If, on those solitary rides, Roosevelt gave much thought to politics,

it was doubtless not on any immediate benefit for himself on which his

mind dwelt. Sewall said, long afterward, that "Roosevelt was always

thinkin' of makin' the world better, instead of worse," and Merrifield

remembered that even in those early days the "Eastern tenderfoot" was

dreaming of the Presidency. It was a wholesome region to dream in.

Narrow notions could not live in the gusty air of the prairies, and

the Bad Lands were not conducive to sentimentalism.

X

The pine spoke, but the word he said was "Silence";

The aspen sang, but silence was her theme.

The wind was silence, restless; and the voices

Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence

Made vocal in the topsy-turvy of dream.

_Paradise Found_

Roosevelt started for the Big Horn Mountains on August 18th, but

Sewall, after all, did not go with him. Almost with tears, he begged

off. "I'd always dreamed of hunting through that Big Horn country," he

said long afterward. "I had picked that out as a happy hunting ground

for years and years, and I never wanted to go anywhere so much as I

wanted to go along with Theodore on that trip." But the memory of the

lonely look in Will Dow's face overcame the soft-hearted backwoodsman

at the last minute. He pointed out to Roosevelt that one man could not

well handle the logs for the new ranch-house and suggested that he be

allowed to rejoin Will Dow.

Early on the morning of the 18th, Roosevelt set his caravan in motion

for the long journey. For a hunting companion he had Merrifield and

for teamster and cook he had a French Canadian named Norman Lebo, who,

as Roosevelt subsequently remarked, to Lebo's indignation (for he

prided himself on his scholarship), "possessed a most extraordinary

stock of miscellaneous mis-information upon every conceivable

subject." He was a short, stocky, bearded man, a born wanderer, who

had left his family once for a week's hunting trip and remained away

three years, returning at last only to depart again, after a week, for

further Odyssean wanderings. "If I had the money," he had a way of

saying, "no two nights would ever see me in the same bed." It was

rumored that before Mrs. Lebo had permitted her errant spouse to go

out of her sight, she had secured pledges from Roosevelt guaranteeing

her three years' subsistence, in case the _wanderlust_ should once

more seize upon her protector and provider.

Roosevelt rode ahead of the caravan, spending the first night with the

Langs, who were always friendly and hospitable and full of good talk,

and rejoining Merrifield and "the outfit" on the Keogh trail a few

miles westward next morning. Slowly and laboriously the "prairie

schooner" lumbered along the uneven route. The weather was sultry, and

as they crossed the high divide which separated the Little Missouri

basin from the valley of the Little Beaver they saw ahead of them the

towering portents of storm. The northwest was already black, and in a

space of time that seemed incredibly brief the masses of cloud boiled

up and over the sky. The storm rolled toward them at furious speed,

extending its wings, as it came, as though to gather in its victims.

[Illustration: Group of Bad Lands citizens. "Old man" Lebo is the

second from the left, seated; to right of him is A. C. Huidekoper,

whose H. T. horse-ranch was famous; beside him is Hell-Roaring Bill

Jones; James Harmon is behind Huidekoper; at the right of the group

(standing) is Schuyler Lebo; at the left, standing beside the Indian

is Charles Mason, famous, above all, for his nickname which (with no

irreverent intent) was "Whistling Jesus."]

Against the dark background of the mass [Roosevelt wrote,

describing it later] could be seen pillars and clouds of

gray mist, whirled hither and thither by the wind, and

sheets of level rain driven before it. The edges of the

wings tossed to and fro, and the wind shrieked and moaned as

it swept over the prairie. It was a storm of unusual

intensity; the prairie fowl rose in flocks from before it,

scudding with spread wings toward the thickest cover, and

the herds of antelope ran across the plain like race-horses

to gather in the hollows and behind the low ridges.

We spurred hard to get out of the open, riding with loose

reins for the creek. The center of the storm swept by behind

us, fairly across our track, and we only got a wipe from the

tail of it. Yet this itself we could not have faced in the

open. The first gust caught us a few hundred yards from the

creek, almost taking us from the saddle, and driving the

rain and hail in stinging level sheets against us. We

galloped to the edge of a deep wash-out, scrambled into it

at the risk of our necks, and huddled up with our horses

underneath the windward bank. Here we remained pretty well

sheltered until the storm was over. Although it was August,

the air became very cold. The wagon was fairly caught, and

would have been blown over if the top had been on; the

driver and horses escaped without injury, pressing under the

leeward side, the storm coming so level that they did not

need a roof to protect them from the hail. Where the center

of the whirlwind struck, it did great damage, sheets of

hailstones as large as pigeons' eggs striking the earth with

the velocity of bullets; next day the hailstones could have

been gathered up by the bushel from the heaps that lay in

the bottom of the gullies and ravines.

They made camp that night at the edge of the creek whose banks had

given them what little shelter there was on the plateau where the

storm had struck them. All night the rain continued in a drizzle

punctuated at intervals by sharp showers. Next morning the weather was

no better, and after a morning's struggle with the wagon along the

slippery trail of gumbo mud, they made what would under other

circumstances have been a "dry camp." They caught the rain in their

slickers and made their coffee of it, and spent another more or less

uncomfortable night coiling themselves over and around a

cracker-barrel which seemed to take up the whole interior of the

wagon.

The weather cleared at last, and they pushed on southwestward, between

Box Elder Creek and Powder River. It was dreary country through which

Lebo and his prairie schooner made their slow and creaking way, and

Roosevelt and Merrifield, to whom the pace was torture, varied the

monotony with hunting expeditions on one-side or the other of the

parallel ruts that were the Keogh trail. It was on one of these trips

that Roosevelt learned a lesson which he remembered.

They had seen a flock of prairie chickens and Roosevelt had started

off with his shot-gun to bring in a meal of them. Suddenly Merrifield

called to him. Roosevelt took no heed.

"Don't you shoot!" cried Merrifield.

Roosevelt, with his eyes on the chickens, proceeded on his way

undeterred. Suddenly, a little beyond where he had seen the prairie

fowl go to covert, a mountain lion sprang out of the brush and bounded

away. Roosevelt ran for his rifle, but he was too late. The lion was

gone.

Merrifield's eyes were blazing and his remarks were not dissimilar.

"Now, whenever I hold up my hand," he concluded, "you stop still where

you are. Understand?"

Roosevelt, who would have knocked his ranch-partner down with

earnestness and conviction if he had thought Merrifield was in the

wrong, meekly bore the hunter's wrath, knowing that Merrifield was in

the right; and thereafter on the expedition obeyed orders with a

completeness that occasionally had its comic aspects. But Merrifield

had no more complaints to make.

They plodded on, day after day, seeing no human being. When at last

they did come upon a lonely rider, Roosevelt instantly pressed him

into service as a mail carrier, and wrote two letters.

The first was to his sister Anna.

I am writing this on an upturned water-keg, by our

canvas-covered wagon, while the men are making tea, and the

solemn old ponies are grazing round about me. I am going to

trust it to the tender mercies of a stray cowboy whom we

have just met, and who may or may not post it when he gets

to "Powderville," a delectable log hamlet some seventy miles

north of us.

We left the Little Missouri a week ago, and have been

traveling steadily some twenty or thirty miles a day ever

since, through a desolate, barren-looking and yet

picturesque country, part of the time rolling prairie and

part of the time broken, jagged Bad Lands. We have fared

sumptuously, as I have shot a number of prairie chickens,

sage hens and ducks, and a couple of fine bucks--besides

missing several of the latter that I ought to have killed.

Every morning we get up at dawn, and start off by six

o'clock or thereabouts, Merrifield and I riding off among

the hills or ravines after game, while the battered "prairie

schooner," with the two spare ponies led behind, is driven

slowly along by old Lebo, who is a perfect character. He is

a weazened, wiry old fellow, very garrulous, brought up on

the frontier, and a man who is never put out or disconcerted

by any possible combination of accidents. Of course we have

had the usual incidents of prairie travel happen to us. One

day we rode through a driving rainstorm, at one time

developing into a regular hurricane of hail and wind, which

nearly upset the wagon, drove the ponies almost frantic, and

forced us to huddle into a gully for protection. The rain

lasted all night and we all slept in the wagon, pretty wet

and not very comfortable. Another time a sharp gale of wind

or rain struck us in the middle of the night, as we were

lying out in the open (we have no tent), and we shivered

under our wet blankets till morning. We go into camp a

little before sunset, tethering two or three of the horses,

and letting the others range. One night we camped in a most

beautiful natural park; it was a large, grassy hill, studded

thickly with small, pine-crowned chalk buttes, with very

steep sides, worn into the most outlandish and fantastic

shapes. All that night the wolves kept up a weird concert

around our camp--they are most harmless beasts.

The second letter was to his friend Lodge, who was in the midst of a

stiff fight to hold his seat in Congress.

You must pardon the paper and general appearance of this

letter, as I am writing out in camp, a hundred miles or so

from any house; and indeed, whether this letter is, or is

not, ever delivered depends partly on Providence, and

partly on the good-will of an equally inscrutable personage,

either a cowboy or a horse-thief, whom we have just met, and

who has volunteered to post it--my men are watching him with

anything but friendly eyes, as they think he is going to try

to steal our ponies. (To guard against this possibility he

is to sleep between my foreman and myself--delectable

bedfellow he'll prove, doubtless.)

I have no particular excuse for writing, beyond the fact

that I would give a good deal to have a talk with you over

political matters, just now. I heartily enjoy this life,

with its perfect freedom, for I am very fond of hunting, and

there are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over

these rolling, limitless prairies, rifle in hand, or winding

my way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque

deserts of the so-called Bad Lands; and yet I cannot help

wishing I could be battling along with you, and I cannot

regret enough the unfortunate turn in political affairs that

has practically debarred me from taking any part in the

fray. I have received fifty different requests to speak in

various places--among others, to open the campaign in

Vermont and Minnesota. I am glad I am not at home; I get so

angry with the "mugwumps," and get to have such scorn and

contempt for them, that I know I would soon be betrayed into

taking some step against them, much more decided than I

really ought to take.

The hunting trips which Roosevelt and Merrifield made on this side or

the other of the trail had their charm, and their perils also. There

was one excursion, while the wagon was crawling up the Clear Fork of

the Powder River, which for several reasons remained memorable.

The party was out of food, for the country they had been traversing

was not favorable for game, and Roosevelt and Merrifield started forth

one afternoon, with hope goaded by necessity, to replenish the larder.

Where the hilly country joined the river bottom, it broke off into

steep bluffs, presenting an ascent before which even a bronco, it

seemed, had his hesitations. Roosevelt and his companion rode into a

wash-out, and then, dismounting, led their ponies along a clay ledge

from which they turned off and went straight up an almost

perpendicular sandy bluff. As Merrifield, who was in the lead, turned

off the ledge, his horse, plunging in his attempt to clamber up the

steep bluff, overbalanced himself, and for a second stood erect on his

hind legs trying to recover his equilibrium. As Roosevelt, who was

directly beneath him, made a frantic leap with his horse to one side,

Merrifield's pony rolled over backwards, turned two complete

somersaults and landed with a crash at the bottom of the wash-out,

feet uppermost. They did not dare to hope that the horse would not be

"done for," but he proved on investigation to be very much alive.

Without aid he struggled to his feet, looking about in a rather

shame-faced fashion, apparently none the worse for his fall. With

vigorous pulling, they drew Roosevelt's pony to the top, and by the

same method, augmented with coaxing and abuse, they brought his fellow

to his side at last, and proceeded on their excursion.

Late in the afternoon they came on three blacktail deer. Roosevelt

took a running shot at two hundred yards and missed, took another and

missed again, though this time he managed to turn the animals in their

flight. They disappeared round the shoulder of a bluff, and Roosevelt,

suspecting that they would reappear when they had recovered from their

terror, elevated his sights to four hundred yards and waited. It was

not long before one of the three stepped out. Roosevelt raised his

rifle. The shot, at that distance, was almost impossible, but there

was zest in the trying. Suddenly another buck stepped out and walked

slowly toward the first. Roosevelt waited until the heads were in line

and fired. Over went both bucks. Roosevelt paced off the distance. It

was just four hundred and thirty-one long paces.

It was while they were ascending the Clear Fork of the Powder that

they discovered a band of Indians camped a short distance from the

place where they themselves had halted for the night.

"I'm going over to see those Indians," remarked Merrifield after

dinner that evening.

"What do you want to go over there for?" asked Roosevelt.

"Out in this country," responded the hunter dryly, "you always want to

know who your neighbors are."

They rode over together. The Indians were Cheyennes. Experience had

taught Merrifield that nothing was so conducive to peaceful relations

with a red neighbor as to prove to him that you could beat him at his

own game. He consequently suggested a shooting-match. The Indians

agreed. To Roosevelt's astonishment they proved to be very bad shots,

and not only Merrifield, but Roosevelt himself, completely outclassed

them in the competition. The Indians were noticeably impressed.

Merrifield and Roosevelt rode back to their camp conscious that so far

as those particular Indians were concerned no anxiety need disturb

their slumbers.

