After Boyd joins the seven other inhabitants of Fort Spencer,
a stranger named Colqhoun arrives and describes his wagon train becoming lost
in the Sierra Nevadas and being reduced to cannibalism to avoid starvation. The
party's guide, a Colonel Ives, had promised the party a shorter route to the
Pacific Ocean but instead led them on a more circuitous route, and was then the
one to lead their turn to cannibalism. The soldiers stationed at the fort see
it as their duty to investigate and search for survivors, and so assemble a
rescue party. Before they leave they are warned by their Native American scout,
George, of the Wendigo myth; a story that a man consuming the flesh of his
enemies takes their strength but becomes a demon cursed by a hunger for human
flesh.
