Brian Garfield (34 page)

At any rate neither Van Driesche nor his employer was about. They went on toward Joe Ferris's store. Wil Dow ducked his face against the frigid wind; the temperature was dropping sharply.

Joe let them in. Roosevelt said, “I hope we're not intruding?”

“No sir. Always happy to see you.” Joe took them through to the rear of the store and added lumps of lignite to the fire. The isinglass window of the cannon stove glowed furiously but it wasn't enough to keep out the blasts of winter that came in through chinks in the boards.

Then again, Wil Dow thought, winter was at worst a mixed curse, for at least it held at bay the smell of the abattoir.

Uncle Bill Sewall was examining the stock of boots on the shelf. He complained, “You know I can't get any boots here that will wear at all. Ten- or twelve-dollar boots don't last much more than two months. Sometimes not more than one.”

“It's rough country on footwear,” Joe Ferris agreed. “I buy the best quality I can obtain. I'm trying to find a better supplier.”

Roosevelt said, “Is Mr. De Morès in town, do you know?”

“Afraid I don't keep tabs on him. We're not exactly made of the same leather.”

“I ask because no one ever seems to know when he may be at home. He has a mighty restlessness, that fellow—it seems at any moment he may be off impatiently rushing to Helena or Miles City or Chicago—”

“Pursuing his visionary dreams,” said Arthur Packard, entering and slamming the door behind him against the bitter wind. “The Marquis is at home—I saw him an hour ago. Why?”

“He's trying to seize possession of my ranch.”

“Now there's a surprise,” said Joe Ferris, showing no surprise but plenty of irony, and fixing his glare on Packard.

Wil Dow was confused; he had thought the two men to be friends.

Joe turned his attention back to Roosevelt. “Sir, where you're concerned you may as well know the Markee has got a hate that won't go away—like the stink of something that died under the floor of the house.”

“Joe!” snapped Pack. “Mind your tongue.”

“They've got a right to know what's going on.” Joe's eyes were crowded with a bright blue tension. He said to Roosevelt, “The Markee's lawyers are throwing every delay they can think up, but it's plain sooner or later he's going to stand trial for murdering Luffsey. He blames you for the arrest warrant, even though it's common knowledge the letter to Judge Bateman must've been writ by Huidekoper or Eaton. And meantime Luffsey's Irish friends are talking high and heavy against the Markee, and that includes Redhead Finnegan and Frank O'Donnell running around loose—and Dutch Reuter out on your ranch. All in all it does seem to make the Markee see red, doesn't it, Pack.”

“They're riffraff. Low dogs. They deserve what comes to them—they endangered Madame's life,” said Arthur Packard. He seemed to be watching to see how Roosevelt would react to that, but the New Yorker took another route:

“You may put it in your newspaper that Dutch Reuter was not one of the riflemen who shot up Mr. De Morès's house.”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked him. I have his word on it.”

“And you believe it?”

“I have every reason to place my faith in Dutch's honesty.”

“There are some who'd say you were a fool, then.”

Roosevelt removed his glasses, polished them and put them back on, hooking them over one ear at a time. Then he looked Arthur Packard straight in the eye. “Are you one of those?”

“I'm a newspaperman. I'm impartial. But I'll say this much—I know Dutch well enough to know he'll lie when he wants to.” He pointed an accusing finger toward Joe Ferris. “You know that better than anyone. You rode with him.”

“I did,” said Joe Ferris, “and I know him to be a man who would not shoot from ambush.”

Arthur Packard shrugged. “As I say, I must remain objective.”

Wil Dow made a face. The damned editor was a weasel—a fence-sitter.

Roosevelt said to Joe Ferris, “It appears Mr. De Morès has done a rash thing—he's thrown fifteen hundred head of cattle onto my ranch. He must have known it would bring me straight to his lair. I should like to know as much as I can about his frame of mind. Is he susceptible to reason? Or is he too angry for that? I realize his temper must have been rising because some of his vaunted business ventures have been collapsing. His sheep have been dying by thousands—”

Joe Ferris said with marked displeasure, “Seven thousand dead Merinos out there, sir. Come spring the buzzards will have a banquet. I hear some mutton-packer filed an enormous suit against him for breach of contract and you're right, it hasn't sweetened his temper any. The Markee even hauled Jerry Paddock on the carpet but Jerry knows how to curry favor with him …”

“To coin a phrase,” said Arthur Packard dryly.

