Danny, a prisoner at Fort Sumner during the Civil War, faces the prospect of returning home to Navajo Country, but he must choose between saving his friend from a hanging or remaining free.
Danny Blackgoat, a sixteen-year-old Navajo, is labeled a troublemaker during the Long Walk of 1864 and sent to a prisoner outpost in Texas, where fellow captive Jim Davis saves him from a bully and starts him on the road to literacy--and freedom.