Three young men leave the orphanage where they grew up to make their ways in the adult world.

The story takes place in San Antonio de Areco, in the Argentine pampas. Fabio Cáceres remembers his childhood as an orphan and his youth working in the fields, alongside his godfather, Don Segundo Sombra, a lonely gaucho whom he admires and from whom he will learn to be a gaucho, following him in all his adventures. Don Segundo will be Fabio's role model.