Strange things are happening in Horshoe. Matthew, Robert's seven-year-old brother, has vanished on a walk into town to buy some gum. Robert's mother had asked him to accompany Matthew to Horshoe, but Robert was away -- his mind deep in a swashbuckling adventure story set on Mars, not home on his dust-bowl farm in Depression-era Saskatchewan. But Matthew never made it to town. He vanished and Robert knows that it's his fault and that he has to find Matthew