Manifest Destiny

His awe somewhat dampened by the little dude’s damnable posturings, Pack trudged beside him, fearful the New Yorker would slip on the hard-packed snow.

Roosevelt seemed too weary to initiate conversation. The silence made Pack feel awkward. To dispel it he said, “We’ve been wondering if you’d show up today.”

“Wondering?”

“For the duel? Between you and the Marquis?”

“Good Lord. What’s the date, then?”

“Fourteenth of January.”

“Is it. Fancy that. Well then—by George, I am at his disposal,” Roosevelt whispered. He turned his face toward Pack with the most dreadful livid mask of an expression. Undoubtedly it was intended to be a grin but, undoubtedly as well, Roosevelt had utterly no idea what it did to his appearance.

They went past Geng’s Furnishings & Notions and into the nearest provider of refreshment. It happened to be Jerry Paddock’s saloon. There were a dozen men in the place. The hand-lettered sign on boards advertised EVERY THING FROM COW BOY BITTERS TO DUDE SODA. Roosevelt nearly fell into the nearest chair.

Pack said, “We’ve got to get you to the doctor.”

“Nonsense. I’m fine.”

Pack shoved the table a bit to one side and sat down beside him.

“Coffee,” Roosevelt croaked. He tipped the rifle against the wall behind him.

Jerry Paddock, shifty-eyed and seedy, had been drinking; he looked wickedly cheerful. “Well well. Looky who showed up. Just in time to give the Markee his target practice.”

“The man’s tired and thirsty,” Joe said. “Coffee for both of us, Jerry. Your very best.”

“In a pig’s eye.” Paddock came swinging past the bar and rolled two revolvers out of his shoulders holsters. The Mandarin mustache drooped past his sharp-pointed jaw and his rough gri

Jerry Paddock cocked his two revolvers one at a time with melodramatic deliberation.

Pack said, “For God’s sake, Jerry—”

The earsplitting blast of a gunshot cut him off and left his head reeling. There was another explosion. Pack blinked. He found he had jerked back in his chair hard enough to drive it back against the wall.

Jerry, Paddock had shot holes in his own floor. He wagged the guns in Roosevelt’s face, taunting him.

One of the butchers at the bar said, “Look at old Jerry. Thinks he’s Wild Bill Hiccup.”

Jerry Paddock said in a very quiet dangerous voice, “Four Eyes is going to treat.” He moved forward and planted his feet, so that he stood leaning over Roosevelt, a gun in each hand. “Four Eyes made a damn fool of himself over in that courthouse and now he’s go

There was an audience here; and reputation was a very important thing to a man like Paddock. It would be impossible for him to back down. Pack wondered if Roosevelt knew that. Despite his conviction that the New Yorker’s discomfort was not altogether undeserved, Pack found himself obliged to intrude. “By God, Jerry, if I were armed—”

“Set up the drinks,” Jerry Paddock said stubbornly to Roosevelt. His eyes, quite drunk, blinked with a dull yellow gleam that was full of mortal danger.

Then he fired again: left, right, left, right. The explosions rocked Pack’s head back; he felt dizzy and deaf.

Roosevelt said with a tired sigh of resignation, “Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,” and rose, looking past Paddock toward the bar. And still coming up out of the chair he used all his rising weight to plunge his right fist straight up into the brittle point of Paddock’s jaw.

Both revolvers exploded—possibly from involuntary convulsions of Paddock’s hands, for the bullets went into the floor and by that time Paddock was toppling backward like an axed tree.

Pack was paralyzed with astonishment.

The back of Jerry Paddock’s head struck the bar a sickening thump not six inches to one side of where the butcher was standing.

Paddock tumbled to the floor and Roosevelt was upon him in an instant, twisting the revolvers from Paddock’s limp fists.

Then Roosevelt stumbled back to his chair. It lay on its back as though it had drunk too much and passed out. Roosevelt righted it, collapsed into it and dropped the two revolvers on the table. His exhaustion was obvious.

“Jesus Christ in Tarnation,” exploded the butcher. “Knocked him out cold with a single punch to the jaw!”

Roosevelt said, “He made the mistake of standing to close to me with his heels too close together.”

Pack said, “I don’t believe what I just saw.”

“Then you’re a foolishly overskeptical man, aren’t you.” Roosevelt’s toothsome grin flashed at him. “I told you, didn’t I, that I used to be a boxer at Harvard?”

“I knew that,” Pack said sourly. “I looked into it, you know. I found out you fought more than a dozen matches—and never won a single one.”

“There’s always a first time. And a second as well. You may recall I acquitted myself similarly with Mr. McKenzie last year.”

Nothing daunted Roosevelt’s infuriating good cheer. Pack, shaking his head in exasperation, went behind the bar to pour coffee.

On the next day—January fifteenth, the day fixed for the armed confrontation between Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis De Morès—Pack knocked at the door of Joe Ferris’s store before he walked in. He closed the door behind him against the cold.

Joe said, “Since when have you been knocking at that door?” He stood behind the cash counter in his flour-dusted apron.

“Seems to be a need of formality, somehow.” Feeling a warm pink wash in his cheeks, Pack helped himself to a soda cracker. “He awake yet?”

“No, and he won’t be for another four days unless somebody sets off a pound of blasting powder next to his ear.”

“He’s got two hours.”

“Be that as it may, you think may be the Marquis might extend the schedule a day or two?”

“Now, you know he won’t.”

“And so do you know it. Which kind of sums up the Markee, may be. Now what are we going to do about this fellow upstairs?”

“I’m thinking of telling the Marquis he can’t fight today. Unless you have an alternative to suggest. And incidentally let’s not have any pe

Joe said, “Never had any such intention. But at least you and I agree the duel should not take place today?”

“We do, certainly. The Marquis can be too much the man of honor sometimes—too rigid by half. Nobody denies that. It happens also that he has a business appointment in Chicago that requires him to catch today’s train.”

“Even if he has to step over a dead body to do it.”

“That’s up to Roosevelt, isn’t it? He doesn’t have to turn up, you know.”

“He can’t not turn up,” Joe Ferris said. “He’s not gaited that way and you know it.”

“I might have argued that point with you once upon a time, but after the way he decked Jerry Paddock yesterday—I saw it with my own eyes and I still can’t believe it. He may be a fool but he’s brave enough. No, I don’t expect him to back off.”

Joe said, “There’s one thing we could try. But it would have to come from you, not me. They have some regard for you up there in the château. They won’t let me in the door.”

Pack was suspicious. “Now, what d’you have in mind?”

“That acquittal on the murder charges hasn’t prevented his enterprises from collapsing faster than he could try to save them. Seems to me the spirit’s gone out of him. I think he can be reasoned with—if it comes from the right quarter.”

“Which quarter’s that?”