Brian Garfield Read Free Page B

the knees of his trousers, the train was in sight, coming down out of the cut between the eastern bluffs.
    Watching the advance of the heavy steam locomotive, Pack felt his heart race with an unexpected thrill—and at the same time his eyes swiveled fearfully toward the trees upriver where the evil horseman had disappeared.
    The run to the Elkhorn that day became a flickering confusion in Pack’s mind; later when he thought back on it there was little he remembered of the thirty-mile ride downriver except for the heat, the gritty dust in his teeth and the general sweaty discomfort of it.
    The train came in on time and there was a crowd of men with the President: Westerners, most of them—Roosevelt’s avid Colorado and Wyoming boosters from the Rough Rider regiment, but strangers to Pack. Right from the outset Pack felt himself pushed to the back of things; there was no chance to get close, and in any event he felt a troublesome responsibility to watch the horizons for any hint of Jerry Paddock.
    He was not able to get close to the President during most of the day, especially at the beginning; he was not even in earshot when he saw Roosevelt jump down off the train and climb onto the horse Huidekoper provided. Pack watched as the President, attired in rough riding clothes and a near-shapeless narrow-brim hat, adjusted his feet in the stirrups, gathered the reins and led the parade through town.
    After that it was all Pack could do to keep up; Roosevelt made a thundering race of it.
    Half an hour downriver the President slowed the pace to breathe the horses. They dismounted and led the animals. Someone said something that brought out Roosevelt’s peculiar chattering bark of laughter. “We’ll send half a dozen gunboats and the Colombians won’t know the difference. It takes four weeks on muleback to reach their capital—and in any event they’re in the midst of what appears to be an interminable and perpetual civil war, with the result that it’s impossible to know whom to treat with. Only one solution, by George. The Panamanians will declare their independence under our protection and we’ll make a canal-building treaty with them and then you may mark my words, boys, I shall make the dirt fly.”
    With jaundiced suspicion Pack regarded the costume worn by the President of the United States. It managed somehow to be both calculated and ingenuous. The outfit had seen hard service: slouch campaign hat, dark coat, soft negligee shirt with turndown collar, brown corduroy riding pants, soft leather leggins and stout stovepipe boots. It was the uniform of a hard-riding fighter—a man of the people—a working-man.
    Yet Roosevelt had been born into a fortune, tutored for a life in the aristocracy, trained at Harvard in law and crew. By birth and heritage he was as much a working-man as Louis XIV. But he wore the rough clothes naturally—because he had earned them; even his enemies must concede that.
    Someone else spoke; Roosevelt replied with his back turned, so Pack couldn’t hear it; then the President strolled nearer and Pack heard him address Joe Ferris:
    â€œAnd how’s the hunting, old man?”
    â€œNot much game left nowadays, sir. Everything’s near extinct.”
    â€œI’m doing what I can about that in Washington, you know. We’ve got to protect these animals or future generations will never get a crack at them, will they now.”
    It was a topic that provoked Pack to drag his horse forward, prying a place amid half a dozen trudging strangers, to plunge in with a question: “What do you think of this new Teddy Bear they’ve put on the market?”
    â€œAn abomination,” said the man who hated to be called Teddy. “I’m not yet fool enough to believe what you boys say about me in the newspapers.” Never slowing his quick pace he grinned and looked Pack straight in the eye: “I don’t make a sport of