The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Ending Explained: Spoilers, Character Fates, and Unanswered Questions

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

A Literal Account of the Ending

The novel’s final chapter, “12 January 2013,” presents the conclusion of Etsy Beaucarne’s journey. Etsy has finished transcribing her great-great-great-grandfather Arthur Beaucarne’s 1912 journal—only to discover the journal itself is bound in human skin. Her father dies, and she receives an unopened letter from the Blackfeet Nation. Good Stab (the undying Blackfeet figure who has been confessing to Pastor Arthur) reveals that Arthur, as punishment for his role in the Marias Massacre of 1870, has been transformed into a giant prairie-dog monster. Etsy drives to the massacre site, where she kills the monster using a nail gun and a cable saw, then destroys the journal by sifting her father’s alkaline ashes onto its pages, triggering a chemical decomposition. She meets Good Stab by the river; he nods in acknowledgment that the cycle is finished. She learns he was the construction worker who originally found the journal hidden in a parsonage wall. Good Stab then turns his horse and rides west into a storm, disappearing with his people—the Blackfeet—ending the century-long reckoning.

The Climax: Arthur’s Transformation and Death

The climax occurs in two locations: the site of the Marias Massacre and the riverbank nearby. Etsy confronts Arthur Beaucarne, who is no longer a man but a monstrous creature—a giant prairie dog “punished” by the land for his sins. Arthur’s transformation is literal: Good Stab explains that Arthur became this beast because he participated in the massacre of Blackfeet women and children, a crime that stained the land. Etsy uses a nail gun and cable saw to behead the creature. The head tumbles down a slope, and the monster dies. This action directly resolves Arthur’s arc: the guilt he could never confess or atone for is finally ended by his own descendant, using tools that echo the violence of the frontier.

Major Character Outcomes

Etsy Beaucarne: After being denied tenure and losing her father, Etsy chooses to honor her promise to destroy the journal. She kills Arthur and eliminates the physical evidence of his crime. She gains closure and an unspoken understanding with Good Stab, but her academic future remains ambiguous; she deletes digital copies of the journal and walks away from the story.
Arthur Beaucarne (Three-Persons): The former Lutheran pastor is reduced to a monstrous beast, trapped for over a century. Etsy kills him, ending his unnatural existence. His journal—the record of his guilt—is reduced to dust.
Good Stab (Weasel Plume / Takes No Scalps): He functions as the novel’s avenger and moral witness. After Etsy kills Arthur and destroys the journal, Good Stab acknowledges the deed with a nod but refuses to raise his hand in farewell. He rides away with his people, carrying a hard hat—revealing he was the construction worker who planted the journal for Etsy to find. His fate is open-ended: he returns to the land, possibly continuing his existence as a nachzehrer (vampire) or finally finding rest.
Sheriff Lacy Doyle, the Pinkerton Dove, the Flowers family: All are killed by Good Stab’s vengeful acts during the 1912 timeline. Their deaths underscore the cost of historical violence.
The Cat Man (Nachzehrer): The primal vampire who turned Good Stab into a nachzehrer. He was literally cut in half by a cannon during a battle with soldiers. Good Stab’s narrative confirms that the Cat Man’s bloodline continues through him.

Resolved and Unresolved Threads

Resolved:

The mystery of the 1912 journal and the skinned buffalo hunter is fully explained: Good Stab killed and flayed the hunters as part of his retribution.
Arthur Beaucarne’s guilt for the Marias Massacre is acknowledged and punished—his monster form is killed by his own descendant.
The cycle of violence between the Beaucarne family and the Blackfeet is broken; Etsy destroys the journal and stops further harm.
Good Stab’s confession to the pastor is completed; he shares his entire story and exacts his final revenge.

Unresolved:

What happens to Etsy? She loses her tenure battle, destroys her academic project, and has no clear career path. The novel ends with her standing by the river, watching Good Stab leave.
Good Stab’s ultimate fate: Does he remain an undead nachzehrer forever, or does his ride into the storm represent a final death? The text is deliberately ambiguous.
The Blackfeet Nation’s letter to Etsy is never opened; its contents remain unknown, suggesting an off-page relationship or legal claim that is not pursued.
The precise metaphysical rules of the nachzehrer (vampire) are not fully systematized—the novel relies on oral-story logic rather than a consistent mythology.

Theme Resolution

The ending addresses the novel’s major themes directly.

