kard said
later, "and Roosevelt gave the Marquis credit for an honest belief
that a variation in the Chicago price would cut a figure in their
agreed price. It was that very fact, however, which made impossible
any further business relations between them."

The _Pioneer Press_ of St. Paul, in its issue of August 23d, 1885,
tells its own version of the story.

About a year ago the Marquis made a verbal contract with
Theodore Roosevelt, the New York politician, who owns an
immense cattle ranch near Medora, agreeing to purchase a
number of head of cattle. Roosevelt had his stock driven
down to the point agreed upon, when the Marquis declined to
receive them, and declared that he had made no such
contract. Roosevelt stormed a little, but finally subsided
and gave orders to his men not to sell any cattle to the
Marquis or transact any business with him. The relations
between the Marquis and Roosevelt have since been somewhat
strained.

A reporter of the Bismarck _Tribune_, a few days after this story
appeared, caught Roosevelt as he was passing through the city on his
return from a flying visit to the East, and evidently asked him what
truth there was in it. His deprecation of the story is not altogether
conclusive.

Theodore Roosevelt, the young reformer of New York, passed
through this city yesterday [he writes], _en route_ to his
ranch in the Bad Lands. He was as bright and talkative as
ever, and spoke of the great opportunities of the imperial
Northwest with more enthusiasm than has ever been exhibited
by the most sanguine old-timer. Mr. Roosevelt recently had a
slight tilt with the Marquis de Mores on a cattle deal, and
the story has been exaggerated until readers of Eastern
papers are led to believe that these two cattle kings never
speak as they pass by and are looking for each other with
clubs. This is not true.

Meanwhile, during those summer months of 1885 the hot water into which
the Frenchman had flung himself when he assisted in the killing of
Riley Luffsey began to simmer once more. It came to a boil on August
26th, when a grand jury in Mandan indicted the Marquis de Mores for
murder in the first degree.

The Marquis had not been unaware how matters were shaping themselves.
When the movement to have him indicted first got under way, in fact,
it was intimated to him that a little matter of fift