Joe ignored it. “It was Jerry convinced him there was money in raising sheep and once he decided, he was too stubborn to admit he'd made a mistake. He believed he'd bought fifteen thousand head but I think Jerry only brought in about seven thousand—they took a turn around the mountain during the tally—”

Roosevelt said, “Meaning they were counted twice?”

“Yes sir. In any case they were the wrong breed for the climate and they've all been winter-killed. Naturally Jerry Paddock won't admit that. He's been claiming Finnegan and Reuter and the boys have been murdering the sheep out of spite.”

“I believe he's right about that,” said Arthur Packard.

Bill Sewall snorted. “There isn't that much ammunition in all Dakota.”

Arthur Packard said, “Nobody wants to make excuses for Jerry Paddock's petty soulless tyranny. But he's a hard worker. He manages a store and a saloon and several other enterprises. You can hardly accuse him of indolence. And it's quite possible he made an honest mistake about those sheep. He's never raised sheep, any more than the Marquis has. If what you say about Merinos has any truth in it, I'd be inclined to believe they both were misled.”

Joe Ferris pinched his lips together and kicked the stove repeatedly until the fire glowed brighter. “You want to know about business ventures ready to fall down? The Markee's sunk a fortune in that damn fool Deadwood stagecoach line and it's got no future at all.”

“On the contrary,” said Packard. “It provides a vital link between Deadwood and the railroad, and it will increase the commerce through this town threefold within the next year. The line will have a United States Mail contract by summer, and—”

“It won't last half that long.” Joe Ferris said it without exceptional heat—he was smiling at Pack with a kind of amusement that suggested a private ongoing joke between them—but his words were uncompromising. “The stagecoach line will fail because the Markee has put his stupid faith in Jerry Paddock, and Jerry's milking the scheme for all he can. The Markee paid him good money to buy trained teams. Jerry bought wild horses and put the difference in his pocket.”

“Prove it! Prove it!”

“When they start their runs to Deadwood, I wouldn't care to predict the kind of safety record they'll chalk up. There sure as hell won't be any mail contract, Pack.” Joe flapped a hand at the editor in arch dismissal. He went on: “And his cattle business is not what he says it is. I have had the word from businessmen down the line—people I buy drygoods from. Nobody is buying De Morès beef. Of course the Markee makes excuses for that. He claims his cars keep getting shunted off the main line and held aside until the ice melts inside them and the meat spoils. He says the railroad's in cahoots with the Jews on the Chicago Beef Trust—”

“Swift and Armour?” interjected Roosevelt.

Arthur Packard said, “The blasted meat-packing cartels.”

Roosevelt said, “It was Gustavus Swift who developed the insulated refrigerator car and ice-harvesting facilities and the shipment of refrigerated dressed meat to New York and the other cities around the country. Surely Mr. De Morès cannot deny the man the fruits of his own inventions?”

Joe Ferris said, “All I know from the people I talk to in Minneapolis is that every time they see the Markee he's lost another shipment of beef and he's yelling against the Chicago meat-packing Jews and the New York Wall Street Jews.”

“Of whom apparently he believes I am one,” said Roosevelt.

Packard said, “Why can't you fellows concede he may know what he's talking about? Maybe it's true that the Jews resent his youth, his foreignness, his energy. He's constantly engaged by obstacles designed to thwart him. The railroads give better rates to shippers whose business is far smaller than his. The butchers are intimidated from handling his meat. He issued stock in his National Consumers Meat Company at ten dollars a share but no one bought it because people in the market were frightened off by pressures from the Chicago packers. The Marquis has reason to believe the Jews have sent the message out that he is to be destroyed. Well he shall not be destroyed. He has promised that, and I believe it.”

