Hills for a camping trip with Seth Bullock. I had often seen him
in the East, so the tall, spare figure and the black Stetson were
familiar to me when the Captain boarded the train a few stations
before reaching Deadwood. Never shall I forget the romance of that
first trip in the West. It was all new to me. Unfortunately I had to
leave for the East for the start of school before the opening of the
deer season; but we caught a lot of trout, and had some unsuccessful
bear-hunts--hunts which were doomed to unsuccess before they started,
but which supplied the requisite thrill notwithstanding. All we
ever found of the bear was their tracks, but we had a fleeting
glimpse of a bobcat, and that was felt amply to repay any amount of
tramping. Our bag consisted of one jack-rabbit. The Captain told us
that we were qualified to join a French trapper whom he had known.
The Frenchman was caught by an unusually early winter and snowed in
away off in the hills. In the spring, a good deal to every one’s
surprise, he turned up, looking somewhat thin, but apparently totally
unconcerned over his forced hibernation. When asked what he had lived
on, he replied: “Some day I keel two jack-rabeet, one day one, one
day none!”
The Captain and I took turns at writing my diary. I find his entry
for August 26:
Broke camp at Jack Boyden’s on Sand Creek at 6.30 A. M., and rode
via Redwater Valley and Hay Creek to Belle Fourche, arriving at the
S. B. ranch at two o’clock; had lunch of cold cabbage; visited the
town; returned to camp at five P. M.; had supper at the wagon and
fought mosquitoes until ten o’clock.
Broke camp and rode via Owl Creek divide and Indian Creek through
several very large towns inhabited chiefly by prairie dogs, to
our camp on Porcupine Creek. Fought mosquitoes from 3 A. M. to
breakfast time.
I had long been an admirer of Bret Harte, and many of the people I
met might have stepped from the pages of his stories. There was the
old miner with twenty-two children, who couldn’t remember all their
names. His first wife had presented him with ten of them, but when
he married again he had told his second wife that it was his initial
venture in matrimony. He gave a vivid description of the scene when
some of the progeny of his first marriage unexpectedly put in an
appearance. Time had smoothed things over, and the knowledge of her
predecessor had evidently only acted as a spur to greater deeds, as
exemplified in the twelve additions to the family.
Then there was the old lady with the vinegar jug. She was the
postmistress of Buckhorn. We had some difficulty in finding the
post-office, but at length we learned that the postmistress had moved
it fifteen miles away, to cross the State border, in order that she
might live in Wyoming and have a vote. We reached the shack to find
it deserted, but we had not long to wait before she rode in, purple
in the face and nearly rolling off her pony from laughter. She told
us that she had got some vinegar from a friend, and while she was
riding along the motion exploded the jug, and the cork hit her in the
head; what with the noise and the blow she made sure the Indians
were after her, and rode for her life a couple of miles before she
realized what had happened.
What could have surpassed the names of the trails along which we rode
and the canyons in which we camped? There was Hidden Treasure Gulch
and Calamity Hollow, and a score more equally satisfying. That first
trip was an immense success, and all during the winter that followed
whenever school life became particularly irksome I would turn to
plans for the expedition that we had scheduled for the next summer.
When the time to leave for the West arrived I felt like an old
stager, and indulged for the first time in the delight of getting
out my hunting outfit, deciding what I needed, and supplementing my
last summer’s rig with other things that I had found would be useful.
Like all beginners I imagined that I required a lot for which I had
in reality no possible use. Some men always set off festooned like
Christmas-trees, and lose half the pleasure of the trip through
trying to keep track of their belongings. They have special candles,
patented lanterns, enormous jack-knives with a blade to fulfil every
conceivable purpose, rifles and revolvers and shotguns galore;
almost anything that comes under the classification of “it might come
in handy.” The more affluent hunter varies only in the quality and
not the quantity of his “gadjets.” He usually has each one neatly
tucked away in a pigskin case. The wise man, however, soon learns
that although anything may “come in handy” once on a trip, you
could even on that occasion either get along without it or find a
substitute that would do almost as well. It is surprising with what a
very little one can make out perfectly comfortably. This was a lesson
which I very quickly learned from the Captain.
