‘Sit down, Charlie. Are the young people all settled in?’ he asked.
‘Yes, and we have an extra one.’
‘A what?’
‘A young man on a horse. Early to mid-twenties. Just rode in off the prairie. Looks like a local late volunteer. Would like to join us.’
‘I’m not sure we can take any more on. We have our complement.’
‘Well, to be fair, he has brought all his own equipment. Horse, buckskin suit, pretty soiled, saddle. Even had five animal pelts rolled behind his saddle. He’s obviously made the effort.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Stabling the horse. I told him to report here in half an hour. Thought you might at least take a look at him.’
‘Oh, very well.’
Craig did not have a watch, so he judged by the fall of the sun, but he was accurate to five minutes. When he knocked he was bidden to enter. John Ingles had buttoned up his jacket and was behind his desk. Charlie Bevin stood to one side.
‘You wanted to see me, Major?’
The professor was at once struck by the authenticity of the young man before him. He clutched a round fox-fur hat. An open, honest-looking nut-brown face with steady blue eyes. Chestnut hair that had not been trimmed for many weeks was held back by a leather thong in a ponytail, and beside it hung a single eagle feather. The buckskin suit even had the straggling hand-stitching he had seen before on the real thing.
‘Well now, young man, Charlie here tells me you would like to join us, stay a while?’
‘Yes, Major, I surely would.’
The professor made a decision. There was a bit of slack in the operating fund for the occasional ‘contingency’. He judged this young man to be a contingency. He pulled a long form towards him, took a steel-nibbed pen and dipped it in the inkwell.
‘All right, let us have a few details. Name?’
Craig hesitated. There had been not a hint of recognition so far but his name might ring a bell. But the major was plump and somewhat pale. He looked as if he had just come out to the frontier. Perhaps back east there had been no mention of the events of the previous summer.
‘Craig, sir. Ben Craig.’
He waited. Not a hint that the name meant anything at all. The plump hand wrote in clerkish script: Benjamin Craig.
‘Address?’
‘Sir?’
‘Where do you live, son? Where do you come from?’
‘Out there, sir.’
‘Out there is the prairie and then the wilderness.’
‘Yes, sir. Born and raised in the mountains, Major.’
‘Good Lord.’ The professor had heard of families who lived in tar-paper shacks deep in the wilderness, but this was usually in the forests of the Rockies, in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. He carefully wrote ‘No Fixed Abode’.
‘Parents’ names?’
‘Both dead, sir.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Gone these fifteen years.’