Roosevelt stumbled, then grinned. “Come along, Mr. Packard.”
“What in God’s name is all this?”
Redhead Finnegan, on the wagon—for Finnegan it was indeed, Pack determined after a closer look—thrust his face over the sideboard and glared at Roosevelt. “This dude’s trying to railroad us, Pack. He and his crew ambushed us in the Bad Lands. He’ll tell you any old pack of lies. Don’t believe a word he says. You can see he’s plumb crazy.”
Roosevelt leveled his rifle—a ghost as determined as a bulldog. To Pack he said, “Come along.”
“Well I don’t know. Their word against yours—”
Dutch Reuter jumped down off the wagon, startling Roosevelt whose rifle swung tentatively toward him but Reuter ignored it. He had bits of brown grass and twigs in his beard. He clutched Pack’s coat. Pack shrank back. Reuter’s breath was foul. “His boat we steal. Behind the wagon all the way with his Winchester he walk. Fifty miles. Two days. Fifty miles. Fifty miles! His eyes he never close. Twenty foot back walking, and all the time that book he’s reading. ‘Keep going there—keep going.’ Big storm. Him they jump—Red and Frank, they jump. And he fight ’em off! That wagon and two men, on his back he lift! Bejesus out of them two tough boys he scare. And the river. Dead cows. Take apart the wagon, he makes us. Pieces across we carry. Put back together. That water God-damn cold.”
It wasn’t easy trying to put the German’s words back together and make any sort of sense out of them. Pack tried to review what Dutch Reuter was saying. It began to come clear.
Reuter said in awe, “No man so God-damn brave I ever seen. No man. No sir.”
Pack slammed the Bastille door shut upon Finnegan and O’Donnell. They were bellowing.
Dutch Reuter remained outside. Roosevelt said to him, “Go on, Dutch. Get out of here—get out of the country before someone hurts you. Don’t stay around here, for you’re a fool. You haven’t got enough sense to take care of yourself.”
“Mein Gott, Herr Roosevelt—such kind and generous—how can I you thank? Gott im Himmel—a hundred thanks, a thousand thanks …”
Roosevelt looked at Pack in amusement and said, “By Godfrey, it’s the first time a man ever thanked me for calling him a fool.”
Pack gaped at the fiendish filthy spectral wraith before him. Roosevelt was so tired his every muscle quivered visibly.
Roosevelt said, “Be on your way now, Dutch.”
Dutch Reuter stumbled away.
Pack stood a foot from Roosevelt and yelled at him: “Do you have any idea what you look like?”
“I don’t know how I look,” Roosevelt replied with a wide grin, “but I feel first-rate!”
“You’ve got to see the doctor. Right now.” Pack steered him away from the jail. “Is that story true? Fifty miles? Three days all alone? My God, it’s no good talking about Reuter—you’re the fool. Biggest damn fool I’ve ever heard of. Why on earth did you do this?”
“Why, they stole my boat.”
“Did they now. Well why in hell didn’t you just hang them on the spot and save yourself all this trouble?”
Roosevelt said, “We are civilized men, thank God—not vigilantes. It was my duty to bring them to book, not to murder them.”
Pack tried to offer an arm but Roosevelt shook him off and stumbled into town on his own.
His awe somewhat dampened by the little dude’s damnable posturings, Pack trudged beside him, fearful the New Yorker would slip on the hard-packed snow.
Roosevelt seemed too weary to initiate conversation. The silence made Pack feel awkward. To dispel it he said, “We’ve been wondering if you’d show up today.”
“Wondering?”
“For the duel? Between you and the Marquis?”
“Good Lord. What’s the date, then?”
“Fourteenth of January.”
“Is it. Fancy that. Well then—by George, I am at his disposal,” Roosevelt whispered. He turned his face toward Pack with the most dreadful livid mask of an expression. Undoubtedly it was intended to be a grin but, undoubtedly as well, Roosevelt had utterly no idea what it did to his appearance.
They went past Geng’s Furnishings & Notions and into the nearest provider of refreshment. It happened to be Jerry Paddock’s saloon. There were a dozen men in the place. The hand-lettered sign on boards advertised EVERY THING FROM COW BOY BITTERS TO DUDE SODA. Roosevelt nearly fell into the nearest chair.
Pack said, “We’ve got to get you to the doctor.”
“Nonsense. I’m fine.”
Pack shoved the table a bit to one side and sat down beside him.
“Coffee,” Roosevelt croaked. He tipped the rifle against the wall behind him.
Jerry Paddock, shifty-eyed and seedy, had been drinking; he looked wickedly cheerful. “Well well. Looky who showed up. Just in time to give the Markee his target practice.”
“The man’s tired and thirsty,” Joe said. “Coffee for both of us, Jerry. Your very best.”
“In a pig’s eye.” Paddock came swinging past the bar and rolled two revolvers out of his shoulders holsters. The Mandarin mustache drooped past his sharp-pointed jaw and his rough grinning glance swung hard from Roosevelt to Pack and back again. He was quite drunk and very pleased with himself. He had been insufferable ever since the court had acquitted him; he was a man who not only liked to be on the winning side but took great pleasure in rubbing everyone’s nose in it.
Jerry Paddock cocked his two revolvers one at a time with melodramatic deliberation.
Pack said, “For God’s sake, Jerry—”
The earsplitting blast of a gunshot cut him off and left his head reeling. There was another explosion. Pack blinked. He found he had jerked back in his chair hard enough to drive it back against the wall.
Jerry, Paddock had shot holes in his own floor. He wagged the guns in Roosevelt’s face, taunting him.
One of the butchers at the bar said, “Look at old Jerry. Thinks he’s Wild Bill Hiccup.”
Jerry Paddock said in a very quiet dangerous voice, “Four Eyes is going to treat.” He moved forward and planted his feet, so that he stood leaning over Roosevelt, a gun in each hand. “Four Eyes made a damn fool of himself over in that courthouse and now he’s gonna pay for it. Come on then, you yellow-livered son of a mangy bitch. Let’s see the mint of your money. Set up the drinks, you God-damned puny little peekerwood.”
There was an audience here; and reputation was a very important thing to a man like Paddock. It would be impossible for him to back down. Pack wondered if Roosevelt knew that. Despite his conviction that the New Yorker’s discomfort was not altogether undeserved, Pack found himself obliged to intrude. “By God, Jerry, if I were armed—”
“Set up the drinks,” Jerry Paddock said stubbornly to Roosevelt. His eyes, quite drunk, blinked with a dull yellow gleam that was full of mortal danger.
Then he fired again: left, right, left, right. The explosions rocked Pack’s head back; he felt dizzy and deaf.
Roosevelt said with a tired sigh of resignation, “Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,” and rose, looking past Paddock toward the bar. And still coming up out of the chair he used all his rising weight to plunge his right fist straight up into the brittle point of Paddock’s jaw.
Both revolvers exploded—possibly from involuntary convulsions of Paddock’s hands, for the bullets went into the floor and by that time Paddock was toppling backward like an axed tree.
Pack was paralyzed with astonishment.
The back of Jerry Paddock’s head struck the bar a sickening thump not six inches to one side of where the butcher was standing.
Paddock tumbled to the floor and Roosevelt was upon him in an instant, twisting the revolvers from Paddock’s limp fists.
Then Roosevelt stumbled back to his chair. It lay on its back as though it had drunk too much and passed out. Roosevelt righted it, collapsed into it and dropped the two revolvers on the table. His exhaustion was obvious.