The second trip that we took was from Deadwood, South Dakota, to
Medora, North Dakota. I had never seen the country in which father
ranched, and Seth Bullock decided to take me up along the trail that
father had been travelling when they met for the first time.
We set off on Friday the 13th, and naturally everything that happened
was charged up to that inauspicious day. We lost all our horses
the first night, and only succeeded in retrieving a part of them.
Thereafter it started in raining, and the gumbo mud became all but
impassable for the “chuck-wagon.” The mosquitoes added to our misery,
and I find in my diary in the Captain’s handwriting a note to the
effect that “Paul shot three mosquitoes with a six-shooter. Stanley
missed with a shotgun.”
The Captain was as stolid and unconcerned as a Red Indian through
every change of weather. He had nicknamed me “Kim” from Kipling’s
tale, and after me he had named a large black horse which he always
rode. It was an excellent animal with a very rapid walk which proved
the bane of my existence. My pony, “Pickpocket,” had no pace that
corresponded, and to adapt himself was forced to travel at a most
infernal jiggle that was not only exceedingly wearing but shook me
round so that the rain permeated in all sorts of crevices which might
reasonably have been expected to prove water-tight. With the pride
of a boy on his second trip, I could not bring myself to own up to
my discomfort. If I had, the Captain would have instantly changed
his pace; but it seemed a soft and un-Western admission to make, so
I suffered in external silence, while inwardly heaping every insult
I could think of upon the Captain’s mount. We were travelling long
distances, so the gait was rarely changed unless I made some excuse
to loiter behind, and then walked my pony in slow and solitary
comfort until the Captain was almost out of sight, and it was time to
press into a lope which comfortably and far too rapidly once more put
me even with him.
The Captain was a silent companion; he would ride along hour after
hour, chewing a long black cigar, in a silence broken only by verses
he would hum to himself. There was one that went on interminably,
beginning:
“I wonder if ever a cowboy
Will be seen in those days long to come;
I wonder if ever an Indian
Will be seen in that far bye-and-bye.”
Every now and then some butte would suggest a reminiscence of the
early days, and a few skilfully directed questions would lure him
into a chain of anecdotes of the already vanished border-life. He was
continually coming out with a quotation from some author with whose
writings I had never thought him acquainted. Fishing in a Black Hills
stream, I heard him mutter:
“So you heard the left fork of the Yuba
As you stood on the banks of the Po.”
He had read much of Kipling’s prose and poetry, but what he most
often quoted were the lines to Fighting Bob Evans.
In his house in Deadwood he had a good library, the sort of one which
made you feel that the books had been selected to read and enjoy, and
not bought by the yard like window-curtains, or any other furnishings
thought necessary for a house. Mrs. Bullock was president of the
“Women’s Literary Club,” and I remember father being much impressed
with the work that she was doing.
As I have said before, the Captain was a man whom changing conditions
could not throw to one side. He would anticipate the changes,
and himself take the lead in them, adapting himself to the new
conditions; you could count upon finding him on top. He was very
proud of the fact that he had brought the first alfalfa to the State,
and showed me his land near Belle Fourche, where he had planted the
original crop. Its success was immediate. He said that he could not
claim the credit of having introduced potatoes, but an old friend
of his was entitled to the honor, and he delighted in telling the
circumstances. The Captain’s friend, whom we can call Judge Jones,
for I’ve forgotten his name, had opened a trading-post in what
was at that time the wild territory of Dakota. The Indians were
distinctly hostile, and at any good opportunity were ready to raid
the posts, murdering the factors and looting the trading goods. In
the judge’s territory there was one particularly ugly customer, half
Indian and half negro, known as Nigger Bill. The judge was much
interested in the success of his adventure in potatoes, and the
following was one of the letters he received from his factor, as Seth
Bullock used to quote it to me:
DEAR JUDGE,
This is to tell you all is well here and I hope is same with you.
Nigger Bill came to the door of the stockade to-day and said “I am
going to get in.” I said “Nigger Bill you will not get in.” Nigger
Bill said “I will get in.” I shot Nigger Bill. He is dead. The
potatoes is doing fine.
