"The Chicago price is down a half cent," answered the Marquis regretfully. "I will pay you a half cent less than we agreed." The air was electric. Packard told about it long afterwards. "It was a ticklish situation," he said. "We all knew the price had been agreed on the day before; the sale being completed with the delivery of the cattle. Fluctuations in the market cut no figure. Roosevelt would have made delivery at the agreed price even if the Chicago price had gone up." Roosevelt turned to the Marquis. "Did you agree to pay six cents for these cattle?" "Yes," the Marquis admitted. "But the Chicago price--" "Are you going to pay six cents for them?" Roosevelt broke in. "No; I will pay five and a half cents." Roosevelt turned abruptly to his cowpunchers. "Drive 'em out, boys," he said. The men drove out the cattle. "There was no particular ill-feeling between them," Packard said later, "and Roosevelt gave the Marquis credit for an honest belief that a variation in the Chicago price would cut a figure in their agreed price. It was that very fact, however, which made impossible any further business relations between them." The _Pioneer Press_ of St. Paul, in its issue of August 23d, 1885, tells its own version of the story. About a year ago the Marquis made a verbal contract with Theodore Roosevelt, the New York politician, who owns an immense cattle ranch near Medora, agreeing to purchase a number of head of cattle. Roosevelt had his stock driven down to the point agreed upon, when the Marquis declined to receive them, and declared that he had made no such contract. Roosevelt stormed a little, but finally subsided and gave orders to his men not to sell any cattle to the Marquis or transact any business with him. The relations between the Marquis and Roosevelt have since been somewhat strained. A reporter of the Bismarck _Tribune_, a few days after this story appeared, caught Roosevelt as he was passing through the city on his return from a flying visit to the East, and evidently asked him what truth there was in it. His deprecation of the story is not altogether conclusive. Theodore Roosevelt, the young reformer of New York, passed through this city yesterday [he writes], _en route_ to his ranch in the Bad Lands. He was as bright and talkative as ever, and spoke of the great opportunities of the imperial Northwest with more enthusiasm than has ever been exhibited by the most sanguine old-timer. Mr. Roosevelt recently had a slight tilt with the Marquis de Mores on a cattle deal, and the story has been exaggerated until readers of Eastern papers are led to believe that these two cattle kings never speak as they pass by and are looking for each other with clubs. This is not true.