"Indians," remarked Merrifield later, "are the best judges of human

nature in the world. When an Indian finds out that you are a good

shot, he will leave you absolutely alone to go and come as you like.

Indians are just like white men. They are not going to start something

when they know you can out-shoot them."

For three weeks they traveled through desolation before they came at

last to the goal of their journey. At the foot of the first steep

rise, on the banks of Crazy Woman Creek, a few miles south of the army

post at Buffalo, they left the wagon, and following an old Indian

trail started into the mountains, driving their pack-ponies before

them.

It was pleasant, after three burning weeks of treeless prairie, to

climb into the shadowy greenness of the mountains. All about them was

the music of running water, where clear brooks made their way through

deep gorges and under interlacing boughs. Groves of great pines rose

from grassy meadows and fringed the glades that lay here and there

like quiet parks in the midst of the wilderness.

The hunters pitched their camp at last in a green valley beside a

boisterous mountain brook. The weather was clear, with thin ice

coursing the dark waters of the mountain tarns, and now and again

slight snowfalls that made the forest gleam and glisten in the

moonlight like fairyland. Through the frosty air they could hear the

vibrant, musical notes of the bull elk far off, calling to the cows or

challenging one another.

No country could have been better adapted to still hunting than the

great, pine-clad mountains, studded with open glades. Roosevelt loved

the thrill of the chase, but he loved no less the companionship of the

majestic trees and the shy wild creatures which sprang across his path

or ran with incredible swiftness along the overhanging boughs. Moving

on noiseless moccasins he caught alluring glimpses of the inner life

of the mountains.

The days passed very pleasantly in the crystal air and vibrant

solitude of their mountain hunting grounds. The fare that old Lebo

provided was excellent, and to the three men, who had for weeks been

accustomed to make small fires from dried brush or from sagebrush

roots laboriously dug out of the ground, it was a treat to sit at

night before the roaring pine-logs.

"We've come to a land at last," remarked the quaint old teamster with

satisfaction, "where the wood grows on trees."

They shot several elk promptly, but the grizzlies they were after

eluded them. At last, after a week Merrifield, riding into camp one

dusk, with a shout announced that he had come upon grizzly-bear signs

some ten miles away. They shifted camp at once.

That afternoon, on a crag overlooking a wild ravine, Roosevelt shot

another great bull elk. To Merrifield it seemed as though the elk

might constitute a day's satisfactory achievement. But Roosevelt was

indefatigable. "Now," he said with gusto, contemplating the

magnificent antlers, "we'll go out to-night and get a bear."

But that night they found nothing. Returning next day with Merrifield

for the carcass of the elk however, they found that a grizzly had been

feeding on it. They crouched in hiding for the bear's return. Night

fell, owls began to hoot dismally from the tops of the tall trees, and

a lynx wailed from the depths of the woods, but the bear did not come.

Early next morning they were again at the elk carcass. The bear had

evidently eaten his fill during the night. His tracks were clear, and

they followed them noiselessly over the yielding carpet of moss and

pine-needles, to an elk-trail leading into a tangled thicket of young

spruces.

Suddenly Merrifield sank on one knee, turning half round, his face

aflame with excitement. Roosevelt strode silently past him, his gun

"at the ready."

There, not ten steps off, was the great bear slowly rising from his

bed among the young spruces. He had heard the hunters and reared

himself on his haunches. Seeing them, he dropped again on all-fours,

and the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders bristled as he turned

toward them.

Roosevelt aimed fairly between the small, glittering eyes, and fired.

Doubtless my face was pretty white [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie"

a week later,] but the blue barrel was as steady as a rock

as I glanced along it until I could see the top of the bead

fairly between his two sinister-looking eyes; as I pulled

the trigger I jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if

he charged, but it was needless, for the great brute was

struggling in his death agony, and as you will see when I

bring home his skin, the bullet hole was as exactly between

his eyes as if I had measured the distance with a

carpenter's rule.

At last, one cool morning, when the branches of the evergreens were

laden with the feathery snow that had fallen overnight, the hunters

struck camp, and in single file, with the pack-ponies laden with the

trophies of the hunt, moved down through the woods and across the

canyons to the edge of the great table-land, then slowly down the

steep slope to its foot, where they found the canvas-topped wagon.

Next day they set out on the three-hundred-mile journey home to the

Maltese Cross.

For once I have made a very successful hunting trip

[Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Fort McKinney.] I have just

come out of the mountains and will start at once for the

Little Missouri, which I expect to reach in a fortnight,

and a week afterwards will be on my way home. Merrifield

killed two bears and three elk; he has been an invaluable

guide for game, and of course the real credit for the bag

rests with him, for he found most of the animals. But I

really shot well this time. Merrifield, who is a perfectly

fearless and reckless man, has no more regard for a grizzly

bear than he has for a jack-rabbit; the last one he killed,

he wished to merely break his leg with the first shot "so as

to see what he'd do." I had not at all this feeling, and

fully realized that we were hunting dangerous game; still I

never made steadier shooting than at the grizzlies. I had

grand sport with the elk, too, and the woods fairly rang

with my shouting when I brought down my first lordly bull,

with great branching antlers; but after I had begun

bear-killing, other sport seemed tame.

So I have had good sport; and enough excitement and fatigue

to prevent overmuch thought; and, moreover, I have at last

been able to sleep well at night. But unless I was

bear-hunting all the time I am afraid I should soon get as

restless with this life as with the life at home.

XI

The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings,

The mosquito delights you with buzzing wings;

The sand-burrs prevail, and so do the ants,

And those who sit down need half-soles on their pants.

_Cowboy song_

The day that Roosevelt started south on his journey to the mountains,

Sewall returned north down the river to rejoin his nephew. Will Dow

was watching the cattle on the plateau a few miles south of Elkhorn

Bottom, near the mouth of the defile which the cowboys called Shipka

Pass.

"You never looked so good to me," he said to Sewall that night, "as

you did when I saw your head coming up the Shipka Pass."

They worked together among the cattle for another two or three weeks.

They were on the best of terms with Captain Robins by this time, for

there was much to like and much to respect in the gruff, dark little

seafaring man, who had suffered shipwreck in more ways than one, and

was out on the plains because of a marriage that had gone on the

rocks. He was an excellent man with the horses, and good company about

a camp-fire, for somewhere he had picked up an education and was

well-informed. He gave the two tenderfeet a good training in the

rudiments of "cattle-punching," sending first one and then the other

off to distant round-ups to test their abilities among strangers.

Sewall proved unadaptable, for he was rather old to learn new tricks

so far removed from the activities that were familiar to him; but Dow

became a "cowhand" overnight.

Experience was not greatly mollifying Sewall's opinion of the region

in which his lot had been cast.

The sun when it shines clear [he wrote his brother Sam after

he had been in the Bad Lands six weeks] strikes the bare

sides of the Buttes and comes down on the treeless bottoms

hot enough to make a Rattlesnake pant. If you can get in the

shade there is most always a breeze. The grand trouble is

you can't get in the shade. There's no shade to get into and

the great sandy Desert is cool compared with some of the

gulches, but as you ride it is not quite so bad. The Ponys

when they are up to some trick are lively and smart, all

other times they are tired, are very tame and look very meek

and gentle. But just let one of them get the start of you in

any way and you are left. Am glad to say mine has never

really got the start yet. We have had a number of

differences and controverseys, but my arguments have always

prevailed so far.

About the middle of September, the two backwoodsmen moved down to

Elkhorn Bottom, leaving Robins in charge of the cattle. Dow went away

on a round-up and Sewall undertook to put in livable shape a dugout

that stood on the river-bank some thirty or forty yards from the place

which Roosevelt had, on a previous visit, selected as the site for the

ranch-house which Sewall and Dow were to build. The shack had belonged

to a hunter who had left the country, and was not sumptuous in its

fittings.

[Illustration: Roosevelt's brands.

CHIMNEY BUTTE RANCH.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor.

FERRIS & MERRIFIELD, Managers.

P. O. address, Little Missouri, D. T. Range, Little Missouri, 8 miles

south of railroad.

[brand drawing] as in cut on left hip and right side, both or either,

and down cut dewlap.

Horse brand, [brand drawing] on left hip.

ELKHORN RANCH.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor.

SEAWALL & DOW, Managers.

P. O. address, Little Missouri, D. T. Range, Little Missouri,

twenty-five miles north of railroad.

as in cut, [brand drawing] on left side, on right, [brand drawing]

or the reverse.

Horse brand, [brand drawing] on right or left shoulder.]

Dow returned from the round-up with interesting news. The Marquis, it

seemed, had by no means resigned his claim to the territory on which

Roosevelt had established "squatter's rights." Dow overheard one of

the Marquis's men confiding to another that "there'd be some dead men

round that Elkhorn shack some day."

Sewall received the news with calm satisfaction. "Well," he drawled,

"if there's going to be any dead men hereabouts, I cal'late we can fix

it so it won't be us."

Sewall and Dow began cutting timber for the house in a thick grove of

cottonwoods two or three hundred yards from the river, keeping a

weather eye open for trouble. A day or two after Dow's return from the

round-up, one of the Marquis's men rode up to them where they were

working.

"There's a vigilance committee around, I hear," he remarked casually.

"You haven't seen anything of 'em yet hereabouts, have you? I hear

they're considerin' makin' a call on you folks."

The men from Maine said to each other that the thing began to look

"smoky." They consulted Captain Robins, who agreed that "smoky" was

the word, and they carried rifles after that when they went to cut

timber.

For they knew very well that the hint which the Marquis's man had

lightly thrown out was no idle attempt at intimidation based on

nothing but the hope that the Easterners were timid. The activities of

Granville Stuart's raiders had stimulated the formation of other

vigilance committees, inspired in part by less lofty motives than

those which impelled the president of the Montana Stockgrowers'

Association and his friends. On the border between Dakota and Montana

a company of rough characters who called themselves vigilantes began

to make themselves the topic of excited conversation. They were said

to be after horse-thieves, but it became noticeable that their

activities seemed to be directed mainly against the small ranchers on

the edge of the Bad Lands. It was rumored that certain large ranchmen

were backing them in the hope of driving the "nesters" out of the

country.

The cowmen here are opposed, not only to the Indians, but

also to white settlers [wrote the Western correspondent of

the New York _Sun_]. They want the land these white and red

settlers are taking up. Vast tracts--uncultivated ranges,

not settlements--are what they desire. The small holder--the

man with a little bunch of cattle--is not wanted. They

freeze him out. Somehow he loses cattle, or they are killed

by parties unknown.

Sewall and Dow had a right to keep their guns near them while they

were at work in the grove on Elkhorn Bottom.

Meanwhile, the endeavors of Granville Stuart's vigilantes were having

their results. The precipitous methods of the "stranglers," as they

were grimly called, began to give the most hardened "the creeps." Who

the "stranglers" themselves were, nobody seemed to know. It was

rumored, on the one hand, that they included the biggest ranch-owners

in the Northwest; on the other hand, it was stated that they were

bands of lawless Texans driven out of the Panhandle and hired by the

ranchmen at thirty dollars a month "to clean up the country." Whoever

they were, they moved swiftly and acted without hesitation. The

newspapers said little about them, partly because they knew little,

partly because there was a general tacit understanding that the whole

thing, though necessary, was a disagreeable business, and the less

said of it the better.

The truth seems to be that behind the whole movement to rid eastern

Montana and western Dakota of the horse-thieves was a loose

organization of cattlemen of which Granville Stuart and his friends

were the directing heads. What funds were needed they provided. They

designated, moreover, certain responsible men in the different

round-up districts, to whom subordinate bands of the "stranglers"

reported from time to time for orders. Each subordinate band operated

independently of the others, and the leader in one district knew

nothing as a rule of the operations of the other bands. He told the

"stranglers" what men to "get," and that was all; and a day or two

later a man here and a man there would be found dangling from a

cottonwood.

In certain cases, Packard, who successfully combined the functions of

law officer and news-gatherer, knew beforehand what men were to be

hanged. On one occasion he was informed that two notorious characters

were to be done away with on the following Thursday. The operations of

the stranglers were as a rule terrifyingly punctual, and as Thursday

was the day on which the _Cowboy_ went to press, he announced in it,

with an awful punctuality of his own, the sudden demise of the thieves

in question.

He carried the papers to the depot to put them on the afternoon train

bound for the west, for the _Cowboy_ was popular with the passengers

and he disposed of an edition of seven or eight hundred weekly with

them in excess of his regular edition. As he was about to step on the

train, two men stepped down. They were the horse-thieves whose death

he had too confidently announced.

He stared at them, shocked to the marrow, feeling as though he had

seen ghosts. Would they stay in Medora, or would they go on to where

frontier justice was awaiting them? Would they see the announcement in

the _Cowboy_? He remembered that they could not read.

Fascinated, he watched them. The train started. The two men jumped

aboard.

That night they were hanged.

