Hunting Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  Contents

  Hunting Teddy Roosevelt

  Copyright © 2019 James Ross. All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Hunting Teddy Roosevelt

  James Ross

  Regal House Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 James Ross. All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  Raleigh, NC 27612

  All rights reserved

  ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781947548961

  ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646030231

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941548

  All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

  Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene

  lafayetteandgreene.com

  Cover images © by Andrzej Kubik and Kyryloff/Shutterstock

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  https://regalhousepublishing.com

  The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Anne, with heartfelt gratitude and love.

  Prologue

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK

  NEW YORK CITY

  SUMMER 1876

  “I won’t change my mind, Teddy. You must see that.” Maggie Ryan laid her small white hands in the lap of her ankle-length woolen skirt and braced herself for yet another flood of words, clinging to the hope that if she remained firm, her beau of twelve months would accept the hopelessness of their romance. Grey clouds gathered above the park’s fountain, mirroring Maggie’s unhappy mood.

  “I believe women deserve the same opportunities as men, Maggie. You know that. The same education and the same right to pursue a profession.”

  Her energetic suitor paced back and forth in front of the bench where they had stopped to rest beneath a bronze statue of the Italian soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi. Turning toward her, he spread his arms like a Hyde Park orator, straining a yard of fine woolen cloth across shoulders that had been widened from hours of tossing Indian clubs and pounding leather boxing gloves into canvas bags filled with sand. It was impossible to look at his manly figure and imagine the sickly, asthmatic child he claimed to have been before being cured by a punishing regime of strenuous exercise. He exuded the force of nature and machine combined, as if he were some new form of human locomotive. But Maggie Ryan would not allow herself to be run over.

  “So you say. But your family doesn’t know you’ve been courting a Five Points grocer’s daughter for over a year, do they? And now you’re off to Boston.”

  “I’ll be back by Christmas.”

  “And gone again come January. Four years of it, you said. Gone and back, gone and back. And at the end, what?”

  Her mutton-chopped beau raised his eyes to the canopy of sycamore leaves overhead and pressed fists to his waist, where white shirt met creased grey trousers. Not some loose, old-fashioned frock and bowler for him. Today he’d come courting in a new sack coat with a fine matching waistcoat—a dandy as well as a talker. In her black woolen skirt and white cotton shirtwaist, Maggie felt like a dull brown sparrow beside a flamboyant cockatoo.

  “Maggie, I can’t support us if I don’t go to university. If I told my father now, he’d insist that I stop seeing you. I don’t want to do that. But I couldn’t disobey him, either. So I’m being practical. Principle that ignores fact or hasn’t the patience to wait for strength, can’t succeed in the long run. Even Abraham passed off his wife, Sarah, as his sister when he couldn’t protect her.”

  Maggie waved her hand in dismissal. Teddy was always quoting scripture and foreign books she hadn’t read. “I won’t be your fancy girl,” she pressed. “I’ve told you that.”

  “Maggie! I have no intention of ever touching a woman who is not my wife. Surely you know me better than that by now.”

  “Don’t be telling me you’re different from other men. Anyone can see that. But it doesn’t matter. There’s a life ahead of you, and anyone who’s known you for more than five minutes can see that, too. But not if you’re tied to a Catholic grocer’s daughter, there isn’t.”

  There, I’ve said it. She rose from the bench and strode toward the park’s central fountain. Teddy matched her stride for stride.

  “I don’t care about religion, Maggie, or where you come from. I don’t believe anyone should.” He leapt ahead on the path, folded his wire-rimmed glasses, and shoved them into his jacket pocket, limbs moving every which way like a steam calliope. A broad-shouldered bystander in a Prince Albert coat stopped to stare.

  “I’ve been thinking about going west after college, Maggie. The Dakotas, maybe. People don’t care what religion you are out there, where you come from, or how much money your family has.”

  “The place where those red Indians killed that General Custer a few weeks ago? Don’t be daft.” She walked faster, looking ahead toward the park entrance. Her suitor kept pace without apparent effort, talking and gesticulating without pause while walking backwards.

  “Montana, then. Or California.”

  A breath she’d been squashing behind pursed lips, escaped in an angry burst. “Sufferin’ Jesus, Teddy. Are you deaf as well as dumb? I’m telling you plain, if you go to Boston and leave me behind, I won’t wait for you.”

  They’d been churning the paths round the park for nearly two hours. Da would be missing her at the store if she didn’t get back soon. Her handsome beau with teeth as large as tombstones could talk the ears off a brass monkey, but he was no good at listening.

