"RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAIL"
At the end of Mr. Roosevelt's membership in the New York Assembly, he
began his life on a ranch in North Dakota. In this way he not only
learned much about the Western people, but came to know the ranchman's
life, and to have his first chance to shoot big game.
He had married Miss Lee in 1880, the autumn of the year he left
college. Less than four years afterwards his wife died, following the
birth of a daughter. His mother died on the next day, and Roosevelt
under the sorrow of these two losses, left New York, and spent almost
all his time on his ranch, the Elkhorn, at Medora.
The people in Dakota looked on this Eastern tenderfoot with a little
amusement, and, at first, probably with some contempt. He was, to their
minds, a "college dude" from the East, and moreover he wore eyeglasses.
To some of the people whom he met, this fact, he says, was enough to
cause distrust. Eyeglasses were under suspicion.
But, with two men who had been his guides in Maine, Bill Sewall and
Wilmot Dow, he began his life as a ranchman and a cow-puncher, and went
through all the hard work and all the fun. He took long rides after
cattle, rounded them up and helped in the branding. He followed the
herd when it stampeded in a thunderstorm. He hunted all the game that
there was in the county, and also acted as Deputy Sheriff and helped
clear the place of horse-thieves and "bad men."
In one of his adventures Roosevelt showed that he had taken to heart
the celebrated advice which, in Hamlet, Polonius gives to his son:
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Mulvaney, in one of Kipling's stories, proved that he knew something
about Shakespeare, for he put this advice into his own language so as
to express the meaning perfectly:
"Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you
do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint."
Roosevelt tried to keep out of the fight,--but this is the way it
happened. He was out after lost horses, and had to put up at a little
hotel where there were no rooms downstairs, but a bar, a dining-room
and a kitchen. It was late at night, and there was trouble on, for he
heard one or two shots in the bar as he came up. He disliked the idea
of going in, but it was cold outside and there was nowhere else to go.
Inside the bar, a cheap "bad man" was walking up and down with a cocked
revolver in each hand. He had been shooting at the clock, and making
every one unhappy and uncomfortable.
When Roosevelt came in, he called him "Four eyes," because he wore
spectacles, and announced "Four eyes is going to set up the drinks."
Roosevelt tried to pass it off by laughing, and sat down behind the
stove to escape notice, and keep away from trouble. But the "bad man"
came and stood over him, a gun in each hand, using foul language, and
insisting that "Four eyes" should get up and treat.
"Well," Roosevelt reluctantly remarked, "if I've got to, I've got to!"
As he said this, he rose quickly, and hit the gun-man with his right
fist on the point of the jaw, then with his left, and again with his
right. The guns went off in the air, as the "bad man" went over like
a nine-pin, striking his head on the corner of the bar as he fell.
Roosevelt was ready to drop on him if he moved, for he still clutched
the revolvers. But he was senseless.
The other people in the bar recovered their nerve, once the man was
down. They hustled him out into the shed, and there was no more trouble
from him.
Roosevelt hunted geese and ducks, deer, mountain sheep, elk and grizzly
bear during his stay in the West. It was still possible to find
buffalo, although most of the great herds had vanished. The prairie was
covered with relics of the dead buffalo, so that one might ride for
hundreds of miles, seeing their bones everywhere, but never getting a
glimpse of a live one. Yet he managed, after a hard hunt of several
days, to shoot a great bull buffalo.
An encounter with a grizzly bear is much more exciting, and he was
nearly killed by one bear. In later years Roosevelt killed almost every
kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the earth,--lions,
elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros. The Indian tiger
is perhaps the only one of the large savage animals which he never
encountered. Yet after meeting all these and having some close shaves,
especially with a wounded elephant in Africa, he said that his
narrowest escape was with this grizzly bear.
It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in Idaho. He
had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they parted company,
and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a valley, from a rocky
ridge, he saw a dark object, which he discovered was a large grizzly
bear. He fired, and the bear giving a loud grunt, as the bullet struck,
rushed forward at a gallop into a laurel thicket. Roosevelt paused at
the edge of the thicket and peered within, trying to see the bear, but
knowing too much about them to go into the brush where he was.
