[Illustration: The Bad Lands near Medora. Showing the house of the

Marquis de Mores.]

The Marquis's acquittal did not, it seems, mollify his bitterness

toward Roosevelt. He prided himself on his judgment, as he had once

informed Howard Eaton, but his judgment had a habit of basing its

conclusions on somewhat nebulous premises. Two or three bits of

circumstantial evidence had served to convince the Marquis definitely

that Roosevelt had been the impelling force behind the prosecution.

The fact that "Dutch Wannigan" was an employee of Roosevelt's, in

itself, not unnaturally, perhaps, stirred the Marquis's ire. When he

was told, however, that "Dutch Wannigan," before departing for the

trial at Mandan, had received money from Joe Ferris, his suspicions

appeared confirmed, for Joe was known to be Roosevelt's close friend,

and it was an open secret that Roosevelt was financing Joe's venture

in storekeeping. If his suspicions needed further confirmation, they

seemed to get it when a little, black-haired Irishman, named Jimmie

McShane, otherwise known as "Dynamite Jimmie," received a sum of money

from Joe Ferris and appeared at the trial as the first witness for the

prosecution. On the surface the case against Roosevelt was convincing,

and the Marquis evidently did not dip beneath it. If he had, he would

have realized that Joe Ferris was the acknowledged banker of the Bad

Lands to whom practically all the thrifty souls among the cowpunchers

brought a portion of their wages for safe-keeping. When "Dutch

Wannigan" and "Dynamite Jimmie," therefore, received money from Joe

Ferris, they received only what was their own, and what they needed

for their expenses at the trial.

But the Marquis, whose mind liked to jump goat-like from crag to crag,

did not stop to examine the evidence against Roosevelt. He accepted it

at its face value, and wrote Roosevelt a stinging letter, telling him

that he had heard that Roosevelt had influenced witnesses against him

in the murder trial. He had supposed, he said, that there was, nothing

but friendly feeling between himself and Roosevelt, but since it was

otherwise there was always "a way of settling differences between

gentlemen."

Roosevelt, who had returned from the East early in October, received

the letter at Elkhorn Ranch and read it aloud to Bill Sewall. "That's

a threat," he exclaimed. "He is trying to bully me. He can't bully me.

I am going to write him a letter myself. Bill," he went on, "I don't

want to disgrace my family by fighting a duel. I don't believe in

fighting duels. My friends don't any of them believe in it. They would

be very much opposed to anything of the kind, but I won't be bullied

by a Frenchman. Now, as I am the challenged party, I have the

privilege of naming the weapons. I am no swordsman, and pistols are

too uncertain and Frenchy for me. So what do you say if I make it

rifles?"

Roosevelt sat down on a log and then and there drafted his reply. He

had no unfriendly feeling for the Marquis, he wrote, "but, as the

closing sentence of your letter implies a threat, I feel it my duty to

say that I am ready at all times and at all places to answer for my

actions."

Then he added that if the Marquis's letter was meant as a challenge,

and he insisted upon having satisfaction, he would meet him with

rifles at twelve paces, the adversaries to shoot and advance until one

or the other dropped.

"Now," said Roosevelt, "I expect he'll challenge me. If he does, I

want you for my second."

Sewall grunted. "You will never have to fight any duel of that kind

with that man," he said. "He won't challenge you. He will find some

way out of it."

Roosevelt was not at all sure of this. The Marquis was a bully, but he

was no coward.

A day or so later the answer came by special messenger. Roosevelt

brought it over to Sewall. "You were right, Bill, about the Marquis,"

he said.

Sewall read the Marquis's letter. The Marquis declared that Roosevelt

had completely misunderstood the meaning of his message. The idea that

he had meant to convey was that there was always a way of settling

affairs of that sort between gentlemen--without trouble. And would not

Mr. Roosevelt do him the honor of dining with him, and so forth and so

on?

"The Marquis," as Roosevelt remarked long afterward, "had a streak of

intelligent acceptance of facts, and as long as he did not _publicly_

lose caste or incur ridicule by backing down, he did not intend to run

risk without adequate object. He did not expect his bluff to be

called; and when it was, he had to make up his mind to withdraw it."