  “I have to earn a living, Maggie.” He hooked a finger over the rim of his boiled collar and tugged it away from his throat. “But I’m not much good at anything, yet.”

  People were staring. A man in a grey frock coat and piped trousers tapped a thick hickory cane across the
palm of his hand and looked crossly at Teddy. The air smelled of rain. It was time to finish this.

  “You can read and write and do your sums. That’s enough for most men.”

  “Not where I come from.”

  The granite arch over the entrance to the park came into view beyond a row of sycamore trees. Teddy picked up a tuft of downy feathers from the edge of the path. “Gnatcatcher. They’ll be heading south soon.” He let the tuft fall from his hand. “I’ve always loved natural history, Maggie. I’ve told you that. Father let me start taxidermy lessons when I was ten, and I’ve collected over a thousand specimens. I think I might study botany in college.” His words trailed off as if the sense of them had finally sunk in. His vision of college and hers of proper romance were as different as chalk and cheese.

  “Well then, that settles it.” She stopped beneath the granite arch and extended a small white hand wrapped at the wrist in a tight cotton sleeve. “Good luck to you, Teddy.”

  He took her hand in his and tried to lift it to his lips. She pulled away.

  “This isn’t right, Maggie.”

  “No it isn’t. But maybe you’ll have a chance to make it right when you’ve finished your schooling. A man of your principles can’t expect a girl to lay aside her own plans for years while he goes off chasing his.”

  Her indefatigable suitor opened his mouth. But for the first time in all the months she’d known him, the torrent of words trickled to a halt. Surprise tugged at the corners of his lips and brow.

  She nodded her head in dismissal. “Goodbye, Teddy Roosevelt.”

  Chapter One

  A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good reason, and the real one.

  J. P. Morgan

  NEW YORK CITY

  WINTER 1908

  THIRTY-TWO YEARS LATER

  J. P. Morgan stood at a window of his Manhattan townhouse and watched his two guests alight from separate horse-drawn carriages. Neither was aware he was about to help plan the assassination of the outgoing president of the United States.

  Andrew Carnegie, aging steel tycoon and the wealthiest man in the world, emerged from his plain black coach accompanied by a grey-coated footman who brushed snow from the old man’s cape and lent an arm for support. Behind him, William Randolph Hearst emerged unassisted from a gold-trimmed carriage as large and gaudy as Carnegie’s was plain. Ignoring the wind and the cold, the newspaper publisher lifted his chin toward lower Manhattan as if to survey a tiny portion of his rapidly growing dominion. Then turning toward the townhouse, he mounted the snow-covered stairs two at a time.

  Inside, a uniformed butler ushered Hearst and Carnegie into the library, while another brought hot cider in a silver pitcher to the teetotaler Carnegie, and a Cointreau to the newspaperman Hearst.

  “Gentleman,” said J. P. Morgan when the butler had finished serving libations and closed the twenty-foot high mahogany doors behind him. “Our esteemed and soon to be ex-president, Theodore Roosevelt, has decided to follow George Washington’s example and not run for a third term. When he leaves office in a few weeks, he will lead an expedition to Africa to collect specimens of various game animals for the Smithsonian Museum and the New York Museum of Natural History.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Hearst.

  Carnegie fixed a rheumy eye on Morgan and said nothing.

  “The museum sponsors will be content if our beloved president slaughters a sufficient number of beasts to fill their exhibit halls, but we, the financial and journalistic backers of the Roosevelt safari, have different measures of success. I’ve asked you here so that we might discuss what we hope to gain from our respective investments of money and newsprint, to help each other if possible, and, at a minimum, to avoid working at cross purposes.”

  Carnegie put down his cup of hot cider and waved a bony finger at Morgan. “We know what you want, Pierpont: Roosevelt out of the country for a year so you can work with his successor to undo all that trust-busting nonsense. If he should take up with some African princess and never come back, so much the better!”

  Morgan inclined his head. “Indeed, Andrew. I believe our cowboy president to be a fool of the worst kind: capable, energetic, convinced of his own myopic wisdom, enormously popular, and damn near unstoppable. But as long as he intends to gift the country with a temporary respite from his overbearing personality, I would like to use that gift to good purpose. As do you.”

  Carnegie drove the tip of his mahogany cane into the Persian rug at his feet. “Yes. To put those fine qualities you just listed to work for a higher purpose—peace and progress.”

  Morgan cocked his head.

  “Unlike you, Pierpont, I’m fond of our presidential cyclone. He doesn’t understand business. We all know that. But he’s a force of nature. Unstoppable. Once he’s out of office, I want to harness that force on behalf of progress.”