Colonial Violence and Genocide: Arthur’s monster form is a physical embodiment of the massacre’s stain. Killing it does not undo history but ends a personal and supernatural consequence. The theme suggests that such violence cannot be atoned for by words alone; it requires an active, even violent, breaking of the cycle.
Vampirism as Consumption: Good Stab and the Cat Man’s vampirism represents the consumption of Native land and lives by settler society. In the end, Good Stab does not consume Etsy; he acknowledges her action and departs. The vampiric hunger for revenge is finally satisfied.
Justice and Revenge: Good Stab’s century-long campaign of killing buffalo hunters and their families is presented as a form of justice—but one that nearly consumes him. Etsy’s killing of Arthur is not revenge but a release; she calls it “the rightness of it, the unavoidable goodness.” The novel leaves open whether true justice is possible on stolen land.
Identity and Cultural Erasure: Good Stab’s final act is to turn his back and ride with his people, choosing identity over continued interaction with the white world. Etsy, as a descendant of the oppressor, must confront her family’s erased history. Her destruction of the journal is also a destruction of a false narrative.
Guilt and Absolution: Arthur never receives absolution from any human authority; his confession to Good Stab is a forced reckoning. Etsy’s act of saturation with her father’s ashes becomes a kind of secular absolution—dissolving the physical archive of guilt.

The Epilogue (Chapter 24)

Chapter 24, “12 January 2013,” serves as the sole epilogue. There is no epilogue set after this date. The chapter ends with Etsy standing by the river, her fist raised, watching Good Stab and the Blackfeet vanish into the storm. The final sentence: “No, not the vampire. The Blackfeet.” This reinforces that the supernatural element (the nachzehrer) is secondary to the real subject: the people and their land.

Reasonable Interpretations

Cyclical vs. Linear Time: The novel suggests that historical trauma repeats until someone breaks the cycle. Etsy’s act is that break—but the novel does not promise a permanently peaceful future.
Good Stab as a Tragic Figure: He is both a monster and a hero. His vampirism is a curse born of violence, yet he uses it to seek a form of justice. His refusal to raise his hand in farewell may indicate that he cannot be fully reconciled to the world of the living.
The Journal as a Relic: Bound in skin, the journal is a literal objectification of violence. Its destruction is necessary for memory to be transformed rather than preserved in a harmful form.
The “Buffalo Hunter” as Metaphor: The title refers to both the hunters of buffalo (who destroyed the Plains ecosystem) and Good Stab, who hunts those hunters. Etsy, by killing Arthur, becomes a hunter of the hunter—but she does so to end the hunt, not to perpetuate it.

6 Reader Questions and Answers

1. Why did Good Stab turn the pastor into a prairie-dog monster instead of just killing him?

Good Stab’s punishment was meant to mirror the dehumanization of the Blackfeet. Arthur saw Indians as less than human; thus, he is transformed into an animal—specifically a ground-dwelling creature tied to the land he helped steal. The monster form forces Arthur to live with his guilt physically for over a century.

2. What was in the unopened letter from the Blackfeet Nation?

The novel never reveals its contents. Likely it was a legal notice or a request regarding the journal, or perhaps a message of cultural reckoning. Etsy chooses not to read it, suggesting she has closed that chapter.

3. Is Good Stab truly immortal, and does he die at the end?

He is a nachzehrer, which means he can be killed only by beheading or total bodily destruction (as with the Cat Man). At the end, he rides away alive; the narrative does not depict his death. His disappearance into the storm suggests he may continue in the spirit world or simply remove himself from human affairs.

4. Did Etsy’s father’s ashes really destroy the journal?

Yes. The combination of alkaline ashes and the acidic paper causes a chemical reaction that decomposes the pages. Etsy observes the letters “separating at a nearly microscopic level.” The journal becomes unreadable, fulfilling Etsy’s promise to Good Stab.

5. Who was the body skinned in the first chapter, and why was he left that way?

That body was a buffalo hunter killed by Good Stab. The yellow-and-black face paint and removal of the tongue were deliberate signs: yellow and black are colors associated with death in some Plains traditions, and removing the tongue silences the hunter’s narrative. Good Stab left the body as a message to the community and to the pastor.

6. How does the epigraph from the Augsburg Confession relate to the ending?

The epigraph accuses adversaries of seeking blood over truth. The novel ends with a kind of truth being paid in blood—Arthur’s blood and the journal’s dissolution. The Lutheran pastor’s failure to seek true reconciliation is contrasted with Good Stab’s patient, violent justice. The epigraph frames the story as one where “blood” and “truth” are tragically at odds.

For a deeper look at the characters, see our breakdown of Good Stab, Arthur Beaucarne, Etsy Beaucarne, Sheriff Lacy Doyle, Napi, and the Cat Man. Explore the novel’s major themes: colonial violence, vampirism as consumption, justice and revenge, identity and cultural erasure, and guilt and absolution.