Eight

The beard seemed overnight to have thickened, darkened, become respectable. It pleased Pack.

Riley Luffsey stood hipshot against a hitching rail. A folded newspaper jutted from his back pocket. He smiled hesitantly. Pack nodded a greeting to him and strode catty-corner across the intersection into Joe Ferris’s store and found the proprietor in an apron waiting on a customer. When the transaction was completed Joe said to Pack, “One more good month and I’ll turn a profit.”

“Good for you.”

“Swede could have succeeded if he’d stood his ground.”

“Now, Swede never had your gumption,” Pack told him.

“He never had Theodore Roosevelt’s financial backing.”

“The Marquis isn’t happy about that.”

“Isn’t he,” said Joe Ferris without inflection.

“He feels it’s an affront for Roosevelt to support the competition.”

“Plenty of room in this town for two mercantiles—we keep each other honest. Or we try to. Hard to do sometimes, with Paddock chalking up cutthroat low prices for the goods he stole from Swede.”

“I’ve said it before, Joe. Prove that, or be more careful of the accusations you toss around.”

Joe Ferris only made a face. “Train’s coming.”

“How do you know?”

“Feel it in the floor.”

Pack was about to dispute him when he heard the wail of the engine’s steam whistle. Joe grinned wickedly at him.

Pack said, “The soles of your feet are more observant than mine.”

“I hear Sheriff Harmon’s on the train.”

“You hear that in the soles of your feet too?”

“It was on the telegraph.”

“I saw the wire. I still don’t believe he’ll turn up. He’s been consistently bashful about investigating any crimes against the Marquis. I wouldn’t expect him to lose a lot of sleep just because the man’s family was nearly killed and his house all shot up.” Pack felt thorough disgust. “Isn’t it scandalous to treat our leading citizen this way? Who does this pipsqueak sheriff think he is?”

“May be he thinks he’s his own man, and not some Frenchman’s lackey.” Joe untied his apron. “Your beard looks like a bird’s nest. Whyn’t you shave the thing off? Come on—let’s go see the fun.”

They found the Marquis De Morès riding back and forth before the station in leather leggings and a yellow flannel shirt with a bright red scarf about his neck. He carried in his hand a French breech loader and in his belt a Bowie knife and two long .45 Colt revolvers. The high-strung horse sidestepped away and the Marquis, by not speaking to Pack, indicated his haughty disapproval of Pack’s choice of companion.

Quite a few citizens were hanging about. Everyone had heard about the telegram. Even blacksmith Dan McKenzie was on the platform pretending to study a timetable. Bob Roberts scratched his sidewhiskers and gave Pack a friendly nod. A block away Jerry Paddock—dark, sallow, dissipated—watched from a safe distance.

As the train made its noisy way into town Pack was astonished to see three men ride boldly forward on horseback. They came across the tracks not far ahead of the engine and wheeled in line abreast to face the Marquis.

They were the three who reputedly had shot up the château: Redhead Finnegan, Frank O’Donnell and Riley Luffsey.

“Got the cojones of a brass spittoon,” muttered Joe Ferris.

The three horsemen carried rifles across their saddlebows and ostensibly they were cold sober.

The Marquis watched them approach. His chest swelled.

Something stirred in the far corner of Pack’s vision. Finnegan caught it too, for he turned his head as he steadied the horse, and the moment was so still that even at this distance Pack heard him say lazily, “Stay put, Jerry.”

At the door of his store, Paddock stopped dead. His shoulders lifted. He turned slowly to show his face.

“Just stay put,” Finnegan said again.

A portly man in a brown suit descended the train’s steps and pulled back the lapel of his coat to display the badge on his vest, as if inviting anyone who had business with the law to step forward. He stood blinking like a slow-witted owl until the Marquis De Morès reined his horse thither. “Sheriff G.W. Harmon?”

“I’m his brother. Henry Harmon, Deputy Sheriff. Who’re you? The famous Markee?”

“I see. Not only does the High Sheriff regard our business in Medora as being of such low interest as to spend more than sixty days in responding to a request for assistance, but he can’t even bother to come in person.”

“He’s right busy. Anyways we didn’t think it was a matter of almighty urgency to come down here. Nobody was hurt, was they?”

“My house was fired upon by men with rifles. Cowards firing from the night.”

The Marquis was looking straight at Finnegan when he spoke. Finnegan, fifty feet distant, displayed no reaction that Pack could see.

The Marquis said, “It was only through good luck and quick action that my wife and my children and Mr. Packard here and my own life were spared.”

“Not to mention a houseful of servants,” said Joe Ferris acerbically.

The Marquis paid him no attention. His righteous anger was directed elsewhere for the moment. He said to Deputy Harmon, “I’ve sought to charge these men with attempted murder. But you don’t regard that as a ‘matter of almighty urgency.’”

“I sure do like them bright colors you’re wearin’. Anybody identify the shooter or shooters?”

“I know who they are. Those three men right there. Finnegan, Luffsey, O’Donnell.” The Marquis pronounced their names as if he were reading from a list at a memorial ceremony for war dead.

The deputy regarded the three accused men as if he had not noticed them before. His eyebrows arched high under his hatbrim as he made a show of studying the three. It was clear—comically obvious—that he would have quit right then and got back on the train if it wouldn’t have looked bad.

They sat their horses like figures on a frieze. Finnegan did not stir at all. O’Donnell made no motion except to cock his rifle with as much noise as he could make. Luffsey showed a slight nervous grin. When Pack caught his eye the kid gave a nervous apologetic little shrug of his shoulders.

Up-street, Jerry Paddock looked on with hooded eyes and, no doubt, a gun under his undertaker’s coat.

Joe Ferris took an involuntary step back and bumped into Pack.

Pack felt half strangled by quivering tension. He prepared to drop flat.

The deputy’s voice broke in, unnaturally mild. “Anybody see these men do the purported crime?”

The Marquis said, “They’ve been heard boasting of it in the saloons.”

“Heard by who? You?”

“I don’t habituate saloons.”

“They sign confessions?”

“Don’t be a complete ass.”

Deputy Harmon made a show of examining the three hunters and their rifles and their stony faces.

Finally the law man said, “If nobody seen them do it, and they ain’t volunteered no formal confession, they ain’t a whole lot the law can do here.”

The Marquis’s horse skittered back and forth. He controlled his temper with what Pack felt was admirable restraint. “Let me just ask you this, since even under these ridiculous circumstances it is still my intent to abide by local custom and law. What course of action do you recommend I take?”

“Why, shoot,” Harmon said.

“Yes?”

“Shoot. Shoot, man. Somebody shoots at you, shoot back.”

“And that is how you advise me?”

Deputy Harmon grinned. “Sure is.”

Finnegan grinned back at him.

Suddenly Pack understood that Deputy Harmon and Redhead Finnegan were friends.

The Marquis said, “Suppose I advise you to arrest the men.”

“And if they kill me,” Henry Harmon said, “what do you advise me to do then?”

Riley Luffsey snickered. The Marquis’s head snapped toward him and for a moment Pack was certain the shooting was about to commence but the Marquis only drew a deep breath and said with equanimity to the craven deputy, “If they kill you, then I and my men will consider ourselves deputized and will prevent the murderers’ escaping. You may be assured of that.”