“I brought this for a girl child,” he said. “But perhaps you would enjoy playing with it more.”

Francis stared at the object in the dirt. Only one thing kept him from screaming and attacking Braid—and that was the knowledge that it would do no good.

What Braid had thrown down was a small china doll. It was a pretty doll, fashioned after a woman going to a ball.

There was only one thing wrong with the doll—its nose had been broken off. Francis remembered exactly how that had happened. He had been teasing Rebecca, as he did sometimes, and in a fit of anger she had thrown the doll at him. She had missed him, and the doll had hit the corner of the stove and the nose had broken off. It was his sister’s doll—Rebecca’s doll.

That night, during the dancing and celebration, Francis tried to escape. They caught him not ten feet from the lodge and tied him up.

The next morning they let him loose, and that evening he tried to get away again. This time his “mother” beat him across the backs of his legs with a dried willow cane.

So Francis gave up the idea of escaping for a while. They were watching him too closely.

After his third week there, a large council meeting was held and the tribe decided to move the village. Francis had to help dismantle the lodge and load it on the travois in back of the horses—normally considered woman work, as was gathering wood—but he didn’t mind because the work took his mind off the terrible situation he was in.

He did mind the direction the band took when they had finished packing, however. Strung in a long line, with much barking of camp dogs, the file headed due northeast—away from the direction of the wagon train.

I’ll have to get all the way to Oregon, Francis thought glumly as he trudged along beside the travois, before I’ll find out about Rebecca. That is, if I find a way to escape.

It didn’t cheer him either to find that the movement of the tribe—almost twenty miles a day—almost doubled the speed that the wagon train made.

They traveled for ten days, and then put up a new camp on the southern edge of the Black Hills, the village winter ground—the place of sweet water and good hunting.

Strangely, Francis liked the Black Hills even more than he had liked the Rockies. The Black Hills were not only fine to look at—with their dark ridges and green meadows—but good to live with as well.

And it was here that Francis met Mr. Grimes.