Tom, a white settler in the American West, drinks with his friend Grady and tells him a story of something that happened a while ago. Tom's job was to visit Native Americans alongside a few other men and tell them that they had to leave their land. This time, a Native American woman threw an egg at one of the men, so he urinated in the family's well. Her husband pushed the man into the well, and in retaliation, the white men killed him and his wife and threw their bodies into the well. The couple had two children, which were given away to another Native American woman. Tom reports that the white men went back to give the dead proper burials, but they still continue to see their ghosts everywhere. One man from the company even shot himself as a means of escaping. Tom shares that he went back and killed the couple's children, then buried them by their parents as a means of uniting the family again. He breaks down and cries in front of Grady. Grady brings in Frazier, an older man within their group of men living in the West, and asks Tom to tell him the story. Tom is extremely drunk because he hates drinking water, believing that it tastes of blood. Tom notices Frazier's horse drinking from a trough and begins to panic. He starts screaming to empty air about how he "gave the children back", as if he is talking to ghosts. His body lurches forward into the horse's trough, and even as Grady tries to hold him back and Frazier tries to pull him out, he drowns. Some blame this death on Frazier, but Grady believes that the ghosts of the Native American couple enacted their revenge.