"He belongs to me," the chief said.

Doctor Chantry jumped at the chief in rage.

"For God's sake, shut up and go about your business!"

It was like one of the little dogs in our camp snapping at the patriarch
of them all, and recoiling from a growl. My father's hand was on his
hunting knife; but he grunted and said nothing. Doctor Chantry himself
withdrew from the room and left the Indian in possession. Weak as I was
I felt my insides quake with laughter. My very first observation of the
whimsical being tickled me with a kind of foreknowledge of all his weak
fretfulness.

My father sat down on the floor at the foot of my couch, where the wax
light threw his shadow, exaggerating its unmoving profile. I noticed one
of the chairs he disdained as useless; though when eating or drinking
with white men he sat at table with them. The chair I saw was one that I
faintly recognized, as furniture of some previous experience, slim
legged, gracefully curved, and brocaded. Brocaded was the word. I
studied it until I fell asleep.

The sun, shining through the protected windows, instead of glaring into
our lodge door, showed my father sitting in the same position when I
woke, and Skenedonk at my side. I liked the educated Iroquois. He was
about ten years my senior. He had been taken to France when a stripling,
and was much bound to the whites, though living with his own tribe.
Skenedonk had the mildest brown eyes I ever saw outside a deer's head.
He was a bald Indian with one small scalp lock. But the just and perfect
dome to which his close lying ears were attached needed no hair to adorn