There was no more trouble after that between Theodore Roosevelt and

the Marquis de Mores.

XXI

I'd rather hear a rattler rattle,

I'd rather buck stampeding cattle,

I'd rather go to a greaser battle,

Than--

Than to--

Than to fight--

Than to fight the bloody In-ji-ans.

I'd rather eat a pan of dope,

I'd rather ride without a rope,

I'd rather from this country lope,

Than--

Than to--

Than to fight--

Than to fight the bloody In-ji-ans.

_Cowboy song_

All through that autumn of 1885, Roosevelt remained in the Bad Lands.

With his whole being he reveled in the wild and care-free life; but

the newspapers did not seem to be able to rise above the notion that

he was in Dakota for political purposes:

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, it is rumored [remarked the Chicago

_Tribune_] has an eye on politics in Dakota, and is making

himself popular with the natives. He is bright, certainly,

but Mr. Roosevelt will find the methods in Dakota quite

different from those which gave him sudden prominence in New

York. There is a great deal of breeziness in a Dakota

convention, but it is not the breeziness of innocence. It is

high art. The number of gentlemen who are in training for

United States senatorships, when Dakota shall have acquired

admission, is not limited, and each and every aspirant can

pull a wire with a silent grace which is fascinating. If Mr.

Roosevelt really likes politics, he will enjoy himself in

Dakota.

If Roosevelt had any notion of entering the race for the senatorship

in Dakota, he has left no record of it. Howard Eaton spoke to him once

about it. He was interested and even a little stirred, it appeared, at

the possibility of representing the frontier in the United States

Senate as, half a century previous, Thomas H. Benton, of Tennessee,

whom he greatly admired, had represented it. But the thought failed to

take permanent hold of him. He was, moreover, thinking of himself in

those days more as a writer than as a politician.

The autumn was not without excitement. A small band of Indians began

here and there to set fire to the prairie grass, and before the

cattlemen realized what was happening, thousands of acres of winter

feed lay blackened and desolate.

This act of ruthless destruction was the climax of a war of reprisals

which had been carried on relentlessly between the Indians and the

white men since the first bold pioneer had entered the West Missouri

country. There was endless trouble and bad blood between the races,

which at intervals flared up in an outrage, the details of which were

never told in print because they were as a rule unprintable. In the

region between the Little Missouri and the Yellowstone, in the years

1884 and 1885, the wounds left by the wars, which had culminated in

the death of Custer at the Little Big Horn, were still open and sore.

In the conflict between white and red, the Indians were not always

the ones who were most at fault. In many cases the robberies and other

crimes which were committed were the acts of men maddened by

starvation, for the ranges where they had hunted had been taken from

them, and the reservations in many cases offered insufficient food.

The agents of the Great White Father, moreover, were not always

over-careful to give them all the cattle and the ponies which the

Government was by treaty supposed to grant them. In consequence they

"lifted" a cow or a calf where they could. The cattlemen, on their

part, thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of _might is right_,

regarded the Indians as a public enemy, and were disposed to treat

their ponies and any other property which they might possess as

legitimate prize of war. There was, in fact, during the middle

eighties, open and undisguised warfare between red and white

throughout the region whose eastern border was the Bad Lands. It was,

moreover, a peculiarly atrocious warfare. Many white men shot whatever

Indians they came upon like coyotes, on sight; others captured them,

when they could, and, stripping off their clothes, whipped them till

they bled. The Indians retaliated horribly, delivering their white

captives to their squaws, who tortured them in every conceivable

fashion, driving slivers up under their nails, burning them alive, and

feeding them with flesh cut from their own bodies. Along the banks of

the Little Missouri there were no outrages, for the Indians had been

driven out of the country at the end of the seventies, and, save for

occasional raids in the early eighties, had made little trouble; but

at the edge of the Bad Lands there was a skirmish now and then, and in

the winter of 1884 Schuyler Lebo, son of that odd Ulysses who had

guided Roosevelt to the Big Horn Mountains, was shot in the leg by an

Indian while he was hunting on Bullion Butte.

Roosevelt had a little adventure of his own with Indians that summer.

