Adam enlisted from his sickbed

Charles is drinking with drummers at the village inn while his father hunts the road for him with a shotgun; warned in time, he hides out two weeks, and by his return "murder had sunk back to simple anger". Adam lies four days in bed, and on the third a captain of cavalry and two sergeants arrive in dress blue to swear him in where he lies — Cyrus's demonstration of his own power, and his prize. Adam soldiers five years in the Indian country, revolted by it, a marksman "peculiarly fitted to miss", yet decorated for bravery and volunteering for the field hospitals. Charles writes steadily of cows, weather, Alice's choking death and their father's paid post in Washington, and the brothers grow closer on paper than they ever were at home. Adam keeps one unsigned letter, written past midnight, in which Charles circles the unused birthday knife and the sense that "it's me should be where you are and you here".

The beating pays off twice: Adam is enlisted from his sickbed as proof of his father's reach, and Charles is left alone with the farm. Separation is what lets the brothers speak — Charles, who cannot talk, writes, and the unsigned midnight letter says more than he means it to.