Exactly what relation the vigilance committee which was seeking to

drive the "nesters" out of western Montana bore to Granville Stuart's

organization, is difficult to determine. They had probably originally

been one of the subordinate bands, who were "feeling their oats," and,

under the pretense of "cleaning up the country," were cleaning up

personal scores. The captain of the band was a man called "Flopping

Bill," a distinctly shady character, and the band itself was made up

of irresponsible creatures who welcomed the opportunity to do, in the

cause of righteousness, a number of things for which under ordinary

circumstances they would have been promptly hanged. Their first act as

a body was to engage a French Canadian named Louis La Pache as guide.

La Pache was himself awaiting trial at Miles City for horse-stealing,

but there is no indication in the records that he was chosen because

he was ready to turn State's evidence. He was merely the type that

Flopping Bill's guardians of law and order would naturally choose.

The raiders began their activities near the mouth of Beaver Creek, not

ten miles from the spot where Sewall and Dow (with their rifles at

hand) were hewing timber for the new house. Two cowpunchers had

recently started a ranch there. They were generally considered honest,

but the vigilantes had marked them for destruction, and descended upon

the ranch ready to hang any one in sight. They found only a hired man,

an Englishman, for the ranchmen had got wind of the raid and fled; and

spent their enthusiasm for order in "allowing the Englishman to feel

the sensation of a lariat round his neck," as the record runs,

releasing him on his promise to leave the country forever. Thereupon

they nailed a paper, signed with skull and cross-bones, on the door of

the cabin ordering the ranchmen "to vacate"; and proceeded to other

pastures.

They stopped at a half dozen ranches, terrorizing and burning, but

catching no horse-thieves. It is impossible through the obscurity that

shrouds the grim events of that autumn to determine to what extent

they were honestly in pursuit of lawbreakers or were merely

endeavoring, at the behest of some of the great cattle-owners, to

drive the small stockmen out of the country. Their motives were

possibly mixed. The small ranchers were notoriously not always what

they seemed. Most of the horse-thieves posed as "nesters," hiding in

underground stables by day the horses they stole by night. Each

registered his own brand and sometimes more than one; but the brands

were carefully contrived. If you intended, for instance, to prey on

the great herds of the "Long X outfit," thus [X brand], you called

your brand "Four Diamonds," marking it thus [diamond brand]. A

quick fire and a running iron did the trick. It was all very simple

and very profitable and if you were caught there was always a Certain

Person (to whom you were accustomed to give an accounting), and beyond

him a vague but powerful Somebody Else to stand between you and the

law. There would be no trial, or, if there were a trial, there would

be no witnesses, or, if there were witnesses, there would be a lenient

judge and a skeptical jury. The methods of Flopping Bill's party were

no doubt reprehensible, but in attacking some of the little "nesters"

the raiders came close to the heart of many troubles.

But indiscriminate terrorizing by any one in any cause was not to the

taste of the ranchmen up and down the Little Missouri who happened to

be law-abiding. The raiders were starting prairie fires, moreover,

with the purpose evidently of destroying the pasture of the small

stockmen, and were in consequence vitally affecting the interests of

every man who owned cattle anywhere in the valley. That these acts of

vandalism were the work of a body from another Territory, invading the

Bad Lands for purposes of reform, did not add greatly to their

popularity. The ranchmen set about to organize a vigilance committee

of their own to repel the invaders, if necessary, by force.

Whether the raiders got wind of this purpose is not known, but they

evidently decided that they had overplayed their hand, for they

suddenly veered in their course and troubled the Bad Lands no more.

But before they went they dropped a bomb which did more than many

conflagrations to carry out their ostensible mission as discouragers

of evil-doing.

It happened that not far from Elkhorn Bottom the vigilantes came upon

Pierce Bolan, who, it will be remembered, had some time previous

discoursed to Fisher on the merits of the "considerate treatment" in

relations with horse-thieves. He was himself as honest as daylight,

but, as ill-luck would have it, the raiders found him afoot, and,

assuming that he was about to steal a horse, called on him to confess.

He declared that he had nothing to confess. The raiders thereupon

threw a rope around his neck and drew him up in such a way that his

feet just touched the ground. The victim continued to proclaim his

innocence and the vigilantes finally released him, but not until he

was unconscious. When he came to, the raiders were gone, but nearby he

found a paper possibly dropped not altogether inadvertently. It bore

the names of fifteen men along the Little Missouri whom Granville

Stuart's committee had marked for punishment.

What Bolan did with the list, to whom he showed the list, in what way

he reached the men whose names were on the list--all that is lost to

history. All that we know is that there was a great scattering during

the succeeding days, and certain men who were thought most reputable

discovered suddenly that they had pressing business in California or

New York.

"I never saw a full list of the names on that paper," said Fisher

years afterward, "and knew nothing of what was going on until two of

them came to me about the matter. They found that I was really

ignorant and then asked what I would do if in their place. I advised

hiding out for a while until matters had cooled off, which they did."

Who the men were whose names were on that list is a secret which those

who held it never revealed and inquisitive minds along the Little

Missouri could never definitely solve. Rumor suggested this man and

that whose ways had been devious, but only one name was ever mentioned

with certainty. That name was Maunders. No one seemed to question

that if any one was going to be hanged, Maunders was the most likely

candidate.

That gentleman, meanwhile, was fully aware that he had been marked for

slaughter, but he kept his head, and, trusting no doubt to the

protection of the Marquis, calmly remained in Medora, refusing by

flight to present his enemies with evidence of an uneasy conscience.

To his friends he declared that Fisher alone was responsible for

having his name placed on the list, and breathed dire threats against

the manager of the Marquis's Refrigerator Company.

Fisher was not greatly disturbed by the rumors that reached him of

Maunders's determination to kill him at the first opportunity. He even

went hunting alone with the outwardly affable "bad man."

Some of the "boys" thought he was taking unnecessary risks, and told

him so. "You're taking a big chance in going out alone with Maunders.

He's got it in for you."

Fisher smiled. "Perhaps you haven't noticed," he said, "that I always

make certain that one or the other of you fellows sees us leave.

Maunders would break his neck to see me get back safely."

Unquestionably, Maunders had an almost over-developed bump of caution.

He left Fisher unharmed and turned his attention to the two

backwoodsmen from Maine who were holding down the most desirable claim

north of Medora for an Eastern tenderfoot.

One Sunday morning late in September Sewall was alone in the dugout

at the river-bank. Dow was off on a stroll and Sewall was writing his

weekly letter home, when he suddenly heard hoof-beats punctuated with

shots. He went to the door. Six rough-looking characters on horseback

were outside with smoking rifles in their hands. He knew only one of

them, but he was evidently the leader. It was Maunders. Sewall took in

the situation and invited them all inside.

The men had been drinking, and, suspecting that they would be hungry,

Sewall offered them food. Dow was an excellent cook and in the ashes

of the hearth was a pot of baked beans, intended for their own midday

meal. Sewall, keeping carefully within reach of one or the other of

his weapons which hung on the wall, set the pot before the evil-faced

gunmen.

Maunders, who was slightly drunk, ate ravenously and directly began to

sing the praises of the beans. Sewall filled his plate, and filled it

again.

"I thought I would do everything I could to make them comfortable," he

remarked, telling about it later, "and then if they cooked up any

racket we should have to see what the end would be. I knew that if

they were well filled, it would have a tendency to make them

good-natured, and besides that it puts a man in rather an awkward

position, when he's got well treated, to start a rumpus."

Sewall watched the men unostentatiously, but with an eagle eye. He had

made up his mind that if there were to be any dead men thereabouts

Maunders was to be the first. "He being the leader I thought I would

make sure of him whatever happened to me."

He noted, not without satisfaction, that the men were looking around

the cabin, regarding the weapons with attention. He showed Maunders

about. The gunman agreed without enthusiasm that they had "got things

fixed up in very fine shape," and departed. He treated Sewall most

affably thereafter, but the backwoodsmen were made aware in one way

and another that the old mischief-maker had not yet given up the idea

of driving Theodore Roosevelt and his "outfit" off the claim at

Elkhorn Bottom.

XII

It was underneath the stars, the little peeking stars,

That we lay and dreamed of Eden in the hills:

We were neither sad nor gay, but just wondering, while we lay,

What a mighty lot of space creation fills.

Our fire was just a spark; dot of red against the dark,

And around the fire an awful lot of night.

The purple, changing air was as quiet as a prayer,

And the moon came up and froze the mountains white.

Henry Herbert KNIBBS

[Illustration: Fantastic formation at Medicine Buttes.]

[Illustration: Medicine Buttes.]

The "boss" of Elkhorn Ranch, meanwhile, oblivious of the heat which he

was generating in the Marquis's Prime Minister, was taking his slow

course northeastward across Wyoming to the Bad Lands. It was long and

weary traveling across the desolate reaches of burnt prairie. The

horses began to droop. At last, in some heavy sand-hills east of the

Little Beaver, one of the team pulling the heavily laden wagon played

out completely, and they had to put the toughest of the saddle ponies

in his place. Night was coming on fast as they crossed the final ridge

and came in sight of as singular a bit of country as any of them had

ever seen. Scattered over a space not more than three quarters of a

mile square were countless isolated buttes of sandstone, varying in

height from fifteen to fifty feet. Some of them rose as sharp peaks or

ridges or as connected chains, but the greater number by far were

topped with diminutive table-lands, some thirty feet across, some

seventy, some two hundred. The sides were perpendicular, and were

cut and channeled by the weather into most curious caves and columns

and battlements and spires. Here and there ledges ran along the faces

of the cliffs and eerie protrusions jutted out from the corners. Grave

pine-trees rose loftily among the strange creations of water and wind

set in a desert of snow-white sand. It was a beautiful and fantastic

place and they made their camp there.

The moon was full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they

built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall,

made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of

the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to

life, the buttes in the moonlight had their own still magic. Against

the shining silver of the cliffs the pines showed dark and somber, and

when the branches stirred, the bright light danced on the ground

making it appear like a sheet of molten metal.

It was like a country seen in a dream.

The next morning all was changed. A wild gale was blowing and rain

beat about them in level sheets. A wet fog came and went and gave

place at last to a steady rain, as the gale gave place to a hurricane.

They spent a miserable day and night shifting from shelter to shelter

with the shifting wind; another day and another night. Their

provisions were almost gone, the fire refused to burn in the fierce

downpour, the horses drifted far off before the storm....

"Fortunately," remarked Roosevelt later, "we had all learned that, no

matter how bad things were, grumbling and bad temper can always be

depended upon to make them worse, and so bore our ill-fortune, if not

with stoical indifference, at least in perfect quiet."

The third day dawned crisp and clear, and once more the wagon lumbered

on. They made camp that night some forty miles southwest of Lang's.

They were still three days from home, three days of crawling voyaging

beside the fagged team. The country was monotonous, moreover, without

much game.

"I think I'd like to ride in and wake the boys up for breakfast,"

remarked Merrifield.

"Good!" exclaimed Roosevelt. "I'll do it with you."

Merrifield argued the matter. Roosevelt had been in the saddle all day

and it was eighty miles to the Maltese Cross.

"I'm going with you. I want to wind up this trip myself," said

Roosevelt, and there the argument ended.

At nine o'clock they saddled their tough little ponies, and rode off

out of the circle of firelight. The October air was cool in their

faces as they loped steadily mile after mile over the moonlit prairie.

Roosevelt later described that memorable ride.

The hoof-beats of our horses rang out in steady rhythm

through the silence of the night, otherwise unbroken save

now and then by the wailing cry of a coyote. The rolling

plains stretched out on all sides of us, shimmering in the

clear moonlight; and occasionally a band of spectral-looking

antelope swept silently away from before our path. Once we

went by a drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at the

intruders; as we passed they charged down by us, the ground

rumbling beneath their tread, while their long horns knocked

against each other with a sound like the clattering of a

multitude of castanets. We could see clearly enough to keep

our general course over the trackless plain, steering by the

stars where the prairie was perfectly level and without

landmarks; and our ride was timed well, for as we galloped

down into the valley of the Little Missouri the sky above

the line of the level bluffs in our front was crimson with

the glow of the unrisen sun.

Roosevelt rode down to Elkhorn a day or two after his return to the

Maltese Cross, and found Sewall and Dow busy cutting the timber for

the new house, which was to stand in the shade of a row of cottonwood

trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They

were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a

few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with the

stalwart backwoodsmen.

One evening he overheard Captain Robins ask Dow what the day's cut had

been. "Well, Bill cut down fifty-three," answered Dow. "I cut

forty-nine, and the boss," he added dryly, not realizing that

Roosevelt was within hearing--"the boss he beavered down seventeen."

Roosevelt remembered the tree-stumps he had seen gnawed down by

beavers, and grinned.

Roosevelt found that the men from Maine were adapting themselves

admirably to their strange surroundings. Dow was already an excellent

cowhand. Sewalls abilities ran in other directions.

We are hewing away at the stuff for the house [Sewall wrote

his brother on October 19th]. It is to be 60 ft. long and 30

wide, the walls 9 ft. high, so you can see it is quite a job

to hew it out on three sides, but we have plenty of time.

Theodore wants us to ride and explore one day out of each

week and we have to go to town after our mail once a week,

so we don't work more than half the time. It is a good job

and a big one, but we have lots of time between this and

spring.

