Sgt. Hillary Sitwell, who's about take a trip to a place beyond anything...

On a hot desert day, many years ago, two cavalrywomen, Sargent Hillary Sitwell and Private Joan Bigly are on a scouting mission, searching scorching sands of the American West for any signs of a group of bandits… instead… they find themselves walking right into…

The Twilight Zone…

“Sarge… how much longer are we gonna be wandering around out here?” Bigly asked as they sat on a ridge while their horses took a drink from a stream below them. Sitwell was looking across the horizon with a small telescope and Bigly? Well, she was bored out of her mind.

“Private…” The older woman said, rolling her eyes “I know this is your first assignment… but you need to stop whining like a little boy.”

The greenhorn Cavalrywoman looked over at the senior NCO.

“Sargent… It’s just… we’ve been out here for almost a week and we haven’t found squat. No sign that anyone has been this way but us in months.”

Sitwell put down her spyglass “You’re right… this is a wild goose chase…” she told her “If they did come this way, we would have found something by now. Hoofprints, a used campfire… something…”

Sitwell put her spyglass to her eye one more time. She was making one last swing over the rocky landscape before she was going to give up.

“Holy… I think I see something… smoke…” She handed Bigly the Spyglass. “Over near that mesa…”

“Well I’ll be… You think it’s them?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“I’m sorry I doubted you, Sarge.”

“No… you did the right thing.” Sitwell said. “Though if this is them, get ready for people to call YOU sarge”

The two soldiers rode down the hill and across the valley. The sun was setting as they reached the edge of the mesa.

Instead of a gang of bank robbers, they found a young man picking vegetables in a large patch of fertile soil.

“Excuse me, young man.” Sgt. Sitwell began. The boy looked up and screamed.

“Hold it, hold it, I’m Sgt Sitwell with the First Cavalry. This is private Bigly. We’re looking for a gang of crooks, robbed about $1000 from Salt Lake.”

“I’m sorry for screaming… I just… I’ve not seen women in such a long time… none of us have… not since the accident.”

“What accident?”

“In the mine…” He said, motioning to a boarded up tunnel in the hillside. “Old Woman Ravenswood’s Folly…”

“When you say ‘none of us’, there are other men here?”

“Yes, our town is just around the corner here.” He said. “Up the canyon. Follow me.”