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By Root 3119 0

’Donald, Riley Luffsey, and “Dutch” Wannegan. O’Donald had been offered work by de Morès sometime in the spring, but he had refused, saying that he preferred to live on the proceeds of hunting and trapping. Besides, he was an old enemy of E. G. Paddock—and Paddock was already the Marquis’s right-hand man. De Morès shrugged and forgot about him. Then one day O’Donald rode home to the hunting-shack he shared with Luffsey and Wannegan, ten miles downriver, and discovered a fence across his path. Inquiries revealed that it had been erected by the Marquis, who was buying up large tracts of public land with Valentine script. O’Donald angrily hacked the fence down. De Morès coolly put it up again. Every time O’Donald and his friends rode up and down the valley, they destroyed the fence, only to find it blocking their path on the way back. Tempers began to rise; threats were shouted across the river. Then, in mid-June, came the final straw. O’Donald heard a rumor—allegedly bruited about by E. G. Paddock—that the Marquis was about to “jump claim” to his hunting-shack. “Whoever jumps us,” O’Donald announced publicly, “jumps from there right into his grave.”26

On Thursday, 21 June, the three frontiersmen arrived in Little Missouri for a long weekend of drinking and shooting. One witness described it as “a perfect reign of terror.” The air was thick with promiscuous bullets, and O’Donald, primed with Forty-Mile Red Eye, repeated his threats to shoot de Morès “like a dog on sight.” After two days of this, Paddock felt constrained to ride over to Medora and warn the Marquis that his life was in danger. De Morès promptly took the next train east to Mandan, 150 miles away, and reported the situation to a justice of the peace. “What shall I do?” he asked. “Why, shoot,” replied the J.P.27

The Marquis, who was an expert marksman and no coward (he had already killed two Frenchmen in affaires d’honneur),28 returned nonchalantly to the valley on Monday, 25 June. Waiting for him at the Little Missouri depot were his three rather hung-over enemies. Possibly de Morès stared them down; at all events they allowed him to pass. But later that afternoon, as he stood talking to Paddock outside the latter’s bungalow, a bullet cracked past him, missing by less than a yard.29

Even then, de Morès somehow retained his European reverence for the law. He telegraphed to Mandan for a sheriff, and retired to Medora to await the next train. It was not due to arrive until Tuesday afternoon. To make sure that his antagonists did not leave town before then, the Marquis posted aides on all the trails leading out of Little Missouri. On Tuesday morning he himself staked out a bluff west of town, overlooking the most likely escape route the frontiersmen would take if they sought to avoid the sheriff. Tension gathered as the hour of the train’s arrival approached. Presently the puffing of a locomotive was heard in the east. O’Donald, Luffsey, and Wannegan mounted their horses and rode over to the depot.

As expected, the sheriff was on board the train. Stepping down into the sagebrush, he found himself staring into the barrels of three rifles. When he told the trio he had a warrant for their arrest, O’Donald replied, in classic Western fashion, “I’ve done nothing to be arrested for, and I won’t be taken.” With that, they turned and rode out of town. While the sheriff watched indecisively, the frontiersmen headed straight into the ambush de Morès had prepared for them. There were two, apparently simultaneous explosions of gunfire; the three horses collapsed and died; the firing continued; then, with a scream of “Wannegan, oh Wannegan!” Riley Luffsey fell dead, a bullet through his neck. Another bullet smashed into O’Donald’s thigh, and Wannegan’s clothes were shot to ribbons. They surrendered instantly.

When the dust and smoke cleared, de Morès, Paddock, and two other aides were seen emerging from various hiding-points in the sage. The sheriff arrested all except Paddock, who, having taken care not to be seen participating in the ambush, insisted that the frontiersmen