Brian Garfield (29 page)

Sewall said, “He is suffering great pain from that broken shoulder bone and has been taking laudanum and I'm afraid it's diminished his judgment.”

If he ever had any
, Pack thought, which I doubt very much.

But the promise of confrontation between Roosevelt and De Morès, after what he'd heard about their
contretemps
at the railroad corrals, put an excitement into him that drove him immediately back outside.

He saw Roosevelt and Joe Ferris in front of the store in the same patch of shade that had been occupied a few minutes earlier by Luffsey and the whore. Roosevelt, despite his leather sling and buckskin outfit, did not seem to mind the stifling heat. Half-drunk on laudanum, no doubt. Joe Ferris was gesturing and talking, probably trying to impress the dude with the zeal with which he had been guarding Roosevelt's investment. Someone had tried to break into the store the other night and Joe had fired several shots, one of which had hit the wall of Pack's office, and he'd had words with Joe about that. But afterward they had shared a meal and laughed about it.

Pack walked to the store. He arrived in time to hear Roosevelt say to Joe Ferris, “Your friend Dutch has been doing fine work with us. I'm grateful for the recommendation…. Now this horse Manitou is a magnificent creature of great endurance. Take good care of him. I shall see you later if you're still awake, and I shall appreciate it if you don't shoot me for a prowler.”

Joe said, “I may just make that mistake if you keep letting that mustache grow. It's starting to droop as bad as Jerry Paddock's.”

“They're saying you have a score to settle with Mr. Paddock.”

“He stole every scrap from this store. Drove Swede Nelson out of town. Keeps trying to rob me blind.”

Pack interjected, “Now, you've never proved a word of that, Joe.”

“Hell, everybody in town knows it. Let him sue me for slander—may be the truth will come out then!”

Roosevelt looked Pack up and down. “A fine coat you're wearing. May I take it you're bound for Mr. De Morès's house?”

“I was about to ask you the same question,” Pack said reluctantly.

*    *    *

There hadn't been any appreciable rain since last spring. The river was shallow beneath the railroad bridge. Pack accompanied Roosevelt along the ties and up the hill. “I heard about your disputation with the Marquis. I'm surprised you'd accept an invitation to dine at the chateau.”

Roosevelt said, “It's better all around if a cordial relation be maintained, as befitting two civilized gentlemen.”

Perhaps, Pack thought. But there might be another side to it—perhaps Roosevelt did not wish to be cut off from contact with Mme. Medora …

In a way he nearly felt compassion for the silly dude, for Pack knew something of such things. When he'd been at the University of Michigan he had fallen disastrously in love with an ethereal girl whose pale delicacy and enormous shy brown eyes had entranced him. Unwilling to risk her diamond-engraved engagement to a world-traveling timber-and-railroad heir, she had dallied harmlessly with the helplessly smitten Pack; in the entire collegiate year he had obtained not so much as a kiss on the cheek, and in the end she had gone off gaily to marry the wretched heritor without so much as a word of regret.

After an exchange of a few more desultory politenesses with Roosevelt, he found himself at the château. Several guests were already there, outdoors on the verandah trying to pick up what little breeze came across the butte. There were half a dozen wealthy Easterners and seven Europeans, including two of the Belgians from Luffsey's hunt and a titled couple from Denmark. Madame la Marquise wore a henna-colored gown that set off her red hair. Eaton was there, and the famous Montana cattle king Granville Stuart, and a barrel-bodied rancher named Pierre Wibaux, proprietor and manager of the W-Bar Ranch on Beaver Creek. Wibaux was from France and, although he was not from the Marquis's social class, the Marquis generously extended frequent invitations to him because he was a fellow countryman.

From the outset things went badly. The French flag waved on its staff before the château and Roosevelt made an issue of the impropriety of this. The Marquis evidently had decided to humor the New Yorker, regardless of provocations. Perhaps it had to do with Roosevelt's injury. A servant was summoned and in short order the American flag was hoisted, with the French flag beneath it; then Roosevelt pointed out that the sun had gone down and therefore it was not proper to fly
any
flag.

Pack thought he wouldn't blame the Marquis if he threw the insufferable dude off the premises and told him never to return.

