Then: eight mounted riders in flat-plate hats and Union Blue, yellow piping on their trousers, armed with ’73 Springfield Carbines, the first man in line carrying the Stars and Stripes and blowing a bugle—not even holding on to his reins, the Kaiser noted with dissatisfaction. The uniforms did not match—there were kerchiefs and caps from inappropriate campaigns, and the holes in their clothing had been patched with white canvas. The cavalry had arrived.

August Wilhelm surprised him by muttering that that was very accurate. He made a sweeping gesture, as if the horizon were Montana. “They dressed as the field conditions forced them. The cavalry was adaptive to war,” he said.

“Quite unprofessional,” Adalbert spat.

“But they won,” August Wilhelm concluded.

The Kaiser blinked, his eyes so dry they almost clicked. Americans. Would there be Americans in this war? He felt like a blind man groping through a room packed with furniture. What side would they fight on? What were their industries, their national interest, their character? All he could touch upon was fantasy, romance, entertainment. Was Duncan even a real colonel? And if he wasn’t, did it even matter? A fake colonel employing real Indians to portray fake Cossacks and re-create battles that never happened, in uniforms that were correct because they were incorrect. The American character had been such a part of his daydreams, his childhood, the need to bring it down to earth and study it seemed as impossible as lassoing a cloud. Which was something Americans might try.

On the field was the final battle, cavalrymen in mortal combat with Indians. Lit from below by the dismembered, flaming wheels of the wagon, up went an Iroquois tomahawk, sharpened spike turned downward, flared brass blade gleaming against the fire, ready to impale its victim. Then—miraculously!—a soldier galloping on horseback, being strangled by another Indian, back bent over the horn of his saddle, pulled his pistol and shot the tomahawk out of the savage’s hand!

The Indians’ heads jerked back from punches that never really connected. They plunged into hidden hay bales when shot with blank cartridges, letting themselves be lassoed and dragged through the dust until the rescued pioneer family could be paraded on the saddles of the victorious American soldiers.

After passing the eyes once, it vanished, except for memory, and so remembered fondly.

The light was gone now. If it weren’t for the dying flames, sputtering and sending up smoke, ash, the fireflies of embers, the action would be playing in darkness, hints of action, grays against blacks.