Joe said, “The Markee’s a bully and a coward in my view. He didn’t expect Roosevelt to accept his challenge. So he’s run off east to think it over. He’ll come back because he’s got to put a good face on things. If Roosevelt hasn’t left the country by then the Markee’ll go through with the duel because he knows he’s better at those things by a mile. But he’ll be a little nervous because he didn’t expect Roosevelt to show this kind of courage. Roosevelt will show him a few more surprises too. He’s always tougher than anybody expects him to be. But listen, Pack—be that as it may, I don’t want to see him killed. I don’t think you do either.”
Pack retrieved his notebook, snapped it shut and slapped it down on the desk.
With the toe of his boot Joe hooked a rung of the chair beside him and slid it out toward Pack. “Sit yourself.”
Pack felt obstinate. He stood fast. “Why?”
“Because I’ve got to make up my mind whether I’m willing to be your friend any more.”
“That’s up to you.”
“And because you’re at the point where you have to choose between pursuing your own life and being a satellite.”
“You’re wrong. I’m my own man.” He wouldn’t have thought Joe’s lexicon would have included such a word as “satellite.” Joe was a man of constant surprises.
“Your trouble, Pack, you doubt the wrong people and you seem to know everyone’s business but your own. For God’s sake it is time for you to see the light and realize that the true hero of the Bad Lands is not that strutting bastard De Morès at all.”
“All right, Joe, I know you don’t like his walk or his talk. It’s not your style. He’s got no skill at blending. It’s not in him to go unnoticed. He can’t ape the mannerisms of pedestrian men. That’s because he dreams mighty dreams. He bestrides this land like a Colossus. He inspires—”
“He inspires nobody but you, Pack. Hell, De Morès’s real followers—loyal supporters—are just about nonexistent. There’s his wife who adores him with blind faith and there’s Johnny Goodall, who rides his own trail, and there’s you. Other than that there’s only opportunists like Jerry Paddock and Dan McKenzie.”
“Not to mention a few no-accounts like Granville Stuart and—”
“The rich folks from Bismarck and from over in Montana? They side with him, sure. Why not? They fawn on the titled son of a bitch. They’d admire to be just like him—filthy rich and frivolous. They live off to one side, they don’t live under him where you find out for sure what it really means when De Morès says he believes in the divine right of kings. He makes no secret he means to become a king himself. He believes his blue blood gives him the right to make laws in our Territory—well this isn’t France. I don’t care about Granville Stuart, Pack. Granville Stuart lives in Montana—it’s no skin off him what happens in the Bad Lands. Where I live, nobody except you trusts the Marquis. Some take his pay and keep quiet, but they all know his promises are about as durable as snow on a hot griddle.”
Pack said in a low voice, “He has never broken his word to me.”
“May be the occasion didn’t come up. Good Jesus, the Stranglers have killed more than sixty men. Sixty men, Pack.”
“No one’s laid that at the Marquis’s doorstep. God knows you’ve tried, but there’s no shred of evidence. He has told me, confidentially, that he doesn’t know any of the Stranglers by name or by sight.”
“He doesn’t need to know their names to be their paymaster. He’s the boss, Pack. Without him there’d be no Stranglers.”
Pack walked back and forth with his hands rammed deep in his pockets. Head down, not looking at his friend, he said, “Huidekoper and the others saw what a man of imagination and vision could do in this wilderness, and they hate him for having shown them up. They try to blame him for everything that happens. Sour grapes.”
“He’s a foul-tempered childish fool. He killed Luffsey—I don’t care what the trial says—and he’ll murder Theodore Roosevelt however he can. If this duel takes place it’ll mean Roosevelt’s life. He’s toughened up and he’s got grit enough for ten, I guess, but be that as it may, I’ve spent plenty days hunting with the man and I can testify, you put a rifle in Roosevelt’s hands and two times out of three he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn.”
An enormous weariness dragged Pack down into the chair. His eyelids drooped. “The death of Theodore Roosevelt might not be a significant loss to the world, Joe. The death of the Marquis De Morès, on the other hand—”
“That’s an unforgivable thing to say. God help you.”
Pack blinked. He felt listless.
Joe said, “He won’t ever be king of France, I agree. But he’s a better man by a country mile than the Markee. Remember how he handled the Lunatic? He cared, even about that poor useless creature. He has got no vindictiveness. None.”
When Pack made no reply, Joe murmured, “What’s eating at you?”
“Now, I am a newspaperman. My duty is to be objective—to see the truth as it is, and not as you would have it be.”
Joe went to the door. “Hell, Pack, you wouldn’t know the truth if it shot you between the eyes.” He went out. The door closed not with an angry slam but with a quiet reproachful click.
Twenty-one
Wil Dow was happy Mr. Roosevelt and Uncle Bill had come home safely; at last he could dismiss the useless hired man and get some sleep instead of leaping awake at odd intervals to keen the night for creeping Stranglers.
So he welcomed them home with unfeigned enthusiasm. But coming home did not brighten Uncle Bill Sewall’s outlook. He put a bleak half-lidded stare upon the tortured waste of ice-rimmed thorns and vulture-picked bones and pronounced it harrowing and merciless.
“Uncle, doesn’t it give you a lift to come home?”
“Home? This ain’t my home. Anyhow we have got bigger things to worry on. They turned the Marquis loose—and now he aims to kill the boss.”
Then Sewall told Wil of the impending duel between Mr. Roosevelt and the Marquis De Morès. The Marquis was in the East attending to urgent business matters that were overdue but he would be back in Medora by the arrival of the new year and would place himself at Mr. Roosevelt’s disposal upon the road below the railroad bridge on the fifteenth of January at 3 P.M.
“He chose that hour for a reason. You watch,” said Uncle Bill to Roosevelt. “He’ll be west of you, facing east, and you’ll have the sun in your eyes.”
“Perhaps it will be a cloudy day,” said Mr. Roosevelt without heat.
Wil said, “I’d be proud to go in your place, sir.”
“Thank you, Wil. It won’t be necessary. Now please tell me—are the Stranglers still about?”
“I’m not pleased to report it but they are.” Four days ago, Wil told them, four travelers had found a lifeless body swinging from the limb of a cottonwood not six miles from the Elkhorn house, and nearby—probably not dropped accidentally—they had found a torn scrap of paper bearing the names of eighteen or twenty men. They had come by: strangers who claimed they were not Stranglers, and while Wil held his cocked three-barrel gun ready they had shown him the list and he had found fifteen of the names legible. In the past several days since word got out that the list had been found, at least a dozen men seemed to have scattered and disappeared in a great hurry.
Mr. Roosevelt inquired, “Was any of our names on the list?”
“No sir. I believe I would have mentioned that.”
“That’s the first good news I have heard in a month,” growled Uncle Bill.
“Dutch Reuter’s name was on the list. So were Finnegan and O’Donnell.”
Uncle Bill said, “Then the Stranglers are out to avenge the honor of De Morès. Any idea where Dutch went?”
“Haven’t see him,” Wil said. “Haven’t heard a thing.”