The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt, #1)

by Edmund Morris

He allowed himself just one day to recover (having been in the saddle, almost continuously, for twenty-four hours) before riding another forty miles north to visit Sewall and Dow.81 They had unpleasant news for him: his forebodings of “trouble,” after rejecting the Marquis’s claim to the Elkhorn range, had been justified. E. G. Paddock—now more and more the power behind the throne of de Morès—had stopped by the ranch-site in late September, accompanied by several drunken gunmen. Finding Roosevelt away, the gang accepted lunch, sobered up, and rode off well stoked with beans and bonhomie. Since then, however, Paddock had begun to declare that the Elkhorn shack was rightfully his. If “Four Eyes” wished to buy it, he must pay for it in dollars—or in blood. Roosevelt, on hearing this, merely said, “Is that so?”82 Remounting his horse, he rode back upriver to Paddock’s house at the railroad crossing. The gunman answered his knock. “I understand that you have threatened to kill me on sight,” rasped Roosevelt. “I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing.”