gifted in this
way. I have wonderful insight."

But Eaton said to himself, "I wonder if the Marquis isn't raising his
sights too high?"

The Marquis formed the Northern Pacific Refrigerator Car Company with
two brothers named Haupt as his partners and guides; and plunged into
his dream as a boy into a woodland pool. But it did not take him long
to discover that the water was cold. Frank Vine offered to sell out
the Little Missouri Land and Cattle Company to him for twenty-five
thousand dollars, and when the Marquis, discovering that Frank had
nothing to sell except a hazy title to a group of ramshackle
buildings, refused to buy, Frank's employers intimated to the Marquis
that there was no room for the de Mores enterprises in Little
Missouri. The Marquis responded by buying what was known as Valentine
scrip, or soldiers' rights, to the flat on the other side of the river
and six square miles around it, with the determination of literally
wiping Little Missouri off the map. On April Fool's Day,
1883--auspicious date!--he pitched his tent in the sagebrush and
founded the town of Medora.

The population of Little Missouri did not exhibit any noticeable
warmth toward him or his dream. The hunters did not like "dudes" of
any sort, but foreign "dudes" were particularly objectionable to them.
His plans, moreover, struck at the heart of their free and untrammeled
existence. As long as they could live by what their guns brought down,
they were independent of the machinery of civilization. The coming of
cattle and sheep meant the flight of antelope and deer. Hunters, to
live, would have to buy and sell like common folk. That meant stores
and banks, and these in time meant laws and police-officers; and
police-officers meant the collapse of Paradise. It was all wrong.

The Marquis recognized that he had stepped in where, previously,
angels had feared to tread. It occurred to him that it would be the
part of wisdom to conciliate Little Missouri's hostile population. He
began with the only man who, in that unstable community, looked solid,
and appealed to Gregor Lang, suggesting a union of forces. Lang, who
did not like the grandiose Frenchman, bluntly refused to entertain the
idea.

"I am sorry," said the Marquis with a sincerity which was attractive
and disarming. "I desire to be friends with every man."

The Marquis's efforts to win supporters were not altogether without
success, for the liveryman, Jerry Paddock, became hi