Meanwhile, he stubbornly insisted that the country was not adapted to

cattle.

I think I already see a good many drawbacks to this country

[he wrote]. The Stock business is a new business in the Bad

Lands and I can't find as anybody has made anything at it,

yet _they all expect to_. I think they have all lost as yet.

Talked the other day with one of the biggest Stock men here.

He is hired by the month to boss. He said nobody knew

whether there was anything in it or not, yet. He had been

here three years and sometimes thought there was not much in

it, said it was very expensive and a great many outs to it

and I believe he told the truth. Out about town they blow it

up, want to get everybody at it they can. We shall see in

time. Can tell better in the spring after we see how they

come in with their cattle.

The truth was, Bill knew the ways of cattle, for he had run cattle in

the open in Maine under climatic conditions not dissimilar to those of

the Dakota country. His experience had taught him that when a cow is

allowed to have one calf after another without special feeding, she is

more than likely to die after the third calf. He knew also that when a

cow calves in cold weather, she is likely to freeze her udder and be

ruined, and lose the calf besides.

"Those cows will either have to be fed," he said to Roosevelt, "or

they'll die."

Roosevelt took Sewall's pessimism with a grain of salt. "No one

hereabouts seems to think there's any danger of that sort," he said.

"I think, Bill, you're wrong."

"I hope I am," said Bill; and there the matter dropped.

It was while Roosevelt was working at Elkhorn that further rumors of

trouble came from the party of the Marquis. Maunders insisted that he

had a prior claim to the shack in which Sewall and Dow were living and

all the land that lay around it, and demanded five hundred dollars for

his rights. Roosevelt had from the first scouted the claim, for

Maunders had a way of claiming any shack which a hunter deserted

anywhere. Vague threats which Maunders was making filled the air, but

did not greatly disturb Roosevelt. Sewall and Dow, however, had heard

a rumor which sounded authentic and might require attention. Maunders

had said that he was going to shoot Roosevelt at the next opportunity.

They passed the news on to "the boss."

This was decidedly interesting. Maunders was known as a good shot and

was well protected by the Marquis.

Roosevelt promptly saddled his horse and rode back up the river.

Maunders's shack stood on the west bank a few hundred yards from the

Pyramid Park Hotel. Roosevelt knocked on the door. Maunders opened it.

"Maunders," said Roosevelt sharply, "I understand that you have

threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want

to begin the killing and to let you know that, if you have anything to

say against me, now is the time for you to say it."

Maunders looked unhappy. After a brief conversation it appeared that

Maunders did not after all want to shoot him. He had been "misquoted,"

he said. They parted, understanding one another perfectly.

Roosevelt left Medora on October 7th, bound for New York. He had

decided, after all, not to remain aloof from the political campaign.

He deeply distrusted the Democratic Party, on the one hand, and he was

enraged at the nominations of the Republican Party, on the other; but

the "Mugwumps," those Republicans who, with a self-conscious

high-mindedness which irritated him almost beyond words, were

supporting the Democratic nominee, he absolutely despised. Besides, it

was not in him to be neutral in any fight. He admitted that freely.

During the final weeks of the campaign he made numerous speeches in

New York and elsewhere which were not neutral in the least.

By leaving Medora on the 7th of October he missed a memorable

occasion, for on the following day Packard at last opened his

stage-line. The ex-baseball player had met and surmounted an array of

obstacles that would have daunted anybody but a youngster on the

Western frontier. He had completed his building operations by the end

of September, and by the first of October he had distributed his

hostlers, his eating-house keepers, his helpers and his "middle-route"

drivers, among the sixteen relay-stations that lined the wheel-tracks

which the Marquis was pleased to call the "highway" to the Black

Hills. The horses which he had purchased in a dozen different places

in the course of the summer were not such as to allay the trepidation

of timid travelers. They had none of them been broken to harness

before Packard's agents had found them and broken them in their own

casual and none too gentle fashion. Packard would have preferred to

have horses which had become accustomed to the restraining hand of

man, but "harness-broke" horses where rare in that country. Besides,

they were expensive, and, with the money coming from the Marquis only

in little sums, long-delayed, Packard that summer was hunting

bargains. As it was, Baron von Hoffman, who was a business man of

vision and ability, was none too pleased with the mounting expenses of

his son-in-law's new venture.

"How many horses have you bought?" he asked; Packard one day rather

sharply.

"A hundred and sixty-six."

"How many are you using on the stage-line?"

"A hundred and sixty."

"What are you doing with the other six?"

"They're out on the line."

"Humph!" grunted the Baron in despair. "Eating their heads off!"

What the Baron said to the Marquis is lost to history. The family in

the new house across the river from Medora had plenty of dignity and

pride. Whatever disagreements they had they kept securely within their

own walls, and there was nothing but a growing querulousness in the

voice of the man who held the purse-strings to reveal to the world

that Baron von Hoffman was beginning to think he was laying away his

money in a hole that had no bottom. Something of that feeling seems to

have been in the Marquis's own mind, for in the interviews he gave to

the newspapers the words "I won't be bled" recur.

On the first of October, Packard was ready for the "dress rehearsal"

of his stage-line. That performance partook of more than the usual

quantity of hazard connected with such occasions. At every station,

for instance, some or all of the six horses had to be roped, thrown,

and blindfolded before they would let themselves be harnessed. To

adjust the harness was itself a ticklish undertaking and had to be

done with minute regard for sensitive nerves, for if any part of it

struck a horse except with the pressure of its own weight, the devil

was loose again, and anything might happen. But even when the harness

was finally on the refractory backs, the work was not half done. Still

blindfolded, the horses had to be driven, pulled, pushed, and hauled

by main force to their appointed places in front of the coach.

Noiselessly, one at a time, the tugs were attached to the single-tree,

and carefully, as though they were dynamite, the reins were handed to

the driver. At the Moreau Station, two thirds of the way to Deadwood,

all six horses, it happened were practically unbroken broncos. The

driver was on his box with Packard at his side, as they prepared to

start, and at the head of each horse stood one of the station-hands.

"Ready?" asked the man at the head of the near leader.

"All set," answered the other helpers.

"Let 'er go!" called the driver.

The helpers jerked the blinds from the horses' eyes. The broncos

jumped into their collars as a unit. As a unit, however, they surged

back, as they became suddenly conscious of the horror that they

dreaded most--restraint. The off leader made a wild swerve to the

right, backing toward the coach, and dragging the near leader and the

near swing-horse from their feet. The off leader, unable to forge

ahead, made a wild leap for the off swing horse, and fairly crushed

him to earth with his feet, himself tripping on the harness and

rolling at random in the welter, his snapping hoofs flashing in every

direction. The wheel team, in the meantime, was doing what Packard

later described as "a vaudeville turn of its own." The near wheeler

was bucking as though there were no other horse within a hundred

miles; the off wheeler had broken his single-tree and was facing the

coach, delivering kicks at the mêlée behind him with whole-hearted

abandon and rigid impartiality.

"It was exactly the kind of situation," Packard remarked later, "that

George Myers would have called 'a gol-darned panorama.'"

But the horses were not to have matters altogether their own way, for

the helpers were experienced "horse-wranglers." By main strength they

pulled the off leader to his place and blindfolded him, delegating one

of their number to sit on his head until the snarl might be untangled.

The process was repeated with the other horses. The damage proved to

be negligible. A few small harness straps had snapped, and a

single-tree was broken. A second trial resulted no better than the

first. After the half-crazy animals had been a second time

disentangled and a third time harnessed, quivering, to the coach, the

driver had his way with them. The horses jumped forward into a wild

run, thrashing the heavy coach about as a small boy might be thrashed

about as the tail in "crack the whip." It was a wild ride, but they

reached Spearfish with no bones broken.

[Illustration: Poster of the Marquis de Mores's deadwood stage-line.]

"Our entrance into Deadwood was spectacular," said Packard later, "and

ended in an invitation ride to Lead City with Mayor Seth Bullock at

the head of the local dignitaries, riding in state inside the

coach."

On the 8th of October, Packard offered the dubious joys of his

stage-line for the first time to the public; and began to see a faint

prospect of return on his rather extravagant investment of energy and

time. But his satisfaction died stillborn. The Marquis's sanguine

temperament had once more proved the undoing of what might have been a

profitable venture. The mail contract, which the easy-going Frenchman

had thought that he had secured, proved illusory. Packard, who had

been glad to leave that part of the business to his principal,

discovered, as soon as he began to inquire for the mail-bags, that

what his principal had actually secured from the Postmaster-General

was not a contract at all, but merely a chance to bid when the annual

offers for star routes came up for bidding the following May. It was a

body blow to the putative owner of a stage-line.

Long after the last of his Deadwood coaches had been rattled to

kindlings in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Packard told the last

chapter of his connection with the Medora and Black Hills Forwarding

and Transportation Company.

"No mail contract; hardly a month of earnings before winter, when

there was no chance of paying operating expenses; responsible for the

pay-roll, but not on it; with a private pay-roll and expenses equal to

or greater than my private income; with all my cash savings gone in

the preliminary expenses of putting on the line, and finally with no

chance, under my contract, of getting a cent from the stage-line

before that nebulous time when it had paid for itself. The Marquis

soon returned and I told him I could not consider myself bound by the

contract. The delay in providing funds I had condoned by staying with

the proposition, but a mail contract which was essential in helping to

pay expenses was not even a possibility for seven or more months in

the future. I stayed until another man was hired and left my duties

with a grunt of relief."[9]

[Footnote 9: It was Packard's stage-line which brought

Scipio le Moyne (in Owen Wister's novel) from the Black

Hills to Medora to become the substitute cook of the

Virginian's mutinous "outfit." The cook whom the

Virginian kicked off the train at Medora, because he was

too anxious to buy a bottle of whiskey, is said to have

been a man named Macdonald. He remained in the Bad Lands

as cook for one of the ranches, but he was such an

inveterate drinker that "Nitch" Kendley was forced to

take drastic measures. Finding him unconscious one day,

just outside of Medora, he tied him hand and foot to the

sagebrush. The cook struggled twelve hours in the

broiling sun before he could free himself. Tradition has

it that he did not touch another drop of liquor for

three years.]

For Packard the failure of his venture was not a serious matter. The

_Cowboy_ was flourishing and there was enough in all conscience to

keep him occupied in his duties as Chief of Police. But for the

Marquis it was bad business. He had, as it was, few enough honest men

at his side.

XIII

Oh, we're up in the morning ere breaking of day,

The chuck-wagon's busy, the flapjacks in play;

The herd is astir o'er hillside and vale,

With the night riders rounding them into the trail.

Oh, come take up your cinches, come shake out your reins;

Come, wake your old bronco and break for the plains;

Come, roust out your steers from the long chaparral,

For the outfit is off to the railroad corral.

_The Railroad Corral_

Roosevelt returned to the Bad Lands on the 16th of November and was

greeted with enthusiasm by Merrifield and Sylvane. The next day he

started for the new ranch. He had intended to get under way by noon,

but Sylvane and Merrifield wanted to drive a small beef herd, which

they were shipping to Chicago, to the shipping corrals near the

Cantonment, and it was mid-afternoon before he was able to put spurs

to his smart little cowpony and start on the long ride to Elkhorn. The

day was bitterly cold, with the mercury well down toward zero, and the

pony, fresh and impatient, went along at a good rate. Roosevelt had

not gone many miles before he became conscious that darkness was

falling. The trail followed along the bottom for a half-dozen miles

and then turned off into the bad lands, leading up and down through

the ravines and over the ridge crests of a rough and broken country.

He crossed a wide plateau where the wind blew savagely, sweeping the

powdery snow into his face, then dipped again into the valley where

the trail led along the bottoms between the rows of high bluffs,

continually crossing and recrossing the river. The ice was too thin to

bear the horse, for the cold had come suddenly and had not yet frozen

it solid, and again and again, as the pony cautiously advanced, the

white surface would suddenly break and let horse and rider down into

the chilling water.

Roosevelt had made up his mind that he could under no circumstances

reach the new ranch that night and had determined to spend the night

with Robins, the seafaring man, whose hut was three or four miles

nearer. But the sun set while he was still several miles from his

goal, and the darkness, which had been closing round him where he rode

in the narrow valley, crept over the tops of the high bluffs and shut

out from his vision everything but a dim track in the snow faintly

illuminated by the stars. Roosevelt hurried his pony. Clouds were

gathering overhead, and soon, Roosevelt knew, even the light that the

stars gave would be withdrawn. The night was very cold and the silence

was profound. A light snow rendered even the hoof-beats of his horse

muffled and indistinct, and the only sound that came out of the black

world about him was the long-drawn, melancholy howling of a wolf.

Captain Robins's shack stood in the midst of a large clump of

cottonwoods thickly grown up with underbrush. It was hard enough to

find in the day-time, but in the darkness of that wintry night it

proved tantalizingly elusive. There was no light in it to guide him,

which depressed him.

He found the cabin at last, but it was empty and chill. He lit a fire

and hunted about among the stores of the old seafaring man for

something of which to make supper. The place was stripped bare. He

went down to the river with an axe and a pail and brought up some

water; in his pocket he had a paper of tea. It was not an altogether

satisfying supper for a tired and hungry man.

