That isn't anything.
What if they took the heads?
Does that make any difference?
None at all.
The Indians always took the scalps when Grandfather was at Fort Kearny after the war.
Do you remember the cabinet in your father's office with the arrowheads spread out on a shelf, and the eagle feathers of the war bonnets that hung on the wall, their plumes slanting, the smoked buckskin smell of the leggings and the shirts and the feel of the beaded moccasins?
Do you remember the great stave of the buffalo bow that leaned in a corner of the cabinet and the two quivers of hunting and war arrows, and how the bundle of shafts felt when you closed your hand around them?
Remember something like that.
Remember something concrete and practical.
Remember Grandfather's saber, bright and well oiled in its dented scabbard and Grandfather showed you how the blade had been thinned from the many times it had been to the grinder's.
Remember Grandfather's Smith and Wesson.
It was a single action, officer's model .32 caliber and there was no trigger guard.
It had the softest, sweetest trigger pull you had ever felt and it was always well oiled and the bore was clean although the finish was all worn off and the brown metal of the barrel and the cylinder was worn smooth from the leather of the holster.
It was kept in the holster with a U.S. on the flap in a drawer in the cabinet with its cleaning equipment and two hundred rounds of cartridges.
Their cardboard boxes were wrapped and tied neatly with waxed twine.
You could take the pistol out of the drawer and hold it.
"Handle it freely," was Grandfather's expression.
But you could not play with it because it was "a serious weapon."
You asked Grandfather once if he had ever killed any one with it and he said,
"Yes."
Then you said,
"When, Grandfather?" and he said,
"In the War of the Rebellion and afterwards."
You said,
"Will you tell me about it, Grandfather?"
And he said,
"I do not care to speak about it, Robert."
Then after your father had shot himself with this pistol, and you had come home from school and they'd had the funeral, the coroner had returned it after the inquest saying,
"Bob, I guess you might want to keep the gun.
I'm supposed to hold it, but I know your dad set a lot of store by it because his dad packed it all through the War, besides out here when he first came out with the Cavalry, and it's still a hell of a good gun.
I had her out trying her this afternoon.
She don't throw much of a slug but you can hit things with her."
He had put the gun back in the drawer in the cabinet where it belonged, but the next day he took it out and he had ridden up to the top of the high country above Red Lodge, with Chub, where they had built the road to Cooke City now over the pass and across the Bear Tooth plateau, and up there where the wind was thin and there was snow all summer on the hills they had stopped by the lake which was supposed to be eight hundred feet deep and was a deep green color, and Chub held the two horses and he climbed out on a rock and leaned over and saw his face in the still water, and saw himself holding the gun, and then he dropped it, holding it by the muzzle, and saw it go down making bubbles until it was just as big as a watch charm in that clear water, and then it was out of sight.
Then he came back off the rock and when he swung up into the saddle he gave old Bess such a clout with the spurs she started to buck like an old rocking horse.
He bucked her out along the shore Qf the lake and as soon as she was reasonable they went on back along the trail.
"I know why you did that with the old gun, Bob," Chub said.
"Well, then we don't have to talk about it," he had said.
They never talked about it and that was the end of Grandfather's side arms except for the saber.
He still had the saber in his trunk with the rest of his things at Missoula.
I wonder what Grandfather would think of this situation, he thought.
Grandfather was a hell of a good soldier, everybody said.
They said if he had been with Custer that day he never would have let him be sucked in that way.
How could he ever not have seen the smoke nor the dust of all those lodges down there in the draw along the Little Big Horn unless there must have been a heavy morning mist?
But there wasn't any mist.
I wish Grandfather were here instead of me.
Well, maybe we will all be together by tomorrow night.
If there should be any such damn fool business as a hereafter, and I'm sure there isn't, he thought, I would certainly like to talk to him.
Because there are a lot of things I would like to know.
I have a right to ask him now because I have had to do the same sort of things myself.
I don't think he'd mind my asking now.