Charlie felt nauseated. On their way to Fort Wilderness, he and the Rat Packers kept coming across middle-aged lechers and their victims rolling in the fake flora. It was impossible to tell the women who might be willing participants from the girls—children, really. And it was difficult to reconcile the debauched criminality with the Disneyness of the setting: the wholesome plastic artifice, the aggressive Americana, and the bland mainstream music, including the song emanating from the fort right now—“Wringle Wrangle,” from the Disney Western Westward Ho the Wagons!

With a dollar’s worth of beans, a new pair of jeans, got a woman to cook and wash and things, blared the recording of Fess Parker, who’d acted in the film as well as played the lead in Disney’s erstwhile Davy Crockett show.

“Remember this song?” Davis asked Lawford.

“’Course,” Lawford said.

“Whatever happened to ol’ Fess?” Davis asked.

“He wanted to play more than cowboys, but Uncle Walt only saw him with chaps,” Lawford said. “He refused to do some picture with a bit part, and that was that. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Can’t be a starter if you won’t play ball,” Davis observed.

Their trail veered right and suddenly Fort Wilderness was before them. Constructed out of ponderosa pine logs as if it were an actual U.S. outpost in Texas, the fort sat atop a bluff on the western bank of the island, adjacent to an ersatz Missouri River. Four men stood at the gate dressed as U.S. Army soldiers from the early 1800s, around the time of the campaign against the Creek Indians. Seemingly working for whoever was throwing the party, they nodded to Charlie as he led the group in.

Charlie, Lawford, and Davis stood and surveyed the decadence. Across the fort grounds were girls who looked like they should have been preparing for JV cheerleading tryouts paired off with men who looked like their fathers or grandfathers. Bonfires flickered, illuminating the parade ground as Charlie searched for Violet. A staircase led to a porch; beyond the parade ground stood a graveyard, some teepees, and, in the distance, the burning cabin they’d seen from the river, the controlled flames on its roof purposely fed by propane.

Some laughed or sang, the men in cowboy gear, the girls in Indian leather playing their parts as dutiful conquests. Waiters in army uniforms brought them drinks in copper tankards.

“Do you see her, old boy?” Lawford said as he scanned the scene.

“I don’t,” Charlie said. He stared at the faces. Couples sat at tables or around the bonfires, drinking. Some danced. An older man, white-haired with a belly, struggled to his feet. He laughed and extended his hand to the girl by his side; she was dressed like a squaw in a B Western with feathers in her headband and a short, fringed, clingy faux buckskin dress and beaded moccasins.

It was Violet.

Charlie gasped.