He was out with his rifle at break of day. Outside the hut the prairie

fowl were crowing and calling to one another in the tall trees,

evidently attracted by the thick growth of choke-cherries and wild

plums. As the dawn deepened, the sharp-tails began to fly down from

their roosts to the berry bushes. Up among the bare limbs of the

trees, sharply outlined against the sky, they offered as good a target

as any hungry man might ask. He shot off the necks of five in

succession, and it was not long before two of the birds, plucked and

cleaned, were split open and roasting before the fire.

He found that Sewall and Dow had cut all the timber for the house, and

were beginning work on the walls. It was a roomy place they were

building, a palace as houses went in the Bad Lands. Roosevelt worked

with them for two days. Both men were excellent company, Dow a

delightful spinner of yarns, witty and imaginative, Sewall full of

horse sense and quiet philosophizing. Roosevelt himself was much

depressed. His virtual elimination from politics, together with the

tragic breaking-up of his home life, had left him for the moment

aimless and without ambition. There is a wistful note in a letter he

wrote, that week to Lodge. "The statesman (?) of the past has been

merged, alas, I fear for good, in the cowboy of the present." He was

not in the habit of talking of himself or of asking others to share

his negations; but there was something avuncular about Sewall that

impelled confidences. He told the backwoodsman that he did not care

what became of himself; he had nothing to live for, he said. Sewall

"went for him bow-legged," as he himself described it in later years.

"You ought not to allow yourself to feel that way," he insisted. "You

have your child to live for."

"Her aunt can take care of her a good deal better than I can,"

Roosevelt responded. "She never would know anything about me, anyway.

She would be just as well off without me."

"You won't always feel that way," said Sewall. "You will get over this

after a while. I know how such things are; but time heals them over.

You won't always feel as you do now, and you won't always be willing

to stay here and drive cattle, because, when you get to feeling

differently, you will want to get back among your friends where you

can do more and be more benefit to the world than you can driving

cattle. If you can't think of anything else to do, you can go home and

start a reform. You would make a good reformer. You always want to

make things better instead of worse."

Roosevelt laughed at that, and said no more concerning the uselessness

of his existence. An amusing angle of the whole matter was that

"starting a reform" was actually in the back of his head at the time.

The reform in question was fundamental. It concerned the creation of

an organization, ostensibly, in the absence of constituted government,

for the purpose of making and enforcing certain sorely needed laws for

the regulation of the cattle industry; but actually with the higher

aim in view of furnishing a rallying point for the scattered forces of

law and order. Montana had such an organization in the Montana Live

Stock Association and more than one ranchman with large interests in

the valley of the Little Missouri had appealed to that body for help.

But the Montana Association found that it had no authority in Dakota.

Roosevelt determined, therefore, to form a separate organization.

The need unquestionably was great. To an unusual extent the cattle

industry depended upon coöperation. Each ranchman "claimed" a certain

range, but no mark showed the boundaries of that range and no fence

held the cattle and horses within it. On every "claim" the brands of

twenty different herds might have been found. No ranchman by himself,

or with the aid only of his own employees, would ever have been able

to collect his widely scattered property. It was only by the

coöperative effort known as "the round-up" that it was possible once

or twice a year for every man to gather his own. The very persistence

of the range as a feeding-ground and the vitality and very life of the

cattle depended upon the honest coöperation of the stock-owners. If

one man over-stocked his range, it was not only his cattle which

suffered, but in an equal measure the cattle of every other ranchman

along the river.

Regulating this industry, which depended so largely on a self-interest

looking beyond the immediate gain, was a body of tradition brought

from the cattle ranges of the South, but no code of regulations. There

were certain unwritten laws which you were supposed to obey; but if

you were personally formidable and your "outfit" was impressive, there

was nothing in heaven or earth to force you to obey them. It was

comparatively simple, moreover, to conduct a private round-up and ship

to Chicago cattle whose brands were not your own. If ever an industry

needed "regulation" for the benefit of the honest men engaged in it,

it was the cattle industry in Dakota in 1884.

But the need of a law of the range which the stockmen would respect,

because it was to their own interests to respect it, was only a phase

of a greater need for the presence in that wild and sparsely settled

country of some sort of authority which men would recognize and accept

because it was an outgrowth of the life of which they were a part.

Sheriffs and marshals were imposed from without, and an independent

person might have argued that in a territory under a Federal governor,

they constituted government without the consent of the governed. Such

a person would look with entirely different eyes on a body created

from among the men with whom he was in daily association.

Medora was blest with a deputy United States Marshal, and much good

did law and order derive from his presence. He happened to be the same

Joe Morrill who had gained notoriety the preceding winter in the

Stoneville fight, and who had long been suspected, by law-abiding folk

between Medora and the Black Hills, of being "in cahoots" with

everything that was sinister in the region. He had for years been

stationed at Deadwood for the purpose mainly of running down deserting

soldiers, and one of the rumors that followed him to Medora was to the

effect that he had made himself the confidant of deserters only to

betray them for thirty dollars a head. The figure was unfortunate. It

stuck in the memory with its echoes of Judas.

The law-abiding element did not receive any noticeable support from

Joe Morrill. He was a "gun-toting" swashbuckler, not of the "bad man"

type at all, but, as Packard pointed out, altogether too noisy in

denouncing the wicked when they were not present and too effusive in

greeting them when they were. He gravitated naturally toward Maunders

and Bill Williams and Jess Hogue, and if law and order derived any

benefits from that association, history has neglected to record them.

Thievery went on as before.

Roosevelt, no doubt, realized that the hope of the righteous lay not

in Joe Morrill or in any other individual whom the Federal authorities

might impose on the Bad Lands, but only in an organization which was

the expression of a real desire for coöperation. He set about promptly

to form such an organization.

After two days of house-building at Elkhorn, Roosevelt, who was

evidently restless, was again under way, riding south through a

snowstorm all day to the Maltese Cross, bringing Sewall and Dow with

him.

It was late at night when we reached Merrifield's [he wrote

"Bamie" on November 23d], and the thermometer was twenty

degrees below zero. As you may imagine, my fur coat and

buffalo bag have come in very handily.

I am now trying to get up a stockman's association, and in a

day or two, unless the weather is too bad, I shall start up

the river with Sewall to see about it.

At one ranch after another, Roosevelt, riding south through the biting

cold with his philosophic backwoodsman, stopped during the week that

followed, to persuade fifteen or twenty stockmen along the valley of

the Little Missouri of the benefits of coöperation. It was an arduous

journey, taking him well south of Lang's; but it was evidently

successful.

Theodore Roosevelt, who used to be a great reformer in the

New York Legislature, but who is now a cowboy, pure and

simple [remarked the Bismarck _Weekly Tribune_ in an

editorial on December 12th], calls a meeting of the stockmen

of the West Dakota region to meet at Medora, December 19th,

to discuss topics of interest, become better acquainted, and

provide for a more efficient organization. Mr. Roosevelt

likes the West.

Winter now settled down on the Bad Lands in earnest. There was little

snow, but the cold was fierce in its intensity. By day, the plains and

buttes were dazzling to the eye under the clear weather; by night, the

trees cracked and groaned from the strain of the biting frost. Even

the stars seemed to snap and glitter. The river lay fixed in its

shining bed of glistening white, "like a huge bent bar of blue steel."

Wolves and lynxes traveled up and down it at night as though it were a

highway.

Winter was the ranchman's "slack season"; but Roosevelt found,

nevertheless, that there was work to be done even at that time of year

to test a man's fiber. Activities, which in the ordinary Eastern

winter would have been merely the casual incidents of the day's work,

took on some of the character of Arctic exploration in a country where

the thermometer had a way of going fifty degrees below zero, and for

two weeks on end never rose above a point of ten below. It was not

always altogether pleasant to be out of doors; but wood had to be

chopped, and coal had to be brought in by the wagon-load. Roosevelt

had a mine on his own ranch some three or four miles south of Chimney

Butte. It was a vein of soft lignite laid bare in the side of a clay

bluff by the corrosive action of the water, carving, through the

centuries, the bed of the Little Missouri. He and his men brought the

coal in the ranch-wagon over the frozen bed of the river. The wheels

of the wagon creaked and sang in the bitter cold, as they ground

through the powdery snow.

The cattle, moreover, had to be carefully watched, for many of them

were slow in learning to "rustle for themselves," as the phrase went.

A part of every day at least was spent in the saddle by one or the

other or all of the men who constituted the Chimney Butte outfit. In

spite of their great fur coats and caps and gauntlets, in spite of

heavy underclothing and flannel-lined boots, it was not often that one

or the other of them, returning from a ride, did not have a touch of

the frost somewhere about him. When the wind was at his back,

Roosevelt found it was not bad to gallop along through the white

weather, but when he had to face it, riding over a plain or a plateau,

it was a different matter, for the blast cut through him like a keen

knife, and the thickest furs seemed only so much paper. The cattle

were obviously unhappy, standing humped up under the bushes, except

for an hour or two at midday when they ventured out to feed. A very

weak animal they would bring into the cow-shed and feed with hay; but

they did this only in cases of the direst necessity, as such an animal

had then to be fed for the rest of the winter, and the quantity of

hay was limited. As long as the cattle could be held within the narrow

strip of Bad Lands, they were safe enough, for the deep ravines

afforded them ample refuge from the icy gales. But if by any accident

a herd was caught by a blizzard on the open prairie, it might drift

before it a hundred miles.

Soon after Roosevelt's return from the East, he had sent Sylvane

Ferris to Spearfish to purchase some horses for the ranch. About the

first week in December his genial foreman returned, bringing fifty-two

head. They were wild, unbroken "cayuses," and had to be broken then

and there. Day after day, in the icy cold, Roosevelt labored with the

men in the corral over the refractory animals making up in patience

what he lacked in physical address.

Bill Sewall, who with Dow was on hand to drive a number of the ponies

north to Elkhorn Ranch, did not feel under the same compulsion as "the

boss" to risk his neck in the subjugation of the frantic animals. Will

Dow had become an excellent horseman, but Sewall had come to the

conclusion that you could not teach an old dog new tricks, and refused

to be bulldozed into attempting what he knew he could not accomplish.

There was something impressive in the firmness with which he refused

to allow the cowboys to make him look foolish.

The night the horses arrived, Sewall overheard a number of the cowboys

remark that they would get the men from Maine "on those wild horses

and have some fun with them." "I was forewarned," said Sewall, years

after, telling about it, "and so I was forearmed."

One of the men came up to Sewall, and with malice aforethought led the

subject to Sewall's participation in the breaking of the horses.

"I am not going to ride any of those horses," said Sewall.

"You will have to," said the cowboy.

"I don't know so much about that."

"If you don't," remarked the cowboy, "you will have the contempt of

everybody."

"That won't affect me very much," Sewall answered quietly. "If I were

younger, it might, but it won't now."

"Oh, well," said the other lightly, "you will have to ride them."

"No," remarked Sewall, "I didn't come out here to make a fool of

myself trying to do what I know I can't do. I don't want to be pounded

on the frozen ground."

The cowboy made a sharp reply, but Sewall, feeling his blood rise to

his head, became only more firm in refusing to be bulldozed.

"I suppose you fellows can ride broncos," he said, "but you cannot

ride me, and if you get on, your feet will drag."

There the conversation ended. The next morning Sewall heard the cowboy

remark, not too pleasantly, "I suppose it is no use to saddle any bad

ones for Sewall, for he said he wouldn't ride them."

Sewall paid no attention to the thrust. The whole affair had a comic

conclusion, for it happened that, quite by accident, Sewall, in

attempting to pick out a gentle horse, picked one who ultimately

proved to be one of the worst in the herd. For all the time that

Sewall was on his back, he acted like a model of the virtues. It was

only when Dow subsequently mounted him that he began to reveal his

true character, bucking Dow within an inch of his life. The cowboy,

however, made no more efforts at intimidation.

To Roosevelt--to whom difficulty and peril were always a challenge,

and pain itself was a visitant to be wrestled with and never released

until a blessing had been wrung from the mysterious lips--the

hardships and exertions of those wintry day were a source of boyish

delight. It partook of the nature of adventure to rise at five (three

hours ahead of the sun) and ride under the starlight to bring in the

saddle-band; and it gave a sense of quiet satisfaction to manly pride

later to crowd around the fire where the cowboys were stamping and

beating their numbed hands together and know that you had borne

yourself as well as they. After a day of bronco-busting in the corral,

or of riding hour after hour, head on into the driven snow-dust, there

was a sense of real achievement when night fell, and a consciousness

of strength. The cabin was small, but it was storm-proof and homelike,

and the men with whom Roosevelt shared it were brave and true and

full of humor and good yarns. They played checkers and chess and

"casino" and "Old Sledge" through the long evenings, and read

everything in type that came under their hands. Roosevelt was not the

only one, it seemed, who enjoyed solid literature.

Did I tell you about my cowboys reading and in large part

comprehending, your "Studies in Literature"? [Roosevelt

wrote to Lodge]. My foreman handed the book back to me

to-day, after reading the "Puritan Pepys," remarking

meditatively, and with, certainly, very great justice, that

early Puritanism "must have been darned rough on the kids."

