That day Red Robe had planned to start with a party to war; but when he heard this news he asked his friend Talking Rock to take word to the leader that he had changed his mind and would not go.  He asked his friend to stay with him, instead of joining the war party, and Talking Rock agreed to do so.

Out in front of the camp was a large spring, and to that place Red Robe went and stood leaning against a large stone and looking sadly down into the blue water.  Soon, as he had thought, Ma-min’ came to the spring for a skin of water.  He took her hands, as he had done before, and began to beg her to go away with him that very night, before it was too late.  The girl cried bitterly, but at first she did not speak.

The two were standing in plain sight of the camp and the people in it, and some one went to the chief’s lodge and told him what was taking place.

“Go to the spring,” said the chief, “and tell that young man to let the girl go; she is to be my wife.”

The person did as he was told, but the two young people paid no attention to him.  They did not care what any one said, nor if the whole camp saw them there together.  All they could think about was this terrible thing, which would make them unhappy so long as they lived.  Red Robe kept asking the girl to go, and at last she consented to do as he wished.  They had their arms about each other, not thinking of the crowd that was watching them, and were quickly planning for their meeting and for their going away that night, when Three Bulls quietly walked up to them and stabbed the young man with a flint-pointed lance.  Red Robe sank down dying at the young girl’s feet, and she, looking down for an instant at her lover, turned and ran to her father’s lodge.

“Bring wood,” the chief called out; “let every one bring some wood; all you have at your lodges.  Those who have none, let them go quickly and bring some from the timber.”

All the people hurried to obey.  What Three Bulls ordered was soon done, for the people feared him, and soon a great pile of wood was heaped beside the dead man.

The chief lifted the slender young form, placed it on the pile of wood, and told a woman to bring coals and set fire to the pile.  When this had been done, all left the place except Three Bulls, who stayed there, tending the fire and poking it here and there, until it was burnt out and no wood or trace of a human body was left.  Nothing remained except the little pile of ashes.  These he scattered.  Still he was not satisfied.  His medicine was strong; perhaps his dream had warned him.  Now he ordered that the lodges be taken down, that everything be packed up, and that the trail of the moving camp should pass over the heap of ashes.

Some time before this, after Red Robe had made his long fasting, and his dream had come to him and he had returned to his grandmother’s lodge, he had told his true friend something of what had been said to him by his dream.