Manifest Destiny

“What news is coming to town?”

“You’ll see.”

“What’s the mystery?”

“Seeing’s believing. Best for you to witness it with a fresh clean open mind. I wouldn’t want to go coloring your editorial opinions.”

“Now, Joe, you’re an exasperation.”

“I know I am.” Joe seemed pleased with himself.

They walked on, bootheels kicking up little whorls of powder dust. Masking his nose with a curved palm against the abattoir stink, Pack recalled the six or seven De Morès horsemen who’d ridden out east just now. Something odd about them nagged at him and it struck him now that all of them had been carrying rifles and wearing holstered revolvers. He glanced at Joe Ferris’s belted sidearm and wondered what things were coming to.

Riley Luffsey came hurrying up behind them. “Mr. Packard? I hope that’s not a wool shirt you’re wearing.”

“Why?”

Joe Ferris made a face at Luffsey and pushed Pack forward into Bob Roberts’s Bug Juice Dispensary. There was much more of a crowd than one should expect at this hour on a Monday afternoon; and come to think of it, why was Joe Ferris closing the doors of his store in the middle of the afternoon?

A man nearly backed into him; Pack put his hand gently against the man’s shoulder and eased past him. He heard someone say, “Strong? Naw. I wouldn’t say this snake juice was strong. But you give a shot of it to a fifteen-pound puppy and he’ll pull a freight train.”

Dan McKenzie, the blacksmith, was swapping tall stories with a friend. “Why that’s nothing. Just last fall I seen a petrified bird sitting on a petrified tree singing a petrified song.”

Some of them were onetime buffalo hunters fretting their lives away in unemployed bitterness. But why wasn’t McKenzie at work?

Pack sensed expectancy in the air. He said to Joe Ferris, “What is it?”

“May be we’ll find out soon enough.”

By the barroom piano a group of men sang in rough voices the popular song “What Was Your Name in the States?”

At the long plank bar Redhead Fi

Fi

“You want to know what I think?” asked young Riley Luffsey. No one encouraged him but he went on anyway: “I think he’s no French nobleman at all. I think it’s a lie—just a way to avoid having to hobnob with common folks.”

Frank O’Do

Pack drew breath to retort but Joe Ferris pulled him aside. “You want a Do

“Now, don’t scream at me, Joe.”

“I thought we were friends. Why have a friend if you can’t scream at him? I’m trying to save you a beating—or worse.”

“The Marquis has every right to fence his own land.”

“Sure, I know. The Markee can do no wrong. To hear you tell it, the sun shines out of his hind end. But don’t tell it that way in here—these boys will make wolf meat out of you.”

Dutch Reuter came weaving away from the bar, drunk and mildly angry. “They not ready yet to fight are. What good they are?” He pushed toward the door.

Joe Ferris said, “Where you going, Dutch?”

“Clearing out. Someplace where a man the air can breathe.”

“Don’t you like it around here any more?”

“Like, not like—no matter, Joe, I got no job. Maybe Dickinson I try, maybe Black Hills.”

“Wait then. I know a man who may give you a job. I’ll have a word with him.” Joe moved away, his arms across Dutch’s shoulders. Pack recalled that Joe had ridden with Dutch back in the buffalo-hunting days. If you had ever been a friend of Joe’s you could always count on his help.

Behind the bar Bob Roberts examined both sides of a papermoney note before he shoved it in his pocket and counted out a handful of coins in change. A filthy hunter elbowed his way to the bar, leaned across and spoke rapidly in Roberts’s ear. Roberts looked startled. Then he threw his head back. His big round voice boomed out into the room. “They’re coming!”

At first Pack had no clue to the saloonkeeper’s meaning; but in the abrupt silence that followed, he heard a faint drumming thunder.

The crowd listened with a religious intensity of silence. The rataplan grew slowly louder.

Bob Roberts broke the spell:

“By the Lord God, it’s true then!”

There was a continuing stillness of some duration, punctuated by a growing racket of hoofs and followed by a surprisingly quiet statement from Redhead Fi

“The blackhearted devil.”

There was a surge toward the doors. Pack caught Joe Ferris’s eye. They waited out the crush and afterward followed the crowd outside.

By then three point riders had entered the head of the street and Pack finally understood when he saw the dust-caked woollies behind them—a sea of bobbing sheep, fu

The breeze, having shifted around to the east, brought with it a new odor—the stink of sheep oil. It set Frank O’Do

The sheep bobbed like corks. Their faces, Pack thought, were truly i

One block short of Roberts’s saloon the point riders turned the herd left, heading them toward the embankment. A single horseman posted himself at the near side of the intersection to prevent strays from wandering this way. He didn’t seem to have any difficulty; the sheep trotted around the bend as obediently as children in a follow-the-leader game. They looked like four-legged flour barrels.

The Bad Landers were aghast.

Joe Ferris said, “How many? Five, seven thousand goddamn sheep? Didn’t have to drive the stupid critters right through town. Take two inches of topsoil off the streets.”

Fi

A hundred yards away Jerry Paddock stood in the doorway of the De Morès office building. Dressed all in black, he watched the sheep’s progress. His face was not legible beneath the lowered hatbrim; the droop of his Oriental mustache gave him a sardonic look in the misty dust.

Young Luffsey, half full of whiskey, stepped past Pack and lifted his revolver toward the flowing sheep. Before the youth could steady his aim Pack grasped his arm and pushed it down.

Pack said mildly, “Might hit one of the riders.”