Brian Garfield (46 page)

There were three others in the company: Huidekoper, Eaton and a man whom Pack believed he recognized as the editor of a Chicago newspaper. Roosevelt was holding forth in his unpleasant squeaking voice. Pack couldn't make out the words. He sniffed, allowed a scowl to settle appropriately on his face, and examined the bill of fare.

A moment later he was startled when Joe Ferris said from immediately above him, “When you get done marveling at the prices let me recommend the beefsteak. Real prime bull-cheese.”

“Kind of you.”

Pack felt awkward, for everything in the past year and a half had been building toward this event, and he found it disquieting that of all the people with whom he might be conversing in a public place on the eve of such a decisive Monday, he should be seen in the company of a man who made no secret of the fact that he would be testifying for the opposing side.

Joe said dryly, “It's all right, Pack. I haven't contaminated the kitchen. Look over there—you see all the big fat defense lawyers he's got on his team? Enough legal talent to make the sidewalk groan with their weight. Did you know the District Attorney applied to the commissioners for one or two lawyers to help him? I guess the Markee's boys got to the commissioners first, because they turned him down. He's going in there all alone.”

Pack had little sympathy to spare. “Poor Ted Long, left all alone in such a den of thieves and criminals as Bismarck.”

“You see Frank Allen there? The fattest one. With the burnsides. Funny thing, but it seems he just happened to serve as Judge Francis's clerk when the good judge was practicing law back in Newark, New Jersey. That was before President Arthur appointed his political friend Mr. Francis to the bench out here in the Territories.”

“You're clutching at straws if you try to make something sinister of that.”

“I guess I must be. Not that there's any collusion here, of course,” Joe said. “All the same it won't matter. The truth will out.”

“It most certainly will,” Pack said. Indeed that was exactly what he hoped for.

Joe said, “They're clowns, all of 'em. I hear the Marquis made the mistake of giving friend Paddock several thousand dollars he was supposed to distribute here and there to make sure the right witnesses showed up. Of course Jerry forgot to distribute it. Maybe it felt too good in his pocket.”

“That's nonsense. The matter doesn't need bribery or coercion. Everybody knows the Marquis has always stood ready to clean up the matter then and there.”

“‘Everybody knows,' hey?” Joe grinned at him.

Pack felt a warm flush. “I hate a man who'll throw my own words back at me.”

“Hate away. What're you going to eat?”

“Maybe chicken,” Pack said defiantly.

“That's right,” Joe said, “I'd stay away from the beefsteak if I were you. It may be De Morès beef and you might break a tooth on it.”

Pack looked past Joe at the table where Roosevelt was talking with the Chicago editor. Mrs. Reuter sat in a more or less civilized costume—it had puffed sleeves—and a hat that looked rather like a small overturned milk bucket, or at least Pack assumed it must be a hat because she wore it on her head. She looked prim and grim. Pack said to Joe, “Tell me. Where have you got Dutch?”

“Who says I've got him?”

“‘Everybody.'” Pack grinned at him. “You know it really wasn't necessary to go to such shenanigans to keep him alive. O'Donnell hasn't been murdered, has he. And he's primed to tell the same lies as Dutch Reuter's. Dutch is safe enough. Where'd you hide him?”

“You can search my room if you like,” Joe said. “You won't find him there. Let's just say I have a feeling Dutch is lying low where he'll be safe until it's his turn to testify. May be you're right he'd have been left alone, and may be you're not. The Markee can handle one eyewitness against him. I don't believe he can handle two.”

“Then as usual you underestimate him,” Pack said with confidence. “I'll have the beefsteak.”

When he returned to his room he unfolded the documents he had obtained four hours earlier from the court clerk. On top was the list of jurors' names: Edick, Frisby, Gage, Griffin, McKinney, Moorehouse, Northrup, Ronass, Wahl, Watson, Williams, Young.

Not one Irish name among the twelve. Luffsey's death had infuriated every Irishman in the Territory.

