British journalist Robert Harrison Clarke joins the wagon train, along with his Sikh aide, hoping to write a story on the "real" West. Clarke is a pompous and arrogant man who looks down on his fellow wagon train members, and thinks that stories about the West are simply exaggerations. Chris and Cooper pick up a trio of civilian surveyors who with Chris and Cooper will lay out a new road to Fort Crowder. Clarke and his aide are to go along on the trip. At the same time a troop of Army infantry are marching through the area which violates a treaty with the Kiowa and Comanche. The tribes out number the troop and massacres all but two of the soldiers who Chris and Cooper rescue. Clarke's beliefs are tested when they find the remains of the soldiers after the Comanche and Kiowa have finished with them. Their leaders are vowing to attack Hale's group if the soldiers stay with Hale's group which is under siege at Adobe Walls..
—rbecker28