She hadn’t intended to settle for the first man who asked. She had wanted to wait for a man who would talk to her, who would listen to her, who would pull back her chair for her. But times were hard. Dutch had got half drunk and proposed marriage—and she’d had no other offers. “I am a plain woman. But I have made a good life for myself here. It is a good place.” The abrupt smile, cozy and jolly, illuminated her face.

Roosevelt came out of the back room dressed in his new suit. Wil Dow’s eyes opened wide with admiration. He couldn’t recall ever having seen such soft golden buckskin. The fringed yoke and the cut of it made Roosevelt look taller and more powerful—handsomer all round.

Uncle Bill Sewall said without enthusiasm, “You’ll be the most beautiful cowboy in the corral.”

Mrs. Reuter enjoyed provocation. While Roosevelt was admiring his suit she poked his arm. “I want to know why a woman can’t vote in this free country. You are a politician. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me why I can’t vote.”

Roosevelt seemed pleased to be asked: he seemed both amused and serious. “Well I’m no longer in politics, you know. But I still have opinions. I feel it is exactly as much a right of women as of men to vote. I believe in suffrage for women, because I think they are fit for it. But the important point—man or woman—is to treat suffrage as a duty. A vote is like a rifle. The mere possession of it will no more benefit men and women not sufficiently developed to use it than the possession of rifles will turn untrained Egyptian fellaheen into soldiers. You see I believe, for women as well as for men, more in the duty of doing well and wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot.”

“If we women had the vote we wouldn’t be so ready to send young men off to war.”

Roosevelt said, “As to that, madame, war is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be beneficial when it encourages people to forget their selfish concerns and lend themselves to great national effort.”

“My father was killed in the war,” she replied. “I hope your outfit suits you.”

Roosevelt studied himself in the mirror she’d handed him. “It’s a splendid suit. Splendid.” Whether or not he realized he’d been chastised, he said no more to Mrs. Reuter about the benefits of war.

It was too late to ride home; they camped for the night not far from Mrs. Reuter’s.

“How do you spell Audubon? One or two?”

Sewall said, “Two u’s, one o.”

“I’m a dreadful speller.”

Roosevelt could read things at amazingly high speed while simultaneously carrying on a running conversation. He seemed to see and hear everything—at least he had strong opinions about everything. Wil Dow saw him find endless magic in the books against which he squinted every evening in the inadequate light of lantern or campfire. He had an especial passion for natural science books and made notes as he read them.

Roosevelt considered the page on which he was writing. He seemed agitated with a hint of his old enthusiasm. “D’you know, Bill, narrow ideas cannot survive on these prairies. This is a wholesome place to dream in.”

Sewall only grunted; but Wil Dow was pleased to see even so small a sign of recovery in Roosevelt.

Suddenly, for no particular reason, it struck him that Roosevelt had no sidewhiskers this season; he thought back and decided Roosevelt must have shaved them off in 1883.

The pencil scratched across the tablet. Roosevelt was writing a book about ranching. It was a serious endeavor; he had already written a book that had been published—a history of the naval battles of the War of 1812—and now it seemed his literary ambitions were revived. Maybe that was another good sign.

After a while he set the notebook aside and took out his letter-writing paper. He had received several letters along with the last batch of possibles that Dutch had picked up at Joe Ferris’s store. Most of them, Wil gathered, were from his sister Bamie. Now Roosevelt opened one of the letters, consulted it briefly and began to set down his response. A soft smile hovered around his mouth.

That night he didn’t seem to wheeze as much as usual.

In the morning Roosevelt impishly decided they must sate their curiosity with a visit to the Indian camp that Mrs. Reuter had told them about. Wil Dow nearly danced with eagerness.

As they broke camp, Dutch Reuter appeared from the coulees and joined them without comment; it was as if he had been spying on them from afar in order to join them as soon as they were clear of his formidable frau.

Dutch rolled a quirly from his makin’s. He offered it to Roosevelt, who said, “I have a gentleman’s distaste for tobacco.” Dutch, not offended in the least, kindled his snoose and puffed away with content. They rode along together and presently Sewall saw something out yonder on the plain. “What’s that? Big rock?”

Wil Dow searched the distance and found it—a white spire, perhaps a pyramid.

Dutch studied it a while before he replied. “Tepee, I think.”

It was evident by the way he squinted at the horizon that Roosevelt couldn’t see what they were talking about. He yanked off his glasses and polished them.

They rode forward for a good half hour before Dutch said quietly to Wil Dow, “How you find her?”

“Your wife?”

“Yah, yah.”

Wil Dow was uncertain how to reply. Finally he said, “Fine stout woman.”

“For me she don’t pine,” Dutch said. “That’s good.”

Wil Dow grinned. “You miss her, do you?”

Dutch licked his fingers before he pinched out the lit end of the cigarette stub between thumb and finger. He dropped the remains into his tobacco pouch and did not look at Wil Dow at all.

In the end the white pyramid turned out to be an Indian tent, shut up against the world. Dutch clapped his hands in lieu of knocking. There was no reply. He let his call sing out in English and in French. After having observed those amenities he lifted the flap and looked inside.

The smell hit them immediately. Dutch said, “Mein Gott.”

An Indian man lay curled up on his side on a blanket. Roosevelt said, “Is he dead?”

Old Bill Sewall said, “Dead and ripe. A ‘good Indian’—isn’t that what they say? The only good Indian?”

Roosevelt dismounted and crouched for a better look. “I say. He doesn’t seem very old.”

Wil Dow said, “I expect he took sick and the rest of them left him here.”

Uncle Bill Sewall said, “They just left a sick man behind to die?”

Roosevelt said, “I understand that’s their way.”

Uncle Bill backed away, making a face against the smell. “Barbaric.”

Wil Dow said, “I don’t know. It makes sense, you think about it.”

Roosevelt was holding his nose, still hunkered to peer inside. “What tribe is he?”

“Teton Sioux,” Dutch said. “East from they usual range.” He scanned the horizons. “If there be trouble, better not you take cover. Before you know, crawl up on you they do. Better stay in open—they coming, you see them—with your rifle you must make a show. You good rifle shot, you scare them. Most of them very poor shots unless inside bow-and-arrow range they get.”

*    *    *

Dutch yipped and whooped as they approached the encampment. It was considered good manners, he explained, to announce yourself as loudly as possible. It showed you had nothing to hide.

There were quite a few lodges on the high ground. They threw long shadows in the evening sunlight. Indians were converging on foot and horseback from the day’s hunt, some of them dragging the game they’d killed.

Their outfits varied. Dutch identified them as Sioux and Mandans and Gros Ventres. “Friendly ones,” he said.

“I remind you Sitting Bull surrendered only three years ago,” Uncle Bill Sewall growled.

Dutch Reuter said, “No war today. Is etiquette to do a bit of trading.” He winked at Wil Dow, which made Wil feel better: it restored the confidence that had been draining out of him as they drew closer to the crowd of Indians who were emerging before them. Dutch knew what he was talking about. He was a genuine specimen of a frontiersman. He had been mail carrier and scout and free trader and hunter ever since he had come to America. He said he had been shot with bullets seven times and with arrows five times, and once had his head split open with a tomahawk. Of course he had also said he’d been in the Prussian army. But he’d been drunk on that occasion. From what Wil had seen, Dutch had plenty of scars to prove his injuries.