# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/Ghost Woman at the Blood Camp

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GHOST WOMAN AT THE BLOOD CAMP
CHIEF HEAVY COLLAR, of the Blood tribe, left his camp, on the site of Fort McLeod, with a war-party, to exterminate a few acquaintances in the Cypress Hills, but, finding that his departure had been reported to the enemy, there was nothing for it but to jog home again. On the South Saskatchewan, above Seven Persons Creek, he left his party to kill a buffalo, and while roasting a slice of the meat he thought, "If one of the young men were with me I would send him back to that hill for some hair from the buffalo's head, so I could clean my gun with it." In a minute a shag of this hair blew toward him and fell at his feet. Tramping up the stream to St. Mary's River, he crawled into a bunch of rye grass to sleep. But all night he was conscious of faint, strange noises, and he was troubled. At dawn he found that he was lying beside a skeleton: ​a Blackfoot woman had been killed there in the preceding summer. Next day he went as far as Belly River, where at nightfall he made a fire in the shelter of a tree that had come down in a freshet. The skeleton had been following him, for now he saw it, seated astride a branch, whistling and swinging its legs in time to the tune. Four times he prayed the thing to leave him, but it only whistled the more, looking up at the stars in a complacent manner, until anger got the better of fear, when Heavy Collar fired at the skeleton, and it fell backward, screaming, "You have killed me again! Dog! there is no place on earth where you can hide from me." All that night the chief ran from the skeleton, its angry words dying in the distance, then approaching and lending the fresh energy of fright to his jaded frame. At daylight his companions saw from the Belly River buttes the two figures approaching, and, descending to meet their chief, they began to chaff him for bringing back a stranger wife. Yet as they looked about they discovered no woman, and only the footprints of Heavy Collar could be seen along the ground. Then he knew that his senses had not deceived him, and that he was haunted.
On regaining the camp a feast of welcome was set in nearly every lodge, and, leaving his own tent, to eat with a neighbor, Heavy Collar saw a bear walk out of the brush, as if attracted by the odor of food, and he threw a bone at it to drive it ​away. "You killed me once, and again you are killing me," cried the creature; for it was the ghost woman in that guise. He shouted, "A ghost bear is upon us!" whereon all the people in the camp crowded into his tepee and listened as the ghost tramped about, grumbling, outside. First she turned the wing, or flap, at the top of the lodge, so that the wind would blow the smoke of Heavy Collar's fire back into the tent and strangle the people. They, hearing her threats to kill them, began to pray to her. After a time the chief's mother lighted a pipe and offered it in propitiation, and as the ghost backed away the woman followed, still extending the pipe. Heavy Collar ran out and seized his mother about the waist, but she was drawn on as by an invincible power. Another man caught him, and he in turn was held by another, until the whole village was on the march. Suddenly the pipe fell from the old woman's hands. She was dead. The ghost was satisfied with one life, and melted out of sight, never to be seen again.