[2] Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster), an American fur trapper, is on his way to sell the hides he has amassed over the winter.

As Lee and Bass catch up to the Kiowa, they watch them being ambushed by a group of scalphunters, after the bounty offered by the government for each Native American scalp they bring in.

He begins to win her favor, by doing her hair and telling her fortune, hoping she will persuade Howie to take him with them to Mexico (where slavery is illegal), rather than sell him.

Shortly before the release of the film, per the timing custom of the era, Gold Medal Books published a novelization of the screenplay by veteran pulpsmith Richard Wormser as "Ed Friend" (a pseudonym he employed for most of his media tie-in work).

It qualifies as an "inferred novelization" as the source screenplay is not directly credited as the basis, though the copyright is assigned to Norlan Productions and Bristol Pictures—and the film is referenced on the front and back covers of the first edition.

The Scalp-Hunters was not the only Gold Medal novelization of the era to tacitly disguise itself as a novel original to its author, and thus the basis for the film—and in this case, the strategy seems to have paid off; the book stayed in print well beyond the theatrical run of the movie: Future editions of the book (there was a second printing and a re-release about a decade later) eschewed mention of the film altogether.