It was eight years later that Crow Dog started trouble among the young braves, and some say that Spotted Tail was arranging to shoot him as he had shot Big Mouth. Crow Dog did not wait. In the terse language of the West he "beat him to it," and Spotted Tail was the one to die.

Father DeSmet speaks of Crow Dog as a man of courage and with a withered arm. This was forty years before Spotted Tail's death, and disagrees with the statement of Hyde that Crow Dog was "a young leader."

Mrs. A. R. Honnold, wife of the attorney at Scottsbluff, tells an interesting story, that came to her from her mother, Mrs. E. Van Horn, who was an almost first citizen of Belle Fourche. Crow Dog had been tried at Sidney and sentenced to imprisonment at Deadwood. Mrs. Van Horn, then a girl of sixteen years, was on the stage from Sidney to Deadwood, in which the prisoner, in charge of two officers, was being conveyed. Crow Dog was held at Deadwood for years ; first imprisoned, then as a trusty. In the latter capacity he carried slops and garbage to a few hogs that were owned by the civil authorities. He did the work uncomplainingly, and with not a murmur of discontent, for many years.

One day they missed him from the work, and they never made a search. They knew that the wilderness had beckoned to him, that he

had heard the call of the wild solitudes, and had gone. They let him go, to spend his few remaining years in the old familiar fastnesses, where his rapidly dimming eyes would soon close forever to the changeful coloring of the sky and land.