Brian Garfield (45 page)

Wil was not quite willing to say so aloud but he was ready to agree with Uncle Bill's assessment. The heat seemed to have no end. Mr. Roosevelt was the only one who didn't seem to mind it. He went on with unflagging drive.

Wil felt very low. He saw that Uncle Bill had been right after all. In this drought each steer needed as much as thirty acres. The Bad Lands were crowded together thicker than that now. Beef prices were falling every day and yet just last week another Texas fool had brought in six thousand head from the south.

Then again, Wil sometimes thought, drought really wasn't much of a threat if there was no one left alive to suffer from it. The Stranglers had killed more than forty men. Seemed as if they were burning another ranch every day—or maybe it was the poor starving Indians hungry for red meat. They had been setting grass fires to cover their thievery and, some said, to get revenge against the whites because the Stranglers had murdered three or four of them. Every stockman had been injured by the scorched-earth behavior of the infuriated Indians. Wil and Uncle Bill and Roosevelt had worked heroically to extinguish several grass fires. They would slaughter a steer, split and splay it bloody-side down, and rope-drag it forward, smothering the line of flames, fighting their fire-maddened horses at every step. In that manner the ranchmen had contended with blazes day after day—as if the miserable round-up hadn't been discouraging enough, with its dying cattle and panting horses.

Yet Roosevelt remained in high spirits and Wil felt shamed that he too had fallen behind, unable to match the boss's inexhaustible energy. On top of it all, Roosevelt was writing again, working on a biography of Thomas Hart Benton, the Missouri Senator; his previous book had just been published—
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman
—and Wil had been admiring the leather-bound edition and hoping to find time to read it. He had glanced through it and been gratified to see that someone had fixed the boss's spelling.

By November Huidekoper and his hounds and huntsmen had wiped out the last of the grey wolves who had preyed on the stockmen's livestock. “They've driven the species to extinction in the Bad Lands,” Roosevelt growled, “and I believe if the Stranglers are left to run wild much longer they'll accomplish the same end with the human inhabitants.”

By this time the Stranglers were said to have murdered more than half a hundred men. Bill Sewall said, “I believe we're the only inhabited outfit left in a ten-mile radius. Six months ago there were eight including Pierce Bolan, who is a man I still miss. A prudent fellow would think about pulling up stakes.”

“No one would count you a coward if you did that,” Roosevelt said with surprising equanimity.

Wil said, “That's what they want us to do—De Morès and his vigilantes. They want us to go. I say we should take the fight to
him.
”

Roosevelt looked at them both in turn. “Speaking for myself, I shall not run, and I shall not be alarmed into attacking a man against whom I have no proof.”

Uncle Bill was exasperated. “Then what the blazes do you aim to do?”

“By Godfrey, I will stand my ground!” Roosevelt's eyes and teeth glittered ferociously.

Wil drew himself up. “Well then,” he said, “I expect my uncle and I will stand it with you, sir. If the Stranglers want us, then by Godfrey let them come and try!”

There was a ferocious rainstorm—far too late to be of any service; all it accomplished was to wash away tons of caked dry earth and fill the rivers with clay silt. The downpour lasted two days. In the middle of the following week on a bitter evening Mrs. Reuter came down Blacktail Creek riding sidesaddle with a matted buffalo coat over her divided buckskin riding habit. Wil helped her dismount in the barn and began to unsaddle her horse but the stout woman would have none of that. She took care of her own animal—it looked to Wil as if it had endured a lengthy wearying journey—and, once it had been watered and curried and stalled and grained, Mrs. Reuter accompanied Wil up to the house. Roosevelt welcomed her with a big pleased grin and gave her a seat by the fire.

She said, “Well look at you. I shall have to let out that suit again—you're coming through the seams.”

“This wonderful country has built me up, by George. I'm ready to go fifteen rounds with any man in Dakota.”

“You look it.”

Uncle Bill pulled on his pipe, Wil boiled coffee and Mrs. Reuter said in a different voice, “There'll be no more trouble with Indians setting grass fires.”

“How so?”

