Brian Garfield (56 page)

Madame Medora said, “Antoine, you must see that Arthur's right. It wouldn't be fair to take advantage of his weakened condition.”

“If he says he's prepared to meet me, then I assume he has come prepared to decide the matter.”

Madame la Marquise leaned over, reached out and touched a palm to her husband's cheek.

Pack watched her with an altogether new fascination.

Most women were realists, he had found—much more so than men were. A thing that fascinated him about Medora was that unlike most women she was not such a realist. No matter how accomplished, she was not practical; she was a romantic.

Whatever her feelings about Roosevelt might be, she was indeed in love with the Marquis. She wasn't blind to his arrogance and prejudices, any more than Pack was; she was able to ignore them because the great shining light of her romantic faith washed away all the shadows from her picture of him. Soft as she was, she had the will not to see things if they were unimportant by comparison with the man's true greatness.

Pack was able to recognize those qualities in her because he shared some of them.

“Antoine—if Theodore were to be killed in the Bad Lands, by you, I'm rather afraid there might be repercussions throughout New York Society.”

She said no more than that; and Pack did not understand why her words made the Marquis stop dropping the heavy stick into his palm.

The Marquis looked away from her and met Pack's inquiring stare. A sort of snarl curled one corner of the lip beneath the meticulously pointed mustache. The Marquis lifted his Winchester out of the carriage, jacked it half open to see the cartridge in the chamber, made a grunting sound in his throat that Pack couldn't decipher at all, climbed up onto the seat and tapped the driver's shoulder with the muzzle of the rifle. “Let's go.”

Roosevelt threaded the crowd to climb onto the platform with his rifle in hand. Joe Ferris watched with a scowl. “You shouldn't be here. If he sees you he won't have any choice but to fight.”

“On the contrary—there is a choice, and it's his to make.”

“Sir, begging to differ. Look at the size of the crowd watching here. In my experience it's always better to let the other chap keep his dignity intact.”

“I shan't impugn his dignity. I shall say nothing inflammatory to him. But I am here, and here I shall stay. You may as well give up the argument, old fellow.”

Joe opened his mouth to speak again but thought better of it; there was too much steel in Roosevelt's eye.

They hadn't long to wait. The eastbound train pulled in with a good deal of steamy chuffing—and the Marquis and Marquise arrived in their surrey. Arthur Packard came puffing along behind them, on foot.

The crowd made way. The Marquis stepped down. He carried his stick in one hand and a rifle in the other. He handed the stick up to Medora. The weight of it brought her arms down to the seat.

The Marquis kept his rifle in one hand, aimed at the ground. He faced Theodore Roosevelt. The crowd hung back, fascinated; no one made a sound. Joe recognized all the familiar faces—Johnny Goodall, Dan McKenzie, Eaton, Huidekoper, Deacon Osterhaut, Bob Roberts, dozens of others; and over at the edge with his two guns protruding from their shoulder holsters stood Jerry Paddock. Joe put his hand on his Remington revolver and made sure Jerry Paddock knew he was watching him. Jerry's expression did not change but his hands dropped to his sides and that was enough to provoke Joe Ferris's tight cool smile.

“Well, then,” said the Marquis, “here we are.”

Roosevelt nodded. His eyeglasses were sparkling clean, Joe noted. He must have washed them yet again.

There was a long run of silence—long enough to make sweat stand out on Pack's brow. Joe kept one eye on Jerry Paddock the whole time. He heard restless stirrings amid the crowd.

Roosevelt stood rock-steady, jaw jutting. The rifle was in his hand; his thumb was curled over its hammer.

The Marquis looked at that, and at Roosevelt's face. Then his faithless glance wandered toward the tops of the bluffs.

Roosevelt's grasp whitened on the rifle and the Marquis said, “May I pass?”

Theodore Roosevelt breathed deep. “The platform is open to any one. It's a free country, sir.”

There was something like a low moan from the collective throats of the crowd.

The Marquis still didn't look Roosevelt in the face. He was looking across the river, uphill toward the château. “I am going east on business. Then my wife will join me in New York and we intend to go home to Paris for a season of civilized amusements.”

