In the bushes, the children built an Indian castle. Dad's manoeuvre tent is properly pegged up with the help of Karl. A pair of neighbouring children with big war paint are there. Berti is Winnetou with a huge colourful headdress and tomahawk in his belt, even Ali—soon-to-be 16-year-old—is playing along today, but probably only because Lela asked him so much.
Lela also had a rooster feather fastened with a headband on her head. She is the squaw and has to stay at home and cook while the men go on the warpath. With a huge roar, they storm off to return home with scalps and hunting trophies, howling in triumph. Lela sits abandoned in the tent. One of the boys, Berti's friend Gerhard—very serious and scary looking—is wearing long Indian trousers with fringes all down the side seams. Lela is sad, that she is only a squaw. Once again she ponders the misfortune that she is a girl and isn't allowed to wear Indian trousers. Why are girls not allowed to wear trousers, maximum for gymnastics? Fraülein Anna says it's not appropriate. But it must be wonderful to be able to walk like a man, a gun in your belt and . . .
She is completely horrified. One of the redskins has crept up and, with a devilish gesture, holds out his long spear in front of her, at the tip of which Lela's bear is pierced as prey. Lela lets out a terrible, heartbreaking, shrieking scream. But Ali is already on the spot. He grabs the unsuspecting boy,
snatches Bear—who is bleeding sawdust—from him
slaps the hunter hard across the face, and takes the trembling, screaming Lela into his arms. One can hear noise from the house. Mother and Fräulein Anna are already there.
"It's not so bad, Lela," says Fräulein Anna comfortingly. "We'll sew up the hole again."
But Lela screams all the more shrilly, tortured by this idea,
"Don't sew, please, please, don't sew!"
Mother takes her in her arms.
"No, my darling," she says soothingly, "we don't need to; it will grow back by itself."
Both, Ali and Mum have to sit next to Lela's bed until she falls asleep. Still, while sleeping, she jerks. She holds her small hand tightly over Bear's wound until Ali is able to secretly steal the toy from the deep sleeper and Mummy repairs the injury by lamplight. As soon as Bear, only slightly slimmer from the heavy blood loss, is back in his place at Lela's breast, Ali can go to bed with a clear conscience.
The two siblings do not look alike. Lela is more like her father, while Ali, the smart, quiet Ali, is more blond and resembles mother's family. But still, Ali belongs to Lela. He is always there when Lela needs him. Berti is still a real boy; he pulls Lela by her sparse braid that she wears and that causes her enough grief as it is, he hides her Sweeties and takes the plates from her doll's kitchen to feed his white mice.
"Berti, you shouldn't do it!" Manuela cries. "Then Laura can't eat from them; Laura thinks white mice smell bad."
But then Ali stands there. He finds the Sweeties, he snatches the dolls' plates from Berti, he saws and makes toys for Lela, and Ali, the artistic Ali, conjures up for Lela two tiny little doll's houses made from the bones of Pöchlin geese. He puts Lela on his bicycle and rides her around the garden. That is the most beautiful and at the same time the most frightening thing Lela can think of. The legs dangle down to left and right, and one have to bend upper body far forward to get hold of the handlebars. Sometimes she trembles that she'll fall, but again and again it's Ali's big boyish hand that holds her.