Brian Garfield (8 page)

Riding away at a brisk trot with spine braced against a halfexpected bullet, Joe glanced at Roosevelt beside him and wondered at his silence.

He'd worried himself near sick back there that the boisterous New Yorker might be moved to utter a harangue about right and wrong, law and principle, good and evil. A year ago it would have been impossible to shut him up. Finnegan probably would have shot him out of the saddle for a loudmouthed fool.

But this time there had been next to no moralizings. Roosevelt hadn't said much of anything beyond his approval of their fence-cutting and his cool statement of neutrality. That was a surprise worth remarking. The man surely did seem distracted. Either that or his whole personality had been squashed—and you'd have thought it would have taken a granite avalanche to do that.

They trotted around a loop in the river. There was lowland meadow here, grass standing three feet high. Joe looked back, and caught Roosevelt doing the same.

Finnegan and his partners were out of sight. Joe's shoulders loosened.

Roosevelt merely said, “I take it those three are not ranchmen.”

“They hunt, do some trapping. Guide visitors when they can.”

“Rough riders, are they? I admire any man who lives on the rough side of things—so long as he keeps his conscience intact.”

“More than rough, those three. And I have not seen much conscience on them. You don't mind my advice, might keep your distance from them. It is said Redhead and his friends don't mind spending money from a stranger's purse.”

Roosevelt made no answer. They forded the river's several channels and rode into a grove of ash. Chilly in here.

Joe thought the subject had died but after an interval Roosevelt revived it: “From what you say, Finnegan seems cut from the same cloth as the notorious Jerry Paddock. I'm surprised they're enemies.”

“I guess they're so alike they just
had
to hate each other,” said Joe Ferris.

“Seems to be plenty of acrimony on this frontier,” Roosevelt murmured.

“A man with good sense stays above it.”

“A man with sound moral underpinnings will seek out the right and wrong, and choose his side according to the right.”

That was easy for a man to say when he was merely a visitor and didn't have to live here. Joe waited for Roosevelt's further comment but it was not forthcoming. The dude relapsed into gloom.

Long shadows sprawled in the coulees; warmth was draining out of the afternoon. The horses carried them south at a lazy gait. Half asleep in the saddle Joe recalled Roosevelt's earlier trip west.

He remembered how the dude had said, “Joe—my little war dance when I got my buffalo. I wouldn't like the little pink wife to hear of it. My Alice teases me sometimes about my wild barbarian ways. I don't mind, really—she's too lovely and lovable a girl, you can't mind anything she does—but I prefer not to give her unnecessary ammunition, don't you know. You'll keep it to yourself, then?” And Roosevelt had all but winked at him, man-to-man.

Now he marked the difference in the man. Roosevelt had been as frail then as now; but his enthusiasm had been unquenchable last fall. Joe remembered most of all Roosevelt's absurd grin—and wondered what had become of it. This Roosevelt, wrapped in gloom, was a different and darker man.

Three

A
.C. Huidekoper took one of his pleasures from listening not simply to people's words but to the music and rhythms in their speech. Just now—above the voices of several men and women in the hot smoky room—Howard Eaton's penetrating tenor was a prominent melody:

“The Indians will have to learn to herd—or they'll starve.”

Huidekoper let the talk roll around him while he watched the crowd. Most of the others in Eaton's big low-ceilinged front room were talking of hunting and of the arrival in town of the beautiful young Madame De Morès, with regard to whom Mrs. Eaton and Huidekoper's wife and three other women kept their voices to a twitter of murmurs, their conversation circumspect because there was a De Morès man in the room.

Huidekoper stroked his muttonchop whiskers and smiled when spoken to; he made himself appear at ease because he didn't care to reveal the expectant abeyance with which he watched the door for the appearance of the Cyclone Assemblyman from New York.

They made for a sizable crowd—more than a dozen ranchers tonight, four or five wives, several Easterners wearing the trappings of wealth. It was not unusual; Howard Eaton, who loved beer and loud argument, had made his Custer Trail Ranch as much a beacon for visitors as were its lamplit windows for the insects that swarmed against the glass.

