Paddock was somewhere else—out of sight, working up his rage, perhaps drawing his two guns even now.
When he stepped out onto the rear vestibule President Theodore Roosevelt was clearly pleased by the size of the crowd, by the earsplitting shout of welcome and by the racketing fusillade of gunshots that roared overhead.
“By Godfrey, a true Bad Lands reception.” The President laughed with magnificent vitality. His wide face shone in the sun—that famous broad cartoon of huge teeth, shaggy mustache, glittering eyeglasses. “Thank you all, my fine friends! My goodness—this must be the entire population of the Bad Lands down to the smallest baby. What a fine day!”
His autograph was much in demand. He bent over the railing to receive books and papers, signed them and handed them back. Then after a short time—short enough to prevent the crowd from growing restive—he removed his rough hat and held it up in one hand while from the platform at the back of his private railroad car he obliged the multitude with a torrent of talk.
The election campaign was still a year away but the President was taking no chances; this tour of the West was unabashedly designed to mend old fences and build new ones. There was the issue of Roosevelt’s unelected Presidency: he had not been voted into the office; he had inherited it, and those who disapproved of his politics resented that. And there was also the fact that in the last election large portions of the West had voted for William Jennings Bryan—and against the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket—on the freesilver proposition, which was an issue both sides of which still bestirred great wrath among Westerners. It seemed transparent to Pack that Roosevelt was trying to repeal the free-silver sentiment by exploiting his close ties to the region.
The Bryan partisans had not folded their tents. Quite the contrary; they had risen to the challenge with the fervor of zealous fanatics. Pack knew that earlier whistle-stops on this journey had been enlivened vividly by several hostile audiences. A few had broken into serious mob riots.
“Even discounting Jerry Paddock, there may be trouble here too, from the malcontents,” Huidekoper had said to Pack just ten minutes ago. And sure enough he heard the angry murmuring sounds of discontent rumbling from several quarters of the crowd as Roosevelt plunged into his hearty speech.
Trying to watch everyone at once, Pack stood under flailing shadows as the great restless rolling buffalo of a man (when he was orating you didn’t notice how short he was) thrashed his powerful arms, peppering the air with spirited high-pitched exclamation.
Roosevelt engaged the crowd with what some of them wanted to hear: he talked of his new designations of National Wildlife Refuges; he talked of San Juan Hill and of his intention to send the Navy to the Isthmus of Panama to protect the proposed canal route against resistance from what he called “those homicidal corruptionists of Colombia.”
Much of the President’s harangue had the hollow ring of campaign malarkey. Yet the man actually meant what he said. The President could spout bombast and bluster but he was no fool. The world, Pack thought, had seldom known such a contradictory array of conflicting qualities in one man.
There were boos and hisses now—catcalls; a segment of the crowd was turning unruly. Pack heard the rallying cry “Cross of gold!” and there was a nasty growl from a dozen throats.
That was when the gaunt two-gun pushed forward through the crowd. Jerry Paddock!
Joe Ferris reached under his coat.
Jerry Paddock smiled his wicked saturnine smile and shook his head at Joe Ferris.
Joe’s Remington lifted.
The President watched—silent for a change—for a brief moment while Jerry Paddock waved a hand at Joe Ferris and, keeping his hands in plain sight, climbed onto the train and stood facing the crowd, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, whipping his stare instantly toward anyone in the crowd who showed any signal of disapproval.
Pack was stunned. Jerry Paddock turned gravely and offered his right hand, and Theodore Roosevelt with a flash of his brilliant grin clutched the offered handshake and then Paddock like a trained dog stepped back behind the President and that was that.
After that the hecklers kept their peace. The rest of the crowd kept interrupting Roosevelt with applause. The President waited it out with a big smile. There were no more boos or hisses; Jerry Paddock’s malevolent two-gun glare silenced them immediately.
The speech reached its bully climax:
“I got a Spaniard or two. Bullets everywhere. Well some of you remember how I told the boys who enlisted with me in ‘98 it would be no picnic—and the place of honor was the post of danger, and we each must expect to die!”
A great roar went up.
At the President’s shoulder A.C. Huidekoper said, “You see they all feel you’re their man, sir.”
“They’re all my old friends,” said the President. Pack saw again the fabled grin when Roosevelt looked back to Jerry Paddock the two-gun man: “Even the ones who tried to kill me.”
The murderer smiled. “At your service, Mr. President.” He touched a finger to his hatbrim in obeisance.
And then the train was ready to leave; the President turned as if to go inside but then he stopped at the railing and peered uphill. When Pack followed the line of his glance he saw smoke rising from the chimney of the chateau.
A.C. Huidekoper said, “That’ll be the last of the servants. They’re about to leave for good. You missed Madame by about six weeks, Mr. President. She came out with two of her grown children to close up the place and take some of the furnishings back to France.”
“Is she in good health and spirits?”
“Very good indeed, and as beautiful as ever.”
“Chère Madame,” said the President. “She’s not had a happy life. I do wish her well.”
Pack got Roosevelt’s ear momentarily. “Sometimes when I think back on the Marquis and the Stranglers and all that, I still ask myself if now and then the Marquis may have been right, according to his own lights. Do you ever ask yourself about those days—if sometimes maybe the ends do justify the means?”
“No, Pack. You can’t tailor your code to fit the needs of the moment. Right and wrong exist. One need not apologize for espousing absolutes. Permit me, old fellow, to remind you that Moses did not come down off the mountain with The Ten Suggestions. The Marquis was wrong—dead wrong, and that’s all there was to it.”
With that and a flashing grin of his great tombstone teeth the President stepped inside. A moment later the train was away.
The crowd dispersed. Pack stood fast, watching the train dwindle.
Pack said to Joe Ferris, “Now wasn’t that singular—what Jerry Paddock did?”
“I guess may be Jerry’s always hankered to be on the winning side. That little show he put on—do wonders for public opinion. I wouldn’t be surprised he ran for public office one day soon. Why, they’ll probably name a creek after him.”
Pack said, “The thought makes me shudder.”
“Well hell, Pack, there’s nobody left around here except hermits and wild goats. Jerry Paddock can get himself elected sheriff of all that if it’s what he wants.”
A.C. Huidekoper pressed the reins of a saddle horse into Pack’s hand and Pack heard him say dryly, “Perhaps after all this time you can begin to admit that it was the ridiculous four-eyed dude there, and not the magnificent Marquis, who, by his example if not his manner, taught you what it really means to be an honorable man.”
“That is true,” Pack admitted—finally. “He was the better man, wasn’t he. And I was wrong in believing otherwise. And I’m prepared to buy you gentlemen a drink to that discovery.”
Joe Ferris said, “I have observed that it takes some people a mighty long time to grow up.” Pack felt the firm clasp of Joe’s arm around his shoulders. It made him smile. It was good to be among friends—and to know who one’s real friends were.