Manifest Destiny

Once in a while Joe tried to get a word in about his natural abilities with bookkeeping figures. He laid hints like rabbit snares, hoping the dude would step into them.

Roosevelt was more polite than most—his inquiries indicated he was listening to what Joe had to say; sometimes he even seemed interested in Joe’s ideas about the great successes in Commerce that awaited a man who knew the country, knew the people, had vision and—most important—had capital to invest. “This country’s going to need a good mercantile store and a solid bank. Why, a man like me for instance—all it would take to set me on my way would be a little seed investment. The man who staked me could just sit back and watch me do all the hard work, and bring in a handsome return, yes sir.”

“I certainly admire your confidence and ambition, old fellow.” Roosevelt beamed infuriatingly at him.

There was no progress. Day after day, conversation was all the encouragement Joe got out of his employer. And the conversation invariably returned to the same exchange:

“Buffalo today, Mr. Ferris?”

“We’ll see, Mr. Roosevelt.”

The dude coughed and wheezed and vomited with alarming frequency but he kept surprising Joe. He proved an accomplished ski

That seemed an accomplishment of dubious worth. And anyhow if a man could not spell any better than Roosevelt, he didn’t appear to have much future as a writer. But Joe curbed his tongue.

Again to his surprise the sick young dude proved to be an adept hunter. On the stalk he owned patience and endurance. He understood the importance of ranging downwind from the prey. And his incessant conversation came to a halt—it was the one circumstance under which he accepted the requirement of silence.

But as a shooter he was indifferent: his eyesight was imperfect even with the aid of glasses and his eager energy did not make up for a lack of simple dexterity. He used up a considerable arsenal of ammunition for each animal he actually felled.

At times the New Yorker had a hard time breathing. He would hunch forward over a painful cough and there would be a frightful chuffing and whistling as he tried to expel air from his chest; then he would drag in a breath—a sound like ripping cloth—and the desperate process would begin again. He couldn’t get enough air in or out.

And there were times when he’d say, “Go on ahead, old fellow. I’ll catch up.” He’d dismount and go behind a bush. Sometimes it was the loose runs, as if he had worms; other times Joe tried to ignore it but couldn’t help hearing him throw up.

The dude explained it once, as if the names of things mattered. “Cholera morbus and asthma. I’ve had them since I was a child. They come and go. Never mind.”

It was the nearest thing to a complaint Joe heard from him.

At first Joe had taken him for a ridiculous little caricature, full of puffery and embroidery—all bombastic flourishes—but in fact he was turning out to be a cauldron of contradictions. In spite of the frailties his energies seemed to have no end. He would read an entire book each day in the saddle and another by campfire-light. Most of his huge duffel bag was filled with books. He was twenty-three years old—four years younger than Joe, but he made Joe feel old, what with his childlike enthusiasms and ignorances.

The dude was stupid and brilliant, oblivious and curious, foolish and sensible; he was a babe in the woods with the wisdom of a sage. Once offhandedly he remarked to Joe that he had graduated three years ago from Harvard University magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and that before he grew too much older he had the ambition to contribute a few dozen volumes of his own writings to the learned libraries of the world.

Joe replied that it seemed to him there were already too many books in the world, for no man could possibly read them all.

“Perhaps not. But he can try,” Roosevelt riposted with a horse-toothed grin.

“That what you do back in the States? Write books all the time?”

“Only sometimes. I’m the Minority Leader of the New York State Assembly.”

Joe made no reply to that. He didn’t believe a word of it. The dude was hardly old enough to vote, let alone get elected to high office.

According to habit Joe made a turn on foot around the camp. His shadow moved around him. He could see it—the moon was that bright; it reminded him that not too many months ago it wouldn’t have been safe to go walking around straight up in moonlight sufficient to guide a Sioux arrow.

They spent one particularly long day in the saddle, part of it in a fruitless galloping pursuit of an elusive pair of whitetail across very rough ground. In the end they emerged on sweating horses at the head of a dry coulee and saw forty miles of sunflower prairie without a single beast stirring anywhere.

Heat pressed in on them. Joe pushed his lips in and out to keep himself from exclaiming aloud. This whole damned hunt must have been designed as a trial for him—or perhaps it was a message from the Almighty that he should follow his instincts and get out of this bloodstained business and find himself a respectable indoor trade.

“They must be up ahead somewhere,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes sir. Be that as it may, we need water. I used up the last of my canteen at breakfast. Yours?”

“The same, I suppose.” The dude shook his water bottle to make sure it was empty.

“Eight hours or more since then.”

“I don’t feel thirsty,” Roosevelt said manfully.

“Yes sir. But these horses do.” He looked at the foam on the animals’ necks. “May be we’d best get off and walk, sir.”

They led the animals along the escarpment from headland to headland, peering down the steep canyons into the Bad Lands for the greenery that would signal water at the surface.

Partly to distract Roosevelt from the increasing peril of their predicament and partly to advance his own schemes, Joe talked about his ideas: a drygoods mercantile store, perhaps a bank. He made it sound idle, but there was no doubt this silly little fellow was a very rich dude. So he talked on, more loquaciously than was his usual habit, allowing Roosevelt to see glimpses of his enthusiasm.

But Roosevelt remained unmoved. Perhaps I am simply a bad drummer, Joe thought.

He sca

The wagon was a full day behind them, loaded with skins and heads; the meat was hanging from cottonwood trees and, knowing the proclivities of coyotes and wolves and bears and cats and Indians, Joe had his doubts whether there would be much left by the time they returned to claim it—if they emerged from this wretched adventure alive.

Just give me a desk and a chair someplace inside four walls and I’ll never again put in jeopardy the life and good health of one of Your poor dumb creatures.

Roosevelt twisted an ankle over a loose rock but he limped on gamely, chattering with a high-pitched cheer that drove Joe nearly mad. “Do you know it reminds me a bit of the ancient desert lands of Egypt. My father took us there when I was a lad. I shot ever so many birds. My sister was furious—she couldn’t stand the form-aldehyde smell of the taxidermy chemicals.” He giggled and lurched on, breath sawing. Then: “Across the desert we went on camels…. I half expect a valley of great pyramids just beyond the horizon there.”