Responsible for protecting his people, Uhtatse urges them to build houses in the sheltering cliffsides, but the Elders refuse.

Uhtatse and his wife build such a house and when a new enemy becomes a threat, the Elders admit their people would be safer there. From their vantage point, they repel a Tsununni attack, inflicting such heavy losses on their enemy that they never again return.

At the end of his long life, Uhtatse steps off the point from which his grieving wife cast herself, years before, after they lost their son.
(from the publisher)