As she came into the street, she saw the little boy sitting on the horse in front of the squaw.

Walking to them quickly, and lifting her arms, as she neared the squaw's pony, the white woman said:-- "Why, Johnnie Barclay, where have you been ?" The boy climbed from the pony, and the two women smiled at each other, but exchanged no words.

And as his feet touched the ground, he became conscious of the rag in his hand, of his bleeding heel, of his cramped legs being "asleep"-- all in one instant, and went limping and whining toward home with his mother, while the Indians traded in the store and tried to steal from the other houses, and in a score of peaceful ways diverted the town's attention from the departing figures down the path.
That was the first adventure that impressed itself upon the memory of John Barclay.

All his life he remembered the covered wagon in which the Barclays crossed the Mississippi; but it is only a curious memory of seeing the posts of the bed, lying flat beside him in the wagon, and of fingering the palm leaves cut in the wood.

He was four years old then, and as a man he remembered only as a tale that is told the fight at Westport Landing, where his father was killed for preaching an abolition sermon from the wagon tongue.