Molly shoots Trooper Leslie

Molly shoots Trooper Spencer Leslie in a moonlit confrontation that turns an attempted arrest into a fatal rupture. As Leslie’s attention shifts toward Molly and her children, Yadaka tries to draw the danger onto himself; Molly fires her Cowles & Dunn shotgun, and Leslie dies. Yadaka rises unharmed, leaving Molly to face the immediate consequence and order that the trooper be buried deep.

Arrest and competing stakes

Under the light of a full moon, Yadaka kneels before Leslie with his hands on his head. Leslie arrests him for the murders of Mrs. Edwards and her three children, as well as Trooper Phillips and native policeman Dempsey Buckskin. Molly is taken aback: Yadaka had not told her about the deaths of the two men, and his glance makes clear that he recognizes her disappointment. Their brief exchange of looks is interrupted when Leslie tells Molly she must accompany him to the lock-up for questioning.

Molly refuses to leave. Her children will soon be home, and she insists that they need her. She starts to say that she did not know Yadaka had killed the men, but Leslie interrupts her with a question about her husband’s whereabouts. His questioning compounds the pressure of Yadaka’s arrest with Molly’s fear for her children and the unresolved story of her husband. The confrontation is therefore not simply a contest over custody of a prisoner: Molly sees her presence at home as necessary to protect her family.

Yadaka intervenes

Yadaka realizes that Molly’s reactions to the trooper’s words are gathering into a crisis. He understands that Leslie’s continued questioning is increasing her distress, and that Molly will not allow anything to come between her and her children. With his own future looking grim, he decides to redirect Leslie’s attention, even though standing up may prompt the trooper to shoot him. Yadaka has killed the other officers while resisting an arrest for a crime he says he did not commit; he believes he would not receive a trial and had chosen survival over submission. Yet, having met Molly and helped her understand her origins, he regards that decision as having led to something worth protecting.

Yadaka rises, and Leslie orders him to stay down and threatens to shoot. Yadaka lowers his head again, recognizing the trooper’s agitation and the danger of provoking him further. The danger does not ease: Leslie swings his pistol between Molly and Yadaka, while Molly repeatedly insists that her children need her. Yadaka then steps toward Leslie and offers to be taken instead, an attempt to place himself between the trooper’s authority and Molly’s mounting distress.

The shot and its immediate aftermath

The crisis escalates when Leslie turns sharply toward Molly and aims his pistol at her head. Yadaka reads the tension in Molly’s grip on her shotgun and realizes she is about to act. He launches himself at Leslie, hoping to knock him out of her way and prevent another death. A shot rings out before he can stop the confrontation. Molly is momentarily unsure who fired; then she sees the smoke from her own Cowles & Dunn shotgun and understands that she pulled the trigger.

For an instant, Molly can only watch the two men on the ground, uncertain which has been hit. Yadaka rolls away and springs to his feet, alive and in shock. Leslie remains dead at Molly’s feet. The immediate outcome is clear, even if the shot’s origin was not clear to her at first: Molly has killed the trooper, while Yadaka has survived his attempt to intervene. She tells Yadaka to bury Leslie deep, making the burial the first response to a killing that has transformed their already perilous situation.

Significance within the action

The shooting brings together the scene’s opposing pressures: Leslie’s claim of authority, Molly’s insistence that she must be with her children, and Yadaka’s effort to shield her by drawing attention to himself. Yadaka’s intervention does not prevent the shot, but it helps explain why he rises to confront Leslie and why Molly’s action unfolds in a moment when she believes the threat is closing in. The result is a reversal: the trooper who has arrived to arrest and question them becomes the dead man whom they must bury.

Molly’s command to bury Leslie deep extends the scene beyond the instant of the gunshot. The killing creates an immediate practical consequence for Molly and Yadaka, while leaving the confrontation’s danger unresolved. The full moon and the approaching first night of winter frame the action, but the decisive change is human and concrete: Molly’s refusal to abandon her children’s home, Yadaka’s attempt to take the danger upon himself, and the fatal shot bind them to what follows.