When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour,
it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned
out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the
committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President
stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing
crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken
by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down,
and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man,
woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting
them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose
hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember
you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes,"
said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was
among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was
very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they
were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay
and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his
train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I
thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once
opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had
recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He says the
scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down
the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee."
Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell Roaring
Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that
Hell Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President
too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a
presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no
doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was
that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other
classic heroes of the frontier.