There were notes regarding various legal documents. The Aliens had kept filing motions for dismissal—quite rightly pounding home the fact that nobody could know who killed Riley Luffsey, and that nobody could even be sure who started the shooting, and therefore in the event of a long and costly courtroom hearing the only possible outcome was predetermined, for the issue of reasonable doubt was the overriding consideration. The case should never have come to trial.

That was the long and the short of it.

But if it hadn't come to trial—would we ever have a chance of finding the truth?

It was a quandary for sure.

District Attorney Theodore K. Long, who had made no secret of his longstanding friendship with A.C. Huidekoper and who seemed to hate the Marquis with a virulent and all too obvious passion, had refused to drop the case even when the Marquis's attorneys had succeeded in achieving a change of venue from Mandan to Bismarck. Long had ridiculed that effort.

Pack had been astonished to read the report of District Attorney Long's frothing vituperation in the Mandan newspaper.

“I shouldn't think Bismarck would need the glory of such an infamous trial,” avers our righteous Mr. Long. “The entire matter is a gigantic burlesque. Bismarck. Bismarck! We all know the character of Bismarck! Bismarck is a city that chose its very name in a cold-blooded effort to gain investment from the Chancellor of Prussia! Bismarck is the home of more dishonesty, skulduggery, rascality, scoundrelism, fraud, perjury, subornation of perjury, bribing of juries, corruption in public and private places than any other city of the same size on the face of the globe!”

Pack turned a page. He couldn't help thinking when he glanced through the Indictment that its author must have been three sheets to the wind.

District Court Sixth Judicial District

INDICTMENT

Territory of Dakota, ss: County of Morton The Territory of Dakota, vs. Antonnie de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores, and E.G. Paddock.

The Grand Jurors of the Territory of Dakota in and for the Second Subdivision of the Sixth Judicial District, upon their oaths, present:

That heretore, to-wit: On the 26th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three in the county of Billings in said Territory of Dakota, Antonnie de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores, and E.G. Paddock, did commit the crime of Murder, committed as follows, and did in the county of Billings (said county being attached to the county of Morton for Judicial purposes) without the authority of law, willfully, unflawfully, feloniously and with premidated design to effect the death of William R. Luffsey, then and there kill and murder him, the said William R. Luffsey by then and there shooting him with Winchester rifles, loaded with poweder and balls, which Winchester rifles, loaded with powder and balls, the said Antonnie and E.G. then and there in their hands held and discharged said balls, taking effect in the body of said William R. Luffsey, causing then and there certain mortal injuries (a description whereof is to the Jurors unknown) to said William R. Luffsey of which said mortal injuries he then and there immediately died. This contrary to the form of the Statute in such case made and provided, and against the Peace and Dignity of the Territory of Dakota.

Dated Aug. 19th, 1885.

(Signed) James R. Clark, Foreman of the Grand Jury.

Monday morning despite the cold the streets of Bismarck were alive with pedestrians; you'd have thought there was going to be a holiday parade. The air was rich with smells of cooksmoke and offal.

The mob outside the brand-new Burleigh County courthouse had an audibly Irish accent and seemed to have lynching on its mind. Pack stood on the top step surveying the scene and was alarmed by the size of the crowd and the growling sound that seemed to pulsate from it, like a warning rumble from deep inside the throat of a predatory beast.

An elaborate phaeton coach was drawn up in front of the courthouse. Eight shotgun men on horseback surrounded the coach, keeping the crowd back away from it.

From alongside the building the Marquis De Morès, escorted by four barrel-shaped deputies, walked around into sight.

The crowd's growl became a roar.

Ignoring it, the Marquis went directly to the coach. The lady Medora was inside, breathtakingly beautiful, looking out. She did not emerge. The Marquis bowed over her hand and kissed it. There were yells, catcalls, and—from somewhere off to the left—an outburst of whistling and applause.

Pack looked that way and saw at least a dozen men on horseback, all of them applauding fervidly while their elbows clutched ready rifles against their coats. He recognized several of them—men who worked in the abattoir.

When the Marquis straightened he gave the crowd another baleful look and ascended the stairs. “Good morning, Arthur.”

Pack felt the restorative power in the Marquis's flashing eyes.