When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left
it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on
the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly towards me;
scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like
embers in the gloom.
I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the
point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the
great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing
the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white
fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding
through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited
until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a
ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his
body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did
not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another
second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet
went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going
into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger;
and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as
he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried
him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright
blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and
made two or three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple
of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of
which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his
muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled
over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had
inflicted a mortal wound.[6]
[6] "The Wilderness Hunter," pp. 305-6.
[Illustration: Courtesy Scribner's and Sons.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT WHEN HE WAS 10 YEARS OLD]
There were, once, near Mr. Roosevelt's ranch, three men who had been
suspected of cattle-killing and horse-stealing. The leader was a tall
fellow named Finnegan, who had long red hair reaching to his shoulders,
and always wore a broad hat and a fringed buckskin shirt. He had been
in a number of shooting scrapes. The others were a half-breed, and a
German, who was weak and shiftless rather than actively bad. They had
a bad reputation, and were trying to get out of the country before the
Vigilance Committee got them.
About the only way to travel--it was early in March and the rivers
were swollen--was by boat down the river. So when the cowboys on Mr.
Roosevelt's ranch found that his boat was stolen, they were sure who
had taken it. As it is every man's duty in a half-settled country to
bring law-breakers to justice, and as Roosevelt was, moreover, Deputy
Sheriff, he decided to go after the three thieves. Two of his cowboys,
Sewall and Dow from Maine, in about three days built another boat.
In this, with their rifles, food enough for two weeks, warm bedding
and thick clothes, Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow set out down the Little
Missouri River.
There had been a blizzard, the weather was still bitterly cold, and the
river full of drifting ice. They shot prairie fowl and lived on them,
with bacon, bread and tea. It was cold work poling and paddling down
the river, with the current, but against a head wind. The ice froze on
the pole handles. At night where they camped the thermometer went down
to zero. Next day they shot two deer, for they needed meat, as they
were doing such hard work in the cold.
On the third day they sighted smoke,--the campfire of the three
thieves. Two boats, one of them the stolen one, were tied up to the
bank. It was an exciting moment, for they expected a fight. As it
turned out, however, it was a tough job, but not a fighting one. The
German was alone in camp, and they captured him without trouble. The
other two were out hunting. When they came back an hour or two later,
they were surprised by the order to hold up their hands. The half-breed
obeyed at once, Finnigan hesitated until Roosevelt walked in close,
covering him with a rifle, and repeated the command. Then he gave up.
But this was only the beginning of a long, hard task. It was often the
way to shoot such men at once, but Sheriff Roosevelt did not like that.
He was going to bring them back to jail. At night the thieves could not
be tied up, as they would freeze to death. So Roosevelt, Sewall and
Dow had to take turns in watching them at night. After they started
down river again, they found the river blocked by ice, and had to camp
out for eight days in freezing weather. The food all but gave out, and
at last there was nothing left but flour. Bread made out of flour and
muddy water and nothing else, is not, says Mr. Roosevelt, good eating
for a steady diet. Besides they had to be careful of meeting a band of
Sioux Indians, who were known to be in the region.
At last they worked back to a ranch, borrowed a pony, on which
Roosevelt rode up into the mountains to a place where there was a
wagon. He hired this, with two broncos and a driver. Sewall and Dow
took the boats down the river, while Roosevelt set out on a journey
which took two days and a night, walking behind the wagon, and guarding
the three men. The driver of the wagon was a stranger.
At night they put up at a frontier hut, and the Deputy Sheriff had to
sit up all night to be sure the three prisoners did not escape. When
he reached the little town of Dickinson, and handed the men over to
the Sheriff, he had traveled over three hundred miles. He had brought
three outlaws to justice, and done something for the cause of better
government in the country where he lived.