He had learned to play his instrument with the same joyless precision that barefoot waifs exercised in stoking the coal fires of a debtors’ prison. Edmund’s fingers stumbled across the cracked ivory keys as his twin brother, Edgar, similarly dressed—stars, stripes, hat—approached from the other side. Edgar played his tuba. They were playing “Dixie,” possibly, knees pumping in the air, as if fearing they would be sold to pirates.

Duncan touched his spurs to Betsy’s flanks, sending her forward in a lope until they stopped at the center of the stands. He cast a solemn gaze across the audience. “The West,” he exclaimed. “The Old West. In Europe, forty years can pass, the seasons turn, the harvest comes and goes, and a son becomes the man his father was, exactly, no different. But in the vast land that is the territories, forty years is the difference between one way of life and another.”

There was no translation. And yet Duncan, crushed by worries only moments before, was in communion. There was a universal language, emotional, that conducted like electricity.

“Here tonight, the traditions and the pageantry, the glory and the spectacle, the passion and the battles, the skills and the beauty that made America worth winning.” He paused here, for the first performers were Onondagas, who could not be accused of winning. “There will also be Cossacks.” Behind him, his company was flowing onto the field in preparation, so he finished with a bow and trotted away to no applause.

Edgar came dutifully from the corrals, clutching his tuba and playing the bass part to “The Rubber Rose Polka,” tapping his foot in the dust in a way that he prayed inspired festivity.

“Mexico!” Duncan cried. Programs swayed as people fanned themselves, eyes turning toward the still-empty Imperial stands. “Old Mexico, land of desperadoes!” A wind had come up, and it brought to Duncan’s ears a couple of coughs, the sipping of beer, chewing of sausage—could he hear the crowd glare at him? He said, “Yee-haw?”

Then the digging of spurs into horses’ flanks, the percussive upkick of dust, and the clicking of tongues from a pair of genuine vaqueros beginning their trick-riding segment. Excitement swept the crowd, but to Duncan’s consternation, all eyes had left the field and were turning toward the reviewing stand. Duncan’s view was impressionistic, a white-and-red rustling of silk flowers spilling out of a cornucopia. In fact, it was a late arrival of—of whom? The men were all still wearing their hats. So it was not the Kaiser.

Attendants and ladies-in-waiting came first, fussing over the seating and ensuring that pillows with the royal crest were strapped in place. A pair of military guards gave a signal to the company on the field: the performance should halt, for Prince Joachim was arriving.