Three medicine men, Hunts to Die, Wolf Medicine, and Bird Shirt, believed he could be saved. Bird Shirt asked for absolute silence. The people who gathered to watch were pushed back to keep a wide path open from the lodge to the water and told to keep any dogs away.
Bird Shirt took his medicine bundle and entered the lodge. He took a wolf skin out of the bundle. As Plenty Coups goes on:
"It was a whole wolf skin with the head stuffed. The legs of the skin were painted red to their first joints and the nostrils and a strip below the eyes were also red. I watched Bird Shirt paint himself to look like his medicine skin, his legs to the knees, his arms to their elbows, his nostrils, and strips below his knees were made red, while he sang steadily with the beating drums. He painted his head with clay until it looked like that of the buffalo-wolf, and he made ears with the clay that I could not tell from a real wolfs ears, from where I stood. All the time, he was singing his medicine song with the drums while the people scarcely breathed.
Suddenly, the drums changed their beating. They were softer and much faster. I heard Bird Shirt whine like a wolf mother that has young pups and saw him trot, as a wolf trots, around the body of Swan's Head four times. Each time he shook his rattle in his right hand and each time dipped the nose of the wolf skin in water and sprinkled it upon Swan's Head, whining continually as a wolf mother whines to make her pups do as she wished.
I was watching -- everybody near enough was watching -- when Swan's Head sat up. We then saw Bird Shirt sit down like a wolf, with his back to Swan's Head, and howled four times, just as a wolf howls four times when he is in trouble and needs help. I could see that Swan's Head's eyes were now open, so that he could see Bird Shirt stand and lift the medicine wolf skin above his own head four times whining like a wolf mother. I seemed myself to be lifted with the skin, and each time there was, I saw, a change in Swan's Head. The fourth time, Bird Shirt lifted the wolf skin, Swan's Head stood up. He was bent, his body twisted, but his eyes were clear while Bird Shirt trotted around him like a wolf, whining still, life a wolf mother coaxing her pup to follow her.
Bird Shirt walked out of the lodge and when Swan's Head followed him, I could scarcely hear the drums or the mens voices singing his medicine song. I felt that I was with Swan's Head when he stopped once, twice, three times and then into the open way to the water behind Bird Shirt, who kept making the coaxing whine of a wolf mother, until both had stepped into the water.
Bird Shirt led Swan's Head out into the stream until the water covered his wounds. Then he pawed the water as a wolf does, splashing it over the wounded man's head. Whirling like a wolf, he nosed the water with the wolf skin and made the nose of the wolf skin move up and down over the bullet holes, like a wolf licking a wound.
'Stretch yourself,' he told Swan's Head; and when Swan's Head did as he was bidden, stretching himself like a man who had been asleep, black blood dripped from the holes in his chest and back. This was quickly followed by red blood that colored the water around them, until Bird Shirt stopped it. 'Bathe yourself now,' said Bird Shirt, and obediently Swan's Head washed his face and hands in the running water. Then he followed Bird Shirt to the brush lodge where they smoked together. I saw them..........."
Thus were wolf and man one.