The voices were young; it was a country for youth. It occurred to Huidekoper that at thirty-seven he might be the oldest person in the room. Most of them, even the owners of the big herds, were still in their twenties.

All the young energy, abetted by the generosity of Howard Eaton's bar, made for a boisterous din. But now a lapse in discourse rippled the length of the long room, muting the racket. Alerted, Huidekoper looked over his shoulder and saw that—in spite of his vigilance—they had managed to take him by surprise after all.

Joe Ferris, compact but wide-shouldered, showed himself in the doorway. In alarm Huidekoper at first thought Joe was alone—he was so short it was difficult to believe anyone might be concealed beyond him. But then Joe stepped inside and behind him in the doorway, diminutive and pale in the waning afternoon light, appeared his dude—New York State Assembly Minority Leader Theodore Roosevelt.

Make that
former
Minority Leader, Huidekoper reminded himself.
And if he stings badly enough from the licking he took, he may just be in a mood to be our savior.

Roosevelt's quick piping voice made a new disharmony. He was greeting Eaton and Gregor Lang and others he already knew from the time of his previous Western trip; he was being introduced to the ones he didn't know; amid the murmurs and polite rumblings his magpie bursts were as discordant as an out-of-tune fiddle.

As Huidekoper moved toward the drinks table with studied nonchalance—waiting his moment—he heard Joe Ferris tease Johnny Goodall:

“We came on Redhead Finnegan on the road. Pulling down one of your fences.”

“Then we'll just have to string it up again,” Johnny said with his usual equanimity.

Joe Ferris, unsmiling, was having his dour fun with De Morès's man: “Redhead said a few unfriendly words about the Marquis.”

“I don't expect the Marquis is fixin' to lose a heap of sleep over that,” said Johnny Goodall. From this distance Huidekoper couldn't tell if he was amused or irritated; Johnny's Texas twang seldom gave away his feelings.

“Being none of my concern,” Joe Ferris told him, “but you might give a mind to Redhead and his mates. They're armed and they take their pleasures in making trouble. Trouble for the Marquis—trouble for you one day.”

“They do and I reckon they will end in a shallow grave,” Johnny Goodall replied without heat. He glanced at Huidekoper and gave him the benediction of his brief polite nod. Johnny Goodall stood a head taller than most others in the room. He had a big man's slow way about him. He was smiling courteously and he had a good-humored manner; but Huidekoper had caught the brief pale dancing flash of danger in his eyes.

Coming to the beer keg Johnny moved with the slow wary caution of a dog amid an unfriendly pack. For—despite the fact that he was generally liked and respected—Johnny Goodall was range foreman for the Marquis De Morès, and his presence put tension in the house. Men spoke guardedly so long as he was present.

Theodore Roosevelt had penetrated deeper into the room and Huidekoper thought,
It is better to get this over with.
He poured his cheer straight and turned toward the young New Yorker. “Sorry to hear about your ladies. A terrible misfortune.” He drank his tot and felt the burn when it went down.

Roosevelt, turning to speak to someone else, stopped in midswing and blinked. Then he continued to pivot away, purporting not to have heard Huidekoper's solicitous remark: he gave Huidekoper his back.

It was a blunt rebuff; Huidekoper thought,
Why, I am a fool.
He should have intuited that the young man might prefer not to discuss his personal tragedies.

So it would be necessary to come to him from another side; for it was important to get the New Yorker's ear tonight, while he still had the fresh clean viewpoint of an outsider—before the damn fool dreamers could blind Roosevelt to the alarming truth.

Joe Ferris leaned over the table and had his look at the beer keg and the bottles. He seemed a bit lost; he nodded a greeting to Huidekoper and said, “Feel like I'm getting narrow at the equator. Anything to eat around here?”

“Bacon and beans in the kitchen.”

“I might have known,” Joe Ferris said. “Always a pot on the stove at Custer Trail.”

“If you can hold your horses, I'm sure Mrs. Eaton will be serving up supper in just a bit.”

“Then may be just one drink first.” Joe poured, tasted and considered.

Huidekoper offered, “Genuine forty-rod coffin varnish.”

