Brian Garfield (7 page)

In the corner of his vision Joe saw Madame la Marquise avert her face to hide what may have been a quick smile—of amusement? Of memory?

Roosevelt offered his hand to De Morès. “That's settled then. I look forward to seeing you soon. And your delightful wife.”

Demoted to an egalitarian Mister, the Frenchman accepted the proffered handshake only after a pause that was long enough to be insulting. Roosevelt didn't appear to notice. He shook hands briefly with Pack, bowed deeply—perhaps an inch too deeply?—to Madame la Marquise and summoned Joe with a jerk of his head.

Joe endeavored to help carry the luggage but Roosevelt refused to relinquish it. “Just show the way. I can carry for myself. Didn't come out here to be waited upon.”

Joe pointed north and Roosevelt promptly tramped away.

Pack glared after him. “What an insufferable prig. What an utter disappointment.”

You'll change that opinion when you get to know him
, Joe thought.

Walking away to catch up with his client, Joe heard De Morès say with a bite in his tone, “Tell me, Arthur. Is he Jewish?”

“I don't think so. Dutch ancestry, I believe.”

“I don't like him.”

Joe caught up and led Roosevelt upstreet, ignoring the fit of coughing.

There was no paint on the town; the smell of new boards was in his nostrils—evidence that the wind was favorable, for otherwise they'd have smelled nothing but the abattoir's stink.

Roosevelt said, “I should feel sorry for Medora if I were you, old fellow. She's got herself a cavalier despot for a husband.”

Joe was surprised by the remark. A year ago Roosevelt surely wouldn't have made it; he'd have been too filled with vigor—he'd have found
something
admiring to say about the couple.

Now there was a bitter note in the piping voice and an intolerance that hadn't been there before. Give him half an excuse, Joe thought gloomily, and the silly dude would get himself in serious trouble if he went around making those kinds of remarks about the imperial Frenchman. Joe felt he should warn Roosevelt that De Morès was too conceited to let an insult pass; and that he was well armed at all times. But he couldn't think of a way to do it that might not offend the little dude, so—just for the time being, he reckoned—it was all right to leave things alone.

Two months ago in the spring there had been rain—torrents. The river had run full, crashing down its banks. Two months from now by August it would dwindle to a fitful stream lurching through cut-clay channels not more than a foot deep. Just now it was half a river, stirrup-high, and they were able to splash their horses without trouble across the gravel ford a hundred yards downstream from the Northern Pacific bridge.

From there they struck south along the dirt track that passed for a wagon road. It took them across the rails and upriver beneath the bluff—Roosevelt's hatbrim lifted and turned as he focused his interest on the brand-new De Morès château up there—and around a bend through shade of cottonwoods that briefly interrupted the blast of afternoon sun.

Joe Ferris was thinking about the girl he had left behind in Newfoundland. In his memory he saw the laugh in her green eyes—as good as a kiss.

Must have been the sight of De Morès's big house that put him in mind of his girl. Didn't usually think about her in the daytime.

He heard Roosevelt: “It's said Mr. De Morès has killed two or three Jews in duels.”

“Doesn't like Jews, does he?”

“I take him to be an unpleasant man all around,” said Roosevelt. “Well despite all that, old fellow, it's good to be back. I feel as if I've come home. It's an enchanted country. D'you know Poe's tales and verses? These Bad Lands look just the way Poe sounds.”

Joe scanned the scarred butte country. The ground was rent into fantastic shapes and splashed with barbaric colors. But after a while you hardly noticed.

He didn't know much about anybody called Poe. He'd done some reading in the books from school and from his mother's library bookcase and he had enjoyed some of them, especially the Sir Walter Scott ones, but none of it seemed to apply much to the country hereabouts, and he didn't know what Mr. Roosevelt meant but he wasn't curious enough to inquire further.

Deep in the horizon's haze he thought he saw antelope. He didn't remark it to Roosevelt; he did not hanker for several hours' hard riding followed by the acrid stink of shooting and the stench, even worse, of bleeding and skinning.

Safe enough not to point out the herd in the distance: Roosevelt, even with his storm windows, couldn't see well enough to discover it by himself.

Joe remembered that much from last time. Roosevelt still looked as frail as he'd looked last summer when he'd come for the hunting.
Consider yourself engaged.
That hunt had been a true misery. Please God let us not repeat it. Let this one be easy.

