Brian Garfield (4 page)

“Then I'll rent one from you. And of course saddle, bridle …”

“Well hold on,” Jerry Paddock said. “We don't know you, do we.” This morning Jerry's gaunt face looked exceptionally evil, like an illustration of a Mongol Tatar villain in a lurid dime novel.

“My name is Theodore Roosevelt,” said the dude in his very strange Eastern accent.

“I hear you saying it.”

“I'll be happy to pay in advance. Two weeks at, shall we say, seventy-five cents a day? Ten dollars and fifty cents, shall we make it?” He drew out his purse.

Jerry Paddock's eyes fell upon the purse as if it were a roast suckling pig and he hadn't eaten in a week. He said coquettishly, “We've had visitors ride away with our horses before. Anyways, how do I know you wouldn't mistreat my animal? Why, we had one here just last spring, rode my best horse to death and cooked it and ate the poor thing.”

Jerry Paddock had what passed for a humorous glint in his eye. He was stringing the stranger; in a minute he'd be shooting holes in the dust around Mr. Roosevelt's polished boots. All in fun of course—but the dude's purse was likely to end up in Jerry's pocket before it was over.

With a reluctant sense of responsibility toward his client Joe tried to turn trouble aside: “Mr. Roosevelt, it's a long way to the Killdeers. You might be more comfortable on the wagon with me, sir.”

“Nonsense.” Roosevelt strutted toward the stable, talking sternly to Jerry Paddock: “Come along, my good fellow. If you won't rent me a horse I'm sure you'll sell me one. For cash.”

That brought an end to the trouble then and there. Jerry brought out his sorriest mare—ugly wart of a bay, an old-timer named Nell—and Mr. Roosevelt cheerfully parted with half again what the horse and rig were worth, as if it didn't matter.

The boys trailed toward the saloon because the unexpected profit put Jerry in such a good mood he offered to stand them all a round of drinks.

The only man to refuse the offer was Roosevelt. “Thank you very much indeed, sir, but I do not partake of strong drink.”

With hoots of derision the crowd tramped inside. In two shakes Joe was alone with the puny dude in the Cantonment corral.

Roosevelt overcame a coughing fit long enough to say, “Now then, old fellow, if you wouldn't mind showing me how to put the saddle on this animal …”

That was how the great hunt started. Its auspices were poor at best. It was with dismal foreboding that Joe made ready to put the wagon onto the trail.

Roosevelt was peering at the brick construction works across the river. “What's all that?”

“Abattoir,” Joe said, “whatever that means.”

“Slaughterhouse. It's French.”

“Yes sir. So's the gentleman who's building it. The Marquis De Morès.”

There was a glint, probably accidental, off Roosevelt's eyeglasses. “De Morès? Is he here?”

“Not now. Back East someplace. Big financial affairs. You know him?”

“We haven't met. I'm acquainted with his wife.”

Joe considered the great heaps of fresh brick on the flats below the bluff. “The Marquis says he's going to build a whole town right there on the right bank. Abattoir and all. They say he's got ten thousand cattle coming north from Texas.”

“A sizable enterprise.” There was displeasure in the dude's piping voice. “The money comes from his father-in-law. The Marquis has no fortune of his own.”

“I wouldn't know about such things.”

Roosevelt seemed unwilling to let it drop. “I can't abide aristocrats. The stench of their blue blood despoils the clean air of America.”

“Wouldn't know about that either, sir. I'm Canadian.”

“And proud of it, are you?”

Joe felt the rise of suspicion. “I am.”

Roosevelt smiled. “Good for you.” His attention returned to the brick pile. “An abattoir? Credit the man at least with large aspirations.”

Joe said, “All I know is, it takes plenty of game meat to feed his carpenters and masons, so these rough boys you see here will get plenty of work.”

“What about you, then, Mr. Ferris?”

“I used to hunt meat. For the railroad. I don't any more.”

“Why not?”

Joe wasn't ready to tell the exact truth. These weren't the circumstances. He said, “One time I was shooting buffalo the barrel of my rifle got so hot it near melted my hand. Decided to let some other fellow have a turn.”

“How many buffalo did you kill?”

