Hannie, Juneau, and Missy head toward Mason, Texas, and the federal army outpost. On the word of the horse thief in the jail, they hope to be reunited with William Gossett. Hannie is surprised to find that the shadowy man she thinks has been tracking her since she left Louisiana, the man responsible for tossing her off the Genesee Star, the massive, scarred man she knows only as Moses, is in fact a federal deputy marshal named Elam Salter. He is on a mission to break up renegade bands of vigilante Confederate soldiers who refused to abandon the war and now raid towns along the Texas frontier. Elam tells Hannie that William Gossett ran afoul of the federal government when he bought a stolen Army horse from a band of vigilantes while trying to help his son on the lam from federal agents. When William was detained for trafficking in stolen Army horses, which was capital offense, a gunfight broke out in which William was shot in the leg. Despite army field hospital care, the wound festered until the leg had to be amputated. Salter tells Hannie that William is clinging to life at an army outpost some twenty miles away.