He evidently sympathized keenly with the feelings of the

poor little "examples of original sin."

Roosevelt spent all his time at the Maltese Cross and went to Medora

only for his mail. The quiet of winter had descended upon the wild

little town. The abattoir was closed for the season, the butchers (who

did their part in enlivening the neighborhood) had gone East, the

squad of carpenters was silent. There was nothing for anybody to do

except to drink, which the citizens of Medora did to the satisfaction

of even the saloon-keepers.

Roosevelt had planned all the autumn to go on a hunting trip with

Merrifield after mountain sheep, but his departure had been delayed by

Sylvane's return with the horses, and the need for all hands in the

"outfit" in the arduous undertaking of preparing their free spirits

for the obligations of civilization. It was well toward the middle of

December before they were able to make a start. Roosevelt sent George

Myers ahead with the buckboard and himself followed on horseback with

Merrifield. It was a savage piece of country through which their

course took them.

There were tracts of varying size [Roosevelt wrote later

describing that trip], each covered with a tangled mass of

chains and peaks, the buttes in places reaching a height

that would in the East entitle them to be called mountains.

Every such tract was riven in all directions by deep chasms

and narrow ravines, whose sides sometimes rolled off in

gentle slopes, but far more often rose as sheer cliffs, with

narrow ledges along their fronts. A sparse growth of grass

covered certain portions of these lands, and on some of the

steep hillsides, or in the canyons, were scanty groves of

coniferous evergreens, so stunted by the thin soil and bleak

weather that many of them were bushes rather than trees.

Most of the peaks and ridges, and many of the valleys, were

entirely bare of vegetation, and these had been cut by wind

and water into the strangest and most fantastic shapes.

Indeed, it is difficult, in looking at such formations, to

get rid of the feeling that their curiously twisted and

contorted forms are due to some vast volcanic upheavals or

other subterranean forces; yet they are merely caused by the

action of the various weathering forces of the dry climate

on the different strata of sandstones, clays, and marls.

Isolated columns shoot up into the air, bearing on their

summits flat rocks like tables; square buttes tower high

above surrounding depressions, which are so cut up by

twisting gullies and low ridges as to be almost impassable;

shelving masses of sandstone jut out over the sides of the

cliffs; some of the ridges, with perfectly perpendicular

sides, are so worn away that they stand up like gigantic

knife-blades; and gulches, wash-outs, and canyons dig out

the sides of each butte, while between them are thrust out

long spurs, with sharp, ragged tops.

They hunted through the broken country on foot. Up the slippery,

ice-covered buttes they climbed, working their way across the faces of

the cliffs or cautiously groping along narrow ledges, peering long and

carefully over every crest. But they found no sheep. The cold was

intense and they were glad when, at sunset, they reached the cabin,

which was to be their headquarters. George Myers had already arrived.

It was a bitter night, and through the chinks of the crazy old hut it

invaded their shelter, defying any fire which they could build.

By the time the first streak of dawn had dimmed the brilliancy of the

stars, the hunters were under way. Their horses had proved a bother

the day before, and they were afoot, striding briskly through the

bitter cold to where the great bulk of Middle Butte loomed against the

sunrise. They hunted carefully through the outlying foothills and

toiled laboriously up the steep sides to the level top. It was a

difficult piece of mountaineering, for the edges of the cliffs had

become round and slippery with the ice, and it was no easy task to

move up and along them, clutching the gun in one hand and grasping

each little projection with the other. That day again they found no

sheep.

Hour by hour the cold grew more intense. All signs indicated a

blizzard.

The air was thick and hazy as Roosevelt and Merrifield early next

morning reached the distant hills where they intended that day to make

their hunt. Off in the northwest a towering mass of grayish-white

clouds hung, threatening trouble. The region was, if anything, even

wilder and more difficult than the country they had hunted through on

the two previous days. The ice made the footing perilous, and in the

cold thin air every quick burst they made up a steep hill caused them

to pant for breath. But they were not unrewarded. Crawling cautiously

over a sharp ledge they came suddenly upon two mountain rams not a

hundred yards away. Roosevelt dropped on his knee, raising his rifle.

At the report, the largest of the rams staggered and pitched forward,

but recovered himself and disappeared over another ridge. The hunters

jumped and slid down into a ravine, clambering up the opposite side as

fast as their lungs and the slippery ice would let them. They had not

far to go. Two hundred yards beyond the ridge they found their quarry,

dead. They took the head for a trophy.

It was still early in the day, and Roosevelt and Merrifield made up

their minds to push for home. The lowering sky was already overcast by

a mass of leaden-gray clouds; they had no time to lose. They hurried

back to the cabin, packed up their bedding and provisions, and started

northward. Roosevelt rode ahead with Merrifield, not sparing the

horses; but before they had reached the ranch-house the storm had

burst, and a furious blizzard was blowing in their teeth as they

galloped along the last mile of the river bottom.

George Myers celebrated the successful conclusion of the hunt in his

own fashion. In one of his unaccountable culinary lapses, he baked the

beans that night in rosin. With the first mouthful Roosevelt dropped

his knife and fork and made for the door.

"George," he remarked as he returned to the table with his eye fixed

on the offender, "I can eat green biscuits and most of your other

infernal concoctions, but I am hanged if I can eat rosined beans."

He did not eat them, but he did not let the memory of them die either,

to George's deep chagrin.

I have just returned from a three days' trip in the Bad

Lands after mountain sheep [Roosevelt wrote to "Bamie" on

December 14th], and after tramping over the most awful

country that can be imagined, I finally shot one ram with a

fine head. I have now killed every kind of plains game.

I have to stay here till after next Friday to attend a

meeting of the Little Missouri Stockmen; on Saturday,

December 20th, I start home and shall be in New York the

evening of December 23d. I have just had fifty-two horses

brought in by Ferris, and Sewall and Dow started down the

river with their share yesterday. The latter have lost two

horses; I am afraid they have been stolen.

The meeting of the stockmen was held in Medora on the day appointed,

and it is notable that it was Roosevelt who called it to order and who

directed its deliberations. He was one of the youngest of the dozen

stockmen present, and in the ways of cattle no doubt one of the least

experienced. Most of the men he greeted that day had probably been

discussing the problems he was undertaking to solve long before he

himself had ever heard of the Bad Lands. It was Roosevelt's

distinction that having observed the problems he determined to solve

them, and having made this determination he sought a solution in the

principles and methods of democratic government. The stockmen had

confidence in him. He was direct, he was fearless; he was a good

talker, sure of his ground, and, in the language of the Bad Lands, "he

didn't take backwater from any one." He was self-reliant and he minded

his own business; he was honest and he had no axe to grind. The

ranchmen no doubt felt that in view of these qualities you might

forget a man's youth and forgive his spectacles. They evidently did

both, for, after adopting a resolution that it was the sense of the

meeting "that an Association of the Stockmen along the Little Missouri

and its tributaries be forthwith formed," they promptly elected

Theodore Roosevelt chairman of it.

Lurid tales have been told of what went on at that meeting. There is a

dramatic story of Joe Morrill's sudden appearance, backed by a score

of ruffians; of defiance and counter-defiance; of revolvers and "blood

on the moonlight"; and of a corrupt deputy marshal cowering with ashen

face before the awful denunciations of a bespectacled "tenderfoot";

but unhappily, the authenticity of the story is dubious. The meeting,

so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only

in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle. The

Marquis de Mores was present; so also was Gregor Lang, his most

merciless critic; but whatever drama was inherent in that situation

remained beneath the surface. By-laws were adopted, the Marquis was

appointed "as a Committee of One to work with the committee appointed

by the Eastern Montana Live Stock Association in the endeavor to

procure legislation from the Territorial Legislature of Dakota

favorable to the interests of the cattlemen"; and the meeting was

over. It was all most amiable and commonplace. There was no oratory

and no defiance of anybody. What had been accomplished, however, was

that, in the absence of organized government, the conservative

elements in the county had formed an offensive and defensive league

for mutual protection, as the by-laws ran, "against frauds and

swindlers, and to prevent the stealing, taking, and driving away of

horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other stock from the rightful owners

thereof."

It meant the beginning of the end of lawlessness in the Bad Lands.

XIV

I'll never come North again.

My home is the sunny South,

Where it's never mo' than forty below

An' the beans don't freeze in your mouth;

An' the snow ain't like white smoke,

An' the ground ain't like white iron;

An' the wind don't stray from Baffin's Bay

To join you on retirin'.

From _Medora Nights_

Roosevelt arrived in New York a day or two before Christmas with the

trophies of his hunt about him and his hunting costume in his "grip."

He settled down at his sister's house, at 422 Madison Avenue, where

his little girl Alice was living, and, with his characteristic energy

in utilizing every experience to the full, promptly began work on a

series of hunting sketches which should combine the thrill of

adventure with the precise observation of scientific natural history.

It is worth noting that, in order to provide a frontispiece for his

work, he solemnly dressed himself up in the buckskin shirt and the

rest of the elaborate costume he had described with such obvious

delight to his sister; and had himself photographed. There is

something hilariously funny in the visible records of that

performance. The imitation grass, not quite concealing the rug

beneath, the painted background, the theatrical (slightly patched)

rocks against which the cowboy leans gazing dreamily across an

imaginary prairie, the pose of the hunter with rifle ready and finger

on the trigger, grimly facing dangerous game which is not there--all

reveal a boyish delight in play-acting. For once his sense of humor

was in abeyance, but posterity is the richer for this glimpse of the

solemn boy in the heart of a powerful man.

[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt (1884).]

Winter closed over the Bad Lands, bringing Arctic hardships. Even Bill

Sewall, who had been born and bred in the Maine woods, declared that

he had never known such cold. There was a theory, fostered by the real

estate agents, that you did not feel the cold which the thermometer

registered; and the Marquis, who never missed an opportunity to "boom"

his new town in the newspapers, insisted stoutly not only that he

habitually "walked and rode about comfortably without an overcoat";

but also that he "felt the cold much more severely in New York, and in

Washington even." Other landowners maintained the same delusion, and

it was considered almost treason to speak of the tragedies of the

cold. The fact remained, however, that a snowfall, which elsewhere

might scarcely make good sleighing, in the Bad Lands became a foe to

human life of inconceivable fury. For with it generally came a wind so

fierce that the stoutest wayfarer could make no progress against it.

The small, dry flakes, driven vertically before it, cut the flesh like

a razor, blinding the vision and stifling the breath and shutting out

the world with an impenetrable icy curtain. A half-hour after the

storm had broken, the traveler, lost in it, might wonder whether there

were one foot of snow or five, and whether the greater part of it

were on the ground or whirling about him in the air. With the snow

came extreme cold that pierced the thickest garments.

The horses, running free on the range, seemed to feel the cold

comparatively little, eating the snow for water, and pawing through it

to the stem-cured prairie-grass for food. But the cattle suffered

intensely, especially the Southern stock which had not yet learnt that

they must eat their way through the snow to the sustenance beneath.

They stood huddled together at every wind-break, and in the first

biting storm of the new year even sought the shelter of the towns,

taking possession of the streets. The cows, curiously enough, seemed

to bear the hardship better than the bulls. The male, left to his own

resources, had a tendency to "give up" and creep into the brush and

die, while the females, reduced to skin and bones, struggled on,

gnawing at the frozen stumps of sagebrush, battling to the last.

Western newspapers, "booming" the cattle business, insisted that every

blizzard was followed by a warm wind known as a "chinook" which

brought a prompt return of comfort and sleekness to the most unhappy

steer; but wise men knew better. For the cattle, seeking a livelihood

on the snowy, wind-swept wastes, the winter was one long-protracted

misery.

It was in fact not an unalloyed delight for human beings, especially

for those whose business it was to guard the cattle. The hardest and

the bitterest work was what was called "line riding." The ranchmen

cared little if their cattle grazed westward toward the Yellowstone;

it was a different matter, however, if they drifted east and southeast

to the granger country and the Sioux Reservation, where there were

flat, bare plains which offered neither food nor shelter, and where

thieves were many and difficult to apprehend. Along the line where the

broken ground of the Bad Lands met the prairie east of the Little

Missouri, the ranchmen, therefore, established a series of camps, from

each of which two cowboys, starting in opposite directions, patrolled

the invisible line halfway to the adjoining camps.

Bill Sewall gazed out over the bleak country with a homesick and

apprehensive heart.

As for our coming back [he wrote his brother in January],

you need not worry about that. As soon as I serve out my

time and my sentence expires I shall return. Am having a

good time and enjoy myself, should anywhere if I knew I

could not do any better and was obliged to, but this is just

about like being transported to Siberia, just about as cold,

barren and desolate and most as far out of the way. It was

hotter here last summer than it ever was at home and it has

been colder here this winter than it ever was at home, 50

and 65 below all one week. Don't see how the cattle live at

all and there is lots of them dieing. You can find them all

around where they lay nights in the bushes. The poor ones

will all go, I guess. They say they will die worse in the

spring. The fat strong ones will get through, I guess. Don't

know that any of our hundred have died yet, but I don't

believe this is a good country to raise cattle in.

