Fools Crow: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

At dawn, the Pikunis attack the village of Bull Shield. As he rides through the village, White Man’s Dog fires his many-shots gun, killing a man standing in the entrance of a lodge. Suddenly, White Man’s Dog sees a strong and beautiful black horse tied to a lodgepole. He takes it, firing a shot into the tipi nearby. A man comes out with a hand gun, and he knows that it is Bull Shield. White Man’s Dog sees Fox Eyes appear just as he hears a loud bang and a pain in his side. 

White Man’s Dog falls, and he sees Fox Eyes ride down on Bull Shield so that he can kill him close. Bull Shield fires the gun and Fox Eyes falls dead at his feet. Bull Shield advances and White Man’s Dog shoots him three times. He falls dead. As White Man’s Dog assesses his own injury, Rides-at-the-door appears. “Take his hair, son,” he says. 

After taking his enemy’s scalp, White Man’s Dog climbs up onto the black horse (his own horse is nowhere to be found) and rides next to Rides-at-the-door, who smiles at his proudly. White Man’s Dog looks at the scalp in his hand and vomits.

The next day, far away from the Crow camp, White Man’s Dog and Rides-at-the-door ride behind the covered bodies of Fox Eyes and Lone Medicine Person, another Pikuni chief. There are six others dead, thirteen unaccounted for, and seven badly wounded. As they ride, a few of the men light fire to the valley behind them. “Now we make the Crows cry twice,” one warrior says. “Their blackhorns will leave them and become someone else’s meat.” 

The warriors bury the bodies and place Fox Eyes beneath a ledge on a tan rock high up a cliff. As White Man’s Dog watches, he thinks about Sun Chief hiding his face and Fox Eyes riding to Bull Shield when he had a clear shot from a distance. Fox Eyes could have easily killed Bull Shield. White Man’s Dog believes that Fox Eyes wanted to die. After all, “only great chiefs die when Sun hides his face.”