Mad Bear and Big Wolf wouldn't have fled the reservation if they hadn't been drunk, but they were, after two days and nights of drinking. This was 1880 and Indians weren't allowed off the reservation without written permission. Life on the reservation was unbearable for these two who had grown up free on the Great Plains, and they fled for Canada to join Sitting Bull. It wasn't their best plan, but it was spring, they were young, and Sitting Bull was living free, having gone to Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer's Last Stand.

Cavalry men were sent from Ft. Worthington to capture the two renegades, but the soldiers decided to desert the Army and collect the reward money for themselves. Reward money Agent Tom Laughlin had posted for the capture, dead or alive, of Mad Bear and Big Wolf for insurrection against the United States Government.

Mad Bear and Big Wolf made it safely into Canada. They believed this was where they would rekindle their peoples' ancient way of life. They knew soldiers weren't allowed to cross the border, but Sgt. Hardy and his men didn't care. The border was a line no man could see, and with four hundred dollars they could start a new life somewhere else.

Agent Tom had sent Black Heart, Chief of the Agency Police, and his men after Mad Bear and Big Wolf with the orders they weren't to return to their white man comforts on the reservation without the two renegades. Black Heart had no interest in chasing those two clear to Canada just to kill them, and he had no intention of living without the white man's goods to which he had become accustomed. Because of this, Agent Tom found himself negotiating for his life with Black Heart. The price was that all the gold taken out of the Black Hills by the white man was to be put back. The Black Hills were sacred to the Lakota.