Still shaken by the thought of being left behind at the fort, Sal resumes her story the next morning. A week after receiving the first message, Phoebe finds one reading, “Everyone has his own agenda” (58). She discusses the meaning and source of the messages with Sal and Mary Lou, while Ben doodles two moons inside a pair of moccasins. This startles Sal, who’s always pictured the saying in the same way. As the group walks to the drugstore, Ben also catches Sal to prevent her from falling, and Sal nervously demands he let her go. He brings this up on the way back from the store, remarking that Sal doesn’t seem to like being touched and asking about her mother. The exchange troubles Sal: She doesn’t want to talk about her mother, and she’s worried she’s becoming “stiff” like the Winterbottoms (64). Ben also says the girls shouldn’t call the mysterious young man (whom they’d spotted at the store) a “lunatic.”

When Sal and Phoebe return to the latter’s house, Mrs. Cadaver is pulling into her own driveway. As the girls hurry inside, Sal catches a glimpse of Ben helping Mrs. Cadaver unload several objects, including an axe, from her car. Meanwhile, Phoebe shows her anxious mother the latest message. When Sal returns home, she asks her father why someone might flinch when touched. Her father tearfully embraces her instead of responding.

Gram and Gramps become increasingly involved in Phoebe’s story, often sharing anecdotes from their own lives; when Sal mentions her reluctance to talk about her mother, Gramps tells her he once punched a friend who asked about his then absentee father. Near the South Dakota border, Gramps detours to visit the Pipestone National Monument. After visiting the Pipe Museum, Gramps approaches a man smoking a peace pipe and asks to try it, then passes it to Gram and Sal. Before they leave, he buys two peace pipes and gives Sal one as a memento. At the hotel that evening, Gramps announces (as he does every night), “This ain’t our marriage bed, but it will do” (73). Sal reflects on how much Gramps cherishes his marriage bed back in Bybanks: It’s the same bed he was born in, and his family surprised him with it on the night of his wedding to Gram. Sal wonders if she’ll have a marriage bed of her own someday.

Sal tells Gram and Gramps about her English teacher, Mr. Birkway—an enthusiastic man who, on the first day of class, “[flings] himself up and down the aisles” collecting the journals he’d asked students to write over the summer (78). Sal is nervous because she didn’t write a journal, but Mr. Birkway assures her, “There’s nothing in this whole wide world that is better than a new person” (80), and tells her he’ll think of an alternate assignment.

One day while Sal and Phoebe are home alone, they spot Mrs. Cadaver working in her garden. She’s soon joined by Mr. Birkway, who helps her dig up and then replant a rhododendron. Phoebe speculates that the plant’s new location is where Mr. Cadaver is buried, saying Mr. Birkway must be an accomplice to the murder. Sal is skeptical, but happy for any reason to avoid going to Mrs. Cadaver’s house. Mrs. Winterbottom seems upset when she returns home, and Sal later overhears her asking Phoebe’s older sister Prudence whether she thinks she “lead[s] a tiny life” (86). Prudence doesn’t answer, instead asking her mother to mend one of her skirts. Sal returns home to find her father waiting with a present from Mrs. Cadaver. The package contains a sweater, but Sal insists she doesn’t want it, and rejects her father’s attempts to discuss Mrs. Cadaver with her.

Gramps stops near Chamberlain, South Dakota. It’s very hot, so Gram and Gramps strip to their underwear to go swimming in the Missouri River. Sal eventually gets in as well, and as her hair floats in the water, she thinks about how her mother cut her own long hair a week before leaving. Suddenly, a teenage boy appears, waving a knife and telling the family they’re on private property. He then begins going through Gramps’ pockets. Sal wants to leave, but Gramps instructs her to throw a stone into the knothole of a nearby tree as a warning. Just then, Gram announces that a water moccasin has bitten her, and Gramps and the boy work together to suck out the poison. The boy then gets into the car with the family, helping to direct them to the nearest hospital. Once there, they offer the boy money for his help; he declines and admits to Sal that the land wasn’t private property. Gram ends up spending the night in the hospital.