Am afraid Theodore will not make so much as he has been led

to think he would. There are lots of bleeders here, but we

mean to fend them off from him as well as we can.

Roosevelt spent the coldest months in New York, working steadily on

his new book which was to be called "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman." On

the 8th of March he wrote Lodge, "I have just sent my last roll of

manuscript to the printers"; adding, "in a fortnight I shall go out

West." But he postponed his departure, held possibly by the lure of

the hunting-field; for on the 29th he rode with the Meadowbrook hounds

and was "in at the death." It was presumably in the first days of

April that he arrived at Medora. If tradition may be trusted, he came

in all the glory of what were known as "store clothes." The Pittsburgh

_Despatch_, which sent out a reporter to the train to interview him as

he passed through that city, westward-bound, refers to "the high

expanse of white linen which enclosed his neck to the ears," which

sounds like a slight exaggeration. Tradition does insist, however,

that he wore a derby hat when he arrived, which was considered highly

venturesome. Derby hats as a rule were knocked off on sight and then

bombarded with six-shooters beyond recognition. Roosevelt informed his

fellow citizens early in his career as a cowpuncher that he intended

to wear any hat he pleased. Evidently it was deemed expedient to

suspend the rule in his case, for he was not molested.

After a brief sojourn at the Maltese Cross, Roosevelt made his way

north to Elkhorn Ranch. The house was nearing completion. It was a

one-story log structure, with a covered porch on the side facing the

river; a spacious house of many rooms divided by a corridor running

straight through from north to south. Roosevelt's bedroom, on the

southeast corner, adjoined a large room containing a fireplace, which

was to be Roosevelt's study by day and the general living-room by

night. The fireplace, which had been built by an itinerant Swedish

mason whom Sewall looked upon with disapproval as a dollar-chaser, had

been designed under the influence of a Dakota winter and was enormous.

Will Dow, who was somewhat of a blacksmith, had made a pair of

andirons out of a steel rail, which he had discovered floating down

the river loosely attached to a beam of yellow pine.[10]

[Footnote 10: The andirons are still doing service at

the ranch of Howard Eaton and his brothers in Wolf,

Wyoming.]

The cattle, Roosevelt found, were looking well. "Bill," he said to

Sewall, remembering the backwoodsman's pessimism, "you were mistaken

about those cows. Cows and calves are all looking fine."

But Sewall was not to be convinced. "You wait until next spring," he

answered, "and see how they look."

Roosevelt was himself physically in rather bad shape, suffering from

that affliction which has, by common consent, been deemed of all of

Job's troubles the one hardest to bear with equanimity. Douglas

Robinson wrote Sewall telling him that Theodore's sisters were worried

about him and asking him for news of Roosevelt's health. Roosevelt

heard of the request and was indignant, "flaring up," as Sewall

described it.

"They had no business to write to you," he exclaimed. "They should

have written to me."

"I guess," remarked Sewall quietly, "they knew you wouldn't write

about how you were getting on. You'd just say you were all right."

Roosevelt fumed and said no more about it. But the crisp air of the

Bad Lands gradually put all questions of his health out of mind. All

day long he lived in the open. He was not an enthusiast over the

hammer or the axe, and, while Sewall and Dow were completing the house

and building the corrals and the stables a hundred yards or more

westward, he renewed his acquaintance with the bizarre but fascinating

country. The horses which the men from Maine had missed the previous

autumn, and which Roosevelt had feared had been stolen, had been

reported "running wild" forty or fifty miles to the west. Sewall and

Dow had made one or two trips after them without success, for the

animals had come to enjoy their liberty and proved elusive. Roosevelt

determined to find them and bring them back. He went on three solitary

expeditions, but they proved barren of result. Incidentally, however,

they furnished him experiences which were worth many horses.

On one of these expeditions night overtook him not far from

Mingusville. That hot little community, under the inspiration of a

Frenchman named Pierre Wibaux, was rapidly becoming an important

cattle center. As a shipping point it had, by the close of 1884,

already attained notable proportions on the freight records of the

Northern Pacific. Medora, in all its glory, could not compete with it,

for the cattle trails through the Bad Lands were difficult, and space

was lacking on the small bottoms near the railroad to hold herds of

any size preparatory to shipping. About Mingusville all creation

stretched undulating to the hazy horizon. The great southern cattle

companies which had recently established themselves on the northern

range, Simpson's "Hash-Knife" brand, Towers and Gudgell's O. X. Ranch,

and the Berry, Boyce Company's "Three-Seven outfit," all drove their

cattle along the Beaver to Mingusville, and even Merrifield and

Sylvane preferred shipping their stock from there to driving it to the

more accessible, but also more congested, yards at Medora.

Civilization had not kept pace with commerce in the development of the

prairie "town." It was a lurid little place. Medora, in comparison to

it, might have appeared almost sober and New-Englandish. It had no

"steady" residents save a half-dozen railroad employees, the landlord

of the terrible hotel south of the tracks, where Roosevelt had had his

encounter with the drunken bully, and a certain Mrs. Nolan and her

daughters, who kept an eminently respectable boarding-house on the

opposite side of the railroad; but its "floating population" was

large. Every herd driven into the shipping-yards from one of the great

ranches in the upper Little Missouri country brought with it a dozen

or more parched cowboys hungering and thirsting for excitement as no

saint ever hungered and thirsted for righteousness; and celebrations

had a way of lasting for days. The men were Texans, most of them,

extraordinary riders, born to the saddle, but reckless, given to heavy

drinking, and utterly wild and irresponsible when drunk. It was their

particular delight to make life hideous for the station agent and the

telegraph operator. For some weeks Mingusville, it was said, had a new

telegraph operator every night. About ten o'clock the cowboys,

celebrating at the "hotel," would drift over to the board shack which

was the railroad station, and "shoot it full of holes." They had no

particular reason for doing this; they had no grudge against either

the railroad or the particular operator who happened to be in charge.

They were children, and it was fun to hear the bullets pop, and

excruciating fun to see the operator run out of the shack with a yell

and go scampering off into the darkness. One operator entered into

negotiations with the enemy. Recognizing their perfect right to shoot

up the station if they wanted to, he merely stipulated that they allow

him to send off the night's dispatches before they began. This request

seemed to the cowboys altogether reasonable. They waited until the

operator said that his work was done. Then, as he faded away in the

darkness, the night's bombardment began.

Into this tempestuous little "town," Roosevelt rode one day as night

was falling. No doubt because Mrs. Nolan's beds were filled, he was

forced to take a room at the nefarious hotel where he had chastised

the bully a year previous. Possibly to prevent the recurrence of that

experience, he retired early to the small room with one bed which had

been assigned him and sat until late reading the book he had brought

along in his saddle-pocket.

The house was quiet and every one was asleep, when a cowboy arrived

from God knows whence, yelling and shooting as he came galloping

through the darkness. He was evidently very drunk. He thumped loudly

on the door, and after some delay the host opened it. The stranger

showed no appreciation; on the contrary, he seized the hotel-keeper,

half in play, it seemed, and half in enmity, jammed the mouth of his

six-shooter against his stomach and began to dance about the room with

him.

In the room above, Roosevelt heard the host's agonized appeals. "Jim,

don't! Don't, Jim! It'll go off! Jim, it'll go off!"

Jim's response was not reassuring. "Yes, damn you, it'll go off! I'll

learn you! Who in hell cares if it does go off! Oh, I'll learn you!"

But the gun, after all, did not go off. The cowboy subsided, then

burst into vociferous demands for a bed. A minute later Roosevelt

heard steps in the hall, followed by a knock at his door. Roosevelt

opened it.

"I'm sorry," said the host, "but there's a man I'll have to put in

with you for the night."

"You're not as sorry as I am," Roosevelt answered coolly, "and I'm not

going to have him come in here."

The host was full of apologies. "He's drunk and he's on the shoot," he

said unhappily, "and he's got to come in."

This appeal was not of a character to weaken Roosevelt's resolution.

"I'm going to lock my door," he remarked firmly, "and put out my

light. And I'll shoot anybody who tries to break in."

The host departed. Roosevelt never knew where the unwelcome guest was

lodged that night; but he himself was left undisturbed.

On another occasion that spring, when Roosevelt was out on the prairie

hunting the lost horses, he was overtaken by darkness. Mingusville was

the only place within thirty miles or more that offered a chance of a

night's lodging, and he again rode there, knocking at the door of Mrs.

Nolan's boarding-house late in the evening. Mrs. Nolan, who greeted

him, was a tough, wiry Irishwoman of the type of Mrs. Maddox, with a

fighting jaw and a look in her eye that had been known to be as potent

as a "six-shooter" in clearing a room of undesirable occupants. She

disciplined her husband (who evidently needed it) and brought up her

daughters with a calm good sense that won them and her the respect of

the roughest of the cowpunchers who came under her roof.

Roosevelt, having stabled his horse in an empty out-building, asked

for a bed. Mrs. Nolan answered that he could have the last one that

was left, since there was only one other man in it.

He accepted the dubious privilege and was shown to a room containing

two double beds. One contained two men fast asleep, the other only one

man, also asleep. He recognized his bedfellow. It was "Three-Seven"

Bill Jones, an excellent cowman belonging to the "Three-Seven outfit"

who had recently acquired fame by playfully holding up the Overland

Express in order to make the conductor dance. He put his trousers,

boots, shaps, and gun down beside the bed, and turned in.

He was awakened an hour or two later by a crash as the door was rudely

flung open. A lantern was flashed in his face, and, as he came to full

consciousness, he found himself, in the light of a dingy lantern,

staring into the mouth of a "six-shooter."

Another man said to the lantern-bearer, "It ain't him." The next

moment his bedfellow was "covered" with two "guns." "Now, Bill," said

a gruff voice, "don't make a fuss, but come along quiet."

"All right, don't sweat yourself," responded Bill. "I'm not thinking

of making a fuss."

"That's right," was the answer, "we're your friends. We don't want to

hurt you; we just want you to come along. You know why."

Bill pulled on his trousers and boots and walked out with them.

All the while there had been no sound from the other bed. Now a match

was scratched and a candle was lit, and one of the men looked round

the room.

"I wonder why they took Bill," Roosevelt remarked.

There was no answer, and Roosevelt, not knowing that there was what he

later termed an "alkali etiquette in such matters," repeated the

question. "I wonder why they took Bill."

"Well," said the man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted

him," and blew out the candle. That night there was no more

conversation; but Roosevelt's education had again been extended.

XV

When did we long for the sheltered gloom

Of the older game with its cautious odds?

Gloried we always in sun and room,

Spending our strength like the younger gods.

By the wild, sweet ardor that ran in us,

By the pain that tested the man in us,

By the shadowy springs and the glaring sand,

You were our true-love, young, young land.

Badger CLARK

Spring came to the Bad Lands in fits and numerous false starts, first

the "chinook," uncovering the butte-tops between dawn and dusk, then

the rushing of many waters, the flooding of low bottom-lands, the

agony of a world of gumbo, and, after a dozen boreal setbacks, the

awakening of green things and the return of a temperature fit for

human beings to live in. Snow buntings came in March, flocking

familiarly round the cow-shed at the Maltese Cross, now chittering on

the ridge-pole, now hovering in the air with quivering wings, warbling

their loud, merry song. Before the snow was off the ground, the grouse

cocks could be heard uttering their hollow booming. At the break of

morning, their deep, resonant calls came from far and near through the

clear air like the vibrant sound of some wind instrument. Now and

again, at dawn or in the early evening, Roosevelt would stop and

listen for many minutes to the weird, strange music, or steal upon the

cocks where they were gathered holding their dancing rings, and watch

them posturing and strutting about as they paced through their minuet.

The opening of the ground--and it was occasionally not unlike the

opening of a trap-door--brought work in plenty to Roosevelt and his

friends at the Maltese Cross. The glades about the water-holes where

the cattle congregated became bogs that seemed to have no bottom.

Cattle sank in them and perished unless a saving rope was thrown in

time about their horns and a gasping pony pulled them clear. The

ponies themselves became mired and had to be rescued. It was a period

of wallowing for everything on four feet or on two. The mud stuck like

plaster.[11]

[Footnote 11: "I never was bothered by gumbo in the Bad

Lands. There wasn't a sufficient proportion of clay in

the soil. But out on the prairie, oh, my martyred Aunt

Jane's black and white striped cat!"--_A. T. Packard._]

Travel of every sort was hazardous during early spring, for no one

ever knew when the ground would open and engulf him. Ten thousand

wash-outs, a dozen feet deep or thirty, ran "bank-high" with swirling,

merciless waters, and the Little Missouri, which was a shallow trickle

in August, was a torrent in April. There were no bridges. If you

wanted to get to the other side, you swam your horse across, hoping

for the best.