Although realizing to the full that the change was inevitable and, of
course, to the best interests of the country, and naturally taking
much pride in the progress his State was making, the Captain could
not help at times feeling a little melancholy over the departed days
when there was no wire in the country, and one could ride where one
listed. He wrote me in 1911: “The part of South Dakota which you knew
has all been covered with the shacks of homesteaders, from Belle
Fourche to Medora, and from the Cheyenne agency to the Creek Where
the Old Woman Died.” The old times had gone, never to return, and
although the change was an advance, it closed an existence that could
never be forgotten or relived by those who had taken part in it.
The Captain gave me very sound advice when I was trying to make up
my mind whether or not to go to college. I was at the time going
through the period of impatience that comes to so many boys when they
feel that they are losing valuable time, during which they should be
starting in to make their way in the world. I had talked it over with
the Captain during one of the summer trips, and soon afterward he
wrote me:
Ride the old studies with spurs. I don’t like the idea of your
going out to engage in business until you have gone through
Harvard. You will have plenty of time after you have accomplished
this to tackle the world. Take my advice, my boy, and don’t
think of it. A man without a college education nowadays is badly
handicapped. If he has had the opportunity to go through college
and does not take advantage of it, he goes through life with a
regret that becomes more intensified as he gets older. Life is a
very serious proposition if we would live it well.
I went through college and I have often realized since how excellent
this advice was, and marvelled not a little at the many-sidedness of
a frontiersman who could see that particular situation so clearly.
[Illustration: A morning’s bag of prairie chicken in South Dakota
Seth Bullock is second from the left, and R. H. Munro Ferguson third]
The year before I went with my father to Africa, R. H. Munro Ferguson
and myself joined the Captain in South Dakota for a prairie-chicken
hunt. We were to shoot in the vicinity of the Cheyenne Indian
reservation, and the Captain took us through the reservation to
show us how the Indian question was being handled. The court was
excellently run, but what impressed us most was the judge’s name, for
he was called Judge No Heart. Some of our hunting companions rejoiced
in equally unusual names. There were Spotted Rabbit, No Flesh, Yellow
Owl, and High Hawk, not to forget Spotted Horses, whose prolific
wife was known as Mrs. Drops-Two-at-a-Time. We had with us another
man named Dave Snowball, who looked and talked just like a Southern
darky. As a matter of fact, he was half negro and half Indian. In
the old days negro slaves not infrequently escaped and joined the
Indians. I went to see Dave’s father. There was no mistaking him for
what he was, but when I spoke to him he would answer me in Sioux
and the only English words I could extract from him were “No speak
English.” He may have had some hazy idea that if he talked English
some one would arrest him and send him back to his old masters,
although they had probably been dead for thirty or forty years.
Possibly living so long among the Sioux, he had genuinely forgotten
the language of his childhood.
High Hawk and Oliver Black Hawk were old “hostiles.” So was Red Bear.
We came upon him moving house. The tepee had just been dismantled,
and the support poles were being secured to a violently objecting
pony. A few weeks later when we were on the train going East,
Frederic Remington joined us. He was returning from Montana, and upon
hearing that we had been on the Cheyenne reservation he asked if we
had run into old Red Bear, who had once saved his life. He told us
that many years before he had been picked up by a party of hostiles,
and they had determined to give him short shrift, when Red Bear,
with whom he had previously struck a friendship, turned up, and
successfully interceded with his captors. One reminiscence led to
another, and we were soon almost as grateful to Red Bear for having
opened such a store as Remington had been for having his life spared.
Frederic Remington was a born raconteur, and pointed his stories with
a bluff, homely philosophy, redolent of the plains and the sage-brush.
The night before we left the Indians the Captain called a council.
All the old “hostiles” and many of the younger generation gathered.
The peace-pipes circulated. We had brought with us from New York a
quantity of German porcelain pipes to trade with the Indians. Among
them was one monster with a bowl that must have held from an eighth
to a quarter of a pound of tobacco. The Indians ordinarily smoke
“kinnikinick,” which is chopped-up willow bark. It is mild and gives
a pleasant, aromatic smoke. The tobacco which we had was a coarse,
strong shag. We filled the huge pipe with it, and, lighting it,
passed it round among the silent, solemn figures grouped about the
fire. The change was as instantaneous as it was unpremeditated.
