Brian Garfield (55 page)

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.

“Jesus Christ in Tarnation,” exploded the butcher. “Knocked him out cold with a single punch to the jaw!”

Roosevelt said, “He made the mistake of standing to close to me with his heels too close together.”

Pack said, “I don't believe what I just saw.”

“Then you're a foolishly overskeptical man, aren't you.” Roosevelt's toothsome grin flashed at him. “I told you, didn't I, that I used to be a boxer at Harvard?”

“I knew that,” Pack said sourly. “I looked into it, you know. I found out you fought more than a dozen matches—and never won a single one.”

“There's always a first time. And a second as well. You may recall I acquitted myself similarly with Mr. McKenzie last year.”

Nothing daunted Roosevelt's infuriating good cheer. Pack, shaking his head in exasperation, went behind the bar to pour coffee.

On the next day—January fifteenth, the day fixed for the armed confrontation between Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis De Morès—Pack knocked at the door of Joe Ferris's store before he walked in. He closed the door behind him against the cold.

Joe said, “Since when have you been knocking at that door?” He stood behind the cash counter in his flour-dusted apron.

“Seems to be a need of formality, somehow.” Feeling a warm pink wash in his cheeks, Pack helped himself to a soda cracker. “He awake yet?”

“No, and he won't be for another four days unless somebody sets off a pound of blasting powder next to his ear.”

“He's got two hours.”

“Be that as it may, you think may be the Marquis might extend the schedule a day or two?”

“Now, you know he won't.”

“And so do you know it. Which kind of sums up the Markee, may be. Now what are we going to do about this fellow upstairs?”

“I'm thinking of telling the Marquis he can't fight today. Unless you have an alternative to suggest. And incidentally let's not have any penny-dreadful heroics. You are not going to fight the duel in his place.”

Joe said, “Never had any such intention. But at least you and I agree the duel should not take place today?”

“We do, certainly. The Marquis can be too much the man of honor sometimes—too rigid by half. Nobody denies that. It happens also that he has a business appointment in Chicago that requires him to catch today's train.”

“Even if he has to step over a dead body to do it.”

“That's up to Roosevelt, isn't it? He doesn't have to turn up, you know.”

“He can't
not
turn up,” Joe Ferris said. “He's not gaited that way and you know it.”

“I might have argued that point with you once upon a time, but after the way he decked Jerry Paddock yesterday—I saw it with my own eyes and I still can't believe it. He may be a fool but he's brave enough. No, I don't expect him to back off.”

Joe said, “There's one thing we could try. But it would have to come from you, not me. They have some regard for you up there in the château. They won't let me in the door.”

Pack was suspicious. “Now, what d'you have in mind?”

“That acquittal on the murder charges hasn't prevented his enterprises from collapsing faster than he could try to save them. Seems to me the spirit's gone out of him. I think he can be reasoned with—if it comes from the right quarter.”

“Which quarter's that?”

“Talk to his wife, Pack. She's the only one with any influence over the madman.”

Pack scowled. “He's not a madman. He's a visionary.”

“Have it your way. Just talk to her.”

“Well it's a thought, I admit. Not only does the Marquis listen to Madame—she'd plead Roosevelt's case more earnestly than anyone else.”

“You're wrong about that, you know.”

“What?”

“You think there's something between them. Around behind the Markee's back.”

“Now, I've seen them together.”

“You've seen one thing and thought another. I'll tell you something, Pack. You keep thinking Roosevelt's secretly in love with her. It's not Roosevelt who's weak in the upper story over her, you damn fool—it's you.”

“I for one, certainly … I'm hardly the only one … Every man in town—”

“Every man in town, mostly, knows a lot of things about her that you don't seem to know. Surely she can take a man's breath—but she's spoiled rotten. Her every whim's attended by one of twenty servants and if you know Mr. Roosevelt at all you've got to see how her life must look to him—all frivolous and downright decadent. The women in his own family may be used to having a few servants around but they damn well know how to fend for themselves. This girl Medora, she's got no independence—no life of her own at all, except what the Marquis allows her. She's well born, well bred, well trained, but she does what she's told. That's not Mr. Roosevelt's kind of woman. He's been polite and considerate to her because I reckon he feels sorry for her, and I expect may be he admires her loyalty to the Markee, but—”

“Now, Joe, she's not stupid! You make her sound vacuous. She's got more talents and skills than most of the grown men in this Territory.”

“All right. Be that as it may. Roosevelt's been writing to his lady friend in New York, hasn't he now.”

“How would you know that?”

“I'm postmaster, ain't I.”

“You spied on him?”

“I'm no spy, Pack. You know better. I can read an address as well as the next man, and when he keeps sending letters every chance he gets to a Miss Edith Carow who clearly isn't his sister—”

“She could be a maiden aunt.”

“And I could be Christopher Columbus. Hell, Pack, if you've got to know, I asked him one day and he told me. He said, ‘That is Miss Edith Carow, the sweetheart of my childhood, and we intend to be married in London in the spring.'”

Theodore Roosevelt said, “An event to which I look forward with the most avid pleasure,” and came down the stairs.

Pack wondered with alarm how much he had heard.

Roosevelt had done his best to clean up his outfit. He had shaved and some of the bruises had gone down and he looked nearly presentable.

And he was toting his Winchester.

He jacked it empty on the counter, picked up the cartridges, counted and examined them, and reloaded the magazine carefully.

His voice had a dull flat listlessness; it was unlike him. “In the absence of Mr. Sewall, I wonder if you, Joe, would be so good as to act as my second, and convey to the Marquis the information that I am available at his convenience.”

Pack said, “If I may be so bold. Joe and I don't think this is the best time for you to go engaging in a duel.”

Roosevelt blinked behind his eyeglasses. They were, Pack noticed, sparkling clean. Roosevelt said, “Is there such a thing as a good time for a duel?”

“Now, I believe there's a chance this one can be averted until you're feeling stronger.”

He waited for Roosevelt to argue with him. The New Yorker said, “By all means. What do you have in mind?”

“I don't suppose you'd be willing to back away?”

“I don't suppose I can.”

Joe Ferris said, “But if the Markee was to back away, you wouldn't force the issue, would you?”

“Old fellow, I should be a very happy man indeed if the Marquis should choose to withdraw his challenge. I've no desire to kill him, nor be killed by him.”

Pack drew a deep breath and closed his eyes for an instant, and opened them. He looked Roosevelt in the eye. “Not much chance this will do any good, but will you object if I go to talk with the Marquis?”

“Why certainly not.”

“And have you strenuous objection to my speaking with Madame Medora as part of the effort to change the Marquis's mind?”

“None whatever. For all I care you may speak with the Devil himself, if it will help restore peace and tranquillity to our town.”

The Marquis De Morès was ready to climb into the carriage. He had already handed Madame up onto the seat. Facing Pack he stood with feet braced apart and whapped the weighted bamboo stick into his open palm.

Pack said, “Roosevelt has had a gruelling adventure—”

“Yes. Arthur, don't you find it a wonderful irony that he should be the man to arrest Dutch Reuter? Think of the trouble he could have saved himself if he'd simply let me have the old fool to begin with.”