Army scout John Hawk stood on the bank of Sweet Grass Creek, waiting for the fifteen-man cavalry patrol to catch up to him. While he waited, he poked with his boot at a scorched bone from the ashes of a campfire. It required no scouting of the creek bank to tell him this was where the party of Indians had camped the night before. He knew it was the night just past because digging with his fingers in the ashes told him they were still warm from that morning. He could easily form a mental picture of the small party of Indian hunters gathered around the fire, enjoying a breakfast of fresh beef. His guess was Blackfoot, because he knew that his old friend Walking Owl and his village of old men and women were still trying to survive in this area below the Musselshell. His small band was all that was left of his village after the young warriors headed north to escape the army’s efforts to send them to the reservation. The village must have been desperate for food to have come down this far to butcher a cow from one of the ranches in the valley. In Hawk’s mind, the problem was that the ranchers had gotten to the point where they contacted the army at Fort Ellis every time they lost one cow to a group of starving Indians. And when they contacted the fort, that stolen cow was reported as a large part of their herd.