Free Brian Garfield by Manifest Destiny Page A

what you say, Finnegan seems cut from the same cloth as the notorious Jerry Paddock. I’m surprised they’re enemies.”
    â€œI guess they’re so alike they just had to hate each other,” said Joe Ferris.
    â€œSeems to be plenty of acrimony on this frontier,” Roosevelt murmured.
    â€œA man with good sense stays above it.”
    â€œA man with sound moral underpinnings will seek out the right and wrong, and choose his side according to the right.”
    That was easy for a man to say when he was merely a visitor and didn’t have to live here. Joe waited for Roosevelt’s further comment but it was not forthcoming. The dude relapsed into gloom.
    Long shadows sprawled in the coulees; warmth was draining out of the afternoon. The horses carried them south at a lazy gait. Half asleep in the saddle Joe recalled Roosevelt’s earlier trip west.
    He remembered how the dude had said, “Joe—my little war dance when I got my buffalo. I wouldn’t like the little pink wife to hear of it. My Alice teases me sometimes about my wild barbarian ways. I don’t mind, really—she’s too lovely and lovable a girl, you can’t mind anything she does—but I prefer not to give her unnecessary ammunition, don’t you know. You’ll keep it to yourself, then?” And Roosevelt had all but winked at him, man-to-man.
    Now he marked the difference in the man. Roosevelt had been as frail then as now; but his enthusiasm had been unquenchable last fall. Joe remembered most of all Roosevelt’s absurd grin—and wondered what had become of it. This Roosevelt, wrapped in gloom, was a different and darker man.

Three
    A .C. Huidekoper took one of his pleasures from listening not simply to people’s words but to the music and rhythms in their speech. Just now—above the voices of several men and women in the hot smoky room—Howard Eaton’s penetrating tenor was a prominent melody:
    â€œThe Indians will have to learn to herd—or they’ll starve.”
    Huidekoper let the talk roll around him while he watched the crowd. Most of the others in Eaton’s big low-ceilinged front room were talking of hunting and of the arrival in town of the beautiful young Madame De Morès, with regard to whom Mrs. Eaton and Huidekoper’s wife and three other women kept their voices to a twitter of murmurs, their conversation circumspect because there was a De Morès man in the room.
    Huidekoper stroked his muttonchop whiskers and smiled when spoken to; he made himself appear at ease because he didn’t care to reveal the expectant abeyance with which he watched the door for the appearance of the Cyclone Assemblyman from New York.
    They made for a sizable crowd—more than a dozen ranchers tonight, four or five wives, several Easterners wearing the trappings of wealth. It was not unusual; Howard Eaton, who loved beer and loud argument, had made his Custer Trail Ranch as much a beacon for visitors as were its lamplit windows for the insects that swarmed against the glass.
    The voices were young; it was a country for youth. It occurred to Huidekoper that at thirty-seven he might be the oldest person in the room. Most of them, even the owners of the big herds, were still in their twenties.
    All the young energy, abetted by the generosity of Howard Eaton’s bar, made for a boisterous din. But now a lapse in discourse rippled the length of the long room, muting the racket. Alerted, Huidekoper looked over his shoulder and saw that—in spite of his vigilance—they had managed to take him by surprise after all.
    Joe Ferris, compact but wide-shouldered, showed himself in the doorway. In alarm Huidekoper at first thought Joe was alone—he was so short it was difficult to believe anyone might be concealed beyond him. But then Joe stepped inside and behind him in the doorway, diminutive and pale in the waning afternoon light, appeared his dude—New