een hundred
dollars judiciously distributed would cause the indictment to be
withdrawn. He inquired whether the indictment would stay withdrawn or
whether he would be subject to indictment and, in consequence, to
blackmail, during the rest of his life. He was told that since he had
never been acquitted by a jury, he might be indicted at any moment,
the next day, or ten years hence. He declared that he preferred to
clean up the matter then and there.

"I have plenty of money for defense," he said to a reporter of the New
York _Times_, adapting, not without humor, a famous American war-cry
to his own situation, "but not a dollar for blackmail."

Knowing the ways of courts, he removed himself from the Territory
while the forces were being gathered against him at Mandan.

"I determined that I would not be put in jail," he explained to the
_Times_ interviewer, "to lie there perhaps for months waiting for a
trial. Besides, a jail is not a safe place in that part of the
country. Now the court seems to be ready and so will I be in a few
days. I do not fear the result."

He was convinced that the same forces which had thwarted him in his
business enterprises were using the Luffsey episode to push him out of
the way.

"I think the charge has been kept hanging over me," he said, "for the
purpose of breaking up my business. It was known that I intended to
kill and ship beef to Chicago and other Eastern cities, and had
expended much money in preparations. If I could have been arrested and
put in jail some months ago, it might have injured my business and
perhaps have put an end to my career."

The Marquis was convinced that it was Roosevelt who was financing the
opposition to him and spoke of him with intense bitterness.

The indictment of the Marquis, meanwhile, was mightily agitating the
western part of the Territory. Sentiment in the matter had somewhat
veered since the first trials which had been held two years before.
The soberer of the citizens, recognizing the real impetus which the
Marquis's energy and wealth had given to the commercial activity of
the West Missouri region, were inclined to sympathize with him. There
was a widespread belief that in the matter of the indictment the
Marquis had fallen among thieves.

The Marquis returned from the East about the last day of August, and
gave himself up to the sheriff at Mandan. He was promptly lodged in
jail. The remark he had made to the interviewer in New York, that