The first “brave” drew deeply and inhaled a few strong puffs; with
a choking splutter he handed the pipe to his nearest companion. The
scene was repeated, and as each Indian, heedless of the fate of his
comrades, inhaled the smoke of the strong shag, he would break out
coughing, until the pipe had completed the circuit and the entire
group was coughing in unison. Order was restored and willow bark
substituted for tobacco, with satisfactory results. Then we each
tried our hand at speaking. One by one the Indians took up the
thread, grunting out their words between puffs. The firelight rose
and fell, lighting up the shrouded shapes. When my turn came I spoke
through an interpreter. Coached by the Captain as to what were their
most lamentable failings--those that most frequently were the means
of his making their acquaintance--I gave a learned discourse upon the
evils of rustling ponies, and the pleasant life that lay before those
who abstained from doing so. Grunts of approval, how sincere I know
not, were the gratifying reply to my efforts. The powwow broke up
with a substantial feast of barbecued sheep, and next morning we left
our nomadic hosts to continue their losing fight to maintain their
hereditary form of existence, hemmed in by an ever-encroaching white
man’s civilization.
Near the reservation we came upon two old outlaw buffaloes, last
survivors of the great herds that not so many years previously had
roamed these plains, providing food and clothing for the Indians
until wiped out by the ruthless white man. These two bulls, living
on because they were too old and tough for any one to bother about,
were the last survivors left in freedom. A few days later we were
shown by Scottie Phillips over his herd. He had many pure breeds but
more hybrids, and the latter looked the healthier. Scottie had done
a valuable work in preserving these buffalo. He was a squaw-man, and
his pleasant Indian wife gave us excellent buffalo-berry preserves
that she had put up.
Scottie’s ranch typified the end of both buffalo and Indian. Before
a generation is past the buffalo will survive only in the traces of
it left by crossing with cattle; and the same fate eventually awaits
the Indian. No matter how wise be the course followed in governing
the remnants of the Indian race, it can only be a question of time
before their individuality sinks and they are absorbed.
The spring following this expedition I set off with father for
Africa. The Captain took a great deal of interest in the plans for
the trip. A week before we sailed he wrote:
I send you to-day by American Express the best gun I know of for
you to carry when in Africa. It is a single action Colts 38 on a
heavy frame. It is a business weapon, always reliable, and will
shoot where you hold it. When loaded, carry it on the safety, or
first cock of the hammer.
Seth Bullock was a hero-worshipper and father was his great hero. It
would have made no difference what father did or said, the Captain
would have been unshakably convinced without going into the matter at
all that father was justified. There is an old adage that runs: “Any
one can have friends that stand by him when he’s right; what you want
is friends that stand by you when you’re wrong.” Seth Bullock, had
occasion ever demanded it, would have been one of the latter.
In the Cuban War he was unable to get into the Rough Riders, and so
joined a cowboy regiment which was never fortunate enough to get
over to Cuba, but suffered all its casualties--and there were plenty
of them--from typhoid fever, in a camp somewhere in the South. He was
made a sort of honorary member of the Rough Riders, and when there
were informal reunions held in Washington he was counted upon to take
part in them. He was a favorite with every one, from the White House
ushers to the French Ambassador. As an honorary member of the Tennis
Cabinet he was present at the farewell dinner held in the White House
three days before father left the presidency. A bronze cougar by
Proctor had been selected as a parting gift, and it was concealed
under a mass of flowers in the centre of the table. The Captain had
been chosen to make the presentation speech, and when he got up and
started fumbling with flowers to disclose the cougar father could not
make out what had happened.
The Captain, as he said himself, was a poor hand at saying good-by.
He was in New York shortly before we sailed for Africa, but wrote: “I
must leave here to-day for Sioux Falls; then again I am a mollycoddle
when it comes to bidding good-by; can always easier write good-by
than speak it.”
His gloomy forebodings about the Brazilian trip were well justified.
He was writing me to South America:
I was glad to hear you will be with your father. I have been uneasy
about this trip of his, but now that I know you are along I will
be better satisfied. I don’t think much of that country you are to
explore as a health resort, and there are no folks like home folks
when one is sick.
The Captain made up his mind that if his regiment had failed to get
into the Cuban War the same thing would not happen in the case of
another war. In July, 1916, when the Mexican situation seemed even
more acute than usual, I heard from the Captain:
If we have war with Mexico you and I will have to go. I am daily
in receipt of application from the best riders in the country.