At Medora it was customary, when the Little Missouri was high, to ride

to the western side on the narrow footpath between the tracks on the

trestle; and after the Marquis built a dam nearby for the purpose of

securing ice of the necessary thickness for use in his refrigerating

plant, a venturesome spirit now and then guided his horse across its

slippery surface. It happened one day early in April that Fisher was

at the river's edge, with a number of men, collecting certain tools

and lumber which had been used in the cutting and hauling of the ice,

when Roosevelt, riding Manitou, drew up, with the evident intention of

making his way over the river on the dam. The dam, however, had

disappeared. The ice had broken up, far up the river, and large cakes

were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and

raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The

river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a

giraffe."

"Where does the dam start?" asked Roosevelt.

"You surely won't try to cross on the dam," exclaimed Fisher, "when

you can go and cross on the trestle the way the others do?"

"If Manitou gets his feet on that dam," Roosevelt replied, "he'll keep

them there and we can make it finely."

"Well, it's more than likely," said Fisher, "that there's not much of

the dam left."

"It doesn't matter, anyway. Manitou's a good swimmer and we're going

across."

Fisher, with grave misgivings, indicated where the dam began.

Roosevelt turned his horse into the river; Manitou did not hesitate.

Fisher shouted, hoping to attract the attention of some cowboy on the

farther bank who might stand ready with a rope to rescue the

venturesome rider. There was no response.

On the steps of the store, however, which he had inherited from the

unstable Johnny Nelson, Joe Ferris was watching the amazing

performance. He saw a rider coming from the direction of the Maltese

Cross, and it seemed to him that the rider looked like Roosevelt.

Anxiously he watched him pick his way out on the submerged dam.

Manitou, meanwhile, was living up to his reputation. Fearlessly, yet

with infinite caution, he kept his course along the unseen path.

Suddenly the watchers on the east bank and the west saw horse and

rider disappear, swallowed up by the brown waters. An instant later

they came in sight again. Roosevelt flung himself from his horse "on

the downstream side," and with one hand on the horn of the saddle

fended off the larger blocks of ice from before his faithful horse.

Fisher said to himself that if Manitou drifted even a little with the

stream, Roosevelt would never get ashore. The next landing was a mile

down the river, and that might be blocked by the ice.

The horse struck bottom at the extreme lower edge of the ford and

struggled up the bank. Roosevelt had not even lost his glasses. He

laughed and waved his hand to Fisher, mounted and rode to Joe's store.

Having just risked his life in the wildest sort of adventure, it was

entirely characteristic of him that he should exercise the caution of

putting on a pair of dry socks.

Joe received him with mingled devotion and amazement. "Landsake, man!"

he cried, "weren't you afraid?"

"I was riding Manitou," Roosevelt responded quietly. "Just," exclaimed

Joe later, "as though Manitou was a steam engine." He bought a new

pair of socks, put them on, and proceeded on his journey.

Fisher saw him shortly after and accused him of being reckless.

"I suppose it might be considered reckless," Roosevelt admitted. "But

it was lots of fun."

Roosevelt spent his time alternately at the two ranches, writing

somewhat and correcting the proofs of his new book, but spending most

of his time in the saddle. The headquarters of his cattle business was

at the Maltese Cross where Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield were in

command. Elkhorn was, for the time being, merely a refuge and a

hunting-lodge where Sewall and Dow "ran" a few hundred cattle under

the general direction of the more experienced men of the other

"outfit."

* * * * *

[Illustration: Elkhorn ranch buildings from the river. Photograph by

Theodore Roosevelt.]

At the Maltese Cross there were now a half-dozen hands, Sylvane and

"our friend with the beaver-slide," as Merrifield, who was bald, was

known; George Myers, warm-hearted and honest as the day; Jack Reuter,

known as "Wannigan," with his stupendous memory and his Teutonic

appetite; and at intervals "old man" Thompson who was a teamster, and

a huge being named Hank Bennett. Roosevelt liked them all

immensely. They possessed to an extraordinary degree the qualities of

manhood which he deemed fundamental,--courage, integrity, hardiness,

self-reliance,--combining with those qualities a warmth, a humor, and

a humanness that opened his understanding to many things. He had come

in contact before with men whose opportunities in life had been less

than his, and who in the eyes of the world belonged to that great mass

of "common people" of whom Lincoln said that "the Lord surely loved

them since he made so many of them." But he had never lived with them,

day in, day out, slept with them, eaten out of the same dish with

them. The men of the cattle country, he found, as daily companions,

wore well.

They called him "Mr. Roosevelt," not "Theodore" nor "Teddy." For,

though he was comrade and friend to all, he was also the "boss," and

they showed him the respect his position and his instinctive

leadership merited. More than once a man who attempted to be unduly

familiar with Roosevelt found himself swiftly and effectively

squelched. He himself entered with enthusiasm into the work of

administration. He regarded the ranch as a most promising business

venture, and felt assured that, with ordinary luck, he should make his

livelihood from it. On every side he received support for this

assurance. The oldest cattleman as well as the youngest joined in the

chorus that there never had been such a country for turning cattle

into dollars. In the Territorial Governor's Report for 1885, Packard

is quoted, waxing lyric about it:

Bunch and buffalo-grass cover almost every inch of the

ground. The raw sides of buttes are the only places where

splendid grazing cannot be found. On many of the buttes,

however, the grass grows clear to the summit, the slopes

being the favorite pasture-lands of the cattle. Generally no

hay need be cut, as the grass cures standing, and keeps the

cattle in as good condition all winter as if they were

stall-fed. The only reason for putting up hay is to avoid a

scarcity of feed in case of heavy snow. This very seldom

happens, however, as very little snow falls in the Bad

Lands. A curious fact with cattle is that the ones that have

been here a year or two, and know how to rustle, will turn

away from a stack of hay, paw away the snow from the grass,

and feed on that exclusively. Even in the dead of winter a

meadow has a very perceptible tinge of green.

A realist might have remarked that very little snow fell in the Bad

Lands mainly because the wind would not let it. The _Cowboy_ editor's

exultant optimism has an aspect of terrible irony in the light of the

tragedy that was even then building itself out of the over-confidence

of a hundred enthusiasts.

Bill Sewall and Will Dow alone remained skeptical.

Perhaps we are wrong [Sewall wrote his brother], but we

think it is too cold and barren for a good cattle country.

Nobody has made anything at it yet. _All expect to._ Guess

it's very much like going into the woods in fall. All are

happy, _but the drive is not in yet_. When it does get in,

am afraid there will be a shortness somewhere. The men that

furnish the money are not many of them here themselves and

the fellows that run the business and are supposed to know,

all look for a very prosperous future, consider the troubles

and discouragements, losses, etc., _temporary_. They are

like us--_getting good and sure pay_.

Roosevelt recognized the possibility of great losses; but he would

have been less than human if in that youthful atmosphere of gorgeous

expectation he had not seen the possibilities of failure less vividly

than the possibilities of success. Sylvane and Merrifield were

confident that they were about to make their everlasting fortunes;

George Myers invested every cent of his savings in cattle, "throwing

them in," as the phrase went, with the herd of the Maltese Cross. In

their first year the Maltese Cross "outfit" had branded well over a

hundred calves; the losses, in what had been a severe winter, had been

slight. It was a season of bright hopes. Late in April, Roosevelt sent

Merrifield to Minnesota with Sewall and Dow and a check for twelve

thousand five hundred dollars to purchase as many more head of stock

as the money would buy.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, was proving himself as capable as a ranchman as

he was courageous as an investor. The men who worked with him noted

with satisfaction that he learned quickly and worked hard; that he was

naturally progressive; that he cared little for money, and yet was

thrifty; that, although conferring in all matters affecting the stock

with Sylvane and Merrifield, and deferring to their experience even at

times against his own judgment, he was very much the leader. He was

never "bossy," they noted, but he was insistent on discipline, on

regularity of habits, on prompt obedience, on absolute integrity.

He was riding over the range one day with one of his ablest

cowpunchers, when they came upon a "maverick," a two-year-old steer,

which had never been branded. They lassoed him promptly and built a

fire to heat the branding-irons.

It was the rule of the cattlemen that a "maverick" belonged to the

ranchman on whose range it was found. This particular steer,

therefore, belonged, not to Roosevelt, but to Gregor Lang, who

"claimed" the land over which Roosevelt and his cowboy were riding.

The Texan started to apply the red-hot iron.

"It is Lang's brand--a thistle," said Roosevelt.

"That's all right, boss," answered the cowboy. "I know my business."

"Hold on!" Roosevelt exclaimed an instant later, "you are putting on

my brand."

"That's all right. I always put on the boss's brand."

"Drop that iron," said Roosevelt quietly, "and go to the ranch and get

your time. I don't need you any longer."

The cowpuncher was amazed. "Say, what have I done? Didn't I put on

your brand?"

"A man who will steal _for_ me will steal _from_ me. You're fired."

The man rode away. A day or so later the story was all over the Bad

Lands.

Roosevelt was scarcely more tolerant of ineffectiveness than he was of

dishonesty. When a man was sent to do a piece of work, he was expected

to do it promptly and thoroughly. He brooked no slack work and he had

no ear for what were known as "hard-luck stories." He gave his orders,

knowing why he gave them; and expected results. If, on the other hand,

a man "did his turn" without complaint or default, Roosevelt showed

himself eager and prompt to reward him.

His companions saw these things, and other things. They saw that "the

boss" was quick-tempered and impatient of restraint; but they saw also

that in times of stress the hot-headed boy seemed instantly to grow

into a cautious and level-headed man, dependable in hardship and cool

in the face of danger. He was, as one of them put it, "courageous

without recklessness, firm without being stubborn, resolute without

being obstinate. There was no element of the spectacular in his

make-up, but an honest naturalness that won him friends instantly."

"Roosevelt out in Dakota was full of life and spirit, always

pleasant," said Bill Sewall in after years. "He was hot-tempered and

quick, but he kept his temper in good control. As a rule, when he had

anything to say, he'd spit it out. His temper would show itself in the

first flash in some exclamation. In connection with Roosevelt I always

think of that verse in the Bible, 'He that ruleth his spirit is

greater than he that taketh a city.'"

"He struck me like a sort of rough-an'-ready, all-around

frontiersman," said "Dutch Wannigan." "Wasn't a bit stuck up--just the

same as one of the rest of us."

Joe Ferris, who frankly adored Roosevelt, declared to a crowd at his

store one day, "I wouldn't be surprised if Roosevelt would be

President."

His hearers scoffed at him. "That fool Joe Ferris," remarked one of

them at his own ranch that night, "says that Roosevelt will be

President some day."

But Joe held his ground.[12]

[Footnote 12: Joe Ferris was made aware of this scornful

reference to his judgment through a cowboy, Carl

Hollenberg, who overheard it, and sixteen years later

came into Joe's store one September day shouting, "That

fool, Joe Ferris, says that Roosevelt will be President

some day!" The point was that Roosevelt had that week

succeeded McKinley in the White House.]

The neighbors up and down the river were warm-hearted and friendly.

Mrs. Roberts had decided that she wanted a home of her own, and had

persuaded her husband to build her a cabin some three miles north of

the Maltese Cross, where a long green slope met a huge semi-circle of

gray buttes. The cabin was primitive, being built of logs stuck,

stockade-fashion, in the ground, and the roof was only dirt until Mrs.

Roberts planted sunflowers there and made it a garden; but for Mrs.

Roberts, with her flock of babies, it was "home," and for many a

cowboy, passing the time of day with the genial Irishwoman, it was the

nearest approach to "home" that he knew from one year's end to

another.

Shortly after Mrs. Roberts had moved to her new house, Roosevelt and

Merrifield paid her a call. Mrs. Roberts, who had the only milch cow

in the Bad Lands, had been churning, and offered Roosevelt a glass of

buttermilk. He drank it with an appreciation worthy of a rare

occasion. But as he rode off again, he turned to Merrifield with his

teeth set.

"Heavens, Merrifield!" he exclaimed, "don't you ever do that again!"

Merrifield was amazed. "Do what?"

"Put me in a position where I have to drink buttermilk. I loathe the

stuff!"

"But why did you drink it?"

"She brought it out!" he exclaimed, "And it would have hurt her

feelings if I hadn't. But look out! I don't want to have to do it

again!"

Mrs. Roberts spared him thenceforward, and there was nothing,

therefore, to spoil for Roosevelt the merriment of the Irishwoman's

talk and the stimulus of her determination and courage. There were

frequent occasions consequently when "the boys from the Maltese Cross"

foregathered in the Roberts cabin, and other occasions, notably

Sundays (when Sylvane and Merrifield and George Myers had picked up

partners in Medora) when they all called for "Lady Roberts" as

chaperon and rode up the valley together. They used to take peculiar

delight in descending upon Mrs. Cummins and making her miserable.

It was not difficult to make that poor lady unhappy. She had a fixed

notion of what life should be for people who were "nice" and

"refined," and her days were a succession of regrets at the

shortcomings of her neighbors. She was in many ways an admirable

woman, but she seemed incapable of extending the conception of

gentility which a little Pennsylvania town had given her, and she

never caught a gleam of the real meaning of the life of which she was

a part. She wanted everything in the Bad Lands exactly as she had had

it at home. "Well," as Mrs. Roberts subsequently remarked, "she had

one time of it, I'm telling you, in those old rough days."