She accepted a tin cup of coffee from Wil Dow, smiled a tired sad thank-you, blew across the steaming surface and said, “I saw a line of riders the other night. They turned east to give my house wide berth, which is not usual, and I wouldn't have known they were there at all if my horses hadn't started acting up. I climbed the hill and saw them circling past the place—a large number of white men, at least forty of them, strung out single-file and they rode with no talk at all. Such silent stealth that I knew they'd been up to something monstrous evil. So I saddled up and backtracked them.”

“In the middle of the night?” Sewall said, astonished.

“Well that's when it was,” she replied.

Wil Dow said, “Did you recognize any of them?”

“Not at that distance in the dark. But I know who they were.”

Roosevelt said, “The Stranglers.”

“Well of course.”

Mrs. Reuter tasted the coffee and approved it. “They've been using one of the game trails near my soddy as a regular route these past months. I've seen them go by at least a dozen times but usually there's talk and crude laughing—you know the way a mob of men will get.”

Roosevelt said, “You didn't inform anyone of this?”

“I keep my own counsel, Mr. Roosevelt, and I have good reason for doing so.”

Wil Dow felt a keen stab of realization. “It's Dutch. You've been hiding him out.”

Mrs. Reuter's head whipped around. Her eyes were wide. “How on earth did you know that?”

“A guess, that's all. Sorry, ma'am.”

Roosevelt said, “Evidently an astute one. Is Dutch well?”

“Well as can be expected of a restless man who must confine himself to the root cellar whenever there's a hint of movement on the horizon.” Mrs. Reuter looked over her shoulder as if in fear of eavesdroppers. “I beg you—don't breathe a word of this to anyone.”

Uncle Bill said, “Nobody will find out from us. We're Dutch's friends.”

“I know that. I'd have told you long ago, but Dutch is so scared he made me promise not to tell a soul in the world except Joe Ferris. Joe's been kind enough to falsify his sales records so nobody can see I've been buying twice as many provisions as I used to.”

Roosevelt said, “I'm tickled pink to know Dutch is in good hands. You were saying—you saw the Stranglers in the night, and you backtracked them …”

“I did, until I found they had covered their trace deliberately in some of the Malpais creeks north of here. But I had my suspicions by then. I knew the Indians had their hunting camp up beyond the Killdeers. That's where they'd been raiding from—stealing meat and setting those grass fires.”

“Ah yes. The Indians. We're back to them.”

“They'd been moving camp a few miles each night but holding to the same district—close to the Canada line where they could get across if anybody spotted them.”

“You knew where they were,” Roosevelt said, “and you told no one?”

“She didn't want to bring attention on herself,” Wil said. “For Dutch's sake.”

“Is that right, madame?”

“I'm obliged, Mr. Wil, but I don't need defending. I've been friends with the Indians since before most whites came into this country. It's their grass, what's left of it after the sheep and cattle and horses you all poured in—I reckon they can set fire to their own land if they see fit.”

“It isn't ‘their' land, it is everyone's land.”

“I make no apology, Mr. Roosevelt. It would have pleased me if they had wiped out every last head of the rotten Markee's stock.”

“Were their depredations directed against the Marquis? If so, they seem to have gone about it rather indiscriminately, for we all suffered from it.”

“To an Indian we're all the same,” Mrs. Reuter said. “They can't see any difference between the Markee and you.”

“For the moment let it pass,” said Roosevelt. “You rode to their camp, I presume, and what did they say that makes you believe they'll set no more grass fires?”

“They didn't say anything. They're dead.”

It took Wil Dow a moment to hear what she had said. He felt his forehead wrinkle and he was about to speak when Roosevelt broke the silence:

“Dead? How?”

“By murder, I should imagine.”

Uncle Bill said, “How many?”

“I counted forty-three mounds of fresh-dug earth. There probably are more that I didn't find. Those men did their best to hide the evidence of their grisly work. I did not have the stomach to dig them up, but there were two dozen lodgepoles scattered around and I saw groups of ponies running loose. And coyotes pawing at the mounds.”

Uncle Bill said, “What about their tent skins?”

