Finnegan thought about it.

The Lunatic puffed and blinked. He had most of his attention on Roosevelt; evidently his curiosity was drawn by the irritating screech and the unfamiliar vowels of the dude’s talk. Pack found himself glaring at Roosevelt with a resentment that surprised him. There was something odiously vexatious about him. It was enough to put anyone out of countenance.

Joe Ferris’s revolver stirred. “You boys don’t really give a damn about the critter one way or the other, and I don’t believe you want to do injury to a gentleman like Mr. Roosevelt. Red, why not just take the boys back to the saloon and buy a round of drinks. You owe it to them, for those bets you lost.”

Evidently it was the right thing to say, for the tone of the crowd’s growl changed. Someone yelled, “Red’s buying!”

There was a loud and, Pack thought, somewhat ominous cheer.

Finnegan, sensing the shift in interests, backed down.

“Just one round. On my chalk.”

Joe Ferris essayed a bit of a smile; for some reason Riley Luffsey laughed aloud and that broke the malice.

Finnegan, still irascible, pointed a menacing finger at Joe and then turned it to aim at Roosevelt, but had nothing to say; he walked away and the hunters walked with him.

Riley Luffsey had one more look at the Lunatic, laughed again and bounced swaggering away, calling out ahead: “Wait on, wait on. Don’t forget my winnings. I’m faster than a slough pig—I tell you boys I am the speediest man in Dakota! I could’ve outrun a bullet from Wild Bill himself!”

The Lunatic groveled and groaned. Joe Ferris put the revolver away and studied his own hand with surprise. Theodore Roosevelt skinned his teeth; his tusks gleamed. “Masterful. By Jove, you’re a capital fellow, Joe.”

“Just trying to keep the peace.” Joe cleared his throat manfully. “Now if I had the fare, I would be willing to deliver this poor critter to Bismarck, sure enough.”

Pack noted that the sun had peeled skin from Roosevelt’s face; he looked mottled as if he’d been too close to a bad fire. Roosevelt said, “I’m seldom mistaken in my judgements of men, and I knew from the outset that our Joe Ferris here was of a finer stamp.”

Pack felt a sarcastic anger that felt unfamiliar: he said to Joe Ferris, “Now, you are sure enough the hero of Medora. Why it’s you who’s the Umpire you were talking about.” He said to Roosevelt, “In generations to come they’ll be erecting statues of Joe Ferris all over the nation—people will salute them as they go by.”

“I don’t know why you’re picking on me, Pack. All I want is a fair shake for everybody and a chance to stock the shelves in my new store and give the competition a run for its money.”

Joe’s sly glance edged toward Roosevelt. He said to Pack in a sincere voice, “I wish you had the capital to back me, Pack. We’d show the world. Just a few thousand’s all it would take to get me started.”

Pack made a face. He looked at the dude to see if Joe’s unsubtle hints were taking effect.

The terms he’d seen attached to Theodore Roosevelt by the press were words that seemed to describe a whirlwind rather than a man: histrionic, harsh, heroic, ebullient, upright, downright, forthright, bumptious, smug, impatient, loud, opinionated, spoiled, garrulous, gallant, blunt, clear-thinking, stubborn, impulsive, swashbuckling, inexhaustible, vehement, snobbish, dyspeptic….

The slight and slender young man who stood before him now did not have the shoulders to support all those words.

The New York dude climbed onto his horse and settled his feet carefully in the stirrups, adjusted the reins and finally looked up to study the two of them through his gold-rimmed spectacles. His regard settled on Joe Ferris and he delivered himself of a theatrical sigh. “If only to bring an end to your unceasing broad hints,” he said, “five thousand and not a penny more—and I shall expect you to look after my money with a zeal equal to that which you’ve just displayed in looking after this poor insane chap.”

Without waiting a reply, Roosevelt neck-reined away, lifting the horse to an immediate canter.

With a straight face Joe Ferris said to Pack, “I told you he’d invest.”

Pack pouted at him in suspicion. “I wish I could believe you were genuine all the way through. Now, how much bravery did you invent for the dude’s benefit?”

Joe Ferris smiled. “Be that as it may.”

Five

The prairie put Wil Dow in mind of the Maine sea: it seemed to consist of nothing but horizon. He chased a steer into the herd, eased back on his saddlesores, watched the dusty backs of the cattle and was content to make slow passage through the thick rippling grass that grew chest-high to the horse.

His quick eye caught it far off when a frightened pronghorn doe bolted; the signal patches of her rump flashed white with alarm and Wil Dow heard the grunt of her peculiar utterance, half bay and half snort. Then he saw her pursuers—a pair of hungry coyotes. The doe soon distanced them and was gone.

This was truly a grand adventure.

He saw Uncle Bill Sewall emerge from the fog of dust. Uncle Bill was caked with clay. They had been on the trail from the rail yards at Dickinson two days—just long enough so that the sight of his uncle on a Texas-rigged horse no longer startled Wil Dow.

“Heat could make a rattlesnake pant,” Uncle Bill Sewall complained. He tugged a burr from his bright red beard.

“In the shade there’s most always a breeze.”

“The grand trouble is, no shade to get in.” Uncle Bill squeezed his eyes shut. He had lived all his life in the deep woods of Maine and seemed to have trouble adjusting to the glare of the open land. “It’s a dirty country, Wil, and very dirty people mostly.”

“Why it seems healthy to me, Uncle Bill. Where’s Mr. Roosevelt?”

“Out front. Good thing he found us last night. I don’t see a profusion of landmarks for navigation around here.”

“He’s in dreadful low spirits.”

“He went down into a blackness that few can ever know. But I believe he’ll turn out all right. All his life they’ve told him he was too little for this, too weak for that, too sick to do a thing. You can see how much that wisdom has slowed him down.”

Wil Dow and his uncle had guided young Roosevelt on a good many hunting expeditions through the wild woods of Maine and during the very first of them, when Wil had been just a boy and Roosevelt had been even younger, Uncle Bill had warned Wil Dow, “The doctor said Theodore ain’t strong but he’s all grit and he’d as soon kill himself before he’d even say he’s tired.” The upshot had been that neither of them had been able to keep up with the sickly New Yorker.

Now he’d wired them in Island Falls and had guaranteed them a share of anything they made in the cattle business, and if they lost money Roosevelt said he’d absorb the losses and pay their wages. Yesterday at the railroad corrals, shaking hands with their employer, Sewall had said, “It is a pretty one-sided proposition. But if you think you can stand it, I think we can.”

Sewall had told Wil Dow he suspected that perhaps Roosevelt had invited the two to join him because they reminded him of his Alice Lee. She’d been a New England girl.

An eerie howling moaned about the camp. Wil Dow wheeled to keen the darkness.

Roosevelt stopped wheezing long enough to say, “Wolves—the evening concert. The first time you hear it, it can frighten you out of your wits. Never mind, Wil. Contrary to legend they are most harmless beasts, except to livestock.”

Wil lied, “I’m not afraid, Mr. Roosevelt.”

The New Yorker regarded him with squinting blinking thoughtfulness. “It’s all right to be afraid. I used to be afraid of everything. Everything. But by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually took control of it. You’ll see. Look here, Wil—fear makes your perceptions keener—adds to your energy and helps you perform beyond your usual capacity.” Roosevelt’s voice piped high. “Being afraid can be a friend. But it depends, don’t you know, on whether you’re in control of it—or it’s in control of you. Don’t say you can’t be frightened. Of course you can be frightened. Anyone can. The trick’s to stay in control after you do get frightened.”