He was traveling along the edge of the prairie on a solitary journey

to the unexplored country north and east of the range on which his

cattle grazed, and was crossing a narrow plateau when he suddenly saw

a group of four or five Indians come up over the edge directly in

front. As they saw him, they whipped their guns out of their slings,

started their horses into a run, and came toward him at full speed.

He reined up instantly and dismounted.

The Indians came on, whooping and brandishing their weapons.

Roosevelt laid his gun across the saddle and waited.

It was possible [Roosevelt wrote subsequently] that the

Indians were merely making a bluff and intended no mischief.

But I did not like their actions, and I thought it likely

that if I allowed them to get hold of me they would at least

take my horse and rifle, and possibly kill me. So I waited

until they were a hundred yards off and then drew a bead on

the first. Indians--and, for the matter of that, white

men--do not like to ride in on a man who is cool and means

shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the

side of his horse, and all five had turned and were

galloping backwards, having altered their course as quickly

as so many teal ducks.

At some distance the Indians halted and gathered evidently for a

conference.

Thereupon one man came forward alone, making the peace sign first with

his blanket and then with his open hand. Roosevelt let him come to

within fifty yards. The Indian was waving a piece of soiled paper, his

reservation pass.

"How! Me good Injun," he called.

"How!" Roosevelt answered. "I'm glad you are. But don't come any

closer."

The Indian asked for sugar and tobacco. Roosevelt told him that he had

none. Another Indian now began almost imperceptibly to approach.

Roosevelt called to him to keep back, but the Indian paid no

attention.

Roosevelt whipped up his gun once more, covering the spokesman. That

individual burst into a volume of perfect Anglo-Saxon profanity; but

he retired, which was what he was supposed to do. Roosevelt led the

faithful Manitou off toward the plains. The Indians followed him at a

distance for two miles or more, but as he reached the open country at

last they vanished in the radiant dust of the prairie.

Indians were a familiar sight in Medora and about the ranch-houses up

and down the Little Missouri. In groups of a half-dozen or over they

were formidable, but singly they were harmless and rather pathetic

creatures. Roosevelt's attitude toward the Indians as a race was

unequivocal. He detested them for their cruelty, and even more for

their emphasis on cruelty as a virtue to be carefully developed as a

white man might develop a sense of chivalry; but he recognized the

fact that they had rights as human beings and as members of tribes

having treaty relations with the United States, and insisted in season

and out of season that those rights be respected.

I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western

view of the Indian [he said in the course of a lecture which

he delivered in New York, during January, 1886]. I don't go

so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead

Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I

shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the

tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than

the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New

York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in

vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the

Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they

rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of

themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the

plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked

Sheridan for a cannon. "What! Do you want to kill my

soldiers with it?" asked the general. "No," replied the

chief, "want to kill the cowboy; kill soldier with a club."

It was characteristic of Roosevelt that, in spite of his detestation

of the race, he should have been meticulously fair to the individual

members of it who happened to cross his path. He made it a point, both

at the Maltese Cross and at Elkhorn, that the Indians who drifted in

and out at intervals should be treated as fairly as the whites,

neither wronging them himself nor allowing others to wrong them.

Mrs. Maddox, the maker of the famous buckskin shirt, who was an

extraordinary woman in more ways than one, had her own very individual

notions concerning the rights of the Indians. When Roosevelt stopped

at her shack one day, he found three Sioux Indians there, evidently

trustworthy, self-respecting men. Mrs. Maddox explained to him that

they had been resting there waiting for dinner, when a white man had

come along and tried to run off with their horses. The Indians had

caught the man, but, after retaking their horses and depriving him of

his gun, had let him go.

"I don't see why they let him go," she exclaimed. "I don't believe in

stealing Indians' horses any more than white folks', so I told 'em

they could go along and hang him, I'd never cheep! Anyhow I won't

charge them anything for their dinner," she concluded.

The psychology of the Indians was curious, and it took time

occasionally for their better qualities to reveal themselves. As

chairman of the Little Missouri Stock Association, Roosevelt on one

occasion recovered two horses which had been stolen from an old

Indian. The Indian took them, muttering something that sounded like

"Um, um," and without a word or a gesture of gratitude rode away with

his property. Roosevelt felt cheap, as though he had done a service

which had not been appreciated; but a few days later the old Indian

came to him and silently laid in his arms a hide bearing an elaborate

painting of the battle of the Little Big Horn.

