They were coming across the prairie, they were
    galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
    their man at last—­
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree
    encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
    miles away. 
Mistake him?  Never!  Mistake him? the famous
    Eagle Chief! 
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle
    Thief—­
That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over
    the plain,
Who thieved and raided, and scouted, who rode like
    a hurricane! 
But they’ve tracked him across the prairie; they’ve
    followed him hard and fast;
For those desperate English settlers have sighted
    their man at last.

Up they wheeled to the tepees, all their British
    blood aflame,
Bent on bullets and bloodshed, bent on bringing
    down their game;
But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief:  that
    lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons—­for the
    women alone were there. 
“The sneaking Indian coward,” they hissed; “he
    hides while yet he can;
He’ll come in the night for cattle, but he’s scared
    to face a man.” 
“Never!” and up from the cotton woods rang the
    voice of Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the
    Cattle Thief. 
Was that the game they had coveted?  Scarce fifty
    years had rolled
Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the
    bone and old;
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the
    warmth of blood. 
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the
    sight of food.

He turned, like a hunted lion:  “I know not fear,”
    said he;
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in
    the language of the Cree. 
“I’ll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I
    kill you all,” he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen
    balls of lead
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower
    of metal rain,
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped
    dead on the open plain. 
And that band of cursing settlers gave one
    triumphant yell,
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that
    writhed and fell. 
“Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass
    on the plain;
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he’d have
    treated us the same.” 
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed
    high,
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman’s
    strange, wild cry. 
And out into the open, with a courage past
    belief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o’er the corpse
    of the Cattle Thief;
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in
    the language of the Cree,
“If you mean to touch that body, you must cut
    your way through me.”