Dinner was a splendid affair, served on costly Minton china. It began with Mumm’s champagne from the wine icebox. The table sat eight. The servants brought forth plovers’ eggs and truffles from Park & Tilford, Apollinaris water, finely sauced pheasant and a St. Julien Château LaGrange from Bordeaux that the Marquis tasted and pronounced splendid.

At table Pack found himself studying the Marquis and Roosevelt. It might have been said by someone who did not know them that the two men had quite a bit in common. They were the same age. They were wealthy; they were avid hunters; they were born aristocrats; they loved the Bad Lands; they were, or purported to be, fearless men of adventure; they were exceptionally well educated; they had interests in financial matters and political affairs.

But in spite of those things they were at opposite poles, really. De Morès had grand ambition and energy; he had impeccable manners and personal habits, which set him far apart from the childish New York dude with his desultory small-rancher desires and his rapid priggish voice. Roosevelt’s personality and mannerisms made Pack cringe.

Madame la Marquise said to Roosevelt, “Does your arm hurt terribly?”

“Not a bit of it. I feel capital. Capital. Especially in such charming presence as yours, dear lady.”

Pack felt a sense of personal shame every time he caught Roosevelt exchanging secret smiles across the table with the lady Medora. At least he thought they were secret smiles. It wasn’t possible to be sure. The suspicion had occurred to him that the entire matter existed solely in his own mind and that he might be misinterpreting innocent gestures. As a journalist he tried to be fair and objective but the effort was maddening; how did you draw the line between impartiality and indecision?

Lady Medora smiled at him. He felt shattered into pieces.

After dinner there was coffee. De Morès—by birth heir to one of the Orléans dukedoms and a “white lily of France”—sat in his favorite deerhide chair. When he lifted his cup to drink, he deftly pushed the points of his mustache out of the way with two fingers of his left hand. He wore a pinch-waisted grey suit and a starched white shirt. He said, “The buffalo will be extinct in a few years, they say. That suits me well enough.” He chortled. “It will make my trophies worth all the more.” He described how the thrill of the hunt no longer satisfied his cravings for excitement and therefore he had faced that grizzly bear there with glittering steel—he bade everyone examine the knife.

Medora, upon her husband’s request, played Beethoven on the piano. She caressed the keys so beautifully, Pack thought—such warm passion. But the interval put him in mind of guns blazing in the night….

Roosevelt listened with polite restlessness and afterward Pack overheard him confiding in Howard Eaton, “I fear the only music my ear comprehends is the song of wild birds.” Pack glared at him.

When cognac had been distributed the Marquis led the gentlemen onto the trophy porch. Continuing a discourse to his foreign guests he gesticulated toward a framed photograph of the abattoir and declared, “The object of the undertaking is to provide on the range facilities for fattening, slaughtering and marketing forty thousand beeves yearly, thus doing away with the risks and losses arising from live-animal shipment, transport shrinkage, middlemen and of course Jewish monopolies. You see,” he went on without a break, baffling Pack as he so often did with his abrupt change of direction, “I can trace my nobility back to the King of Aragon five hundred years ago—and now I shall become the richest financier in the world. It is only fitting. We of the aristocracy are uniquely suited to rule the world, don’t you agree?”

His remarks had not been addressed to Roosevelt but it was Roosevelt who replied. “I’ve no patience, Mr. De Morès, with attempts to fall back into the tyrannies of old ways. History ought to mean progress—and I believe democracy to be the most noble principle we have to offer the world. I hold that men like you and me are not entitled, simply because of family or wealth, to an ounce of privilege. In fact I think we ought to be held to an exceptional accountability. A good deal has been given to us, and therefore people have a right to expect a good deal of us.”

Howard Eaton was looking on, visibly impressed, perhaps not so much by Roosevelt’s egalitarian sentiments as by the stout courage with which he had uttered them in the face of the daunting Marquis.

Obviously feeling he had scored a point, Roosevelt said with boyish smugness, “Hem, hem!”

The Marquis said, “I should not expect the son of a merchant to agree with me,” and turned his back haughtily to speak with one of the Belgians.

Pierre Wibaux took Roosevelt’s elbow and said mildly, “You ought not call him ‘Mr. De Morès.’”

“It’s jolly well the American way. We have no titles here.”

What a prime silly fool, Pack thought. What an ass.

“No, no,” said Wibaux. He was a little drunk and slurred his words, but his English was excellent. “I mean ‘De Morès’ is not his name, it’s his title. His name is Vallombrosa. He is either Mr. Vallombrosa or the Marquis De Morès. You see?”

The Marquis was swinging about. “Wibaux, what business have you with this man?”

“What?”

“I heard you’d bought six horses from him for an absurdly high price.”

“You’re mistaken. I’ve bought nothing from him.”

“Now you call me a liar! I won’t be called a liar in my own house!”

The Marquis was more than a little drunk; Pack only just realized it. The Marquis pulled two sabers from their scabbards and tossed one belligerently to Wibaux. “Defend yourself!”

The rancher caught it by the hilt in mid-air—a matter of reflex rather than decision.

“Alors?”

“En garde!” The Marquis was on him in an instant, blade flashing. Wibaux fell back, defending himself vigorously, slashing back and forth, not quite fencing but somehow keeping the Marquis at bay by the sheer energy of his flailing defense.

It was serious swordplay. These weren’t foils; they were cavalry sabers, heavy enough to decapitate. Pack felt a chugging sensation in his innards. A sudden sweat cracked through his skin. “Wait a minute. Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”

Roosevelt had already thrust past him. “Stop it, De Morès. Stop this—right now!”

The Marquis ignored him. He lunged; Wibaux parried desperately; there was the crash of blade upon blade, the sickening hiss of sliding steel. Wibaux had his back to the wall now.

The European visitors watched the combat with jaded impartiality. Theodore Roosevelt was dodging elbows, trying to reach out and grasp the Marquis.

Pack watched Roosevelt and felt scorn. The damn fool was likely to get his arm chopped off at this rate.

That was when Madame Medora swept into the room. Somehow her delicate voice penetrated everything. “Antoine!”

The Marquis stepped back. He lowered the saber. An easy smile spread beneath his mustache. “ça va.” He endeavored to laugh. “Just having a bit of sport, aren’t we, Wibaux. Amusing our visitors with a bit of Wild West adventure, eh?”

Wibaux had nothing to say; he was breathing heavily—the blood had rushed into his face and he tried to put on a smile for the others but it wavered. He tossed the saber to the floor and walked unsteadily from the room.

Roosevelt watched the Marquis with a fixed narrowed gaze.

Pack began to relax. He smiled. It was nothing, really. Two hot-blooded gents got a bit drunk and showed their tempers; nobody hurt.

It brought the evening to an abrupt and ragged close.

A sense of propriety led Pack reluctantly to seek out Roosevelt, to walk back to town with him, but he found that the dude had already departed.

In a sense he felt relief. But there was also a degree of frustration. In challenging the Marquis, Roosevelt had thrown raw meat on the floor. Pack knew De Morès would not let it lie there to grow maggoty. There was a clear conflict between the two men—their attitudes, ambitions, even their very personalities were clearly marked for collision, and Pack wanted to see it concluded. He wanted to see the boisterous little New Yorker’s comeuppance; more, he wanted this potentially hazardous obstacle removed from the Marquis’s course of destiny.