The young cavalry officer watched as his men, many with tears in their eyes, stacked their arms in front of Wilmer McLean's home at Appomattox, Virginia. He was not alone in the immense sadness he felt at the loss suffered that day by General Lee's great army. Yet, at the same time, he was most grateful to General Grant's troops for providing rations for his starving men and for himself. And when the mustachioed Union general, astride his horse, saluted most honorably the defeated confederate soldiers who were there, Captain Chance Munro, his dignity intact, snapped to attention and proudly returned General Chamberlain's salute. The War Between the States had come to an end.
     "Where will you go, Captain Munro," the boarding house matron asked as she watched him throw his saddle bags over his right shoulder.
     "California, ma'am. I'll be workin' my way west with a wagon train. Maybe I can strike it rich when I get there." He tipped his hat to Mrs. Guthrie, climbed onto Shiloh's back, and began an epic voyage.
     His journey acrosss the southern American expanse was slow, steady and, for the most part, uneventful. On one hot day in late August, however, Munro spotted a small band of Indians shadowing his group from atop a ridge to their right as they negotiated a shallow canyon. The Indians, he surmised, were probably just curious, as they soon rode on.
     Once in California, they were nearing a desert settlement called Barstow. The hills off to his right caught Chance's eye and his interest. He arranged to leave the wagon train and was given water, provisions and coin as payment for his services. He fitted Shiloh with a litter onto which he loaded his supplies and set out for those hills. When he found a spot he liked at the base of one of the hills, he set up camp and bedded down for the night.
     Chance Munro was up before daybreak. He began climbing a south facing hill. The rocks he found contained high grade silver ore. His heart now racing, he ventured over the hill and down the other side. He nearly tripped over the seemingly lifeless form before he saw it: a man, unconscious, lying on his back, badly burned by the sun, leg broken and feverish.
     The man's clothing was foreign to Munro and the language he spoke in his delerium was stranger still. Back at his camp, out of the sun, Munro set the man's leg and applied moisture to his forehead and lips. He awoke the next day.
     "I'm Chance Munro. Don't try to get up! You're leg's broken. Here." Munro offered the man water.
     "I am called Brack. Thank you for coming to my aid." The man took a sip. "I am in your debt."
     "Where did you come from? You don't have a horse. And your accent..."
     The man laughed. "It's hard to explain. I'll shall have to show you."
     Directed to a secluded canyon, Munro, carrying Brack piggyback, then beheld a most breathtaking sight: a circular, metallic object some thirty feet across. "What is it!?"
     "Bring your horse and join me inside. You'll see."
     Inside, as the space craft began accelerating upward, Chance Munro could find no words as he watched the Earth recede.