Harmon pretended to consider that.

Pack heard a low fluttering sound. It barely reached his ears. A moment went by before he realized it was a chuckle of amusement from the throat of Jerry Paddock.

Deputy Harmon exchanged knowing glances again with Finnegan. Then he turned without hurry and stepped back aboard the train just as it pulled away from the platform.

The three ruffians gave the Marquis plenty of time to act, should he be so foolish. Redhead Finnegan’s hatbrim lifted and turned as he looked past the Marquis. “Come on, then, Jerry. You want to start a ball?”

As isolated as if he were quarantined, Paddock spread his open hands wide, like a dark preacher to his flock. He was grinning wickedly.

The three riders presented their backs to the Marquis and rode away at an insolently slow gait. Luffsey rode tall and straight. Pack felt, not for the first time, that there was a good deal to be admired in that youngster and it was a shame he had elected to take up with such low companions.

The Marquis glared at their backs with high indignation. “Vile cowardly vermin!”

They heard it. Pack saw Luffsey’s back stiffen: Luffsey looked at Finnegan, then O’Donnell. But neither of them responded. They continued to ride slowly away.

Joe Ferris showed Pack a troubled brooding scowl.

De Morès then decided—sensibly, Pack thought—to ignore the entire matter. It was the magnanimous act of a truly civilized gentleman. Pack tried to explain this to Joe Ferris but Joe only jeered. Anyway the Marquis was entertaining visitors—Russian royalty. Surrounded by servants and hounds he took them away on a hunting expedition out toward the Yellowstone.

For once his wife did not accompany the Marquis. One of the children had a touch of fever and she remained to minister to the baby. Within a few days the child had recovered, and Madame la Marquise was seen more often riding along the bluffs and through the town. Pack’s heart leaped whenever he saw her.

On a hot Saturday late in August he rented a horse and was saddling in the livery corral when he saw two riders enter town: the lady Medora and, of all people, Theodore Roosevelt. They were riding together stirrup to stirrup. Pack’s jaw dropped.

“I’ve been showing Mr. Roosevelt our landscape,” she said unabashedly to Pack.

“And I’ve been admiring Mrs. De Morès’s paintings,” Roosevelt said.

Pack said stiffly, “I’m on my way to Eaton’s. There’s a hunt today.”

“I know,” said Roosevelt. “I’ve been invited. I’m afraid we shall be late.”

Medora gave Roosevelt the bounty of her smile. “Very nice to have seen you again.”

“The pleasure’s entirely mine, madame.” Roosevelt touched his hatbrim.

Pack, besotted with suspicions, now saw it right before him. Why, they were hiding it right out in the open. He marveled at their boldness.

Of course now that they were in town tact imposed an absolute modesty on whatever it was that they had between them. Pack could not bring himself to give it a name; but it took no great leap of imagination to envision the deep flood of feeling that must be concealed behind the polite smiles with which they regarded each other on this public occasion.

He felt befuddled. No matter how contrary women might be, he had difficulty believing what the events implied. It was beyond credence that there could be anything truly unseemly in the lady Medora’s disposition toward Roosevelt. Not only was her husband handsome, gallant and titled—while Roosevelt was unprepossessing at best—but it had been clear from the first moment of her arrival in the Bad Lands that she worshipped the Marquis with an adoring and unquestioning passion.

Still, it was possible that, as she was from New York, she might have acquired an inappropriate sense of Theodore Roosevelt’s importance and power. Women, Pack had observed, sometimes had such propensities. And if that was the case, was it possible that Roosevelt could have been so caddish as to have played upon those strings?

Leaving no answers in her wake, Madame la Marquise rode away. Dan McKenzie came out of the livery and said sarcastically to Pack, “D’you think she can cook?”

Pack scowled at the ill-mannered oaf. Roosevelt did more than that. He dismounted behind McKenzie and gripped his shoulder. When the blacksmith turned, Roosevelt said, “Apologize for your tone, sir.”

McKenzie only grinned. Perhaps it wasn’t for Roosevelt to know that McKenzie’s preferred answer to everything was the hammer or the fist—two objects that were nearly interchangeable in McKenzie’s lexicon—but Roosevelt was about to learn it; and Pack took a certain sly satisfaction in being witness to the dude’s lesson.

McKenzie said, “What’d you say?”

“Apologize.”

McKenzie, still grinning, hauled a roundhouse left up from hip level. What happened then was odd. It appeared to Pack that Roosevelt, flinching from the blow, must have tripped over his own bootheel; in any event McKenzie’s powerful swing sailed over the dude’s head and before McKenzie could recover his balance, Roosevelt hit him at the hinge of the jaw.

It happened so fast Pack wasn’t sure what he had seen, but McKenzie—twice the dude’s size—was down and then Roosevelt was helping the man up. “Go to the trough and wash yourself. When you’re in the presence of a lady, henceforth conduct yourself like a gentleman—or suffer the consequences.”

McKenzie’s eyes narrowed. Roosevelt said, “I studied boxing with the master prizefighter John Long.”

“Aagh,” McKenzie said, disbelieving it. “One lucky punch—I wasn’t looking.”

“If you’d care for a match I shall accommodate you at any suitable time and place. Here and now will do, if you like.”

Madame was two blocks distant, riding away; she had noticed none of it. Pack felt vaguely gratified: at least Roosevelt’s brazen act of fraudulent chivalry hadn’t impressed her.

McKenzie looked down upon Roosevelt. “Hell, I ain’t going to pick on a man your size.”

“As you wish. The choice is yours.”

McKenzie shook his head in a display of exasperated disgust, glanced at Pack and walked back into the stable.

Roosevelt got back on his horse. “If we’re both bound for the Custer Trail, I should be pleased to have your company.”

Pack could think of no suitable grounds for refusal. He rode along southward with the four-eyed dude. To cover his confusion he said, “Now, the Republicans seem in serious disarray. What do you think?”

“Don’t ask me about politics. I’m out of that. I’ve far more interest in the coming round-up than in politics—the round-up’s far more respectable.”

Theodore Roosevelt, political apostate. Pack wondered if the ridiculous man realized how pompous he appeared, all decked out in his pretense to have cornered the market on moral absolutes.

But then, to be perfectly honest, was that any worse than going along from day to day like a mere witness, devoid of the passionate commitments of involvement? Pack daily threw himself with increasing resentment against the bars of his cage of inaction. He saw everything; he participated in nothing. It seemed life had not begun for him yet. He was nothing but a spectator. Nothing serious will ever happen to me, he complained to himself.

Howard Eaton’s front yard was decorated with chunks of petrified logs, cold to the touch.

Wolves had been taking down livestock. Some of the ranchers had organized a Dakota version of an ancient tradition: a rugged frontier interpretation of a fox hunt, with grey wolves as the prey. In place of red coats the hunters wore whatever seemed practical. A.C. Huidekoper kept a pack of wolfhounds he’d imported all the way from Imperial Russia, and on these high social occasions they were set loose to lead the spirited horsemen at breakneck pace across the Bad Lands.

This time the crowd was swelled by a dozen visiting Eastern sportsmen. Most of them seemed bemused; but the local hunters were in foul spirits because some practical joker had found out where Huidekoper planned to start his wolf hunt, and had dragged the skin of a fresh-killed wolf from that spot directly back to Eaton’s well. The hounds had led the crowd directly home to the well, where Pack and Roosevelt arrived to find the hunters dismounted and crowded around. A few bloody claws had been found at the rim and a man had to be lowered into the well. Now he climbed out and shook his head; he’d found nothing amiss at the bottom.