Cornpatch

She believed it was time to show the boy, to let him see with his own eyes, the difference between living free in the land of the buffalo and being trapped in the mud-log huts and cornpatches of the Mandan.

He paused by the edge of the lifeless-looking cornpatch, drew a drink from one of his skins to start the saliva, and spat into the arid soil.

Soon the two of them had transformed the Erne into the muddy Mississippi flowing all the way to Ballyshannon through the cottonfields of Fermanagh and the fertile cornpatches of Donegal.