“Night has come over ridge and hill

Where the Badlands starkly lie

Like the tortured fane of a god insane

That mocks the brooding sky.”

Howard continues in seven more haunting four-line verses, dedicated to the passing of a great race. Here Howard’s use of the term race, as linked with culture and bloodline equally, rather than as our own zoological designations that all Amerindians, Asians, whites, etc., are of the same race, brings the reader much closer to the land in terms of how it shapes a folk.

Ghost Dancers is near my favorite Howard poem.

If you are ever in Cross Plains, Texas, stop in to the Robert E. Howard Museum and buy a copy of A Word from the Outer Dark.