Horses neighing, women scurrying to cover, the report of guns, his mother, Pretty-weasel, gashing her legs for mourning,—that was Takes-the-pipe’s earliest memory. Later he learned that his own father, a famous warrior of the Whistling-water clan, had fallen in the fight and that his “father,” Deaf-bull, was really a paternal uncle who had married the widow. No real father could have been kinder than Deaf-bull. If anything, he seemed to prefer his brother’s son to his own children, always petting him and favoring him with the choicest morsels.