Manifest Destiny

It made Pack look that way. He saw a jouncing diminutive horseman emerge from the shadow of a cloud. He was startled. “Roosevelt? You think you’ll get a pe

“What? What gave you that notion?”

Pack said, “You took him out hunting. Now, two days later you came back alone.”

“He changed his mind, that’s all. Decided to ride by himself. I judged he wasn’t hunting game; he was hunting solitude. May be he wanted to look the loneliness square in the face. I know he had some things he wanted to forget.”

“Lost his wife and his mother,” Pack said. “I know all that. Is that what makes him so disagreeable, or was he born like that?”

“He’s got his own way about him,” Joe said. “What makes you think he’s disagreeable?”

“Thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he. Great hunter. Fortunate he didn’t find himself looking a bear square in the face.”

Joe hitched up his cartridge belt with the flats of his wrists. “I guess he didn’t, as you see. Know Blacktail Creek?”

“Heard of it.”

“Downstream on the east bank, thirty miles north of here, may be more. Anyhow a fair day’s ride. There’s a good ford. I’ve taken hunters in there a few times—good big stand of cottonwoods and some bottomland pasture, and the river’s wide and gentle about the bend, so you find game often as not. One of the boys told me Mr. Roosevelt staked it out last week. Say he’s pla

Joe watched the horseman’s ungainly approach. “Well,” he said dubiously, “good luck to you.”

Riley Luffsey brought the Lunatic across the embankment, half dragging the poor creature. Luffsey did his best to pretend he wasn’t winded. The crowd trailed them toward the Bastille. Downriver the approaching Roosevelt must have noticed the activity, for he changed course and advanced.

Pack saw him coming but was drawn by something more vital; after a moment he forgot about the horseman altogether as he kept close watch on the Lunatic in case those eyes, with their profound secret, should rise to meet his own; but the Lunatic stood with his head down, chest heaving, and never gave him a glance. Pack felt obscurely betrayed.

Pack felt the familiar pressing urgency—an insistence to know more. He needed to get beneath the surfaces of things and find out what was hidden in their crevices and shadows and dreams, for only in such inaccessible and guarded places could one hope to find the important secrets.

“I ran him till he dropped,” Luffsey boasted, puffing. “You all see when I butted him into the river there? Gave him a right fine bath. He ‘most bit my nose off but look at him now—not an ounce of fight left in him.”

Frank O’Do

The Lunatic stood in bleary silence while Joe Ferris tried to entice him into the shack with an uncovered bowl of cold rice and beans. Breathing very fast, the Lunatic watched it but seemed too tired to follow Joe.

Riley Luffsey said to Fi

Pack heard growls of agreement from some of the hunters. They all were ready to gather their wi

Fi

Young Luffsey appeared to be unmindful of the displeasure of the man from Bitter Creek. The youth whooped at the sky. He gri

Joe Ferris ripped the revolver from his holster and pointed it in Luffsey’s direction and shouted, “Let it go!”

Luffsey rocked back and stared up at Joe.

Pack was astonished.

A growl of dangerous anger rolled through the crowd.

Joe Ferris glared at them all.

The Lunatic crawled around fearfully like a half-squashed insect, knees drawn up, hands over his head.

Joe waved the revolver in a sweep that brought the entire mob within its intimacy. “What a pack of big brave men we got here! You coyotes take your pleasures from watching this poor dumb critter chew gravel?”

Luffsey was getting to his feet. He seemed unable to decide whether to make his face surly or cocky. He took a pace toward Joe Ferris.

Joe cocked the Remington: a loud scraping ratchet of warning.

Pack said, “Now, wait now—”

Fearful and intent, he nearly jumped a foot when Theodore Roosevelt came beside him and stopped his horse at the edge of the crowd. “What’s all this?”

Joe Ferris had all his attention on the ruffians. His revolver stirred back and forth, keeping them at bay. “Pack, get the critter’s feet under it and put it back in the box where it’ll be safe from these drunks.”

Before Pack could move, Roosevelt’s piping voice cut forward overhead: “Is this the strange fellow I’ve heard of?” He dismounted and walked unhurriedly to the Lunatic. “What is it, my friend? Have you something to say? Have no fear.”

Roosevelt’s own fearlessness astounded Pack; but then he thought it likely it wasn’t courage at all, but merely ignorance.

Anger put a chalk-white strain on Frank O’Do

Roosevelt helped the Lunatic to his feet. “Nothing to say, have you?” The New Yorker peered through his dusty eyeglasses at the assembled hunters, and at Pack, and finally at Joe Ferris with the revolver in his hand. Roosevelt said, “This poor fellow deserves care, not ridicule. He certainly doesn’t belong here.’ He pointed an angry digit at the Bastille.

Joe said, “Belongs out in the woods to be its own free natural self—or else someplace where somebody can look after it. Poor critter should not be a toy for the amusement pack.”

“Perfectly right, Joe old fellow. He should be taken away for observation and treatment. There’s an asylum at the territorial capital, I believe.”

Redhead Fi

Roosevelt said, “In the sense that one has a responsibility to those who are not fortunate enough to be able to care for themselves. Yes, he belongs to me. He’s my responsibility, and yours, and yours, and yours.”

“You have got a leaky mouth, mister.”

Privately Pack agreed with Fi

Frank O’Do

Roosevelt said, “It appears to me, Joe old fellow, that your friends might benefit from a word or two about such subjects as kindness and decency and moral probity.”

Fi

Joe Ferris pointed the revolver at Fi

“Just where in the hell did you screw up enough foolishness to point a gun in my face?”

“You know this isn’t worth a fight, Red.”