ask the Captain when he would be coming. I found the reply in the
newspapers a few days later. The Captain was dead. The gallant old
fellow had crossed the divide that he wrote about, leaving behind him
not merely the sorrow of his friends but their pride in his memory.
Well may we feel proud of having been numbered among the friends of
such a thoroughgoing, upstanding American as Seth Bullock. As long as
our country produces men of such caliber, we may face the future with
a consciousness of our ability to win through such dark days as may
confront us. The changes and shiftings that have ever accompanied our
growth never found Seth Bullock at a loss; he was always ready to
“Turn a keen, untroubled face
Home to the instant need of things.”
Throughout his well-rounded and picturesque career he coped with
the varied problems that confronted him in that unostentatious and
unruffled way so peculiarly his own, with which he faced the final
and elemental fact of his recall from service.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Fifteen years later when I was in Medora with Captain Seth
Bullock, Muley was still alive and enjoying a life of ease in Joe
Ferris’s pastures.
[2] Shenzi really means bushman, but it is applied, generally in
a derogatory sense, by the Swahilis to all the wild natives, or
“blanket Indians.”
[3] Since writing this we have heard from a friend who is learned in
books. He tells us that he believes the letter to be an excellent
facsimile pasted in the edition concerned.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Happy Hunting-Grounds, by Kermit Roosevelt