It takes the group almost two days to make it the rest of the way to Roswell. They only have one horse, and some of their equipment, like Cady's trunk of disguises, is left behind with the train. Tobey's pack gets gored by a jackalope the first morning, but no one else other than Ginger sees it. In Roswell, they end up staying at the Boys In Gray Hotel, which is passable and that's all. They also end up buying all the free horses in Roswell, which amounts to five - apparently many of the horses were spooked by a storm a few nights ago and have had to be put down.
Cady, having worked out an unlocking hex, decides it's time to open the mysterious sealed box she won in a poker game a long time ago, that clearly has something good in it. The hex doesn't work, but Doctor Vorpwhistle tells her she can just un-pin the hinges. Cady is surprised by this.
"Some people do not deserve to get into boxes!" - Dr. Vorpwhistle
They do not however end up opening the box, because as they are about to Tobey gets a strong feeling that it would be best to leave the box closed and keep whatever is in it safe. There's a great speculation about what it is and what they might be keeping it safe for, but the reader can make up things just as likely as anything that was mentioned.
The next day they go to see the crater where there used to be a Confederate research base, and get run out again by a couple of Rangers who tell them they can't poke around, that the government still claims the area. In the short time they are there, Vorpwhistle discovers that the smoking rubble piles are smoking because they have been recently re-seeded with ghost rock and coal, not because they are still smoking from the disaster years ago. Elder Tanner, through use of his past vision, learns that the Confederates basically rebuilt the base after the disaster, but underground. Which explains the too-large fort and Ranger contingent in town.
Robert and Tobey go to talk to the Rangers at the fort, to find out if there is anything they can do to help and to ask about Nicodemus. They end up talking to Lt. Criswell, a tall and attractive blonde with a serious chip on her shoulder. She repeats the story about the storm which happened recently, doesn't seem to want any help, and grudgingly tells them that no one like Nicodemus has come to town recently. She listens to their story about the events on the train, and tells them that trains explode all the time.
They then go look at the warehouses at the end of the rail line for a reason which escaped your humble narrator then and still escapes him now. Again they are run off by a guard, and again Tanner uses his past vision, this time to see strange energy rippling up the rail line from the crater a few nights ago. It seems that this energy may have triggered the events on the train.
Staying another night in Roswell turns out to be one too many, because overnight something enters the stable and kills one of the new horses, draining much of its blood and eating various soft parts like eyes, lips, and belly. The hotel manager is distressed, and helps them find out that there have been similar cattle mutilations over the past few nights reported by two of the ranchers. One of them, Bob Hossler, is in town, and they ride back out with him to find out what happened. They learn a lot about the lonely but manly life of a cowboy, but not very much about the mutilations - a couple of cows have been killed, and one of the other cowboys saw some sort of little gray monkey creature. Consulting their critter guide, the posse's best guess is that there is a chupacabra on the loose. These creatures supposedly are people who commit an act of betrayal and change, and may only be killable by the ones they betrayed. Who it is, and who was betrayed, is not yet clear.
They then go to the Peyton ranch, where another few cows have been killed, and learn that during the storm, or whatever it was, Timmy Peyton went crazy and shot Ma before killing himself. Pa and Jenny survived the event, as did Ma (though she is still off her feet). The oldest brother, Jesse, is a Ranger and missed it by running off right at the beginning of the confusion before Timmy went off his nut.
The next morning they go to the fort to try to tell Jesse about the events at his home, and discover (through the annoyed Lt. Criswell) that he never reported for duty, which is out of character for him. They had assumed he was with his family, but now they have to assume something happened to him. Jesse moves to the top of the list for turning into a chupacabra, though he may just have been eaten.
They head back towards the Peyton ranch and Vorpwhistle works on tuning his lure to attract chupacabras. He only discovers a frequency that attracts Cady, and when they run into Jenny Peyton out riding, it seems to attract her too. Mystified by this, they fail to ask her any of the questions they had been meaning to and she rides off again.
"That frequency was just women and that's useless!" - Dr. Vorpwhistle, missing an opportunity to get rich
MM- Didn't we go to the beginning of the rail line to see if there was something there that could have caused the energy of ghost-rock-screwing-up?