Description: Narrator Matt Reardon has been carrying around the memory of a beautiful blonde named Caroline for five years since the Civil War ended. His feelings for her are a mixture of love and hate, the result of a betrayal on her part during the war. When he finds out that she's married to the colonel in command of a remote cavalry outpost in Arizona Territory, Reardon enlists in the army so he can be stationed at the same fort and finally have a chance to resolve things with her. The problem is that a charismatic Apache war chief is putting together an army of his own and has a cunning plan to wipe out the cavalry.
Adams does a great job with the gritty details of cavalry life and in creating a protagonist who's obsessed with the woman who loved him and then betrayed him. The occasional outbursts of violence are very effective. This is the usual tough, terse sort of yarn I've come to expect from Adams.