The depredations of the Indians in the autumn of 1885 made concerted

action on the part of the cattlemen inevitable. The damage which the

fires did to the cattle ranges themselves was not extensive, for the

devastation was confined in the main to a strip of country about

eighteen miles on either side of the railroad's right of way, and the

ranches were situated from twenty-five to eighty miles from the track.

The real harm which the fires did was in the destruction of the

"drives" to the railroad. Driving cattle tended, under the best

conditions of water and pasture, to cause loss of weight; when the

"drive" lay through a burnt district for twenty or twenty-five miles

the deterioration of the cattle became a serious matter.

Day after day the cowboys fought the fires. It was peculiarly

harassing work.

The process we usually followed [Roosevelt wrote in his

Autobiography] was to kill a steer, split it in two

lengthwise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer,

the rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front

leg, and that of the other to the hind leg. One of the men

would spur his horse over or through the line of fire, and

the two would then ride forward, dragging the steer, bloody

side downward, along the line of flame, men following on

foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets to beat out any

flickering blaze that was still left. It was exciting work,

for the fire and the twitching and plucking of the ox

carcass over the uneven ground maddened the fierce little

horses so that it was necessary to do some riding in order

to keep them to their work. After a while it also became

very exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as,

with parched lips and blackened from head to foot, we toiled

at our task.

Work of this sort, day in, day out, did not make for magnanimity on

the part of the cowboys. It was found that seventy-five Indians, who

had received hunting permits from the agent at Berthold, were

responsible for the devastation, and even the Eastern newspapers began

to carry reports about a "serious conflict" which was likely to break

out any minute "between cattlemen and Indian hunters in the Bad Lands

of the Little Missouri."

Some one evidently called a meeting of the Little Missouri River

Stockmen's Association to consider the situation, which was becoming

dangerous, for on November 4th the New York _Herald_ reported that

the Cattle Association on Thursday next will send in a party

of thirty-five cowboys to order the Indians off the Bad

Lands and to see that they go. The Indians, being well armed

and having permits [the report concluded] are expected to

resist unless they are surprised when separated in small

parties.

Whether or not the party was ever sent is dark; but there was no

further trouble with the Indians that year.

Roosevelt did not attend the meeting of the Association he himself

had established. Sometime after the middle of October, he had returned

to the East. On October 24th he rode with the Meadowbrook Hunt Club

and broke his arm, riding in at the death in spite of a dangling

sleeve. A week or two later he was again in the Bad Lands.

He was a sorry sight as he arrived at Elkhorn Ranch, for his broken

arm had not been the only injury he had incurred. His face was scarred

and battered.

Bill Sewall regarded him with frank disapproval. "You're too valuable

a man to use yourself up chasing foxes," he remarked. "There's some

men that can afford to do it. There's some men that it don't make much

difference if they do break their necks. But you don't belong to that

class."

Roosevelt took the lecture without protest, giving his mentor the

impression that it had sunk in.

Roosevelt remained in the Bad Lands until after Christmas, shooting

his Christmas dinner in company with Sylvane. Before the middle of

January he was back in New York, writing articles for _Outing_ and the

_Century_, doing some work as a publisher in partnership with a friend

of his boyhood, George Haven Putnam, delivering an occasional lecture,

and now and then making a political speech. Altogether, life was not

dull for him.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, winter closed once more over the Bad Lands. The Marquis

went to France, followed by rumors disquieting to those who had high

hopes for the future of what the Marquis liked to call "my little

town." J. B. Walker, who "operated the Elk Hotel," as the phrase went,

"skipped out," leaving behind him a thousand dollars' worth of debts

and a stock of strong drink. Nobody claimed the debts, but

Hell-Roaring Bill Jones took possession of the deserted cellar and

sold drinks to his own great financial benefit, until it occurred to

some unduly inquisitive person to inquire into his rights; which

spoiled everything.

The event of real importance was the arrival of a new bride in Medora.

