It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through
northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry
for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through
three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his
rootless, solitary existence.
In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a
young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier,
a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister;
sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own.
Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once
again been torn away from the only home she knows.