“That day? I don't know. May be four hundred.”

“Great Scott! Those must have been glorious days!”

Heedless youth.
Joe tasted the bile of recollection; but he knew better than to dispute the client. He kicked the brake off and the wagon rolled north.

Roosevelt came trotting cheerfully alongside on the old mare, unaware or uncaring of the fact that his Eastern-style posting up and down during the trot would be enough to get him laughed out of Dakota Territory if he didn't leave soon of his own free will.

Taking his time, Joe Ferris was ready to decide that he didn't like the little dude at all. Then Roosevelt unsaddled his own horse that night.

And when Joe began to unfold the canvas tent Roosevelt would have none of it: he bedded down on the earth, wrapped in the saddle blanket.

And in the morning the dude saddled up himself, not asking any questions, remembering precisely the instructions Joe had given him yesterday.

So then it was a relief to see that at least this dude meant to carry his own pack. Maybe he wasn't the worst after all.

“What do you think, Mr. Ferris—shall we cross paths with the buffalo tomorrow?”

“Never can tell, Mr. Roosevelt.”

May be it would be best to reserve judgment a bit longer and see how the dude measured up on the trail.

Joe unhitched the wagon horse, clapped his old McClellan split-tree on it, endured the saddlesores and was moved to take pity on his guest. “Beg your pardon, sir, but they don't post on a Western saddle.”

“That will suit me well enough,” Roosevelt replied. But he kept a poor seat after that and never seemed to learn the trick of riding loose, sticking to the saddle, swaying with the natural movement of the horse. In general he bounced.

“Where are the buffalo, Mr. Ferris?”

“Whatever's to be found, I'll find for you, Mr. Roosevelt.”

Ten days Joe guided his client around the familiar country of the Killdeer Mountain district. They saw no buffalo but nevertheless the expedition seemed to meet the satisfaction of the dude, who kept exclaiming with great enthusiasm over the abundance of game.

Most hunters would have thought it a bad hunt. The animals seemed to have scattered out of pure perversion. Joe Ferris rode more miles and raised more saddlesores than he ever had before. The insides of his knees were scraped raw. But Roosevelt loved it. They took pronghorn, mule deer, whitetail, an elk with a magnificent rack, a bighorn sheep.

Once in a while Joe tried to get a word in about his natural abilities with bookkeeping figures. He laid hints like rabbit snares, hoping the dude would step into them.

Roosevelt was more polite than most—his inquiries indicated he was listening to what Joe had to say; sometimes he even seemed interested in Joe's ideas about the great successes in Commerce that awaited a man who knew the country, knew the people, had vision and—most important—had capital to invest. “This country's going to need a good mercantile store and a solid bank. Why, a man like me for instance—all it would take to set me on my way would be a little seed investment. The man who staked me could just sit back and watch me do all the hard work, and bring in a handsome return, yes sir.”

“I certainly admire your confidence and ambition, old fellow.” Roosevelt beamed infuriatingly at him.

There was no progress. Day after day, conversation was all the encouragement Joe got out of his employer. And the conversation invariably returned to the same exchange:

“Buffalo today, Mr. Ferris?”

“We'll see, Mr. Roosevelt.”

The dude coughed and wheezed and vomited with alarming frequency but he kept surprising Joe. He proved an accomplished skinner. He claimed to be an expert taxidermist and Joe had no reason to doubt his word. During the first ten days of the hunt they filled their bellies with game meat and Roosevelt burdened the wagon with a more than satisfactory load of trophy heads and pelts, along with a number of birds he shot—sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge, ring-necked pheasant—with the intention of mounting them and making drawings for an ornithology book he said he would write one day “in the tradition of the great John James Audubon, who in the interests of science and art killed more birds than any man in history.”

That seemed an accomplishment of dubious worth. And anyhow if a man could not spell any better than Roosevelt, he didn't appear to have much future as a writer. But Joe curbed his tongue.

Again to his surprise the sick young dude proved to be an adept hunter. On the stalk he owned patience and endurance. He understood the importance of ranging downwind from the prey. And his incessant conversation came to a halt—it was the one circumstance under which he accepted the requirement of silence.

