Manifest Destiny

The air was perfumed with strains of chamber music from a string quartet in the anteroom. The woodwork was ornate and polished to a gleam; the tablecloths were of excellent linen, the service crystal and sterling. How extraordinarily civilized it all was.

As Pack sat down he saw Joe Ferris at a table in the middle of the room. Joe was dressed in his good grey suit and appeared to have finished his meal; he was sitting back toying with an empty brandy snifter. His choice of company made Pack scowl furiously, for Joe sat—evidently at ease and happy to be seen with them—between Theodore Roosevelt and Dutch Reuter’s wife.

There were three others in the company: Huidekoper, Eaton and a man whom Pack believed he recognized as the editor of a Chicago newspaper. Roosevelt was holding forth in his unpleasant squeaking voice. Pack couldn’t make out the words. He sniffed, allowed a scowl to settle appropriately on his face, and examined the bill of fare.

A moment later he was startled when Joe Ferris said from immediately above him, “When you get done marveling at the prices let me recommend the beefsteak. Real prime bull-cheese.”

“Kind of you.”

Pack felt awkward, for everything in the past year and a half had been building toward this event, and he found it disquieting that of all the people with whom he might be conversing in a public place on the eve of such a decisive Monday, he should be seen in the company of a man who made no secret of the fact that he would be testifying for the opposing side.

Joe said dryly, “It’s all right, Pack. I haven’t contaminated the kitchen. Look over there—you see all the big fat defense lawyers he’s got on his team? Enough legal talent to make the sidewalk groan with their weight. Did you know the District Attorney applied to the commissioners for one or two lawyers to help him? I guess the Markee’s boys got to the commissioners first, because they turned him down. He’s going in there all alone.”

Pack had little sympathy to spare. “Poor Ted Long, left all alone in such a den of thieves and criminals as Bismarck.”

“You see Frank Allen there? The fattest one. With the burnsides. Fu

“You’re clutching at straws if you try to make something sinister of that.”

“I guess I must be. Not that there’s any collusion here, of course,” Joe said. “All the same it won’t matter. The truth will out.”

“It most certainly will,” Pack said. Indeed that was exactly what he hoped for.

Joe said, “They’re clowns, all of ’em. I hear the Marquis made the mistake of giving friend Paddock several thousand dollars he was supposed to distribute here and there to make sure the right witnesses showed up. Of course Jerry forgot to distribute it. Maybe it felt too good in his pocket.”

“That’s nonsense. The matter doesn’t need bribery or coercion. Everybody knows the Marquis has always stood ready to clean up the matter then and there.”

“‘Everybody knows,’ hey?” Joe gri

Pack felt a warm flush. “I hate a man who’ll throw my own words back at me.”

“Hate away. What’re you going to eat?”

“Maybe chicken,” Pack said defiantly.

“That’s right,” Joe said, “I’d stay away from the beefsteak if I were you. It may be De Morès beef and you might break a tooth on it.”

Pack looked past Joe at the table where Roosevelt was talking with the Chicago editor. Mrs. Reuter sat in a more or less civilized costume—it had puffed sleeves—and a hat that looked rather like a small overturned milk bucket, or at least Pack assumed it must be a hat because she wore it on her head. She looked prim and grim. Pack said to Joe, “Tell me. Where have you got Dutch?”

“Who says I’ve got him?”

“‘Everybody.’” Pack gri

“You can search my room if you like,” Joe said. “You won’t find him there. Let’s just say I have a feeling Dutch is lying low where he’ll be safe until it’s his turn to testify. May be you’re right he’d have been left alone, and may be you’re not. The Markee can handle one eyewitness against him. I don’t believe he can handle two.”

“Then as usual you underestimate him,” Pack said with confidence. “I’ll have the beefsteak.”

When he returned to his room he unfolded the documents he had obtained four hours earlier from the court clerk. On top was the list of jurors’ names: Edick, Frisby, Gage, Griffin, McKi

Not one Irish name among the twelve. Luffsey’s death had infuriated every Irishman in the Territory.

There were notes regarding various legal documents. The Aliens had kept filing motions for dismissal—quite rightly pounding home the fact that nobody could know who killed Riley Luffsey, and that nobody could even be sure who started the shooting, and therefore in the event of a long and costly courtroom hearing the only possible outcome was predetermined, for the issue of reasonable doubt was the overriding consideration. The case should never have come to trial.

That was the long and the short of it.

But if it hadn’t come to trial—would we ever have a chance of finding the truth?

It was a quandary for sure.

District Attorney Theodore K. Long, who had made no secret of his longstanding friendship with A.C. Huidekoper and who seemed to hate the Marquis with a virulent and all too obvious passion, had refused to drop the case even when the Marquis’s attorneys had succeeded in achieving a change of venue from Mandan to Bismarck. Long had ridiculed that effort.

Pack had been astonished to read the report of District Attorney Long’s frothing vituperation in the Mandan newspaper.

“I shouldn’t think Bismarck would need the glory of such an infamous trial,” avers our righteous Mr. Long. “The entire matter is a gigantic burlesque. Bismarck. Bismarck! We all know the character of Bismarck! Bismarck is a city that chose its very name in a cold-blooded effort to gain investment from the Chancellor of Prussia! Bismarck is the home of more dishonesty, skulduggery, rascality, scoundrelism, fraud, perjury, subornation of perjury, bribing of juries, corruption in public and private places than any other city of the same size on the face of the globe!”

Pack turned a page. He couldn’t help thinking when he glanced through the Indictment that its author must have been three sheets to the wind.

District Court Sixth Judicial District

INDICTMENT

Territory of Dakota, ss: County of Morton The Territory of Dakota, vs. Anto

The Grand Jurors of the Territory of Dakota in and for the Second Subdivision of the Sixth Judicial District, upon their oaths, present:

That heretore, to-wit: On the 26th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three in the county of Billings in said Territory of Dakota, Anto