Sergeant Jack Kilroy returns to the United States after a year in combat and two years in a prison camp in Vietnam where he had led an escape and returned over a hundred internees back to U. S. lines, becoming a hero to his men. He takes his discharge in New Mexico and finds an isolated stream near Santa Cala Pueblo where he can fish and think, all by himself, but soon visitors begin to arrive: a Maine coon cat, the cat's pretty owner, and an old Indian selling firewood. Others follow and soon he is playing high stakes poker in the back room of the local bar once a week. All he wants is a little time off, but his time is soon filled with the problems of his army buddies in the V. A. Hospital, the Indians of the nearby pueblo and the poker players, which include the theft of sacred artifacts, the murders of young Indian men and the enmity of witches.