The Marquis lifted his head to face the crowd down. His costume was no more subdued than ever; as always he wore the widest sombrero and the wildest scarf. He watched them with scorn.

“Well gentlemen, if you have the rope ready, here I am.”

No one spoke; no one moved.

Craven lily-hearts!

The Marquis's lip curled. He went inside.

As Pack joined the retinue he looked back and saw the coach wheeling away. She would spend the day, and the next day, and however long it might take, sequestered in her borrowed rooms; she would not attend court, and the force of proper decency in this age was such that her fair name would never be permitted to be mentioned in the Trial.

Shoving past Pack, Jerry Paddock, in the shabby elegance of his worn suit, was escorted into court by two deputies. He walked with the swagger of a sailor prowling the deck in rough seas.

The theater—for that was its actual purpose, Pack thought; this was more melodrama than actual trial—was filled beyond its capacity and reminded him in an ominous way of a wedding gone awry, for the room was plainly divided into two sides, with partisans of the Marquis turning their angry faces frequently toward Luffsey's friends and toward those who, for whatever reasons, felt they were supporting law and order. He saw rich and poor on either side.

Pack found no seat left unoccupied. He was forced to stand at the back of the room and try to take notes under the baleful eye of an armed deputy whose attitude toward everyone in attendance was one of profound anger and suspicion.

Among the spectators in the seats before him Pack recognized a good many familiar heads and backs. Roosevelt was down there of course, with Joe Ferris and Huidekoper and the others. Mrs. Reuter did not seem to be with them this morning.

On the other side of the room were Granville Stuart and a crowd of important ranchers from central Dakota and eastern Montana—quite a few with their bonnetted wives, for the Trial had become one of the social events of the season.

In the rows behind the ruling families were clusters of De Morès men. Johnny Goodall was not among them; Pack recalled that Johnny had elected to remain in Medora and look after the De Morès cattle interests. Johnny had better learn to get off the fence and choose sides, or he might soon find himself looking for new employment.

Pack's view of the spectators was limited to an aspect of the backs of their heads; but he had a clear vista of the theater's stage. The prosecutor, District Attorney Theodore K. Long of Mandan, stood examining a sheaf of papers. Alone behind the Prosecution's long wooden table, he was a tall Lincolnesque figure—he seemed very young and gawky, and Pack felt affronted; he trusted the prosecutor would not play upon the illusion of his own frailty in a cheap effort to gain the jury's sympathy.

Defending De Morès and Paddock at the opposite table were the half dozen heavy-set city men he'd seen in the dining room last night. He recognized in profile Frank B. Allen and his brother Edward S. Allen of Allen & Allen, Bismarck. In their midst sat co-defendant Jerry Paddock, hatless and slick, and—a considerable distance from their chairs—the Marquis, sultry-eyed and scornful, gripping his massive silver-headed stick with both slender hands, putting on a magnificent display of his rock-solid Wagnerian belief in his own manifest destiny.

The clerk said in a loud squeak, “All rise!”

There was a clatter of thuddings and scrapings. When everyone was upright the judge walked in, robes flowing behind him: Presiding Judge William H. Francis—a dark-skinned man, bald on top with a monk's fringe of dark hair around the back and sides of his head. He had a deep and suitably judicious voice. He called the court to order.

“The clerk will call the jury in the case of Territory against Antoine de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès, and Eldredge G. Paddock.”

Pack found the first day of the trial to be anteclimactic in the literal sense and anticlimactic in the figurative, as it was given over largely to dry recitations of facts by Sheriff Harmon, Dr. Stickney and other non-participants most of whom responded in droning voices as if delivering themselves of lessons memorized in a schoolroom—and, Pack thought, that probably was not far from the truth, for it was all but certain that the zealous caddish Ted Long must have rehearsed his witnesses into the wee hours to make sure their answers would be exactly what he wanted them to be. Pack took pleasure in observing that there was an ironic possibility that Long's carefully prepared scheme appeared to be flying back in his own face, for the witnesses seemed to have been so over-rehearsed that all the spontaneity had gone out of them.
If I were on the jury they certainly shouldn't make much of an impression on me.