Manifest Destiny

Dated Aug. 19th, 1885.

(Signed) James R. Clark, Foreman of the Grand Jury.

Monday morning despite the cold the streets of Bismarck were alive with pedestrians; you’d have thought there was going to be a holiday parade. The air was rich with smells of cooksmoke and offal.

The mob outside the brand-new Burleigh County courthouse had an audibly Irish accent and seemed to have lynching on its mind. Pack stood on the top step surveying the scene and was alarmed by the size of the crowd and the growling sound that seemed to pulsate from it, like a warning rumble from deep inside the throat of a predatory beast.

An elaborate phaeton coach was drawn up in front of the courthouse. Eight shotgun men on horseback surrounded the coach, keeping the crowd back away from it.

From alongside the building the Marquis De Morès, escorted by four barrel-shaped deputies, walked around into sight.

The crowd’s growl became a roar.

Ignoring it, the Marquis went directly to the coach. The lady Medora was inside, breathtakingly beautiful, looking out. She did not emerge. The Marquis bowed over her hand and kissed it. There were yells, catcalls, and—from somewhere off to the left—an outburst of whistling and applause.

Pack looked that way and saw at least a dozen men on horseback, all of them applauding fervidly while their elbows clutched ready rifles against their coats. He recognized several of them—men who worked in the abattoir.

When the Marquis straightened he gave the crowd another baleful look and ascended the stairs. “Good morning, Arthur.”

Pack felt the restorative power in the Marquis’s flashing eyes.

The Marquis lifted his head to face the crowd down. His costume was no more subdued than ever; as always he wore the widest sombrero and the wildest scarf. He watched them with scorn.

“Well gentlemen, if you have the rope ready, here I am.”

No one spoke; no one moved.

Craven lily-hearts!

The Marquis’s lip curled. He went inside.

As Pack joined the retinue he looked back and saw the coach wheeling away. She would spend the day, and the next day, and however long it might take, sequestered in her borrowed rooms; she would not attend court, and the force of proper decency in this age was such that her fair name would never be permitted to be mentioned in the Trial.

Shoving past Pack, Jerry Paddock, in the shabby elegance of his worn suit, was escorted into court by two deputies. He walked with the swagger of a sailor prowling the deck in rough seas.

The theater—for that was its actual purpose, Pack thought; this was more melodrama than actual trial—was filled beyond its capacity and reminded him in an ominous way of a wedding gone awry, for the room was plainly divided into two sides, with partisans of the Marquis turning their angry faces frequently toward Luffsey’s friends and toward those who, for whatever reasons, felt they were supporting law and order. He saw rich and poor on either side.

Pack found no seat left unoccupied. He was forced to stand at the back of the room and try to take notes under the baleful eye of an armed deputy whose attitude toward everyone in attendance was one of profound anger and suspicion.

Among the spectators in the seats before him Pack recognized a good many familiar heads and backs. Roosevelt was down there of course, with Joe Ferris and Huidekoper and the others. Mrs. Reuter did not seem to be with them this morning.

On the other side of the room were Granville Stuart and a crowd of important ranchers from central Dakota and eastern Montana—quite a few with their bo

In the rows behind the ruling families were clusters of De Morès men. Joh

Pack’s view of the spectators was limited to an aspect of the backs of their heads; but he had a clear vista of the theater’s stage. The prosecutor, District Attorney Theodore K. Long of Mandan, stood examining a sheaf of papers. Alone behind the Prosecution’s long wooden table, he was a tall Lincolnesque figure—he seemed very young and gawky, and Pack felt affronted; he trusted the prosecutor would not play upon the illusion of his own frailty in a cheap effort to gain the jury’s sympathy.

Defending De Morès and Paddock at the opposite table were the half dozen heavy-set city men he’d seen in the dining room last night. He recognized in profile Frank B. Allen and his brother Edward S. Allen of Allen & Allen, Bismarck. In their midst sat co-defendant Jerry Paddock, hatless and slick, and—a considerable distance from their chairs—the Marquis, sultry-eyed and scornful, gripping his massive silver-headed stick with both slender hands, putting on a magnificent display of his rock-solid Wagnerian belief in his own manifest destiny.

The clerk said in a loud squeak, “All rise!”

There was a clatter of thuddings and scrapings. When everyone was upright the judge walked in, robes flowing behind him: Presiding Judge William H. Francis—a dark-ski

“The clerk will call the jury in the case of Territory against Antoine de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès, and Eldredge G. Paddock.”

Pack found the first day of the trial to be anteclimactic in the literal sense and anticlimactic in the figurative, as it was given over largely to dry recitations of facts by Sheriff Harmon, Dr. Stickney and other non-participants most of whom responded in droning voices as if delivering themselves of lessons memorized in a schoolroom—and, Pack thought, that probably was not far from the truth, for it was all but certain that the zealous caddish Ted Long must have rehearsed his witnesses into the wee hours to make sure their answers would be exactly what he wanted them to be. Pack took pleasure in observing that there was an ironic possibility that Long’s carefully prepared scheme appeared to be flying back in his own face, for the witnesses seemed to have been so over-rehearsed that all the spontaneity had gone out of them. If I were on the jury they certainly shouldn’t make much of an impression on me.

There were testimonies as to the discovery of the body of Riley Luffsey, the determination that it was in fact dead, the doctor’s statements about the bullet wounds inflicted upon Dutch Reuter and Frank O’Do

Ted Long, clearly knowing he had scored a crucial point with audience and jury alike, waited until silence had settled upon the courtroom. Then he said, in a quiet voice that made everyone lean forward, “Now Sheriff Harmon, I ask how you know this is the specific bullet that caused the demise of the decedent. Was it found inside the body?”

“No sir.”

“Where was it found?”

“In a cutbank twenty-eight feet from the corpse.”