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(1874): This is the story of
three brothers and a cannibal.
The brothers are the sons of Abraham Noon, the renowned Irish oculist and explorer. J.W. Martin is the eldest, a bastard, his mother a Georgia plantation heiress disowned by her parents when Abraham refused to marry her. Dr. Bram Noon is Abraham’s oldest legitimate son, a specialist in nervous disorders practicing in London, and George his youngest, an Oxford student. Bram and George have three sisters married and living Dublin.
On his death bed Abraham tells George about Martin: "Bram’s the only other person who knows. He’s kept my secret since the day your mother died giving birth to you." After Abraham dies George runs away to find Martin, a vagabond-turned-family –man and co-owner in a mining syndicate located in the San Juan Basin of Colorado. Along the way George joins a party of 20 prospectors bound for the San Juans, but less than 100 miles from Martin’s cabin George and five other members of the party get lost in a blizzard. One of his companions, Alferd Packer, kills George and the other prospectors while they sleep, robbing them then eating their flesh to survive. Meanwhile, Bram finally discovers where George has run off to with the help of detectives and follows to bring the boy back home.
Packer reaches the nearest town, Saguache, where the other members of his party are waiting out bad weather. As Packer overindulges in poker and whiskey, the other prospectors begin to suspect that packer has disposed of their comrades. They tell their suspicions to Saguache’s sheriff and General Charles Adams, agent at the Los Pinos Indian Agency in whose jurisdiction the crimes probably took place. Adams convinces Packer to guide a search party for the missing men, who Packer claims headed south after abandoning him when he came up lame. When Martin hears that a young Englishman named George Noon is one of the missing men, he cables Bram (who is already on his way to America) then joins the search.
After two weeks of futile searching, Adams and Martin attempt to get Packer to confess to killing George and the others. Packer cracks and claims that, after the party was lost for several days and one member died of starvation, the other four ate some flesh to survive. Ditto after two more men died. Finally another prospector, George Shannon Bell, went mad and killed George Noon then attacked Packer, who overpowered and killed Bell. Martin doesn’t believe Packer and neither does Bram when he arrives: "You are lying, sir. No Noon would descend to cannibalism." Packer is transferred to the Saguache jail as the search continues.
Bram and Martin have never met in person, but, even after the doctor is welcomed into the Martin home, it is obvious Bram resents his elder brother’s existence. When pressed on the matter Bram even confesses he blames Martin for George’s death: "If it weren’t for you, George would never have come here." What Bram can’t fault Martin for is being a man who revels in being a husband and father. As children Bram and George saw very little of the kind but reserved Abraham except when they accompanied their father on one of his excursions. Martin had a better role model in his mother, Sarah, who not only gave up everything for her son but also took in her father and mother after the Martins lost their home and fortune during the Civil War. "Family was everything to my mama," Martin tells Bram, "and it’s everything to me."
In late spring a photographer for Harper’s Weekly stumbles across Packer’s victims in a spot soon referred to as Cannibal Plateau. Adams orders Packer’s arrest, but before the warrant can be served packer escapes Saguache’s sheriff and flees into the mountains. Packer evades the posse sent after him, but Abraham Noon’s sons have no intentions of giving up, Martin seeking justice and Bram desperate that Packer admits George was never a cannibal. After several days when packer can not lose Martin and Bram, he manages to get the pair to split up so he can ambush them separately. Martin wises to the maneuver and doubles back, saving Bram’s life but taking a bullet for his efforts. Packer flees and Bram starts to follow, then realizes he will never exonerate his family’s honor if he leaves his own brother to die. As Packer escapes, Bram removes the bullet then takes Martin home.
In 1883 one of the surviving prospectors form George’s party, Frenchy Cabazon, recognizes a man in a Wyoming salon name John Swartze as Packer "Swartze" is arrested and transported to Lake City, Colorado, a prosperous mining town that has sprung up in the interim three miles from Cannibal Plateau. Martin and his family attend the trial but Bram remains in England, now married and too busy raising his two children to get away. Packer is convicted and sentenced to hang, but a legal technicality causes a retrial and in 1886 Packer is sentenced to 40 years hard labor. He is paroled in January 1901, and leaves the State Penitentiary in Canon City a broken 59-year-old man. Waiting to meet him are Martin, Bram, the doctor’s two grown children, Sarah and George, and two Denver reporters. Bram makes one final plea for Packer to absolve George’s good name. "He was no cannibal," and we both know it. For the sake of my children, for the sake of your own peace of mind, tell the truth." And Packer comes as close to honesty as his nature can allow: "You’re right, doc. The kid, George, wouldn’t eat like the rest of us. Claimed he’d starve first and damn near did. Bell did him a favor, you know, killing the kid when he was sleeping." It is near enough to the truth to satisfy Bram, who, with the others, watch the broken man shuffle away.