Tell the Colonel I have carried out his plan for the forming of a
regiment, and within fifteen days from getting word from him, will
have a regiment for his division that will meet with his approval.
You are to have a captaincy to start with. I don’t think Wilson
will fight without he is convinced it will aid in his election. He
is like Artemus Ward--willing to sacrifice his wife’s relations on
the altar of his country.
The Mexican situation continued to drag along, but we at length
entered the European war, and for a while it looked as if my father
would be allowed to raise a division and take it over to the other
side. The Captain had already the nucleus of his regiment, and the
telegrams passed fast and furiously. However, for reasons best known
to the authorities in Washington, it all turned out to be to no
purpose. The Captain was enraged. He wrote me out to Mesopotamia,
where I was serving in the British forces:
I was very much disgusted with Wilson when he turned us down. I
had a splendid organization twelve hundred strong, comprising
four hundred miners from the Black Hills Mines, four hundred
railroad boys from the lines of the Chicago and Northwestern, and
the C. B. and Q. in South Dakota, Western Nebraska, and Wyoming,
and four hundred boys from the ranges of Western South Dakota,
Montana, and Wyoming. It was the pick of the country. Your troop
was especially good; while locally known as the Deadwood troop,
most of the members were from the country northwest of Belle
Fourche; twenty of your troop were Sioux who had served on the
Indian police. Sixty-five per cent of the regiment had military
training. Damn the dirty politics that kept us from going. I am
busy now locally with the Red Cross and the Exemption Board of this
county, being chairman of each. We will show the Democrats that we
are thoroughbreds and will do our bit even if we are compelled to
remain at home with the Democrats.
After expatiating at some length and with great wealth of detail as
to just what he thought of the attitude of the administration, the
Captain continued with some characteristic advice:
I am going to caution you now on being careful when you are on
the firing line. Don’t try for any Victoria Cross, or lead any
forlorn hopes; modern war does not require these sacrifices, nor
are battles won that way nowadays. I wouldn’t have you fail in any
particular of a brave American soldier, and I know you won’t, but
there is a vast difference between bravery and foolhardiness, and
a man with folks at home is extremely selfish if unnecessarily
foolhardy in the face of danger.
All of it very good, sound advice, and just such as the Captain might
have been expected to give, but the last in the world that any one
would have looked for him to personally follow.
The letter ended with “I think the war will be over this year. I did
want to ride a spotted cayuse into Berlin, but it don’t look now as
if I would.”
The next time that I heard from the Captain was some time after I had
joined the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In characteristic
fashion he addressed the letter merely “Care of General Pershing,
France,” and naturally the letter took three or four months before
it finally reached me. The Captain had been very ill, but treated the
whole matter as a joke.
I have just returned from California, where I was on the sick list
since last December, six months in a hospital and sanitarium while
the doctors were busy with knives, and nearly took me over the
divide. I am recovering slowly, and hope to last till the Crown
Prince and his murdering progenitor are hung. I was chairman of the
Exemption Board in 1917 and stuck to it until I was taken ill with
grippe, which ended in an intestinal trouble which required the
services of two surgeons and their willing knives to combat. The
folks came to California after the remains, but when they arrived
they found the remains sitting up and cussing the Huns.
Now, Kim, take care of yourself; don’t get reckless. Kill all the
Huns you can, but don’t let them have the satisfaction of getting
you.
My father’s death was a fearful blow to the old Captain. Only those
who knew him well realized how hard he was hit. He immediately set to
work to arrange some monument to my father’s memory. With the native
good taste that ever characterized him, instead of thinking in terms
of statues, he decided that the dedication of a mountain would be
most fitting, and determined to make the shaft to be placed upon
its summit simple in both form and inscription. Father was the one
honorary member of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, and it was in
conjunction with this society that the Captain arranged that Sheep
Mountain, a few miles away from Deadwood, should be renamed Mount
Roosevelt.
General Wood made the address. A number of my friends who were there
gave me the latest news of the Captain. He wrote me that he expected
to come East in September; that he was not feeling very fit, and
that he was glad to have been able to go through with the dedication
of the mountain. He was never a person to talk about himself, so I
have no way of knowing, other than intuition, but I am certain that
he felt all along that his days were numbered, and held on mainly in
order to accomplish his purpose of raising the memorial.