“Two weeks old if it's a day,” Joe Ferris agreed.

Huidekoper said, “Around here that's
aged
whiskey, my friend.”

“No dispute it'd make powerful snake poison.” Joe Ferris did not smile. He rarely smiled. His demeanor appeared to derive from a fundamental recognition that life was neither frivolous nor amusing, but mainly a serious business.

Joe touched Huidekoper's arm with a forefinger. “What was that you said to him about his ladies?”

“Didn't you—no, I suppose you didn't. They kept it mainly out of the newspapers, didn't they. I had it in a long letter from one of my relations in New York.”

Joe Ferris watched him with a wry sort of patience. Huidekoper knew his own reputation for roundabout longwindedness. It didn't trouble him. There was time enough for everything; in any discourse many things must be considered—especially here: it was a sudden country, where men often blurted and acted too swiftly.

Taking his own course, Huidekoper said, “He's had dreadful political defeats. You know about those.”

Joe gave him a very quick nod and a very small smile, meant to show that he knew what Huidekoper was talking about; but it was clear Joe knew nothing of the kind. Huidekoper scolded him: “Joe—what do you know?”

“I don't pay a lot of mind to your American politics.”

“Then allow me to be the instrument of your edification. You
must
know, of course, that your friend acquired a certain fame as the youngest Minority Leader in the history of the New York Assembly …”

“Well he told me he was Minority something. I thought he was running a sandy on me.”

“Nothing of the kind. Why, that young idealist was so brash he out-politicked Tammany Hall—just about single-handedly passed a Civil Service Reform Act.” Huidekoper dropped his voice to a confidential drone. “But now you know he's fallen as fast as he climbed. Did you follow the Republican Convention this year?”

“I had a few other things to do.”

“Well Theodore Roosevelt there was thought to be an important figure. But I can tell you that his hand-picked candidate for the presidential nomination—that Vermont Senator whose name even now I cannot recall: a politician not only incorruptibly honest but also soporifically dull—was not merely defeated but squashed on the final convention ballot. And by that time, so much scandal—none of it attached to Roosevelt, so far as I know—had been exposed in the press that quite a few of the most influential Republicans bolted the party. In fact all that remains is a skeleton crew. It was a debacle. Are you sure you don't—”

“I'm fresh and green, A.C. You may as well finish my instruction. Make it faster before I fall down from the starvation!”

“It's unforgivable that you don't apprise yourself of these events. You may be a foreigner but you're on American soil now.”

“We're not in the States, A.C.”

“All the same. Why, some are opining the Republican Party has no future in American politics. And many more, I hear, are opining that Theodore Roosevelt has none.”

“Well, then,” Joe said uncertainly.

“Yes indeed. The question is—do we see the contentious young New Yorker coming west to lick his political wounds—or, as some of our Eastern cousins have been speculating, to build a new constituency?”

“You aiming to vote for him?”

“He's not running for office, is he.” Huidekoper moved closer to his companion and dropped his voice another pitch. “A few years ago, you see, his father died.”

“Mr. Roosevelt's father?”

“Yes. In his forties. And the young fellow was just eighteen. They were very close. I understand he took his father's passing very hard. But he still had a brother and his sisters and surely you've heard of the mother, very bright woman, a Southerner—one of the Bullochs of Savannah. Heroic ancestors in abundance … Anyhow that boy there went back to Harvard after his father passed on—completed his studies and met a young lady up there and married her—Alice Hathaway Lee by name. Hopelessly enchanting girl, I have heard. And by the by a close relation to the Cabots and Saltonstalls.”

“Patrician stuff,” said Joe Ferris.

It took Huidekoper a bit by surprise. “Just so,” he said.

“One of those arranged marriages?”

“The contrary. He was expected to marry one of the Carow girls of New York, I can't remember which one, but he left his sweetheart behind and went off to Boston and met the Lee girl and fell hopelessly out of control over her. Even out in the wilds of Pennsylvania we heard tales about it—sonnets and songs, romance of the season, so on. An authentic love match.”

“Come to think of it he said something to me about his wife.”