"What was there, on to the west?  What lay beyond?  John Chenneville was in a strange land without a map, chasing down a single man in all this emptiness.  He was far from his youth when he had clean linen that had always been laid out on his bed by servants. Other people had started the fires in the fireplaces and brought in wood to keep them going; others made the dinners and set them out; his clothes press was packed tight with clothing from an expensive St. Louis tailor.  But the war had taught him a great deal, that things of immense value were actually small and finite: dry socks, a night's rest without danger, a time plate full of oatmeal with currants in it, a forgotten candle stub in his pocket."