“Paris is at its best in the spring,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes. Quite.” The Marquis turned, finally met Roosevelt's eye and said, “I'm glad you agree there are always ways by which gentlemen can settle their differences amicably.”

“However you prefer it, Mr. De Morès.”

The Marquis said to Pack, “You may put it in your newspaper that I will return in the summer. I am a Dakotan—I have come to stay.”

Pack wrote it down and Joe Ferris had the feeling they never would see the Marquis De Morès again.

The crowd stirred, uncertain. The Marquis boarded the train. The driver carried his luggage across the platform and then returned to the carriage; he lifted the reins but Madame stayed him. She watched the train until it pulled out; she waved, and the Marquis's colorfully sleeved arm waved back from the departing window.

Madame regarded Theodore Roosevelt with unhurried gravity.

The ranchman returned her glance; he smiled and bowed low. It was, Joe realized, a gesture of gratitude and respect.

Madame nodded graciously, acknowledging it. Then she gave Pack a warm smile—Joe was amused to see how it nearly melted Pack to a puddle. She prodded the driver with her husband's heavy stick, and the surrey pulled away.

Jerry Paddock uttered a loud clear obscenity before he wheeled away.

That was the signal for the crowd to disperse. Joe let his hand fall away from the revolver's handle. When he sucked in a long ragged lungful of wind he realized he had not been breathing at all.

Roosevelt said, “Thank you, Arthur. I'm deeply grateful. It's quite possible I owe you my life.”

“I've been objective and non-partisan. I'm pleased if my efforts have helped to keep the peace.”

“You can't remain aloof under the pretense of objectivity, you know. You must commit your soul to the values in which you believe. Defend them, and be damned to noncommittal dispassion. You must have a firmly defined public spirit if you're to be one of the governing class. It's your plain duty—as it is mine. And now if you don't mind I think I'll repair upstairs and read for a bit.”

When the New Yorker had gone to his room Joe said, “He'll sleep a week now.”

“Public spirit,” said Pack. He scowled at Joe. “He's always making speeches, like a stuffed-shirt schoolmaster.”

“Seems to me his speeches make pretty good sense.”

Pack was irritable. “I didn't expect the Marquis to back down.”

“A lot of folks didn't. Maybe they see now the kind of bully he is. Only fights when he knows he's got the advantage.”

“That's not a fair judgment. There were a lot of factors,” Pack said. “But I admit too many things have taken me by surprise today. One was when Madame agreed so readily to talk to him.”

“What did she say to the Markee?”

Pack consulted his notebook. “
‘Antoine—if Theodore were to be killed in the Bad Lands, by you, I'm rather afraid there might be repercussions throughout New York Society.'
”

“New York Society,” Joe said. “That means her father the banker—who happens to be the source of the Markee's fortune. Well you said she wasn't stupid and you were right. I guess she saw right away—and she reminded the Marquis that a duel might have killed more than Theodore Roosevelt. So you see, Pack, the Marquis didn't withdraw out of the goodness of his heart. More like greedy cowardice.”

Pack said, “You'll have a hard time proving that to me.” He turned to go, and then stopped abruptly; he swung back with surprise all over his face. “Now, you've run another confidence game, haven't you. This time on
me.
”

Joe said with wide-eyed guilelessness, “What're you talking about?”

“When you asked me to intercede with Madame. It wasn't your idea at all. It was
his.
”

Joe grinned. “What ever makes you say that?”

“If it had come from him—if he'd been the one to ask me, I wouldn't have done it. He put you up to it. He used you, Joe. He knew I trusted your friendship and he used us both.”

“Ah, well, then, may be,” said Joe Ferris. “Be that as it may, do you really feel ill-used?”

*    *    *

There were distressing reports from the hills as the cattlemen went out with the spring round-up. For two weeks Pack waited while they scoured the Bad Lands, finding no cattle, growing to believe the storms must have drifted the main herds pretty far from their home ranges. They found a few steers, most of which they killed for food. They ranged farther and wider, and to his disbelieving consternation Pack learned in the end that the terrible winter had wiped out the greater part of every herd in the Bad Lands—ironically, with the sole exception of the De Morès herd; the Marquis's tough Dakota-bred three-year-olds had survived, and Johnny Goodall had the unhappy duty of selling them off to settle a small portion of the Marquis's massive debts.

