Manifest Destiny

Deep in the horizon’s haze he thought he saw antelope. He didn’t remark it to Roosevelt; he did not hanker for several hours’ hard riding followed by the acrid stink of shooting and the stench, even worse, of bleeding and ski

Safe enough not to point out the herd in the distance: Roosevelt, even with his storm windows, couldn’t see well enough to discover it by himself.

Joe remembered that much from last time. Roosevelt still looked as frail as he’d looked last summer when he’d come for the hunting. Consider yourself engaged. That hunt had been a true misery. Please God let us not repeat it. Let this one be easy.

He listened absently to thudding hoof-falls and squeaks of saddle leather. As they rounded each bend there was a new shape to the horizon. Roosevelt said, “Don’t the colors amaze you?”

“Guess so.” They clattered across a rock-fall of loose shale colored like rainbows. Above, a few chalk-white lateral stripes had bled down over the darker strata, leaving stains like whitewash. This stretch wasn’t much for green—nothing but a few stunted cedars on the hills.

“This air—” Roosevelt puffed his narrow chest to draw a wheezing breath, coughed, recovered “—fine clean sting to it, like the Alps. Like good tart cider. Look at the size of that sky. ‘Wild Lands’ I might better understand. But they’re not bad. Who called them Bad Lands?”

“Everybody. Indians first.”

“Which Indians?”

So he hadn’t changed much; hadn’t grown up any. He was still asking questions like a schoolboy. The dude seemed to want to stuff into his head every useless fact in the world.

Joe extended his hand palm-up in a gesture. “Indians. Lakota, Crow, Cheye

“They can’t have all lived here.”

Joe contained his vexation. “Indians don’t live anywhere, Mr. Roosevelt. They drift on the plains. All the tribes camped and hunted here in the olden days. Sioux called the country Mako Shika, ‘land bad.’ Take a look at the old map in Arthur Packard’s newspaper office—must be a hundred years old—you see where some French-Canada voyageur put down ‘Bad lands to cross.’”

“Mauvaises terres pour traverser.” Roosevelt showed teeth, proud of his French. Then his face closed up again.

“They tell it twenty years ago old General Sully chased Sioux through here—he’s the one supposedly called the place ‘Hell with the fires put out.’” Joe considered the buttes. “He was partly wrong. Some fires still burning.”

“I remember those. Wasn’t there a coal vein burning near Huidekoper’s?”

“Still on fire. Lignite. They burn for years.”

“I make them ‘Good Lands,’” Roosevelt insisted. “When you come from a life of crowded noisy little rooms filled with tobacco smoke—it’s a stalwart country, Joe.” His face twisted and squinted. “Why, when I was a boy my whole ambition was to take a horse and a rifle out on the prairie and ride day after day without encountering another human soul—far off from all mankind. That’s freedom.”

“Yes sir. For you I guess. I never did take to range-riding. I’ll have four walls and a roof—I am of an indoor disposition. A little luck, I’ll be the second banker in Medora.”

“Who’s the first?”

“Marquis De Morès.”

Roosevelt made no reply; he gigged the horse and rode on. Not like him to be so uncommunicative and glum.

May be just a bad moment—he must be tired from the train journey. Better wait, drop more hints another time.

“We’ll get outfitted at Eaton’s ranch.” Joe added hopefully, “Unless you’d rather go fishing?”

“I never fish,” Roosevelt said. “Can’t bear to sit still that long.” He seemed on the brink of tears.

A three-strand wire fence crossed the trail. Someone had cut it and left the curled strands to dangle. When they rode through the gap Roosevelt said, “Is this Eaton’s fence?”

“No sir. Marquis De Morès’s.”

“Doesn’t the man know enough to put a gate where there’s an obvious road?”

“May be they don’t bother with gates back in France where he comes from.”

Ahead three men hunkered in cottonwood shade, their horses tied to trees; one of the men trailed a fishing line in the river.

“Say, Mr. Roosevelt, be careful with these men now.”

“Who are they?”

“‘Bitter Creek’ Redhead Fi

“I don’t believe I know them.”

“Don’t believe you’ll want to,” Joe said.

“By George, it appears I don’t have a large choice in the matter.”

Fi

Joe drew rein facing them at the edge of the grove. Beside him he was relieved to see, out of the corner of his eye, that Roosevelt followed suit. The mood the dude was in, it didn’t seem safe to trust his prudence; and if Roosevelt should suffer an attack of one of his unpredictable moments, God alone knew what effect it might have on the three trigger-happy hunters.

The third man remained below on the riverbank, squatting on his heels with the fishing pole in his hand; that was young Riley Luffsey. He had a rifle across his lap and looked at them over his shoulder with his customary cocky dare.

Joe said, “You can put up the firearms.”

Pugnacious and surly, “Bitter Creek” Redhead Fi

“Mr. Roosevelt from New York. Gentle down—we don’t work for the Marquis. It was you boys cut the fence, I guess?”

“They Strang it, we cut it,” Frank O’Do

Fi

Joe said, “He claims to own all this land. Valentine Scrip.”

Redhead Fi

Joe pointed them out for Roosevelt’s benefit. “Michael Fi

“Delighted to meet you,” Roosevelt said without any evidence of delight. “And I agree with you that public roads ought to remain open.” At least he had the sense not to dismount.

Fi

“Sorry, gentlemen. No offense intended, but I have a contract with Joe Ferris.”

“Your bad luck then. You’ll go out two, three weeks and come in empty-handed. Count on it.” Fi

Fi

More than one time Joe had heard Redhead Fi

Fi

Story was, some of these Irish fugitives had slit the throats of their rich landlords and fled to the New World. Riley Luffsey was too young for that—only eighteen now, and he’d been in America long enough to lose his brogue—but the rumors might be true enough where O’Do