© 2011

A U.S. SEVENTH CAVALRY LIEUTENANT WITH THE UNGAINLY NAME of Mortingale Todd peered through his government-issue field glasses across the steep-sided flash of frothing ditchwater that on his still crude reconnaissance map had no name, and now seemed to be running much higher and faster than when he had arrived at the bank only moments before.

As a passable scout and a skilled surveyor, his attention focused first on terrain, and beyond the many thoughts that were passing through his mind-principally the threat of a Sioux arrow ripping through his gullet and the likelihood of ambush (just the concept of ambush)-he was forced to accommodate a very unsoldierish, or at least un-surveyor-like notion that the landscape he was confronting was changing before his eyes in a way that he could not quite pin down. “How odd,” Todd mumbled to himself (and whenever he used the word “odd” he was made uncomfortably aware of his name and memories of childhood heckling).

Rapidly rising ground always raises questions in a mapmaker’s mind, and the young point man for his division was beginning to get consciousness-raising ideas that he felt were unmanly and demonstrated the lack of internal discipline that his father, back in Turnip, Illinois, had warned most of their neighbors about.

Indeed, they brought to mind a whole tribe of concerns and speculations that he had been doing his young man’s best to suppress. Most of these circled their horses around the question of what he and his unit were doing in such a beautiful but hostile place-which now seemed to him to be simultaneously dishearteningly barren and lushly blooming. What were they really doing?

On the surface, it appeared to be a scout mission for the United States government.