This incident furnished the cause for an ugly Indian fight which occurred on Rock creek, northeastern Colorado, on June 12, 1877. “Doc” Kinnie, Charley Hayes and myself had come from Deadwood to Cheyenne as an escort for a stage coach carrying the Wells-Fargo express, when Stephenson offered us better pay to work on his cattle ranch. Four days before the incident of the bloody head, Stephenson had missed seven head of cattle and had struck the trail of one Indian who had driven them off. He rode to the ranch house in high rage and offered Kinnie and Hayes one hundred dollars if they would recover the cattle and kill the Indian. In five minutes they were in their saddles riding to the point where Stephenson indicated the trail. I did not join them, as Stephenson insisted that two were enough. Kinnie and Hayes had no difficulty in following the trail of the stolen cattle and were close on them the next evening. Not caring for a night attack they went into camp, eating their bacon raw rather than make a fire. They were in their saddles at the first grey streak of dawn and within an hour came upon two Indians eating their morning meal in a canon, while the missing cattle were grazing five hundred yards beyond. [Illustration: =Charles Hayes, “Doc” Kinnie, Robert McReynolds=. After the Fight (page 40).] It was a complete surprise to the Indians, and in the melee that followed one of them was killed and the other made his escape. It then became a question of how best to prove to Stephenson that they had killed the Indian without the burden of taking him back. Kinnie, who had been a medical student in Ohio before a certain escapade had caused him to emigrate to the west, suggested the amputation of the dead Indian’s head as the handiest way, and also suggested that they keep quiet as to the Indian who got away, lest the old man should only want to pay one-half of the promised reward. Hayes stood guard while Kinnie cut and twisted the Indian’s neck until the head separated from the body. He then rolled it in the Indian’s blanket and carried it on the pommel of his saddle until the afternoon, when he rolled the ghastly trophy out on the ground in front of Stephenson and his squaw wife. “Seems to me if I had your kind of relations I would pay a better price and get them all killed off,” said Hayes, as he returned from the corral. This remark nettled Stephenson, who smoked his pipe awhile in silence. He then grew angry, ordered the three of us to hit the trail for Fort Morgan at once, saying that two thousand Cheyenne Indians would be down upon us as soon as his squaw could communicate with them. This we refused to do, as neither Kinnie nor Hayes, nor their horses were in condition for flight, besides the old man had not settled and we rightly guessed that he would like to get out of paying the one hundred dollars, as well as preserve his good standing with the Indians.