# II: The Cavalry Patrol explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Manly Wade Wellman.

## What happens

Lieutenant Kane Lanark, a Union cavalry officer with Southern sympathies, leads a patrol into southern Missouri in April 1862, seeking to confront the guerrilla leader Quantrill. The patrol discovers a deserted house near a towering rock formation, and Lanark orders the area secured. While exploring a nearby ravine, he comes upon a nude woman praying while holding a hand-mirror in a stream.

## Themes in this chapter

### Isolation and Otherness

Lanark's Southern heritage and Union service mark him as an anomaly, isolated from both sides; the deserted house and remote valley amplify a sense of otherness.

### Fear and Control

Lanark's cautious deployment of pickets and guards reflects the need for control in a hostile, uncertain environment.

## Character check-ins

### Kane Lanark

Union cavalry lieutenant leading a patrol against Quantrill; described as having a strange and vicious heritage, educated at VMI, and bearing a personal grudge against Quantrill.

### Sergeant Jager

Heavyset, morosely keen-eyed sergeant who misquotes Scripture; called 'Bible' Jager by the men; assists Lanark in securing the house.

### Quantrill

Guerrilla leader who robbed Lanark earlier; Lanark now seeks to kill him.

### Suggs

Lanark's personal orderly, a plump blond youth.

## Key lines

> Lieutenant Kane Lanark was one of those strange and vicious heritage-anomalies of one of the most paradoxical of wars⁠—a war where a great Virginian was high in Northern command, and a great Pennsylvanian stubbornly defended one of the South’s principal strongholds; where the two presidents were both born in Kentucky, indeed within scant miles of each other; where father strove against son, and brother against brother, even more frequently and tragically than in all the jangly verses and fustian dramas of the day.

Lanark was a product of the Civil War's contradictions: a Southerner fighting for the Union in a conflict that pitted family members against each other.

_Establishes Lanark's complex identity and the war's paradoxical nature._

> She stood ankle-deep in a swift, narrow rush of brook-water, and her fine body was nude, every graceful curve of it, with a cascade of golden-brown hair falling and floating about her shoulders. She seemed to be praying, but her eyes were not lifted. They stared at a hand-mirror, that she held up to catch the last flash of the setting sun.

Lanark discovers a naked woman in the stream, praying while gazing into a hand-mirror in the sunset light.

_Introduces a mysterious and eerie element, blending the natural with the supernatural._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_37_se/chapters/ii-the-cavalry-patrol
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_37_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_37_se/chapters