For early in January, 1886, Joe Ferris went East to New Brunswick; and

when he came back a month later he brought a wife with him.

It was a notable event. The "boys" had planned to give Joe and his

lady a "shivaree," such as even Medora had never encountered before,

but Joe, who was crafty and knew his neighbors, succeeded in

misleading the population of the town concerning the exact hour of his

arrival with his somewhat apprehensive bride. There was a wild

scurrying after tin pans and bells and other objects which were

effective as producers of bedlam, but Joe sent a friend forth with a

bill of high denomination and the suggestion that the "boys" break it

at Bill Williams's saloon, which had the desired effect.

[Illustration: Joseph A. Ferris.]

[Illustration: Joe Ferris's store.]

The "boys" took the greatest interest in the wife whom Joe (who was

popular in town) had taken to himself out in New Brunswick, and there

was real trepidation lest Joe's wife might be the wrong sort.

Other men, who had been good fellows and had run with the boys, had

married and been weaned from their old companions, bringing out women

who did not "fit in," who felt superior to the cowboys and did not

take the trouble to hide their feelings. The great test was, whether

Joe's wife would or would not like Mrs. Cummins. For Mrs. Cummins, in

the minds of the cowpunchers, stood for everything that was

reprehensible in the way of snobbery and lack of the human touch. If

Mrs. Ferris liked Mrs. Cummins, it was all over; if she properly

disliked her, she would do.

Mrs. Cummins called in due course. Merrifield was on the porch of the

store when she came and in his excited way carried the news to the

boys. As soon as she left by the front steps, Merrifield bounded up by

the back. His eyes were gleaming.

"Well, now, Mrs. Ferris," he cried, "how did you like her?"

Mrs. Ferris laughed.

"Well, what did she say?" Merrifield pursued impatiently.

"Why," remarked Mrs. Joe, "for one thing she says I mustn't trust any

of you cowboys."

Merrifield burst into a hearty laugh. "That's her!" he cried. "That's

her! What else did she say?"

"She told me how I ought to ride, and the kind of horse I ought to

get, and--"

"Go on, Mrs. Ferris," cried Merrifield.

"Why, she says I never want to ride any horse that any of you cowboys

give me, for you're all bad, and you haven't any consideration for a

woman and you'd as lief see a woman throwed off and killed as not."

Merrifield's eyes sparkled in the attractive way they had when he was

in a hilarious mood. "Say, did you ever hear the like of that? You'd

think, to hear that woman talk, that we was nothing but murderers.

What else did she say?"

"Well," remarked the new bride, "she said a good many things."

"You tell me, Mrs. Ferris," Merrifield urged.

"For one thing she said the cowboys was vulgar and didn't have any

manners. And--oh, yes--she said that refined folks who knew the better

things of life ought to stick together and not sink to the level of

common people."

"Now, Mrs. Ferris," remarked Merrifield indignantly, "ain't that a

ree-di-culous woman? Ain't she now?"

Mrs. Ferris laughed until the tears came to her eyes. "I think she

is," she admitted.

Merrifield carried the news triumphantly to the "boys," and the new

bride's standing was established. She became a sort of "honorary

member-once-removed" of the friendly order of cowpunchers, associated

with them by a dozen ties of human understanding, yet, by her sex,

removed to a special niche apart, where the most irresponsible did not

fail, drunk or sober, to do her deference. For her ears language was

washed and scrubbed. Men who appeared to have forgotten what shame

was, were ashamed to have Mrs. Ferris know how unashamed they could

be. Poor old Van Zander, whom every one in Billings County had seen

"stewed to the gills," pleaded with Joe not to tell Mrs. Ferris that

Joe had seen him drunk.

It became a custom, in anticipation of a "shivaree," to send round

word to Mrs. Ferris not to be afraid, the shooting was all in fun.

A woman would have been less than human who had failed to feel at home

in the midst of such evidences of warmth and friendly consideration.

Joe Ferris's store became more than ever the center of life in Medora,

as the wife whom Joe had brought from New Brunswick made his friends

her friends and made her home theirs also.

