“Well, then,” said the Marquis, “here we are.”

Roosevelt nodded. His eyeglasses were sparkling clean, Joe noted. He must have washed them yet again.

There was a long run of silence—long enough to make sweat stand out on Pack’s brow. Joe kept one eye on Jerry Paddock the whole time. He heard restless stirrings amid the crowd.

Roosevelt stood rock-steady, jaw jutting. The rifle was in his hand; his thumb was curled over its hammer.

The Marquis looked at that, and at Roosevelt’s face. Then his faithless glance wandered toward the tops of the bluffs.

Roosevelt’s grasp whitened on the rifle and the Marquis said, “May I pass?”

Theodore Roosevelt breathed deep. “The platform is open to any one. It’s a free country, sir.”

There was something like a low moan from the collective throats of the crowd.

The Marquis still didn’t look Roosevelt in the face. He was looking across the river, uphill toward the château. “I am going east on business. Then my wife will join me in New York and we intend to go home to Paris for a season of civilized amusements.”

“Paris is at its best in the spring,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes. Quite.” The Marquis turned, finally met Roosevelt’s eye and said, “I’m glad you agree there are always ways by which gentlemen can settle their differences amicably.”

“However you prefer it, Mr. De Morès.”

The Marquis said to Pack, “You may put it in your newspaper that I will return in the summer. I am a Dakotan—I have come to stay.”

Pack wrote it down and Joe Ferris had the feeling they never would see the Marquis De Morès again.

The crowd stirred, uncertain. The Marquis boarded the train. The driver carried his luggage across the platform and then returned to the carriage; he lifted the reins but Madame stayed him. She watched the train until it pulled out; she waved, and the Marquis’s colorfully sleeved arm waved back from the departing window.

Madame regarded Theodore Roosevelt with unhurried gravity.

The ranchman returned her glance; he smiled and bowed low. It was, Joe realized, a gesture of gratitude and respect.

Madame nodded graciously, acknowledging it. Then she gave Pack a warm smile—Joe was amused to see how it nearly melted Pack to a puddle. She prodded the driver with her husband’s heavy stick, and the surrey pulled away.

Jerry Paddock uttered a loud clear obscenity before he wheeled away.

That was the signal for the crowd to disperse. Joe let his hand fall away from the revolver’s handle. When he sucked in a long ragged lungful of wind he realized he had not been breathing at all.

Roosevelt said, “Thank you, Arthur. I’m deeply grateful. It’s quite possible I owe you my life.”

“I’ve been objective and non-partisan. I’m pleased if my efforts have helped to keep the peace.”

“You can’t remain aloof under the pretense of objectivity, you know. You must commit your soul to the values in which you believe. Defend them, and be damned to noncommittal dispassion. You must have a firmly defined public spirit if you’re to be one of the governing class. It’s your plain duty—as it is mine. And now if you don’t mind I think I’ll repair upstairs and read for a bit.”

When the New Yorker had gone to his room Joe said, “He’ll sleep a week now.”

“Public spirit,” said Pack. He scowled at Joe. “He’s always making speeches, like a stuffed-shirt schoolmaster.”

“Seems to me his speeches make pretty good sense.”

Pack was irritable. “I didn’t expect the Marquis to back down.”

“A lot of folks didn’t. Maybe they see now the kind of bully he is. Only fights when he knows he’s got the advantage.”

“That’s not a fair judgment. There were a lot of factors,” Pack said. “But I admit too many things have taken me by surprise today. One was when Madame agreed so readily to talk to him.”

“What did she say to the Markee?”

Pack consulted his notebook. “‘Antoine—if Theodore were to be killed in the Bad Lands, by you, I’m rather afraid there might be repercussions throughout New York Society.’”

“New York Society,” Joe said. “That means her father the banker—who happens to be the source of the Markee’s fortune. Well you said she wasn’t stupid and you were right. I guess she saw right away—and she reminded the Marquis that a duel might have killed more than Theodore Roosevelt. So you see, Pack, the Marquis didn’t withdraw out of the goodness of his heart. More like greedy cowardice.”

Pack said, “You’ll have a hard time proving that to me.” He turned to go, and then stopped abruptly; he swung back with surprise all over his face. “Now, you’ve run another confidence game, haven’t you. This time on me.”

Joe said with wide-eyed guilelessness, “What’re you talking about?”

“When you asked me to intercede with Madame. It wasn’t your idea at all. It was his.”

Joe grinned. “What ever makes you say that?”

“If it had come from him—if he’d been the one to ask me, I wouldn’t have done it. He put you up to it. He used you, Joe. He knew I trusted your friendship and he used us both.”

“Ah, well, then, may be,” said Joe Ferris. “Be that as it may, do you really feel ill-used?”

*    *    *

There were distressing reports from the hills as the cattlemen went out with the spring round-up. For two weeks Pack waited while they scoured the Bad Lands, finding no cattle, growing to believe the storms must have drifted the main herds pretty far from their home ranges. They found a few steers, most of which they killed for food. They ranged farther and wider, and to his disbelieving consternation Pack learned in the end that the terrible winter had wiped out the greater part of every herd in the Bad Lands—ironically, with the sole exception of the De Morès herd; the Marquis’s tough Dakota-bred three-year-olds had survived, and Johnny Goodall had the unhappy duty of selling them off to settle a small portion of the Marquis’s massive debts.

The only blessing was that the Stranglers were gone. Evaporated with the snows. With the departure of the Marquis their payroll likewise departed—and therefore so did they. Pack supposed the ugly Mr. W.H. Springfield had returned to Chicago to take a new assignment for his employers at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. As for the identities of the men who had ridden in the noose-party posses, no one had found any further clue to those, and he doubted anyone ever would. It was certain Jerry Paddock knew more about them than he was admitting—it was Jerry who had slipped Pack the embarrassingly premature information about the hanging of Modesty Carter—but Jerry had very little to say to anyone about anything these days. Little Casino had not returned with him from Bismarck; apparently she had found a high-roller there who suited her temper better and she had run off with him to the East, while Jerry took solace in lugubrious portions of whiskey abetted by profits from his multifarious shady schemes.

At the end of the round-up, seventy men rode into Medora driving one limping steer. When Pack interviewed Theodore Roosevelt, the ranchman said he had ridden across his entire home range and not found a single live steer.

Neither Sewall nor Huidekoper had the ill manners to say “I told you so.”

Roosevelt’s ranch was a casualty—but Roosevelt was not. On that final day he came to the train station wearing a derby hat, in defiance of local custom. No one knocked it off; no one fired a shot. Huidekoper was there, and Eaton and Joe Ferris and even McKenzie; there were a score of well-wishers, most of them long-faced because of the dreadful winter kill.

Jerry Paddock, perhaps still nursing his sore jaw, was noticeably absent.

Before he followed Dow and Sewall aboard the Express, Roosevelt said, “You see, Arthur, I intend to wear any hat I please.” He lifted the derby off his head and held it high, grinned at the onlookers and replaced the hat square across his eyes.