At eighteen winters of age, White Man’s Dog, a member of the Lone Eaters band of the Pikunis, has yet to distinguish himself as a warrior. Unlike his father, Rides-at-the-door, who has “many horses and three wives” (3), he has “three horses and no wives” and does not own a decent gun (3). He dreams of possessing a “many shots gun” that will allow him to make name for himself in battle and obtain “plenty of wives, children, horses, meat” (4). As White Man’s Dog imagines his future as a successful warrior and husband to many women, he thinks about his father’s youngest wife, Kills-close-to-the-lake, “and the way she sometimes [looks] at him” (4). He has still never touched the body of a woman, something that his friends often mock him for. He asks “Seven Persons and all the Above Ones [the stars/constellations] to take pity on him, to forgive him his bad thoughts, to light his way” (5). 

On his way to his father’s lodge, White Man’s Dog meets his friend, Fast Horse, who tells him about a raid led by