“Possibly the murderers buried the tepees with the bodies—to hide the evidence of their crime. There's nothing but travois poles and of course those don't prove a thing. I was caught there by a hard rain that lasted two days—”

“We had the same storm,” Wil said.

“—and it stirred the topsoil together so completely there's no sign of those graves now.”

Uncle Bill said, “So the murderers have that massacre on their consciences as well.”

“What consciences?” snapped Mrs. Reuter. She finished her coffee. “It soon will be over, I pray. The Markee's lawyers have exhausted their delays. Next week he is traveling to Bismarck to stand trial. The Markee and Jerry Paddock.”

“Not a moment too soon,” growled Uncle Bill.

In the morning, like some omen, came the early onset of winter—a bitter dry cold that froze the water in the bucket on the piazza and chilled everything to the marrow.

Mrs. Reuter said, “I know no one has a shred of proof to tie the Markee to the Stranglers. But when he and Paddock go to prison—you can bank on it, that will put an end to the night-riding, then and there.”

Uncle Bill said, “I would surely like to be there to see the Markee get his comeuppance.”

Wil Dow looked out at snowflakes drifting through the dawn. “You go, then, Uncle. Not me. I'd sooner be out here in the wild country than in some city courtroom having to smell cigar smoke.”

Roosevelt said, “Then we'll hire a good man to keep you company in looking after the home ranch and keeping an eye peeled for vigilantes, while your uncle and I escort Mrs. Reuter and her good husband to the capital. For by Godfrey I wouldn't miss this trial for the world.”

Eighteen

P
ack looked out his hotel window. On lantern-lit Rosser Street barkers shouted the praises of crib girls while the big-voiced macs showed off the salient attractions of their painted powdered sporting women who gave gents the benedictions of their professional smiles and awaited escort to their cubicles on the Row behind the saloons.

There were a good many armed men abroad in the night who had never previously graced the streets of Bismarck with their presence. Tempers were short; cool reason was scarce; danger quivered in the town.

Pack returned his attention to the notebook on the desk. He turned up the lamp's wick and resumed writing:

He is a gentleman of capital whose works are of incalculable benefit to Dakota, and it should be a travesty were Bad Lands desperadoes to have their way in the forthcoming Trial. Outlaws must not be permitted to swagger through the Territory insulting and terrorizing good citizens. It is criminal to persecute a man simply because he happens to be a Marquis. We find it an utter outrage and disgrace that he is being held in a jail cell like a common criminal during the period of the Trial.

When he realized he was hungry he put on his suit coat and went downstairs. It was late and a good many people must have finished supping long ago but the big ornate dining room was crowded to its capacity. He was not surprised to see so many familiar faces. Both factions were represented by strong turnouts. There were, he thought, no neutral parties; you were for the Marquis or you were against him, and in some ways the outcome of this Trial was bound to seal the fates of those on both sides, for it would determine whether the Marquis was to be allowed control over his own empire and a voice in the guidance of its inhabitants.

If there was any justice, he kept telling his friends, the Trial would give the Marquis the benediction of a resounding vindication, and once and for all would silence the disorderly drunken tongues of the Irish louts and the thieving Bad Lands “ranchers” who were so precious to the foolish sentimentalities of Roosevelt, Huidekoper and their soft-hearted ilk.

Still, he was startled to see both sides so strongly represented in this very room. Around an oversized table in the near corner Madame la Marquise sat in conference with the heavy-set Allen brothers and their four co-counsel. They had their heads together and Pack did not wish to disturb what might be a conference of strategic importance so he made his way toward a small table at the side.

The air was perfumed with strains of chamber music from a string quartet in the anteroom. The woodwork was ornate and polished to a gleam; the tablecloths were of excellent linen, the service crystal and sterling. How extraordinarily civilized it all was.

As Pack sat down he saw Joe Ferris at a table in the middle of the room. Joe was dressed in his good grey suit and appeared to have finished his meal; he was sitting back toying with an empty brandy snifter. His choice of company made Pack scowl furiously, for Joe sat—evidently at ease and happy to be seen with them—between Theodore Roosevelt and Dutch Reuter's wife.