Madre de dios, she thought, rolling her eyes in the darkness. No wonder Papa had despaired of the federales ever doing anything about the murder of their family. Or about any of the attacks down in Texas.

Sofia shook her head, causing the blanket to rustle loudly in her ears. One of the earplugs for her little transistor radio came out, but rather than pulling out the other one and giving up on the broadcast, she hunted around inside the folds of the blanket until she’d found it and pressed it back in.

It was a terrible thing to lose faith in someone. Not the worst thing in the world, of course, and Sofia Pieraro was well acquainted with the worst things in the world. But she felt keenly her disappointment with President Kipper. She had written him a letter once, just after they’d arrived in Kansas City. She’d told him exactly what had happened when the road agents attacked their farm, and of the atrocities she witnessed on the trail. And of how it had to be true that Jackson Blackstone was responsible for it all. But James Kipper had not read that letter on the radio. He hadn’t answered her questions about what he was going to do. He certainly hadn’t sent any tough Cavalry troopers down into the Mandate to chase the road agents away. Or even to catch them, and hang them by their necks, as her father and the Mormons had done.