But of course the Marquis was too civilized for that. Roosevelt went inside with the others and soon was the animated center of a cluster that included Eaton, Wibaux and several others. Passing by, Pack overheard Roosevelt say to Howard Eaton jocularly, “By Godfrey, sometimes I think the Devil put women on this earth to make fools out of men.”

Madame la Marquise was not in earshot but all the same Pack gave Roosevelt an outraged look. Roosevelt didn't seem to notice. Pack moved on, his back stiff in disapproval. Suddenly the Marquis was by his side, taking his elbow, steering him to the trophy porch at the rear of the house. “Arthur, I'd like you to put a few articles in the paper. I'm going ahead with the Deadwood stagecoach line. We're acquiring four Concord coaches from Gilmer and Salisbury. It's been recommended we maintain at least one hundred and fifty stage horses. What do you think?”

Pack was flattered. “I'd like to know more.”

“It is two hundred and fifteen miles to Deadwood and we are building a station every ten to fifteen miles, the precise interval depending on terrain. We've finished five. Soon there will be thirteen stations along the route.”

“You're putting them up now? That's quick work.”

“A coach will leave three days a week and will make its midday dinner stop on the south fork of the Cannonball. That coach will continue south while its driver doubles back on the afternoon stage coming into Medora. In that manner each driver will need to memorize only the details of his own section of the route. He will use four fresh teams a day, and he will cover about a hundred miles round-trip. The coach, having left Medora in the morning, will arrive in Deadwood on the evening of the following day.”

“A thirty-six-hour trip?”

“Just so. Passenger fare will be ten cents a mile.”

“And freight?”

“Express charges ten cents a pound. A coach can carry a ton of cargo—”

Pierre Wibaux, coming through to examine the trophies, interrupted: “In that country? Muddy roads and steep hills?”

“I'm assured it can be done, Pierre. Twenty-five hundred pounds, in fact, and four passengers as well.”

“Whose estimate is that? Jerry Paddock's?”

Annoyed, Pack turned on Wibaux. “Now, Jerry Paddock knows horses and wagons.”

“He's probably stolen enough of both,” Wibaux agreed.

Madame Medora swept forward; some intuition had brought her. Her beauty immediately erased the growing tension. “Come along, Antoine, it's time to feed our guests.”

Dinner was a splendid affair, served on costly Minton china. It began with Mumm's champagne from the wine icebox. The table sat eight. The servants brought forth plovers' eggs and truffles from Park & Tilford, Apollinaris water, finely sauced pheasant and a St. Julien Château LaGrange from Bordeaux that the Marquis tasted and pronounced splendid.

At table Pack found himself studying the Marquis and Roosevelt. It might have been said by someone who did not know them that the two men had quite a bit in common. They were the same age. They were wealthy; they were avid hunters; they were born aristocrats; they loved the Bad Lands; they were, or purported to be, fearless men of adventure; they were exceptionally well educated; they had interests in financial matters and political affairs.

But in spite of those things they were at opposite poles, really. De Morès had grand ambition and energy; he had impeccable manners and personal habits, which set him far apart from the childish New York dude with his desultory small-rancher desires and his rapid priggish voice. Roosevelt's personality and mannerisms made Pack cringe.

Madame la Marquise said to Roosevelt, “Does your arm hurt terribly?”

“Not a bit of it. I feel capital. Capital. Especially in such charming presence as yours, dear lady.”

Pack felt a sense of personal shame every time he caught Roosevelt exchanging secret smiles across the table with the lady Medora. At least he thought they were secret smiles. It wasn't possible to be sure. The suspicion had occurred to him that the entire matter existed solely in his own mind and that he might be misinterpreting innocent gestures. As a journalist he tried to be fair and objective but the effort was maddening; how did you draw the line between impartiality and indecision?

Lady Medora smiled at him. He felt shattered into pieces.

