Summary

Three years pass while Jack lives and learns in the Cheyenne village. There is no formal schooling, but Old Lodge Skins tells the boys stories now and then, stories from which they are expected to learn. Jack recounts a couple of those stories.

The first story is of a raiding party that had gone to capture ponies from the Snake People, the Comanches. They steal many horses but are tracked down the next day, and set upon by far superior numbers. One by one the Cheyenne are killed, until the last of their party, Little Man, fights so bravely and so successfully that the numerically superior Comanche offer to let him go. He refuses and fights off a couple other waves of attackers. He rides after the Snake People warriors and they scatter — but one shoots him in the back with a musket and they...