Lonesome Dove, Volume 2: Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

THOUGH ERMOKE KNEW IT was dangerous to question Blue Duck, he was so angry at what he had seen Idahi do that he went to him anyway, to complain about his lax behavior with the Comanche from the south. One of the rules of the band was that there could be no visitors; those who came either stayed or were killed. Blue Duck had made the rule himself, and now had broken it, and broken it flagrantly. Within the space of a single day a man had ridden in, surveyed the camp, and ridden out.

That Idahi had killed the bear also bothered Ermoke. No one liked the bear, a coward whose spirit Blue Duck had broken long ago. When they tried to use it to make sport with captives the bear only whimpered and turned its back. Once they had even convinced a terrified white woman that they were going to force the bear to mate with her, but of course the bear did not mate with her or even scratch her. Besides, even though it was a skinny bear, it had to be fed from time to time. The bear was only a source of discontent. Sometimes, just to flaunt his authority, Blue Duck would feed the bear choice cuts of venison or buffalo that the men in camp would have liked to eat themselves. It galled them to see a bear eating meat while they had to subsist on mush or fish.