After dinner there was coffee. De Morès—by birth heir to one of the Orléans dukedoms and a “white lily of France”—sat in his favorite deerhide chair. When he lifted his cup to drink, he deftly pushed the points of his mustache out of the way with two fingers of his left hand. He wore a pinch-waisted grey suit and a starched white shirt. He said, “The buffalo will be extinct in a few years, they say. That suits me well enough.” He chortled. “It will make my trophies worth all the more.” He described how the thrill of the hunt no longer satisfied his cravings for excitement and therefore he had faced that grizzly bear there with glittering steel—he bade everyone examine the knife.

Medora, upon her husband's request, played Beethoven on the piano. She caressed the keys so beautifully, Pack thought—such warm passion. But the interval put him in mind of guns blazing in the night….

Roosevelt listened with polite restlessness and afterward Pack overheard him confiding in Howard Eaton, “I fear the only music my ear comprehends is the song of wild birds.” Pack glared at him.

When cognac had been distributed the Marquis led the gentlemen onto the trophy porch. Continuing a discourse to his foreign guests he gesticulated toward a framed photograph of the abattoir and declared, “The object of the undertaking is to provide on the range facilities for fattening, slaughtering and marketing forty thousand beeves yearly, thus doing away with the risks and losses arising from live-animal shipment, transport shrinkage, middlemen and of course Jewish monopolies. You see,” he went on without a break, baffling Pack as he so often did with his abrupt change of direction, “I can trace my nobility back to the King of Aragon five hundred years ago—and now I shall become the richest financier in the world. It is only fitting. We of the aristocracy are uniquely suited to rule the world, don't you agree?”

His remarks had not been addressed to Roosevelt but it was Roosevelt who replied. “I've no patience, Mr. De Morès, with attempts to fall back into the tyrannies of old ways. History ought to mean progress—and I believe democracy to be the most noble principle we have to offer the world. I hold that men like you and me are not entitled, simply because of family or wealth, to an ounce of privilege. In fact I think we ought to be held to an exceptional accountability. A good deal has been given to us, and therefore people have a right to expect a good deal of us.”

Howard Eaton was looking on, visibly impressed, perhaps not so much by Roosevelt's egalitarian sentiments as by the stout courage with which he had uttered them in the face of the daunting Marquis.

Obviously feeling he had scored a point, Roosevelt said with boyish smugness, “Hem, hem!”

The Marquis said, “I should not expect the son of a merchant to agree with me,” and turned his back haughtily to speak with one of the Belgians.

Pierre Wibaux took Roosevelt's elbow and said mildly, “You ought not call him ‘Mr. De Morès.'”

“It's jolly well the American way. We have no titles here.”

What a prime silly fool, Pack thought. What an ass.

“No, no,” said Wibaux. He was a little drunk and slurred his words, but his English was excellent. “I mean ‘De Morès' is not his name, it's his title. His name is Vallombrosa. He is either Mr. Vallombrosa or the Marquis De Morès. You see?”

The Marquis was swinging about. “Wibaux, what business have you with this man?”

“What?”

“I heard you'd bought six horses from him for an absurdly high price.”

“You're mistaken. I've bought nothing from him.”

“Now you call me a liar! I won't be called a liar in my own house!”

The Marquis was more than a little drunk; Pack only just realized it. The Marquis pulled two sabers from their scabbards and tossed one belligerently to Wibaux. “Defend yourself!”

The rancher caught it by the hilt in mid-air—a matter of reflex rather than decision.

“Alors?”

“
En garde!
” The Marquis was on him in an instant, blade flashing. Wibaux fell back, defending himself vigorously, slashing back and forth, not quite fencing but somehow keeping the Marquis at bay by the sheer energy of his flailing defense.

It was serious swordplay. These weren't foils; they were cavalry sabers, heavy enough to decapitate. Pack felt a chugging sensation in his innards. A sudden sweat cracked through his skin. “Wait a minute. Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”

Roosevelt had already thrust past him. “Stop it, De Morès. Stop this—right now!”

The Marquis ignored him. He lunged; Wibaux parried desperately; there was the crash of blade upon blade, the sickening hiss of sliding steel. Wibaux had his back to the wall now.

The European visitors watched the combat with jaded impartiality. Theodore Roosevelt was dodging elbows, trying to reach out and grasp the Marquis.

Pack watched Roosevelt and felt scorn. The damn fool was likely to get his arm chopped off at this rate.