She had been in Medora less than a month when news came from Roosevelt

that he was getting ready to start West and would arrive on the Little

Missouri sometime about the middle of March. Joe's wife knew how to

get along with "boys" who were Joe's kind, but here was a different

sort of proposition confronting her. Here was a wealthy, and, in a

modest way, a noted, man coming to sleep under her roof and eat at her

table. The prospect appalled her. Possibly she had visions, for all

that Joe could say, of a sort of male Mrs. Cummins. "I was scairt to

death," she admitted later.

Roosevelt arrived on March 18th. His "city get-up" was slightly

distracting, for it had a perfection of style that Mrs. Joe was not

accustomed to; but his delight at his return to the Bad Lands was so

frank and so expressive that her anxiety began to dissolve in her

wonder at this vehement and attractive being who treated her like a

queen. He jumped in the air, clicking his heels together like a boy

let unexpectedly out of school, and at odd moments clapped Joe on the

back, crying, "By George! By George!" with the relish of a cannibal

reaching into the pot for a second joint.

She tried to treat him like the city man that he looked, but he

promptly put a stop to that.

"Just use me like one of the boys, Mrs. Ferris," he said decisively.

His words sounded sincere; but, being a shrewd-minded lady, she

wondered, nevertheless.

She did not know him when he came down to breakfast next morning.

Vanished was the "dude," and in his place stood a typical cowpuncher

in shaps and flannel shirt and knotted handkerchief. And his clothes

revealed that they had not been worn only indoors.

He gave an exclamation of delight as he entered the dining-room. "A

white tablecloth in the Bad Lands! Joe, did you ever expect to see

it?"

There was no more ice to break after that.

XXII

"Listen, gentle stranger, I'll read my pedigree:

I'm known on handling tenderfeet and worser men than thee;

The lions on the mountains, I've drove them to their lairs;

The wild-cats are my playmates, and I've wrestled grizzly bears;

"The centipedes have tried and failed to mar my tough old hide,

And rattlesnakes have bit me, and crawled away and died.

I'm as wild as the wild horse that roams the boundless plains,

The moss grows on my teeth and wild blood flows through my veins.

"I'm wild and woolly and full of fleas,

And never been curried below the knees.

Now, little stranger, if you'll give me your address,--

How would you like to go, by fast mail or express?"

Buckskin Joe

That spring of 1886 Roosevelt had a notable adventure. He arrived at

Elkhorn on March 19th.

I got out here all right [he wrote his sister "Bamie" the

following day] and was met at the station by my men; I was

really heartily glad to see the great, stalwart, bearded

fellows again, and they were as honestly pleased to see me.

Joe Ferris is married, and his wife made me most comfortable

the night I spent in town. Next morning snow covered the

ground; we pushed down, in a rough four-in-hand (how our rig

would have made the estimable Mrs. Blank open her eyes!) to

this ranch which we reached long after sunset, the full moon

flooding the landscape with light.

It was like coming home from a foreign country to see the Little

Missouri once more, and the strangely fascinating desolation of the

Bad Lands, and the home ranch and the "folks" from Maine and the loyal

friends of the Maltese Cross. He had good friends in the East, but

there was a warmth and a stalwart sincerity in the comradeship of

these men and women which he had scarcely found elsewhere. Through the

cold evenings of that early spring he loved to lie stretched at full

length on the elk-hides and wolf-skins in front of the great

fireplace, while the blazing logs crackled and roared, and Sewall and

Dow and the "womenfolks" recounted the happenings of the season of his

absence.

Spring came early that year and about the 20th of March a great

ice-jam, which had formed at a bend far up the river, came slowly past

Elkhorn, roaring and crunching and piling the ice high on both banks.

There has been an ice gorge right in front of the house [he

wrote "Bamie"], the swelling mass of broken fragments having

been pushed almost up to our doorstep. The current then

broke through the middle, leaving on each side of the

stream, for some miles, a bank of huge ice-floes, tumbled

over each other in the wildest confusion. No horse could by

any chance get across; we men have a boat, and even thus it

is most laborious carrying it out to the water; we work like

arctic explorers.

