s foreman, and
Jake Maunders, evidently seeing in the noble Frenchman one of those
gifts from the patron saint of crooked men which come to a knave only
once in a lifetime, attached himself to him and became his closest
adviser. Maunders, as one who had known him well remarked long
afterwards, "was too crooked to sleep in a roundhouse." Whether he set
about deliberately to secure a hold on the Marquis, which the Marquis
could never shake off, is a secret locked away with Maunders
underground. If he did, he was more successful than wiser men have
been in their endeavors. Insidiously he drew the Marquis into a
quarrel, in which he himself was involved, with a hunter named Frank
O'Donald and his two friends, John Reuter, known as "Dutch Wannigan,"
and Riley Luffsey. He was a crafty Iago, and the Marquis, born in a
rose-garden and brought up in a hot-house, was guileless and trusting.
Incidentally, the Marquis was "land hungry" and not altogether tactful
in regarding the rights of others. Maunders carried blood-curdling
tales from the Marquis to O'Donald and back again, until, as Howard
Eaton remarked, "every one got nervous."

"What shall I do?" the Marquis asked Maunders, unhappily, when
Maunders reported that O'Donald was preparing for hostilities.

"Look out," answered Maunders, "and have the first shot."

The Marquis went to Mandan to ask the local magistrate for advice.
"There is the situation," he said. "What shall I do?"

"Why, shoot," was the judicial reply.

He started to return to the center of hostilities. A friend
protested. "You'll get shot if you go down there," he declared.

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. "But I have got to go."

"Now, why do you have to go?"

"Why," replied the Marquis, "William is there. He is my valet. His
father was my father's valet, and his grandfather was my grandfather's
valet. I cannot leave William in the lurch."

Whereupon, smiling his engaging smile, he boarded the west-bound
express.

What followed is dead ashes, that need not be raked over. Just west of
the town where the trail ran along the railroad track, the Marquis and
his men fired at the hunters from cover. O'Donald and "Wannigan" were
wounded, Riley was killed. Maunders, claiming that the hunters had
started the shooting, charged them with manslaughter, and had them
arrested.

[Illustration: "Dutch Wannigan" (Left) and Frank O'Donald.]

[Illustration: Scene of the killing of Riley Luffsey, June 26,