He listened absently to thudding hoof-falls and squeaks of saddle leather. As they rounded each bend there was a new shape to the horizon. Roosevelt said, “Don't the colors amaze you?”

“Guess so.” They clattered across a rock-fall of loose shale colored like rainbows. Above, a few chalk-white lateral stripes had bled down over the darker strata, leaving stains like whitewash. This stretch wasn't much for green—nothing but a few stunted cedars on the hills.

“This air—” Roosevelt puffed his narrow chest to draw a wheezing breath, coughed, recovered “—fine clean sting to it, like the Alps. Like good tart cider. Look at the size of that sky. ‘Wild Lands' I might better understand. But they're not bad. Who called them Bad Lands?”

“Everybody. Indians first.”

“Which Indians?”

So he hadn't changed much; hadn't grown up any. He was still asking questions like a schoolboy. The dude seemed to want to stuff into his head every useless fact in the world.

Joe extended his hand palm-up in a gesture. “Indians. Lakota, Crow, Cheyenne, Arikara, Mandan, Gros Ventre. Whichever. You know.
Indians.
”

“They can't have all lived here.”

Joe contained his vexation. “Indians don't live anywhere, Mr. Roosevelt. They drift on the plains. All the tribes camped and hunted here in the olden days. Sioux called the country
Mako Shika
, ‘land bad.' Take a look at the old map in Arthur Packard's newspaper office—must be a hundred years old—you see where some French-Canada
voyageur
put down ‘Bad lands to cross.'”

“
Mauvaises terres pour traverser.
” Roosevelt showed teeth, proud of his French. Then his face closed up again.

“They tell it twenty years ago old General Sully chased Sioux through here—he's the one supposedly called the place ‘Hell with the fires put out.'” Joe considered the buttes. “He was partly wrong. Some fires still burning.”

“I remember those. Wasn't there a coal vein burning near Huidekoper's?”

“Still on fire. Lignite. They burn for years.”

“I make them ‘Good Lands,'” Roosevelt insisted. “When you come from a life of crowded noisy little rooms filled with tobacco smoke—it's a stalwart country, Joe.” His face twisted and squinted. “Why, when I was a boy my whole ambition was to take a horse and a rifle out on the prairie and ride day after day without encountering another human soul—far off from all mankind. That's freedom.”

“Yes sir. For you I guess. I never did take to range-riding. I'll have four walls and a roof—I am of an indoor disposition. A little luck, I'll be the second banker in Medora.”

“Who's the first?”

“Marquis De Morès.”

Roosevelt made no reply; he gigged the horse and rode on. Not like him to be so uncommunicative and glum.

May be just a bad moment—he must be tired from the train journey. Better wait, drop more hints another time.

“We'll get outfitted at Eaton's ranch.” Joe added hopefully, “Unless you'd rather go fishing?”

“I never fish,” Roosevelt said. “Can't bear to sit still that long.” He seemed on the brink of tears.

A three-strand wire fence crossed the trail. Someone had cut it and left the curled strands to dangle. When they rode through the gap Roosevelt said, “Is this Eaton's fence?”

“No sir. Marquis De Morès's.”

“Doesn't the man know enough to put a gate where there's an obvious road?”

“May be they don't bother with gates back in France where he comes from.”

Ahead three men hunkered in cottonwood shade, their horses tied to trees; one of the men trailed a fishing line in the river.

“Say, Mr. Roosevelt, be careful with these men now.”

“Who are they?”

“‘Bitter Creek' Redhead Finnegan and his friends.”

“I don't believe I know them.”

“Don't believe you'll want to,” Joe said.

“By George, it appears I don't have a large choice in the matter.”

Finnegan and Frank O'Donnell had stood up; O'Donnell had moved to his horse and now laid his hand on the buttstock of a scabbarded rifle. Finnegan had a revolver in his fist—not pointed at anyone, but the implied threat was obvious.

Joe drew rein facing them at the edge of the grove. Beside him he was relieved to see, out of the corner of his eye, that Roosevelt followed suit. The mood the dude was in, it didn't seem safe to trust his prudence; and if Roosevelt should suffer an attack of one of his unpredictable moments, God alone knew what effect it might have on the three trigger-happy hunters.

