The Marquis said, “They’ve been heard boasting of it in the saloons.”
“Heard by who? You?”
“I don’t habituate saloons.”
“They sign confessions?”
“Don’t be a complete ass.”
Deputy Harmon made a show of examining the three hunters and their rifles and their stony faces.
Finally the law man said, “If nobody seen them do it, and they ain’t volunteered no formal confession, they ain’t a whole lot the law can do here.”
The Marquis’s horse skittered back and forth. He controlled his temper with what Pack felt was admirable restraint. “Let me just ask you this, since even under these ridiculous circumstances it is still my intent to abide by local custom and law. What course of action do you recommend I take?”
“Why, shoot,” Harmon said.
“Yes?”
“Shoot. Shoot, man. Somebody shoots at you, shoot back.”
“And that is how you advise me?”
Deputy Harmon grinned. “Sure is.”
Finnegan grinned back at him.
Suddenly Pack understood that Deputy Harmon and Redhead Finnegan were friends.
The Marquis said, “Suppose I advise you to arrest the men.”
“And if they kill me,” Henry Harmon said, “what do you advise me to do then?”
Riley Luffsey snickered. The Marquis’s head snapped toward him and for a moment Pack was certain the shooting was about to commence but the Marquis only drew a deep breath and said with equanimity to the craven deputy, “If they kill you, then I and my men will consider ourselves deputized and will prevent the murderers’ escaping. You may be assured of that.”
Harmon pretended to consider that.
Pack heard a low fluttering sound. It barely reached his ears. A moment went by before he realized it was a chuckle of amusement from the throat of Jerry Paddock.
Deputy Harmon exchanged knowing glances again with Finnegan. Then he turned without hurry and stepped back aboard the train just as it pulled away from the platform.
The three ruffians gave the Marquis plenty of time to act, should he be so foolish. Redhead Finnegan’s hatbrim lifted and turned as he looked past the Marquis. “Come on, then, Jerry. You want to start a ball?”
As isolated as if he were quarantined, Paddock spread his open hands wide, like a dark preacher to his flock. He was grinning wickedly.
The three riders presented their backs to the Marquis and rode away at an insolently slow gait. Luffsey rode tall and straight. Pack felt, not for the first time, that there was a good deal to be admired in that youngster and it was a shame he had elected to take up with such low companions.
The Marquis glared at their backs with high indignation. “Vile cowardly vermin!”
They heard it. Pack saw Luffsey’s back stiffen: Luffsey looked at Finnegan, then O’Donnell. But neither of them responded. They continued to ride slowly away.
Joe Ferris showed Pack a troubled brooding scowl.
De Morès then decided—sensibly, Pack thought—to ignore the entire matter. It was the magnanimous act of a truly civilized gentleman. Pack tried to explain this to Joe Ferris but Joe only jeered. Anyway the Marquis was entertaining visitors—Russian royalty. Surrounded by servants and hounds he took them away on a hunting expedition out toward the Yellowstone.
For once his wife did not accompany the Marquis. One of the children had a touch of fever and she remained to minister to the baby. Within a few days the child had recovered, and Madame la Marquise was seen more often riding along the bluffs and through the town. Pack’s heart leaped whenever he saw her.
On a hot Saturday late in August he rented a horse and was saddling in the livery corral when he saw two riders enter town: the lady Medora and, of all people, Theodore Roosevelt. They were riding together stirrup to stirrup. Pack’s jaw dropped.
“I’ve been showing Mr. Roosevelt our landscape,” she said unabashedly to Pack.
“And I’ve been admiring Mrs. De Morès’s paintings,” Roosevelt said.
Pack said stiffly, “I’m on my way to Eaton’s. There’s a hunt today.”
“I know,” said Roosevelt. “I’ve been invited. I’m afraid we shall be late.”
Medora gave Roosevelt the bounty of her smile. “Very nice to have seen you again.”
“The pleasure’s entirely mine, madame.” Roosevelt touched his hatbrim.
Pack, besotted with suspicions, now saw it right before him. Why, they were hiding it right out in the open. He marveled at their boldness.
Of course now that they were in town tact imposed an absolute modesty on whatever it was that they had between them. Pack could not bring himself to give it a name; but it took no great leap of imagination to envision the deep flood of feeling that must be concealed behind the polite smiles with which they regarded each other on this public occasion.
He felt befuddled. No matter how contrary women might be, he had difficulty believing what the events implied. It was beyond credence that there could be anything truly unseemly in the lady Medora’s disposition toward Roosevelt. Not only was her husband handsome, gallant and titled—while Roosevelt was unprepossessing at best—but it had been clear from the first moment of her arrival in the Bad Lands that she worshipped the Marquis with an adoring and unquestioning passion.
Still, it was possible that, as she was from New York, she might have acquired an inappropriate sense of Theodore Roosevelt’s importance and power. Women, Pack had observed, sometimes had such propensities. And if that was the case, was it possible that Roosevelt could have been so caddish as to have played upon those strings?
Leaving no answers in her wake, Madame la Marquise rode away. Dan McKenzie came out of the livery and said sarcastically to Pack, “D’you think she can cook?”
Pack scowled at the ill-mannered oaf. Roosevelt did more than that. He dismounted behind McKenzie and gripped his shoulder. When the blacksmith turned, Roosevelt said, “Apologize for your tone, sir.”
McKenzie only grinned. Perhaps it wasn’t for Roosevelt to know that McKenzie’s preferred answer to everything was the hammer or the fist—two objects that were nearly interchangeable in McKenzie’s lexicon—but Roosevelt was about to learn it; and Pack took a certain sly satisfaction in being witness to the dude’s lesson.
McKenzie said, “What’d you say?”
“Apologize.”
McKenzie, still grinning, hauled a roundhouse left up from hip level. What happened then was odd. It appeared to Pack that Roosevelt, flinching from the blow, must have tripped over his own bootheel; in any event McKenzie’s powerful swing sailed over the dude’s head and before McKenzie could recover his balance, Roosevelt hit him at the hinge of the jaw.
It happened so fast Pack wasn’t sure what he had seen, but McKenzie—twice the dude’s size—was down and then Roosevelt was helping the man up. “Go to the trough and wash yourself. When you’re in the presence of a lady, henceforth conduct yourself like a gentleman—or suffer the consequences.”
McKenzie’s eyes narrowed. Roosevelt said, “I studied boxing with the master prizefighter John Long.”
“Aagh,” McKenzie said, disbelieving it. “One lucky punch—I wasn’t looking.”
“If you’d care for a match I shall accommodate you at any suitable time and place. Here and now will do, if you like.”
Madame was two blocks distant, riding away; she had noticed none of it. Pack felt vaguely gratified: at least Roosevelt’s brazen act of fraudulent chivalry hadn’t impressed her.
McKenzie looked down upon Roosevelt. “Hell, I ain’t going to pick on a man your size.”
“As you wish. The choice is yours.”
McKenzie shook his head in a display of exasperated disgust, glanced at Pack and walked back into the stable.
Roosevelt got back on his horse. “If we’re both bound for the Custer Trail, I should be pleased to have your company.”