Early in the spring, Sewall and Dow had crossed the river to hunt for

a few days in the rough hills to the east, and had killed four deer

which they had hung in a tree to keep them from the coyotes. Roosevelt

determined to go with his men to bring home the deer, but when, after

infinite difficulty, they reached the thicket of dwarf cedars where

the deer had been hung, they found nothing save scattered pieces of

their carcasses, and roundabout the deeply marked footprints of a pair

of cougars, or "mountain lions." The beasts had evidently been at work

for some time and had eaten almost every scrap of flesh. Roosevelt and

his men followed their tracks into a tangle of rocky hills, but,

before they had come in sight of the quarry, dusk obscured the

footprints and they returned home resolved to renew the pursuit at

dawn. They tied their boat securely to a tree high up on the bank.

The next day Roosevelt made arrangements with a companion of many

hunts, "old man" Tompkins, who was living in the shack which Captain

Robins had occupied, to make a determined pursuit of the cougars; but

when, the following morning, he was ready to start once more for the

farther shore, his boat was gone. It was Bill Sewall who made the

discovery. He was not a man easily excited, and he took a certain

quiet satisfaction in sitting down to breakfast and saying nothing

while Roosevelt held forth concerning the fate which was awaiting the

mountain lions.

"I guess we won't go to-day," said Sewall, at length, munching the

last of his breakfast.

"Why not?" Roosevelt demanded.

Sewall showed him a red woolen mitten with a leather palm which he had

picked up on the ice, and the end of the rope by which the boat had

been tied. It had been cut with a sharp knife. "Some one has gone off

with the boat," he said.

Roosevelt had no doubt who had stolen the boat, for the thief or

thieves could scarcely have come by land without being detected. There

was only one other boat on the Little Missouri, and that was a small

flat-bottom scow owned by three hard characters who lived in a shack

twenty miles above Elkhorn. They were considered suspicious persons,

and Roosevelt and his men had shrewdly surmised for some time that

they were considering the advisability of "skipping the country"

before the vigilantes got after them. On inquiry they found that the

shack which the men had occupied was deserted.

The leader of the three was a stocky, ill-looking individual named

Finnegan, with fiery red hair which fell to his shoulders, gaining for

him the nickname "Redhead" Finnegan; a brick-red complexion, and an

evil reputation. He was a surly, quarrelsome, unkempt creature, and

when he came into a saloon with his stumbling gait (as he frequently

did), self-respecting cowboys had a way of leaving him in full

possession of the field, not because they feared him, but because they

did not care to be seen in his presence. He boasted that he was "from

Bitter Creek, where the farther up you went the worse people got," and

he lived "at the fountain head." He had blown into Medora early in

March and had promptly gone to Bill Williams's saloon and filled up on

Bill Williams's peculiarly wicked brand of "conversation juice."

"Well, it laid him out all right enough," remarked Lincoln Lang,

telling about it in after years. "I can testify to that, since I was

right there and saw the whole thing. Johnny Goodall, who was some

practical joker at that time, went into the bar and saw Finnegan lying

on the floor. He got some help and moved him to the billiard table.

Then Goodall sent to the barber shop for a hair clipper, and proceeded

to operate in the following manner: first he clipped off one side of

Finnegan's beard and moustache, and after that removed his long curls

on one side, being careful to leave a stair pattern all up the side of

his head. He concluded operations by removing the fringes upon one

side of his buckskin shirt. Next morning Finnegan sobered up and when

he saw himself in the looking-glass he went bersark."

"His heart got bad," Bill Dantz remarked, taking up the narrative. "He

laid down in a fringe of brush near the Marquis's store, where he

could command a clear view of the town, and began to pump lead into

everything in sight."

The first shot was aimed at the office of the _Bad Lands Cowboy_.

Whether or not "Redhead" Finnegan had it in for the stern moralist who

insisted that drunken criminals should be punished, not only for their

crimes, but also for their drunkenness, is a question on which the

records are dark. Fisher was shaving in Packard's office and the shot

broke the mirror in front of him. Packard, who was on horseback on the

bluff behind Medora, saw Fisher dash out of the shack, and rushed to

the scene of conflict. His horse had knocked Finnegan senseless

before the desperado knew that the Chief of Police was on his trail.

