No officer in the corps could prevent these men from answering an Indian's insult with another of the same kind.

And there remained always men in that command who took their scalps as carelessly as they clipped a catamount of ears and pads.
As for my special detail, I understood perfectly that I could no more prevent my Indians from scalping enemies of their own race than I could whistle a wolf-pack up wind.

But I could stop their lifting the hair from a dead man of my own race, and had made them understand very plainly that any such attempt would be instantly punished as a personal insult to myself.

Which every warrior understood.

And I have often wondered why other officers commanding Indians, and who were ever complaining that they could not prevent scalping of white enemies, did not employ this argument, and enforce it, too.