“I thought it was a mite tight,” he said to Francis. “Braid sent word ahead and asked Standing Bear to hold you if the Sioux found you. That’s interesting since the Pawnee and Sioux are usually enemies—I guess he made a small peace with this village because catching you is so important. It would seem, Mr. Tucket, that you hurt his prestige—the black mare was Braid’s personal mount. You sure do things in spades when you get loose, don’t you? Taking a war leader’s prize horse and all.”

“Me?” Francis said. “I didn’t take—”

“Now, now, Mr. Tucket. Just leave sleeping dogs alone. Old Standing Bear here thinks you must be one go-getter of a young warrior—bucking a big war leader and all. The Sioux think it’s the funniest joke they ever heard, so why don’t you just play along?”

All the time he had been talking to Francis, Mr. Grimes hadn’t stopped looking and smiling at Standing Bear. He said something in Sioux, laughed again when Standing Bear answered, and nodded. “Raise your right hand, Mr. Tucket, the way standing Bear put up his.”

Francis complied. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him you were the toughest fighter in the Black Hills, that you were clever as the fox, that your heart was the heart of a mountain lion.”

“You said all that about me?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Mr. Tucket. Indians don’t take anybody’s word on anything. Standing Bear says that he has a pretty tough boy in his village—”

“Oh, no …”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Tucket. It seems that your wrestling days aren’t over yet.” He turned and again said something to Standing Bear in Sioux.

“Now what did you tell him?” Francis asked.

“I just said that you weren’t afraid of his boy, sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

“I said you were so sure of winning that you’d bet your rifle against a good pony and a set of buckskins.”

“You did what?”

“Now don’t get rattled, Mr. Tucket. Didn’t those Pawnee boys teach you anything about wrestling?”

Francis’s eyes scanned the crowd around them, looking for his possible competitor. “Yes, Mr. Grimes, the Pawnees did teach me something about wrestling.”

“Well, then …”

“They taught me how to lose.”

There were certain formalities that had to be observed before the match. Mr. Grimes had also brought the Sioux powder and lead. Francis watched him loosen the pack on one of the mules and remove a small keg. It couldn’t have been more than a two-pound keg of powder, but the way the Sioux carried on, it could well have been two hundred pounds of triple-fine.

“They can’t make it,” Mr. Grimes told Francis. “So the only way they can get powder is to buy it, or get it as a gift, or steal it.”