Major Long Talks to His Horse

Major Long looks forward to mountains. Mountains he understands: rock, and streams that spring from snow, gentian and bellflowers atop green boulders at right angles, summits here and there, and tree-edged pools. This, he mutters to his horse, disappoints him.

Hand to brow, arm outstretched, pointer finger pointing, he feels his horse lift a leg in impatience. The horse is thirsty. Like himself and the other twenty riders, the horse wants to get on to water, dip its head into a stream and have it course down its impossibly long neck, its organs unshriveling. Yes, well, the view is not promising: first and foremost, no trees. If you need premonitions for your bodings, that lack says no to bodies of water, to underground seepage, to moisture anywhere that would attract a seed.

However, the grass here grows as high as your withers and not two days ago, the Pawnee had at least eight thousand ponies standing by. Then