From the preface: “I had the honor of knowing the late Jack Crabb - pioneer of the wild West, settler who came to the Cheyenne, tracker, gunfighter, buffalo hunter... From February to June 1953, with rare exceptions, I sat next to him every day with him, set up the tape recorder, tried to cheer up the old man if he was not in a good mood, from time to time asked leading questions so that it would be easier for him to recall the events of a century (!) ago, and generally tried to be unobtrusively helpful. After all, it was his book...”

Jack Crabbe, a ten-year-old boy, is captured by Indians who brutally murder his relatives. Easily accustomed to the primitive life of the Indians, he becomes one of them. But fate throws him back to the white people, then again to the Indians, and so on until the end of his days.