“If I should die,” he said, “and you are near, do not desert me.  Go to the place where I fell, and if my body should have been destroyed look carefully around the place.  If you can find even a shred of my flesh or a bit of my bone, it will be well.  So said my dream.  Here are four arrows, which the dream told me to make.  If you can find a bit of my body, flesh or bone, or even hair, cover it with a robe, and standing over it, shoot three arrows one after another up into the air, crying, as each one leaves the bow, ‘Look out!’ When you fit the fourth arrow on the bowstring and shoot it upward, cry, ‘Look out, Red Robe, the arrow will strike you!’ and as you say this, turn and run away from the place, not looking back as you go.  If you do this, my friend, just as I have told you, I shall live again.”

As the camp moved, Three Bulls stood and watched it filing over the place of the fire, and saw the ashes scattered by the trailing ends of lodge poles and travois, and by the feet of hundreds of people and dogs.  Still he was not satisfied, and for a long time after the last of the people had passed he remained there.  Then he went on across the flat and up and over a ridge, but presently he returned, once, twice, four times, to the crest of the hill and looked back at the place where the camp had been; but at last he felt sure that no one remained at the place, and went on.

Yet Talking Rock was there.  He had been hidden in the brush all the time, watching the chief.  Even after Three Bulls had passed over the ridge, he remained crouched in the bushes, and saw him come back again and again to peer over its crest.  Still further on there was another higher ridge, and when the young man saw Three Bulls climb that and disappear on the trail of the camp, he came forth.

Going to the place where his friend had lain, Talking Rock sat down and mourned, wailing long and loud.  Back on the hills the wolves and coyotes heard him and they too became sorrowful, adding their cries to his.

The young man had little faith in the power of the four arrows that he kept so carefully wrapped in a separate bundle in his quiver.  He looked at the place where Red Robe’s body had been burnt.  It was like any other place on the great trail that had been made, dust and grass blades mingled together, and scratches made by the dragging poles.  It did not seem possible that anything of his friend’s body remained; yet he must search, and breaking a green willow twig he began carefully to work over the dust, stopping his crying, for the tears blinded his eyes so that he could not see.

All the long morning and far into the afternoon, Talking Rock swept the dust this way and that, turning it over and over, in a circle that grew always wider, and just as he was about to give up the search, he found a bit of charred and blackened bone.  Was this a part of his friend’s frame?  Was it not more likely a bit of bone of buffalo or elk, which some dog had carried from one of the fireplaces of the camp and dropped here?