Wolf Point, Montana, population 2,578, is a city on the Fort Peck Reservation near the far northeastern border with South Dakota. This is as much as I knew when I stepped off the train into the humid afternoon haze still hanging over the rippling, endless prairie. 

I ended up here because of a sort of dare to myself. Traveling the country by rail, you get intimately but ephemerally acquainted with the little towns that dot the track. Lately I had become possessed by a whim: On one of these Amtrak peregrinations, I needed to get off the train and see a town, any one, in full. When a trip from Idaho home to Pennsylvania gave me my chance, I went about it with due ritual. I printed out the list of Empire Builder stops. I poised a thumbtack and closed my eyes. I brought it down with the force of destiny. After two failed attempts in which the force of destiny went into the table, I had my answer: I was stopping in Wolf Point.