For sensitive young artist Paul Lattimer Benedict, the trip west from his family's comfortable home in Baltimore had been filled with plans of painting the Indians in their primitive state. But he got a closer look than he ever counted on when he was captured and held as a slave by a band of Kiowas. Paul was appalled by the Indians' life of war and savagery, bewildered by their superstition and blind faith in signs, and fascinated by the mysticism and fatalism of these wild wandering people. In the long months after his capture he won their grudging respect through acts of strength and bravery, while inwardly he was unaware of subtle changes in his own attitudes and character, changes which became suddenly clear when a visit to a white man's town sent him fleeing back to his adopted people.