But as a shooter he was indifferent: his eyesight was imperfect even with the aid of glasses and his eager energy did not make up for a lack of simple dexterity. He used up a considerable arsenal of ammunition for each animal he actually felled.

At times the New Yorker had a hard time breathing. He would hunch forward over a painful cough and there would be a frightful chuffing and whistling as he tried to expel air from his chest; then he would drag in a breath—a sound like ripping cloth—and the desperate process would begin again. He couldn't get enough air in or out.

And there were times when he'd say, “Go on ahead, old fellow. I'll catch up.” He'd dismount and go behind a bush. Sometimes it was the loose runs, as if he had worms; other times Joe tried to ignore it but couldn't help hearing him throw up.

The dude explained it once, as if the names of things mattered. “Cholera morbus and asthma. I've had them since I was a child. They come and go. Never mind.”

It was the nearest thing to a complaint Joe heard from him.

At first Joe had taken him for a ridiculous little caricature, full of puffery and embroidery—all bombastic flourishes—but in fact he was turning out to be a cauldron of contradictions. In spite of the frailties his energies seemed to have no end. He would read an entire book each day in the saddle and another by campfire-light. Most of his huge duffel bag was filled with books. He was twenty-three years old—four years younger than Joe, but he made Joe feel old, what with his childlike enthusiasms and ignorances.

The dude was stupid and brilliant, oblivious and curious, foolish and sensible; he was a babe in the woods with the wisdom of a sage. Once offhandedly he remarked to Joe that he had graduated three years ago from Harvard University
magna cum laude
and Phi Beta Kappa and that before he grew too much older he had the ambition to contribute a few dozen volumes of his own writings to the learned libraries of the world.

Joe replied that it seemed to him there were already too many books in the world, for no man could possibly read them all.

“Perhaps not. But he can try,” Roosevelt riposted with a horse-toothed grin.

“That what you do back in the States? Write books all the time?”

“Only sometimes. I'm the Minority Leader of the New York State Assembly.”

Joe made no reply to that. He didn't believe a word of it. The dude was hardly old enough to vote, let alone get elected to high office.

According to habit Joe made a turn on foot around the camp. His shadow moved around him. He could see it—the moon was that bright; it reminded him that not too many months ago it wouldn't have been safe to go walking around straight up in moonlight sufficient to guide a Sioux arrow.

They spent one particularly long day in the saddle, part of it in a fruitless galloping pursuit of an elusive pair of whitetail across very rough ground. In the end they emerged on sweating horses at the head of a dry coulee and saw forty miles of sunflower prairie without a single beast stirring anywhere.

Heat pressed in on them. Joe pushed his lips in and out to keep himself from exclaiming aloud. This whole damned hunt must have been designed as a trial for him—or perhaps it was a message from the Almighty that he should follow his instincts and get out of this bloodstained business and find himself a respectable indoor trade.

“They must be up ahead somewhere,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes sir. Be that as it may, we need water. I used up the last of my canteen at breakfast. Yours?”

“The same, I suppose.” The dude shook his water bottle to make sure it was empty.

“Eight hours or more since then.”

“I don't feel thirsty,” Roosevelt said manfully.

“Yes sir. But these horses do.” He looked at the foam on the animals' necks. “May be we'd best get off and walk, sir.”

They led the animals along the escarpment from headland to headland, peering down the steep canyons into the Bad Lands for the greenery that would signal water at the surface.

Partly to distract Roosevelt from the increasing peril of their predicament and partly to advance his own schemes, Joe talked about his ideas: a drygoods mercantile store, perhaps a bank. He made it sound idle, but there was no doubt this silly little fellow was a very rich dude. So he talked on, more loquaciously than was his usual habit, allowing Roosevelt to see glimpses of his enthusiasm.

But Roosevelt remained unmoved.
Perhaps I am simply a bad drummer
, Joe thought.

He scanned the horizons with worry—embarrassed to realize he didn't know where they were. The last few days' wandering had taken them farther north than he had ever gone before. He didn't know whether they were in Montana or Canada. He did know he hadn't seen this particular God-forsaken stretch.