“Damn, damn, damn,” the President said; then aloud: “You found good hunting.”
One of the group glanced at him, briefly. He said courteously, pleasantly, without inflection, going on: “So so.”
The horses moved again. “I didn’t see any guns,” the other man said.
“Yes,” the President said grimly. “I must look into this, too. I gave strict orders. . . .” He said fretfully, “Damn. Damn. Do they carry their pantaloons when they go hunting too, do you know?”
The Secretary was at breakfast, though he was not eating. Surrounded by untasted dishes he sat, in his dressing gown and unshaven; his expression too was harried as he perused the paper which lay upon his empty plate. Before the fire were two men — one a horseman with unmelted snow still upon his cloak, seated on a wooden settle, the other standing, obviously the secretary to the Secretary.
The horseman rose as the President and his companion entered. “Sit down, sit down,” the President said. He approached the table, slipping off the cloak, which the secretary came forward and took. “Give us some breakfast,” the President said. “We don’t dare go home.” He sat down; the Secretary served him in person. “What is it now?” the President said.
“Do you ask?” the Secretary said. He took up the paper again and glared at it. “From Pennsylvania, this time.” He struck the paper. “Maryland, New York, and now Pennsylvania; apparently the only thing that can stop them is the temperature of the water in the Potomac River.”
He spoke in a harsh, irascible voice. “Complaint, complaint, complaint: here is a farmer near Gettysburg. His Negro slave was in the barn, milking by lantern light after dark, when — the Negro doubtless thought about two hundred, since the farmer estimated them at ten or twelve — springing suddenly out of the darkness in plug hats and carrying knives and naked from the waist down.
Result, item: One barn and loft of hay and cow destroyed when the lantern was kicked over; item: one able-bodied slave last seen departing from the scene at a high rate of speed, headed for the forest, and doubtless now dead of fear or by the agency of wild beasts. Debit the Government of the United States: for barn and hay, one hundred dollars; for cow, fifteen dollars; for Negro slave, two hundred dollars. He demands it in gold.”
“Is that so?” the President said, eating swiftly. “I suppose the Negro and the cow took them to be ghosts of Hessian soldiers.”
“I wonder if they thought the cow was a deer,” the horseman said.
“Yes,” the President said. “That’s something else I want. . . .”
“Who wouldn’t take them for anything on earth or under it?” the Secretary said. “The entire Atlantic seaboard north of the Potomac River overrun by creatures in beaver hats and frock coats and woolen drawers, frightening women and children, setting fire to barns and running off slaves, killing deer. . . .”
“Yes,” the President said. “I want to say a word about that, myself. I met a party of them returning as I came out. They had six deer. I thought I gave strict orders that they were not to be permitted guns.”
Again it was the horseman who spoke. “They don’t use guns.”
“What?” the President said. “But I saw myself . . .”
“No, sir. They use knives. They track the deer down and slip up on them and cut their throats.”
“What?” the President said.
“All right, sir. I seen one of the deer. It never had a mark on it except its throat cut up to the neckbone with one lick.”
Again the President said, “Damn. Damn. Damn.” Then the President ceased and the Soldier cursed steadily for a while. The others listened, gravely, their faces carefully averted, save the Secretary, who had taken up another paper. “If you could just persuade them to keep their pantaloons on,” the President said. “At least about the House. . . .”
The Secretary started back, his hair upcrested like an outraged, iron-gray cockatoo. “I, sir? I persuade them?”
“Why not? Aren’t they subject to your Department? I’m just the President. Confound it, it’s got to where my wife no longer dares leave her bedroom, let alone receive lady guests. How am I to explain to the French Ambassador, for instance, why his wife no longer dares call upon my wife because the corridors and the very entrance to the House are blocked by half-naked Chickasaw Indians asleep on the floor or gnawing at half-raw ribs of meat? And I, myself, having to hide away from my own table and beg breakfast, while the official representative of the Government has nothing to do but . . .”
“. . . but explain again each morning to the Treasury,” the Secretary said in shrill rage, “why another Dutch farmer in Pennsylvania or New York must have three hundred dollars in gold in payment for the destruction of his farm and livestock, and explain to the State Department that the capital is not being besieged by demons from hell itself, and explain to the War Department why twelve brand-new army tents must be ventilated at the top with butcher knives. . . .”
“I noticed that, too,” the President said mildly. “I had forgot it.”
“Ha. Your Excellency noted it,” the Secretary said fiercely. “Your Excellency saw it and then forgot it. I have neither seen it nor been permitted to forget it. And now Your Excellency wonders why I do not persuade them to wear their pantaloons.”
“It does seem like they would,” the President said fretfully. “The other garments seem to please them well enough. But there’s no accounting for taste.” He ate again. The Secretary looked at him, about to speak. Then he did not. As he watched the oblivious President a curious, secret expression came into his face; his gray and irate crest settled slowly, as if it were deflating itself. When he spoke now his tone was bland, smooth; now the other three men were watching the President with curious, covert expressions.
“Yes,” the Secretary said, “there’s no accounting for taste. Though it does seem that when one has been presented with a costume as a mark of both honor and esteem, let alone decorum, and by the chief of a well, tribe . . .”
“That’s what I thought,” the President said innocently. Then he ceased chewing and said “Eh?” sharply, looking up. The three lesser men looked quickly away, but the Secretary continued to watch the President with that bland, secret expression. “What the devil do you mean?” the President said. He knew what the Secretary meant, just as the other three knew.
A day or two after his guest had arrived without warning, and after the original shock had somewhat abated, the President had decreed the new clothing for them. He commanded, out of his own pocket, merchants and hatters as he would have commanded gunsmiths and bulletmakers in war emergency; incidentally he was thus able to estimate the number of them, the men at least, and within forty-eight hours he had transformed his guest’s grave and motley train into the outward aspect of decorum at least.
Then, two mornings after that, the guest — the half Chickasaw, half Frenchman, the squat, obese man with the face of a Gascon brigand and the mannerisms of a spoiled eunuch and dingy lace at throat and wrist, who for three weeks now had dogged his waking hours and his sleeping dreams with bland inescapability — called formally upon him while he and his wife were still in bed at five o’clock in the morning, with two of his retainers carrying a bundle and what seemed to the President at least a hundred others, men, women and children, thronging quietly into the bedroom, apparently to watch him array himself in it.
For it was a costume — even in the shocked horror of the moment, the President found time to wonder wildly where in the capital Weddel (or Vidal) had found it — a mass, a network, of gold braid — frogs, epaulets, sash and sword — held loosely together by bright green cloth and presented to him in return.
This is what the Secretary meant, while the President glared at him and while behind them both the three other men stood looking at the fire with immobile gravity. “Have your joke,” the President said. “Have it quickly. Are you done laughing now?”
“I laugh?” the Secretary said. “At what?”
“Good,” the President said. He thrust the dishes from him. “Then we can get down to business. Have you any documents you will need to refer to?”
The Secretary’s secretary approached. “Shall I get the other papers, sir?”
“Papers?” the Secretary said; once more his crest began to rise. “What the devil do I need with papers? What else have I thought about night and day for three weeks?”
“Good; good,” the President said. “Suppose you review the matter briefly, in case I have forgot anything else.”
“Your Excellency is indeed a fortunate man, if you have been able to forget,” the Secretary said. From the pocket of his dressing gown he took a pair of steel-bowed spectacles. But he used them merely to glare again at the President in cockatoo-crested outrage.
“This man, Weddel, Vidal — whatever his name is — he and his family or clan or whatever they are — claim to own the entire part of Mississippi which
