Now at last Roosevelt understood the animal’s behavior. He allowed it to trot back to the trail.

Joe said, “May be ten years before the smell clears out, if it ever does. They tell it, the nice kitty was under the bed when the Deacon and Mrs. Osterhaut came home with the hired hand. The hired man favored waiting for the nice kitty to leave. Mrs. Osterhaut put her chin in the air and said this and that. You met them—you recall their dispositions? Hired man tried to talk reason but Mrs. Osterhaut made a fuss and the Deacon wasn’t ready to listen to a hired man, so he went in after the skunk with a pitchfork, with the result that you can smell.”

By now Dutch had caught up with the wagon and began laughing. “Polecat Hollow, this place his new name.”

Roosevelt wrinkled his nose. “And where are the Osterhauts living?”

“Trying to farm beef cattle over on the Little Cannonball. As you can tell from the round-up tally they aren’t making much of a go of it. He makes a dollar here and a dollar there for doing confirmations and such—I guess it’s enough to keep body and soul apart.” He chuckled then. “That skunk didn’t improve their mood any. Deacon’s still complaining about everything in sight.”

“It baffles me,” Roosevelt said, “that such fellows fail to realize how their complaints make people dislike them. Everyone despises a whiner.”

There was one thing, Joe conceded in the privacy of his thoughts, that you could say for Roosevelt: he never whined.

In fact that was one of the exasperating things about him.

Under a racket of rattling rustling cottonwood leaves they departed the river bottoms and climbed west toward the high prairie, dragging the wagon up sharp-pitched slopes until they reached an eminence from which they could see clear across the colorful Bad Lands behind them.

Not far ahead of them a wolf stood alone on a promontory. With gentlemanly generosity Roosevelt said, “Your shot, Dutch.”

Dutch Reuter found his rifle under the seat and slid it from the scabbard but he did not lift it. He cocked the hammer, uncocked it and put the weapon away. The wolf ran down off the skyline and disappeared. Roosevelt said, “Why didn’t you shoot?”

“I am no good shot.”

“You made your living shooting buffalo.”

“Buffalo was big target, close by, not move.” Dutch waved toward the promontory. “Three, four hundred meters must be.”

“Then you need more practice. Most of us are not born experts. If we choose resolutely to apply ourselves, we can by sheer industry make ourselves fair rifle shots.”

Joe Ferris said, “May be he’s just tired of shooting and killing.”

“Old fellow, it requires all kinds of moral and physical qualities to be a good hunter. It requires good judgment and cool courage. On the hunt, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery and will power, a man must get his nerves and his nerve thoroughly under control. Otherwise we all have buck fever sometimes, don’t you know.”

“Sir, I expect it’s a long time since Dutch had buck fever,” said Joe Ferris. “It’s not buck fever just because he’s seen too much blood.”

“Ah, Joe, I don’t know what you mean by that. D’you know—one day I want to go back to Africa, south of where I went before, and hunt the greatest game on the earth—rhinoceros, elephant, Cape buffalo, the mighty lion. By Godfrey, I’ve never even seen a. lion! Doesn’t the idea make your blood rush?”

“Can’t say as it does, sir.”

There was a bleached buffalo skull. Sight of them was still common on the plains. They found nothing else that day, to Joe’s relief, and they made camp by twilight in a fairly open section of Bad Lands where a low butte was crowned with rusty-red clay evidence that an old coal fire had consumed a surface lignite vein.

Roosevelt sat cleaning his favorite rifle. He did it mostly with one hand, still favoring the arm he had injured. The rifle was an 1876 Winchester in .45-75 caliber; he’d had the lever-action weapon custom-engraved for him with likenesses of buffalo, antelope and deer. His arsenal also included the bird shotguns—a Thomas ten and a Kennedy sixteen hammerless—and back in the ranch house for general round-the-meadow shots he owned a three-barrelled gun with twin shotgun bores above a .40-70 rifle tube. And in addition to all that he wore a .45 Frontier Colt single-action revolver, plated with both gold and silver and engraved with elaborate scrolls; raised on its ivory handles were his initials and the lugubrious head of a buffalo, in commemoration of the one he had shot last year and danced around.

He was a dandy dude for certain but Joe knew how that could fool people into underestimating him. From last year’s experience Joe recalled how well Roosevelt knew his equipment and its uses. In his taxidermy kit, for example, were knives, arsenic, cotton wads, brushes, surgical shears, needle and thread. He would skin his prizes with great patient care. He didn’t smell too good after he got done, but the job would be top class.

Roosevelt finished cleaning the rifle. He put it away. “I remember my first gun. My father gave it to me when I was thirteen. A 23-gauge Lefaucheux double.”

“You may need some of those guns on two-legged game before too long,” Joe observed. “What are you going to do about the Markee?”

“Do about him?” Roosevelt blinked behind the glasses. “Why, nothing. Unless he forces an issue, I’ve no reason to be concerned with him. Live and let live, old fellow.”

“I get the feeling the Markee don’t think the same way you do about that. He thinks you’re a Jew, and he thinks Jews ought to be ‘dealt with.’ That’s how I heard him put it.”

“He’s mistaken on both counts, then,” Roosevelt said with his stubborn equanimity. Then he disappeared into the bushes again, sick with the colic. It seemed to Joe Ferris that the dude was always sick with something or other; and it had not ceased to amaze him that Roosevelt never seemed to give in to his constant ailments or to complain about them. Did he never feel despair?

In the morning Joe heard the sad rich cadence of a meadowlark’s song. It was very loud and urgent. By the cock of Roosevelt’s square head Joe realized the dude had heard it as well.

Roosevelt was quick to identify birds but he still hadn’t learned what their songs could signify. Joe put his hand on his Remington revolver and looked all around.

A moment later sure enough he saw a small party of Indians emerge from behind a knoll and canter effortlessly away on their tough many-colored ponies.

Roosevelt’s eyes squinted behind the glasses as the Indians rode away. He looked at Joe—at Joe’s hand on the revolver—and said accusingly, “You knew they were there. Before we saw them—you knew.”

“Yes sir.”

“How?”

“Meadowlark didn’t make that loud racket for no reason.”

“I see.” Roosevelt slowly smiled. “I see! Thank you, old fellow.” He stretched higher in the saddle and braced the high plains wind: his teeth glittered with the urgent desire to be driving forward.

Joe ranged his horse alongside the New Yorker’s. With absolute certainty that his wish would be obeyed, Roosevelt said, “Find me buffalo.”

It made Joe uneasy and a bit angry with himself; he had the strong feeling Roosevelt understood perfectly well that he did not like hunting at all—that he went along grudgingly—but the dude seemed to have an uncanny appreciation that he did his job well and conscientiously, and seemed altogether confident of Joe’s ability to produce, however reluctantly, whatever was asked of him. No matter how much Joe might dislike the work, it was difficult not to feel flattered.

The wagon rattled along behind them. They went onto the flat prairie. In the afternoon they came upon a middle-distant herd of blacktail.

“Good targets for you, sir,” Joe murmured.

Roosevelt dismounted and, his arm still being too weak for long-range shooting, aimed by resting his rifle across Manitou’s saddle. He fired.