The only blessing was that the Stranglers were gone. Evaporated with the snows. With the departure of the Marquis their payroll likewise departed—and therefore so did they. Pack supposed the ugly Mr. W.H. Springfield had returned to Chicago to take a new assignment for his employers at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. As for the identities of the men who had ridden in the noose-party posses, no one had found any further clue to those, and he doubted anyone ever would. It was certain Jerry Paddock knew more about them than he was admitting—it was Jerry who had slipped Pack the embarrassingly premature information about the hanging of Modesty Carter—but Jerry had very little to say to anyone about anything these days. Little Casino had not returned with him from Bismarck; apparently she had found a high-roller there who suited her temper better and she had run off with him to the East, while Jerry took solace in lugubrious portions of whiskey abetted by profits from his multifarious shady schemes.

At the end of the round-up, seventy men rode into Medora driving one limping steer. When Pack interviewed Theodore Roosevelt, the ranchman said he had ridden across his entire home range and not found a single live steer.

Neither Sewall nor Huidekoper had the ill manners to say “I told you so.”

Roosevelt's ranch was a casualty—but Roosevelt was not. On that final day he came to the train station wearing a derby hat, in defiance of local custom. No one knocked it off; no one fired a shot. Huidekoper was there, and Eaton and Joe Ferris and even McKenzie; there were a score of well-wishers, most of them long-faced because of the dreadful winter kill.

Jerry Paddock, perhaps still nursing his sore jaw, was noticeably absent.

Before he followed Dow and Sewall aboard the Express, Roosevelt said, “You see, Arthur, I intend to wear any hat I please.” He lifted the derby off his head and held it high, grinned at the onlookers and replaced the hat square across his eyes.

A.C. Huidekoper stepped forward to shake his hand and Roosevelt said, “The land will recover, and you with it. You're a capital fellow.”

“Yes, it takes more than a few blizzards to get rid of a long-winded geezer like me. Good luck to you, Theodore.”

Pack said, “Have you a parting quote for the
Cow Boy?
”

Roosevelt squinted through his glasses at the towering bluffs. He looked all around. “I came to the hills of this fair Territory in great despair, and it has blown the cobwebs from my eyes. This great and glorious West has made me strong and whole, and ready as well as eager to return to my spirited career of honorably stirring up the hack politicians of the Empire State.” At that last bit he flashed his brash many-toothed mischievous grin.

“What are you going to do?”

“My good lady Edith is waiting in New York to marry me and I have a little daughter whom I haven't seen in far too long a time. And after such experiences as those we have enjoyed with the royalist Mr. De Morès I am resolved to plunge myself back into politics, for it seems more than ever important to me that the ideals of our precious democracy be defended. I've decided to run for the office of Mayor of New York.”

“Well good luck to you, Theodore.”

For it was true: Pack had been admitted to the circle of those permitted to address Roosevelt by his first name.

He still was not certain it was a circle to which he cared to belong.

Roosevelt pointed to the precarious stack of newspapers in the wheelbarrow behind Pack, and said offhandedly, “Why don't you tie those in bales so they won't get away from you?”

As the train departed, Pack wondered,
Why didn't
I
ever think of that?

That night, by pure accident,
The Bad Lands Cow Boy
burned to the ground.

Epilogue

June 1903

A
considerable crowd had gathered in the ghost town. Several hundred people waited by the embankment for the eastbound flyer. Looking out the window of the train, Pack saw women and old men in the uniform of the Grand Army of the Republic and children and young men in the ragtag outfits of the Cuban campaign. Many of them were too young to remember this town when it had been alive; but Pack recognized some who had been cow hands here.

He saw dozens of men draw sidearms and check their loads.

The train, preceded by the howl of its whistle, slowed a-clatter across the Little Missouri River bridge. The President and his party were aboard, including Pack, having joined the train five miles west at Huidekoper's loading pens; it wasn't for the local celebrants to know that Colonel Roosevelt and his hand-picked cronies had spent the night at the site of his old Elkhorn ranch swapping ebullient yarns about the old days in the Wild West.