The third man remained below on the riverbank, squatting on his heels with the fishing pole in his hand; that was young Riley Luffsey. He had a rifle across his lap and looked at them over his shoulder with his customary cocky dare.

Joe said, “You can put up the firearms.”

Pugnacious and surly, “Bitter Creek” Redhead Finnegan pointed the revolver vaguely at the dude. “What's this you got here, Joe?”

“Mr. Roosevelt from New York. Gentle down—we don't work for the Marquis. It
was
you boys cut the fence, I guess?”

“They Strang it, we cut it,” Frank O'Donnell snarled, as if it were an invitation to dispute.

Finnegan said, “That's a public road up and down the river. Man's got no right fencing it.”

Joe said, “He claims to own all this land. Valentine Scrip.”

Redhead Finnegan said, “He don't own nothing.” As always he was in search of a fight. He had an evil reputation throughout the Bad Lands.

Joe pointed them out for Roosevelt's benefit. “Michael Finnegan—Frank O'Donnell. The lad down there with the pole is Riley Luffsey.”

“Delighted to meet you,” Roosevelt said without any evidence of delight. “And I agree with you that public roads ought to remain open.” At least he had the sense not to dismount.

Finnegan surveyed Roosevelt, open condemnation in his glance. “Picked yourself a poor guide. If it's good hunting you care for, we'll take you to more game than a man can shoot with a Gatling.”

“Sorry, gentlemen. No offense intended, but I have a contract with Joe Ferris.”

“Your bad luck then. You'll go out two, three weeks and come in empty-handed. Count on it.” Finnegan leered up at Joe.

Finnegan's curly red hair was thick and matted. He wore it shoulder-length like the late Wild Bill Hickok. His skin was as oily as Esquimeaux grease. Finnegan had a broad florid face and a taut stocky body that always seemed ready to spring like a trap: all his moves were sudden. His clothes were filthy.

More than one time Joe had heard Redhead Finnegan boast that he was from Bitter Creek, wherever that might be; and that the farther up Bitter Creek you went, the tougher and meaner the people got; and that he himself hailed from the fountain head of Bitter Creek.

Finnegan's sometime partner Frank O'Donnell was a big ruffian from Ireland whose cheeks bore the rough pits of smallpox. The stoic stillness of the Bad Lands had immobilized O'Donnell's features; he had built a wall around himself and inside it he must have dehydrated. Joe could not remember ever having seen him smile. Nor did O'Donnell talk much, except when drunk.

Story was, some of these Irish fugitives had slit the throats of their rich landlords and fled to the New World. Riley Luffsey was too young for that—only eighteen now, and he'd been in America long enough to lose his brogue—but the rumors might be true enough where O'Donnell was concerned.

Joe Ferris said, “We'll see you boys, then,” and put his horse in motion. But Finnegan seemed unwilling to let the matter drop: he sidestepped in front of the horse, blocked Joe's way, locked his fist on the bridle strap. The horse jerked its head; Finnegan kept his grip. “Listen—every time we ride through here we hack down that fence, and every time we come back it's been put up again.”

“Why talk on me about it?”

“Because you hang your hat around town and you have got the ear of Jerry Paddock and them,” said the man from Bitter Creek. Joe's horse tried to bite him and he took his hand away without even glancing at it. “And now we hear Paddock and the Marquis are fixing to bring legal papers and that Valentine Scrip and jump claim on Frank's shack downriver.”

“Any rascal jumps me,” O'Donnell said, “jumps right into his grave.”

From the edge of the river Riley Luffsey shouted, “I'm the best and fastest shot in Dakota with long gun or short. They want to try something, I'm ready to stand with Frank.”

“And so am I. And others too. You tell that to Jerry Paddock, Joe,” said Finnegan.

“Tell him yourself. He's no friend of mine.”

Finnegan glared at Roosevelt. “What about you, little man? Whose side you on?”

“My own. I've no quarrels here.”

“Keep it that way,” Finnegan adjured.

Joe said, “Be that as it may, Red, I'll give you good advice. Take it or not as you please. You stir it up with Jerry Paddock and the Marquis, I'll venture folks may walk wide around you so they don't have to look too close at the destruction.” Then Joe smiled. “I hear the Marquis loads his ammunition with exploding bullets.”