“Go to sleep,” O’Donnell said, “and maybe you won’t ever wake up.” But there wasn’t any conviction in it. They’d been licked and, he thought, they knew it. The rest was no more than hollow boasting.

“No more talk now,” said the ranchman. He dipped his pen in the inkwell.

The fire dwindled. He fed it and poked it up. A fitful racket of snoring rumbled beyond the fire. It was around three o’clock. Abruptly Finnegan sat bolt upright and glared at him.

The ranchman laid his hand on the grip of the rifle.

Finnegan smiled slowly.

The ranchman said, “Test me again and I may have to tie your hands, Red.”

Without argument the rogue lay back.

Well it will be a long night and a longer day. But it will come to an end.

Dutch moved closer to the fire, held his palms out to warm them and said, “Without help maybe all this you cannot do.”

“I think I can.”

“Man got to sleep.”

“Plenty of time for that after we get to Medora.”

“Something you try prove?”

“What?

“You trying prove? Something?”

“I’m not trying to prove anything, Dutch. I’m demonstrating that it’s against the law to steal a man’s boat, and if you break that law, you will be held accountable. That’s what the rules of civilization mean.”

“Maybe the Markee and the Stranglers a different rules of civilzation they got.”

“The rules apply to them too—whether they know it or not.”

“I to the Markee that will say. ‘Markee,’ I will say, ‘the rules of civilzation you got to obey.’ This I will say right after you he shoot dead.”

“He hasn’t shot me dead yet, Dutch.”

“And when he does?”

The ranchman said, “Everyone has to die, sooner or later. But no one has to run away.”

“Ever you scared get?”

“Certainly I get scared.”

“Right now?”

“I don’t know about right now. I don’t think your friends are going to make any further trouble.”

“How about the Markee you duel fight?”

“We’ll see—we’ll see.”

After that the silence stretched a long time until Dutch Reuter said softly, “I you like. But you one crazy dude.”

“Good night, then, Dutch.”

In the morning he watched the old frontiersman settle his team into the traces and he held the rifle across the crook of his elbow while the four men climbed onto the wagon. Finnegan looked down at him. “Dutch is right, you know. You’re one crazy bastard.”

“Got cojones to spare,” O’Donnell agreed. “You going to walk us all the way to the railroad? Can’t be much less than thirty miles—and plenty of swollen streams between.”

“We’ll get there.”

“Know something?” said O’Donnell. “I think you will, too.”

Finnegan growled, “Let’s go if we’re going. Jail’s got to be warmer than this.”

Dutch Reuter looked at his two Irish companions in obvious surprise. Then he turned a growing smile toward the ranchman and drew himself up like a pigeon.

The ranchman knew he might have their respect at last but it didn’t count for much. There was a long gloomy walk ahead.

The ranchman wiggled his toes in his boots. He felt the swollen blisters and said, “Let’s go.”

Twenty-three

Pushing his wheelbarrow with its teetering tower of newspapers Pack trudged over the snow past Joe Ferris’s store, boots crunching loudly. Joe was inside at the window looking out. Pack saw him look away—make a point of looking away. Pack continued on his errand.

It was truly a season of damnation. Only three weeks ago a train had been snowbound in the station for days. Starving cattle had drifted into Medora, smashed their heads in through windows and eaten the tarpaper off several lean-tos and shacks. A sodbuster couple had gone out to try and feed the cattle in their barn, and had frozen to death within fifty feet of the house. And a horse rancher had shot himself to death, or so it was claimed; there were suspicions it might have been the Stranglers, although Pack was fairly certain they’d disbanded and dispersed. He had put the question to the Marquis and the Marquis had not denied it.

As he reached the depot platform he encountered an astounding sight. It was something out of a fevered dream. There came lurching a battered wagon with four men on it and, walking behind the tailboard, bedraggled, mudcaked, scratched, black-and-blue, a skeletal apparition that was identifiable only by its teeth and eyeglasses.

“Just the man I want to see,” Roosevelt croaked. “We need the key to the jail.”

The wheelbarrow nearly capitulated when Pack set it down.

Roosevelt stumbled, then grinned. “Come along, Mr. Packard.”

“What in God’s name is all this?”

Redhead Finnegan, on the wagon—for Finnegan it was indeed, Pack determined after a closer look—thrust his face over the sideboard and glared at Roosevelt. “This dude’s trying to railroad us, Pack. He and his crew ambushed us in the Bad Lands. He’ll tell you any old pack of lies. Don’t believe a word he says. You can see he’s plumb crazy.”

Roosevelt leveled his rifle—a ghost as determined as a bulldog. To Pack he said, “Come along.”

“Well I don’t know. Their word against yours—”

Dutch Reuter jumped down off the wagon, startling Roosevelt whose rifle swung tentatively toward him but Reuter ignored it. He had bits of brown grass and twigs in his beard. He clutched Pack’s coat. Pack shrank back. Reuter’s breath was foul. “His boat we steal. Behind the wagon all the way with his Winchester he walk. Fifty miles. Two days. Fifty miles. Fifty miles! His eyes he never close. Twenty foot back walking, and all the time that book he’s reading. ‘Keep going there—keep going.’ Big storm. Him they jump—Red and Frank, they jump. And he fight ’em off! That wagon and two men, on his back he lift! Bejesus out of them two tough boys he scare. And the river. Dead cows. Take apart the wagon, he makes us. Pieces across we carry. Put back together. That water God-damn cold.”

It wasn’t easy trying to put the German’s words back together and make any sort of sense out of them. Pack tried to review what Dutch Reuter was saying. It began to come clear.

Reuter said in awe, “No man so God-damn brave I ever seen. No man. No sir.”

Pack slammed the Bastille door shut upon Finnegan and O’Donnell. They were bellowing.

Dutch Reuter remained outside. Roosevelt said to him, “Go on, Dutch. Get out of here—get out of the country before someone hurts you. Don’t stay around here, for you’re a fool. You haven’t got enough sense to take care of yourself.”

“Mein Gott, Herr Roosevelt—such kind and generous—how can I you thank? Gott im Himmel—a hundred thanks, a thousand thanks …”

Roosevelt looked at Pack in amusement and said, “By Godfrey, it’s the first time a man ever thanked me for calling him a fool.”

Pack gaped at the fiendish filthy spectral wraith before him. Roosevelt was so tired his every muscle quivered visibly.

Roosevelt said, “Be on your way now, Dutch.”

Dutch Reuter stumbled away.

Pack stood a foot from Roosevelt and yelled at him: “Do you have any idea what you look like?”

“I don’t know how I look,” Roosevelt replied with a wide grin, “but I feel first-rate!”

“You’ve got to see the doctor. Right now.” Pack steered him away from the jail. “Is that story true? Fifty miles? Three days all alone? My God, it’s no good talking about Reuter—you’re the fool. Biggest damn fool I’ve ever heard of. Why on earth did you do this?”

“Why, they stole my boat.”

“Did they now. Well why in hell didn’t you just hang them on the spot and save yourself all this trouble?”

Roosevelt said, “We are civilized men, thank God—not vigilantes. It was my duty to bring them to book, not to murder them.”

Pack tried to offer an arm but Roosevelt shook him off and stumbled into town on his own.