neath it. If he had, he would
have realized that Joe Ferris was the acknowledged banker of the Bad
Lands to whom practically all the thrifty souls among the cowpunchers
brought a portion of their wages for safe-keeping. When "Dutch
Wannigan" and "Dynamite Jimmie," therefore, received money from Joe
Ferris, they received only what was their own, and what they needed
for their expenses at the trial.

But the Marquis, whose mind liked to jump goat-like from crag to crag,
did not stop to examine the evidence against Roosevelt. He accepted it
at its face value, and wrote Roosevelt a stinging letter, telling him
that he had heard that Roosevelt had influenced witnesses against him
in the murder trial. He had supposed, he said, that there was, nothing
but friendly feeling between himself and Roosevelt, but since it was
otherwise there was always "a way of settling differences between
gentlemen."

Roosevelt, who had returned from the East early in October, received
the letter at Elkhorn Ranch and read it aloud to Bill Sewall. "That's
a threat," he exclaimed. "He is trying to bully me. He can't bully me.
I am going to write him a letter myself. Bill," he went on, "I don't
want to disgrace my family by fighting a duel. I don't believe in
fighting duels. My friends don't any of them believe in it. They would
be very much opposed to anything of the kind, but I won't be bullied
by a Frenchman. Now, as I am the challenged party, I have the
privilege of naming the weapons. I am no swordsman, and pistols are
too uncertain and Frenchy for me. So what do you say if I make it
rifles?"

Roosevelt sat down on a log and then and there drafted his reply. He
had no unfriendly feeling for the Marquis, he wrote, "but, as the
closing sentence of your letter implies a threat, I feel it my duty to
say that I am ready at all times and at all places to answer for my
actions."

Then he added that if the Marquis's letter was meant as a challenge,
and he insisted upon having satisfaction, he would meet him with
rifles at twelve paces, the adversaries to shoot and advance until one
or the other dropped.

"Now," said Roosevelt, "I expect he'll challenge me. If he does, I
want you for my second."

Sewall grunted. "You will never have to fight any duel of that kind
with that man," he said. "He won't challenge you. He will find some
way out of it."

Roosevelt was not at all sure of this. The Marquis was a bully, but he
was no coward.

A day or s