It was a clearly defined road leading to the Missouri at Wolf Creek, with plenty of tracks in both directions. When he started out that morning, he had walked a little way, so he could take a look at those tracks. But he soon decided they could tell him nothing, except that a good many horses had traveled south on the road. He could not be sure he was looking at Booth’s tracks or somebody else’s. So, he stepped up into the saddle and started for Wolf Creek, thinking maybe someone might tell him which way Booth went from there. That thought automatically brought to mind one Rufus Bodine, and he had to wonder if Rufus was still alive. He couldn’t help thinking that there was an awfully good chance somebody had shot the ornery son of a bitch. The last time he had been in Rufus’s trading post was probably at least four years before. He and his Blackfoot friend Bloody Hand had gone there to trade some deer hides, and it had not been a genial transaction. It was the winter before Hawk began his service as a scout for the army, the same year Bloody Hand, along with all the other younger men, left their village to escape life on a reservation. He and Bloody Hand had spent the better part of a month hunting in the Big Belt Mountains. It had been a good hunt and provided a good supply of deer meat and some elk for old Walking Owl’s village. Rufus Bodine’s trading post at Wolf Creek was the closest place to trade the many hides they had collected. Hawk unconsciously shook his head when he thought about it. Bodine was not willing to give a fair price for the pelts. But more than that, he was blatantly arrogant in his attitude toward the Blackfoot hunters, as he thought both were. Before it was over, Hawk had to restrain Bloody Hand from attacking Bodine and adding his scalp to their supply of hides. They managed to withdraw without spilling any blood and took their hides thirty miles downriver, almost to Great Falls, to trade them. “That was before you took up with me,” he told Rascal. “Maybe he’s mellowed a little since that time.”

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