For Charles M. Russell

Here is a set of encyclopedias, Sir, that fails to list you. Not that we don't know who you were, but to ignore you is a little like omitting nostrils from your snorting horses, faces from your fellow cowboys, pigment from your Indians' skin. It's not that by being in you'd be better handed down to posterity detail by detail -- it's only that we'd like to see you here. For as long as there is a print of your wild cows being lassoed, your Indians discovering Lewis and Clark, your wagon trains creaking, your vibrant bellowing buffalo in the West you made your own you'll be handed down.