Not far from me, I saw a scout dressed in a private’s uniform blouse and little else, pounding an old man with the butt of his rifle. When he drew out a knife, I came out of my fog.

“You there! Stop that!” I spurred my horse forward toward them. “What do you think you’re doing to that old man?”

It sounded ridiculous to me at the time and even more so now, as I had not a single notion how to help. I just couldn’t sit there and watching that scout beat the old man senseless. Something must have snapped in me. To this day, I don’t understand why that sparked me to action I was unequal to handle.

The Crows raised his knife, balanced to throw, and held it there. Indecisive? Unsure of his target? I have no idea. He looked back at me and said something that didn’t sound polite in any language. He wheeled his horse and started toward me, his knife back and ready to throw. I raised that old gun Hawk had loaded for me, took serious aim because it mattered, and fired.

The force of the explosion threw me off my horse and I fell backward into the mud. The knife whizzed past my horse and landed behind me with a squish. I groped around in the mud for it, desperate because the Crow was nearly upon me. When it began to rain blood, I wiped the mud from my eyes and looked up.

The Crow scout still sat on his horse, his posture impeccable, but his head had disappeared, blown completely off his shoulders. Blood spouted skyward with a force to rival any geyser, then splattered down around me. I was warm for the first time since crawling from my buffalo robe.

He sat there – it sat there – never wavering for what seemed an excruciatingly long time, then toppled in the mud next to me. I probably would have screamed like a banshee – maybe I tried – but my mouth was full of mud and my teeth felt jarred loose from my fall. Instead, I lay there in what must have been shock, marveling at the whiteness of his neck bones.

After I could breathe again, I climbed back on Fair One. I was beginning to think I was made of sterner stuff than I knew, or my parents even imagined.

The raid continued only a few more minutes. Another Crow died and the others fled into the sheltering rain. It was a hasty retreat, but nothing to rejoice over, because their object had been realized. They escaped with more than one hundred horses The People could ill afford to lose.

Hawk dismounted in a hurry and stood over the Crow I had decapitated with my one lucky shot in a million. He toed the body for no discernible reason. God Almighty, his head was gone. I knew he was dead. Hawk did a peculiar thing, something that confirmed the other half of his origin that a mere glance would never have seen: He shook my hand. I was surprised and relieved. At least I had killed the right Indian.