His one disappointment was that he had never found the hole where the People emerged from the earth. He had talked about the hole so much that the Kickapoos had come to consider him rather a bore. Of course, the hole where the People had emerged was important, but they themselves did not have time to look for it and had lost interest in talking to Famous Shoes about it.

It was while returning from his trip to the Cimarron that Famous Shoes had the misfortune to run into three of Blue Duck's half-breed renegades. They had just ambushed an elderly white man who was riding a fine gray horse.

It was the white man Famous Shoes saw first.

He had been shot two or three times, stripped of all his clothes, and left to die. When Famous Shoes spotted him he had just stumbled into a little gully; by the time Famous Shoes reached him he was staring the stare of death, though he was still breathing a little.

Then the renegades themselves came riding down into the gully. One of them rode the old man's fine horse and the others had donned pieces of his clothing, which was better clothing than their filthy rags.

"Leave him alone, he is ours," one of the renegades said insolently.

Famous Shoes was startled by the bad tone the renegades adopted. Apparently they had decided to torture the dying man a little, but before they could start the man coughed up a great flood of blood, and died.

"He is not yours now," Famous Shoes pointed out. "He is dead." "No, he is still ours," the renegade said. The three renegades were drunk. They began to hack the old man up--soon they had blood all over the clothes they had taken from him.

While the renegades were cutting up the old man, Famous Shoes left. They were in such a frenzy of hacking and ripping that they didn't notice him leaving. He was a mile away before one of the drunken killers decided to pursue him. It was not the bandit who had taken the gray horse; that man was called Lean Head.

The man who pursued Famous Shoes was a skinny fellow with a purple birthmark on his neck. Birthmarks brought either good luck or bad, and this bandit's did not bring him good luck.

Famous Shoes noticed the other two bandits riding off in the direction the old man had come from.

No doubt they wanted to scavenge among his possessions a little more thoroughly.

Because the skinny renegade was alone, and his companions headed in the other direction, Famous Shoes saw no reason not to kill his pursuer, which he did with dispatch. He had a bow and a few arrows with him which he used to provide himself with game. When the renegade loped up behind him Famous Shoes turned and put three arrows in him before the man could catch his breath. In fact, the renegade never did catch his breath again. He opened his mouth to yell for help, but before he could yell Famous Shoes pulled him off the horse and cut his throat--then he grabbed the horse's bridle and cut the horse's throat too. The horse was as skinny as the rider; Famous Shoes left them together, their lifeblood ebbing into the prairie. He left the arrows in the dead man-- there were so many guns on the plains now that it was becoming rare to see a man killed with arrows. The renegades might be so ignorant that they could not tell Kickapoo arrows from any other; they might conclude that their friend had been killed by a passing Kiowa.

The renegades, though, were not quite so ignorant.

By the middle of the afternoon Famous Shoes saw their dust, far behind him. Once he knew they were pursuing him he turned due west, onto the llano. He was soon into a land of gullies--he skipped from rock to rock and walked so close to the edge of the gullies that the pursuers could not follow his steps without riding so close to the gullies that they risked falling in.

That night he only rested for an hour. However drunken or foolish the renegades might be, pursuit was likely to make them determined, or even bold. They would think that he was a rabbit they could run to ground. They would never think that since he had killed one of them he might kill them too. In general he preferred to avoid killing men, even rude, ignorant, dangerous men, for it meant setting a spirit loose that might become his enemy and conspire against him with witches.

He ran west into the llano all night and most of the next day, not merely to evade his pursuers but to put as much distance as possible between himself and the spirit of the dead man. Now that the skinny man was dead Famous Shoes began to worry about the birthmark, which might mean that the man had had an affinity with witches.

It was as he moved deeper into the waterless llano that he heard the faint singing, at night, and determined that it was made by a single Comanche.

Famous Shoes thought he ought to just pass by the Comanche, but the closer he came to the singing, the more curious he felt. Though he knew it was dangerous to approach a Comanche, in this case he could not resist. As he eased closer to the singer it became clear to him that the man was singing the song of his life. He was singing of his deeds and victories, of his defeats and sorrows, of the warriors he had known and the raids he had ridden on.

As he came closer Famous Shoes saw that the man was indeed alone. He had only a tiny fire, made of buffalo dung, and a dead horse lay nearby. The song he sang was both a life song and a death song: the warrior had decided to leave life and had sensibly decided to take his horse along with him, so that he could ride comfortably in the spirit world.

Famous Shoes decided that he wanted to know this warrior, who had chosen such a fine way to leave life. He didn't think the Comanche would turn on him and kill him--f listening to the life song that was a death song he knew that the warrior would probably not be interested in him at all.

He knew, though, that it was not polite to interrupt such a song. He waited where he was, napping a little, until the gray dawn came; then he stood up and walked toward the warrior, who was poking up his fire a little.

The warrior by the small fire did not rise when he saw Famous Shoes coming. His voice was a little hoarse, from all his singing. At first, when he saw Famous Shoes approaching, his look was indifferent, like the look of warriors so badly wounded in battle that their spirits were already leaving their bodies, or like the look of old people who were looking beyond, into the spirit home. The warrior was very thin and very tired. He had not eaten any of the dead horse that lay nearby; he was exhausted with the effort it took to get his life into the song.

Famous Shoes did not know him.

"I was passing and heard your song," Famous Shoes said. "Some of Blue Duck's men were chasing me. I had to kill one of them--t was two days ago." At mention of Blue Duck the warrior's expression changed from one of indifference to one of contempt.

"I was at the camp of Blue Duck," he said, in his hoarse voice. "He was camped on the Rio Rojo, near the forests. I did not stay.