Joe Ferris shook his head with an expression that blended pity and disgust. “He was a fool from the beginning to think he could run a year-round meat packing business. Cattle here in the winter are nothing but skin and bones, and it's all they can do to survive at all. You slaughter them, you get nothing but gristle and bone. The plain truth is,
any
time of year these range-fed beef of his just simply don't taste as good as cattle that have fattened on grain in the Chicago yards. The Chicago packers produce better meat than the Markee does—that's all there is to it. That's why nobody buys his beef. Pack, when are you going to see the Markee's as crazy as the Lunatic was? What are you—a moon circling his planet?”

“Allow me to point out that not only has the Marquis De Morès stimulated the region's economic growth with his capital, but he has a great sense of civic duty. He's built the brick church and the school. Why, he and Lady Medora even pay the schoolteacher's salary. He's organized the fire brigade and donated a park and seen generously to the welfare of everyone who needs help. And he—”

“
I've
never been invited to dine at the château,” Joe Ferris retorted, “nor any other ordinary mortals. He only invites you because you keep writing him up as the Messiah come to Dakota. Only the elite aristocracy are welcomed at that house up there, from which the mighty king of the mountain can look down on
his
village and
his
employees.” Then Joe looked down at his feet. “I am mortally tired of that man. But he's not going to stop. You know his father-in-law? Baron Von Hoffman's bank in New York—second in importance only to Drexel Morgan. If the Markee makes a mess of one venture he can afford to just buy into another.”

“Then Baron Von Hoffman ought to be aware of the nature of his son-in-law's folly,” Roosevelt replied. “Now I shouldn't wish to keep you up. We've business to do and then if it's not too much imposition on your hospitality we'd like to stay the night in your room upstairs. I refuse to put up at De Morès's hotel.”

Bill Sewall said to Wil, “Anyway who'd want to pay the Markee's prices? You know he charges two dollars a night? Highway robbery.”

Joe Ferris said, “Welcome to the upstairs. You know how to find it. The ticks are new. Shouldn't be too much livestock in them. Pump's out back if you want to wash. You going up to the château now?”

“Yes.”

“I'll go with you.”

“I'm grateful. But it isn't your affair, old fellow.”

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

Wil Dow was impatient with himself, for the flesh of his belly trembled as they approached the château's verandah.

Someone had seen them coming: they had seen a man's shadow run toward the house when they were but half way up the bluff. Now post lamps exposed them; anything might be hidden in the darkness beyond; he was damp with sweat even in the deep chill.

They were five; the editor Packard had insisted on accompanying them—“for my newspaper, and who knows, perhaps for history”—and Wil Dow made a point of placing himself on the opposite flank of the five-man line from the miserable toady. Roosevelt plunged forward resolutely between Ferris and Sewall. Wil Dow and his uncle carried rifles; Roosevelt had no weapon in his hand but the engraved Colt revolver was in his holster and it had not escaped Wil Dow's notice that the boss had stripped off his glove.

Four abreast, with the editor off to one side now, they approached the house. Breath steamed from their open mouths; they all were a little winded after the climb.

They were still several yards from the step when the door slammed open. Wil Dow stopped in his tracks. His fists tightened on the rifle. The others to his right had stopped as well.

Up on the porch the Marquis De Morès moved forward into the light—a bamboo stick in his hand and two revolvers thrust through his sash. He was hatless; lamplight gleamed on his wet-down hair.

Roosevelt said, “Mr. De Morès, I want your cattle off my land.”

“Are they on your land, Mr. Roosevelt? I was unaware you owned any land.”

“If the cattle are on my ranch twenty-four hours from now. I shall take appropriate measures.”

“That would not be wise. I hold title to that land.”

“By Valentine Scrip? Show me the document that gives you title to that precise portion of land.”

“It is not necessary. I hold prior right to the land in any case, because my stock were there first.”

Roosevelt smiled: he actually smiled. “All I can see out there that belongs to you is a littering of dead sheep.”

Joe Ferris was looking down toward the far end of the verandah. It was deep in shadow, but something had alerted Joe; he said, “All right. Come on out here where we can all see you,” and after a moment there was a stirring—Jerry Paddock moved forward into a pool of light that fell out through the window. He carried a rifle under his arm.