The Cavalry Officer serves as the leader of a group of mounted soldiers. Although by no means restricted to the genre, he appears especially as a stock character in Western fiction. Given the ridiculously huge nature of the American west, cavalry forces were the workhorses of military forces trying to control the frontier. The Cavalry Officer is typically a professional soldier but may also be represented by anyone in control of mounted civilian or paramilitary forces (such as Texas Rangers, for example). See: Mounted Combat Examples of Cavalry Officer include: