It happened early one morning. Francis had just finished fetching wood and was bending down over the fire, built outside the lodge because the days were still quite warm, when it seemed every dog in camp started barking at once. Francis turned to see what all the noise was about, and there, riding into the middle of the Pawnee camp as though it were the main street of St. Louis, was a white man with only one arm.

It was, Francis learned from one of the Indian boys, Mr. Jason Grimes.

———— Chapter Four ————

THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS that are always easy to remember because of the way they happen. Francis’s first sight of Mr. Jason Grimes was like that. He would remember it always because of the way Mr. Grimes ignored the Pawnees. It was not an easy thing to do. The Indian dogs were snapping at the hooves of his horses and pack mules, and the squaws and children were so thick all around him that he only showed from the waist up. Yet he ignored them, threading his horse carefully, gracefully around the noisy women and children, looking off in space as though they didn’t exist. He made quite a figure as he rode, straight backed, moving easily with the horse’s roll. Francis got more of an impression of a piece of timber bolted to a saddle than a man—until he looked at Mr. Grimes’s face. It was a thin face, and almost as dark as an Indian’s, except that it bore a bushy beard and mustache. He had thin lips and washed-out blue eyes, and on top of his head he wore a dashing but dusty derby, set slightly back, with one long feather sticking straight up from the band. He had on fringed but otherwise not very fancy buckskins, plain moccasins, and no belt.

The last thing Francis noted was that Mr. Grimes’s left arm was gone. He carried his rifle, wrapped in a buckskin case, with the same hand that loosely held his horse’s reins, and the fact that he had no left arm didn’t seem to bother him at all. It seemed almost natural, as though he would have looked odd with a left arm.

Francis realized suddenly that he was staring with his mouth open. He shut it. He moved forward through the crowd around the mountain man.

“Hey,” he called. “Hey, over here. I’m a captive!” The word sounded funny when he said it, but he saw that the mountain man had heard, for he looked down from his horse quickly, then back up. Francis wasn’t sure, but he thought the derbytopped head had shaken left to right just once—as though telling him to be quiet.

Then he couldn’t see anything more because his “mother” found him and dropped a noose over his head. She dragged him back, cackling happily, and led him into a corner of the lodge.