Summary

Jack is taken to Fort Leavenworth, then Fort Laramie. He tells the soldiers he had been kidnapped and tortured by the Native Americans, so much so that he can’t even remember where their village is and where they habitually travel. He finds the soldiers willing to believe almost anything about the Native Americans — such as that they are cannibals or the parents lie with their own children. At the same time, the soldiers are entirely disinterested about how the Native Americans live. No one, from the foot soldier to the general, asks him a thing about the life of the Native Americans.

The soldiers arrange a home for Jack with a family in western Missouri. Silas Pendrake is a preacher with a large black beard to top his large body. His wife, about twenty years his junior, is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty — perhaps not...