for you to say it."

Maunders looked unhappy. After a brief conversation it appeared that
Maunders did not after all want to shoot him. He had been "misquoted,"
he said. They parted, understanding one another perfectly.

Roosevelt left Medora on October 7th, bound for New York. He had
decided, after all, not to remain aloof from the political campaign.
He deeply distrusted the Democratic Party, on the one hand, and he was
enraged at the nominations of the Republican Party, on the other; but
the "Mugwumps," those Republicans who, with a self-conscious
high-mindedness which irritated him almost beyond words, were
supporting the Democratic nominee, he absolutely despised. Besides, it
was not in him to be neutral in any fight. He admitted that freely.
During the final weeks of the campaign he made numerous speeches in
New York and elsewhere which were not neutral in the least.

By leaving Medora on the 7th of October he missed a memorable
occasion, for on the following day Packard at last opened his
stage-line. The ex-baseball player had met and surmounted an array of
obstacles that would have daunted anybody but a youngster on the
Western frontier. He had completed his building operations by the end
of September, and by the first of October he had distributed his
hostlers, his eating-house keepers, his helpers and his "middle-route"
drivers, among the sixteen relay-stations that lined the wheel-tracks
which the Marquis was pleased to call the "highway" to the Black
Hills. The horses which he had purchased in a dozen different places
in the course of the summer were not such as to allay the trepidation
of timid travelers. They had none of them been broken to harness
before Packard's agents had found them and broken them in their own
casual and none too gentle fashion. Packard would have preferred to
have horses which had become accustomed to the restraining hand of
man, but "harness-broke" horses where rare in that country. Besides,
they were expensive, and, with the money coming from the Marquis only
in little sums, long-delayed, Packard that summer was hunting
bargains. As it was, Baron von Hoffman, who was a business man of
vision and ability, was none too pleased with the mounting expenses of
his son-in-law's new venture.

"How many horses have you bought?" he asked; Packard one day rather
sharply.

"A hundred and sixty-six."

"How many are you using on the stage-line?"

"A hundred and sixty."

"What are you