Joe Ferris said, “We’ll see you boys, then,” and put his horse in motion. But Finnegan seemed unwilling to let the matter drop: he sidestepped in front of the horse, blocked Joe’s way, locked his fist on the bridle strap. The horse jerked its head; Finnegan kept his grip. “Listen—every time we ride through here we hack down that fence, and every time we come back it’s been put up again.”

“Why talk on me about it?”

“Because you hang your hat around town and you have got the ear of Jerry Paddock and them,” said the man from Bitter Creek. Joe’s horse tried to bite him and he took his hand away without even glancing at it. “And now we hear Paddock and the Marquis are fixing to bring legal papers and that Valentine Scrip and jump claim on Frank’s shack downriver.”

“Any rascal jumps me,” O’Donnell said, “jumps right into his grave.”

From the edge of the river Riley Luffsey shouted, “I’m the best and fastest shot in Dakota with long gun or short. They want to try something, I’m ready to stand with Frank.”

“And so am I. And others too. You tell that to Jerry Paddock, Joe,” said Finnegan.

“Tell him yourself. He’s no friend of mine.”

Finnegan glared at Roosevelt. “What about you, little man? Whose side you on?”

“My own. I’ve no quarrels here.”

“Keep it that way,” Finnegan adjured.

Joe said, “Be that as it may, Red, I’ll give you good advice. Take it or not as you please. You stir it up with Jerry Paddock and the Marquis, I’ll venture folks may walk wide around you so they don’t have to look too close at the destruction.” Then Joe smiled. “I hear the Marquis loads his ammunition with exploding bullets.”

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.