Three young men went on a quest. They wandered in the high mountain wilderness for days. If they returned without the blood of enemies on their hands they would be shamed. They had eaten nothing but a gopher in days. One night they were sitting in their spirit lodge complaining at such bad luck when they heard a human calling out. An old trapper was standing at the door of the lodge. The trapper was dressed in rags and blue with cold, but he had half a wild goat slung on his shoulder. The young men knew the trapper. Often he had lain at their camp fires and brought good whiskey to enliven the company. He stayed among them one winter, and married for a while.
The young men shared an unsaid thought. They would eat the wild goat and kill the trapper. Then they could return home as warriors, the blood of an enemy on their hands.
They lit a big fire and basked in its warmth as they ate the goat, noisily sucking out the marrow bones and washing it all down with a few gulps of the trapper's whiskey.
The old man was no fool.
``So kill me for an enemy?'' He asked. ``Aint I your friend?''
``But we will return in disgrace ...'' Said the youngest.
They smoked together long.
``So- blood of your enemy...''
``Blood of a white man is blood of an enemy...''
``So...blood of a white man - a white man who has always been your friend - father of Broken Tooth who passed this way not long ago - blood of your enemy?''
The young men searched the flying sparks with their eyes.
``Blood of a white man...'' The trapper took his knife and handed it to the youngest.
``Shed my blood.'' he said. The young man made a light cut on the trapper's arm and blotted up the blood with his own hands. The others did the same.
In the pre-dawn light the young men closed up the spirit lodge and started home. With three cuts on his arm and an Arapaho blanket on his shoulders the trapper headed for a certain sheltered valley he knew well.