Like the Major, Nelson Stack is an ex-army office from the Confederate army. Since the war, though, he has become a pacifist. That, together with the fact that he has more wagons and stock than most on the train, hasn't endeared him to many of his fellow travellers, especially a southerner named Jeff Claymore. When the wagon train runs into Indian trouble, Claymore believes Stack's pacifism is just another word for cowardice. Things really come to a head when it is discovered that Indians have raided the stock and taken some steers. They find one of the Indians, an old man left to die, but Stack won't leave him behind. So he takes him with them. It is the last straw for Claymore.