  Hearst placed his Cointreau on the small rosewood table at his side. “What did you have in mind, Andrew?”

  “World peace. As I’ve said and written.”

  Hearst laughed. “Theodore Roosevelt? Cowboy, Rough Rider, builder of the Great White Fleet? He’s a warmonger, sir.”

  “You should talk!” Carnegie snapped.

  The self-assured young publisher seemed to enjoy provoking the older Carnegie, but Morgan needed both for what he had in mind.

  Carnegie ignored Hearst and addressed himself to Morgan. “The Swedes gave Roosevelt their Nobel Prize for helping the Russians and Japanese mend their differences after Port Arthur. I want him do the same with the Kaiser, the French, and the British. To talk them out of their disastrous arms race. In exchange for my paying half the safari’s costs, our peace-loving president has agreed to stop in Berlin on his way back from Africa to meet with the German Kaiser. What I want, since you ask, are arrangements for his protection. I don’t care to spend a small fortune financing the largest safari in history, only to have some savage put an end to world peace with the point of a spear.”

  Morgan exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke and watched it rise toward the Mowbray mural overhead. “U.S. Steel has the Pinkertons on permanent hire. I can arrange for them to guard President Roosevelt while he’s on safari. But is another European war such a bad thing? For America, I mean.”

  Carnegie choked on his cider, glaring sideways at Hearst and then at Morgan. “Don’t tell me you’ve become a warmonger, too, Pierpont! I’ve spent half my life making steel and watching the god-awful things people do to each other with it. Do you know that there’s a cannon now that can hurl a hundred-pound shell thirty miles and level a whole city block? Guns that can fire a thousand bullets a minute? Modern war is insanity!”

  Morgan exhaled a cloud of smoke and watched it rise toward the ceiling. “You misunderstand me, Andrew. I’ve read your books and I admire your principles. But the American economy is now as strong as any in Europe. If England, France and Germany get into another war and America stays out, that may be our nation’s chance to finally fulfill its destiny: to become the dominant global power and reap the rewards that go with it.”

  Carnegie shook his head in disappointment.

  Hearst rolled a cut glass tumbler between his palms and smiled. “An interesting point, Mr. Morgan. But I must confess that my newspapers are more experienced at promoting foreign wars than keeping us out of them.”

  “A legacy I wouldn’t want to defend when my time came,” Carnegie muttered.

  Morgan raised a hand. “What does Congressman Hearst see as a satisfactory outcome to the Roosevelt safari? Or Publisher Hearst, if you prefer.”

  The newspaperman put down his drink. “They’re the same. Congressman and publisher both want an African version of the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Ivory-fanged lions and dark African maidens. Not a word on domestic politics or global affairs. Theodore Roosevelt returns from Africa as famous as ever, but as a gaudy adventurer, not a se
rious politician. My newspapers will sell a million copies, and no one will consider Roosevelt a serious candidate if he decides to run for president again in 1912. Remember, his pledge was not to run for a third consecutive term. He left the door wide open for another nonconsecutive term.”

  “Do you have someone else in mind for the position, Randolph?”

  Hearst smiled and remained silent. Morgan knew perfectly well who the Hearst newspapers planned to promote as the next president of the United States—their owner and publisher, William Randolph Hearst.

  Lighting his twentieth cigar of the day, Morgan tossed the cutting into a fifteenth-century Italian marble fireplace deep enough to roast several of Roosevelt’s African big game animals together. “Well gentlemen, our views of a successful African safari may differ, but our actions needn’t interfere with one another. I will arrange protection for Citizen Roosevelt to see that he comes to no harm before he can meet with the German Kaiser on behalf of world peace. I will use the coming months to educate the incoming administration on the benefits of a less hostile relationship with business. Mr. Hearst’s newspapers will provide ample coverage of African animal slaughter, but not a drop of ink about our former president’s idiotic views on global economics or business regulation. As long as we get what we want, Mr. Carnegie and I will continue to provide the Smithsonian with funds to pay for this enormous undertaking. Are we agreed?”

  Hearst raised his tumbler. Carnegie nodded. Morgan suppressed a smile.

  Elliot Cashman waited a minute to be sure that Morgan’s guests were gone before he entered the library through a small, concealed door in the wall next to the fireplace. He carried a pen, a notebook, and the flushed, pained look of someone in need of fresh air. Morgan pointed to the wingback chair that still held the imprint of Andrew Carnegie’s bony frame. “Could you hear everything, Elliot?”

  “The acoustics are fine, sir. But it’s an inferno in there with that fire going.”