When Finnegan came to he was in a box-car, under lock and seal. But a

friend released him, and the man from Bitter Creek made his way down

the river to his cabin.

The population of Medora had not relished Finnegan's bombardment, and

suggestions concerning a possible "necktie party" began to make

themselves heard. Finnegan evidently decided that the time had come

for him, and the men who lived with him in his ill-kept shack, to

leave the country. Travel by horse or foot was impossible. The boat

they owned was a miserable, leaky affair. The Elkhorn skiff had

evidently appeared to Finnegan and Company in the nature of a godsend.

[Illustration: Wilmot Dow and Theodore Roosevelt (1886).]

[Illustration: The piazza at Elkhorn. Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt.]

Roosevelt's anger boiled up at the theft of the boat and he ran to

saddle Manitou. But Sewall restrained him, pointing out that if the

country was impassable for the horses of the thieves, it was no less

impassable for the horses of the pursuers. He declared that he and Dow

could build a flat-bottomed boat in three days. Roosevelt told him to

go ahead. With the saddle band--his forty or fifty cow-ponies--on the

farther side of the river, he could not afford to lose the boat. But

the determining motive in his mind was neither chagrin nor anxiety to

recover his property. In a country where self-reliant hardihood and

the ability to hold one's own under all circumstances ranked as the

first of the virtues, to submit tamely to theft or to any other

injury was, he knew, to invite almost certain repetition of the

offense.

A journal which he kept for a month or two that spring gives in

laconic terms a vivid picture of those March days.

March 22. Tramped over to get deer; mountain lions had got them.

March 23. Shot 4 prairie chickens.

March 24. Thieves stole boat; started to build another to go

after them.

March 25. Went out after deer; saw nothing. Boat being

built. River very high; ice piled upon banks several feet.

March 26. Boat building.

March 27. Boat built. Too cold to start. Shot 4 chickens.

March 28. Bitter cold.

March 29. Furious blizzard.

While Sewall and Dow, who were mighty men with their hands, were

building the boat, and his other cowpuncher, Rowe, was hurrying to

Medora to bring out a wagon-load of supplies for their contemplated

journey, Roosevelt himself was by no means idle. He had agreed to

write a life of Thomas Hart Benton for the _American Statesmen

Series_, and, after two or three months' work in the East gathering

his material, had begun the actual writing of the book immediately

after his return to the Bad Lands.

I have written the first chapter of the Benton [he wrote to

Lodge on March 27th], so at any rate I have made a start.

Writing is horribly hard work to me; and I make slow

progress. I have got some good ideas in the first chapter,

but I am not sure they are worked up rightly; my style is

very rough, and I do not like a certain lack of _sequitur_

that I do not seem able to get rid of.

I thought the article on Morris admirable in every way; one

of your crack pieces. Some of the sentences were so

thoroughly characteristic of you that I laughed aloud when I

read them. One of my men, Sewall (a descendant of the

Judge's, by the way), read it with as much interest as I

did, and talked it over afterwards as intelligently as any

one could.

At present we are all snowed up by a blizzard; as soon as it

lightens up I shall start down the river with two of my men

in a boat we have built while indoors, after some

horse-thieves who took our boat the other night to get out

of the country with; but they have such a start we have very

little chance of catching them. I shall take Matthew Arnold

along; I have had no chance at all to read it as yet.

The next day he was writing to his sister "Bamie." He was evidently

convinced that she would worry about him if she knew the nature of the

adventure on which he was about to embark, for in his letter he

protests almost too much concerning the utterly unexciting nature of

his activities:

Since I wrote you life has settled down into its usual

monotonous course here. It is not as rough as I had

expected; I have clean sheets, the cooking is pretty good,

and above all I have a sitting-room with a great fireplace

and a rocking-chair, which I use as my study.

The walking is horrible; all slippery ice or else deep,

sticky mud; but as we are very short of meat I generally

spend three or four hours a day tramping round after

prairie chickens, and one day last week I shot a deer. The

rest of the time I read or else work at Benton, which is

making very slow progress; writing is to me intensely

irksome work.

In a day or two, when the weather gets a little milder, I

expect to start down the river in a boat, to go to Mandan;

the trip ought to take a week or ten days, more or less. It

will be good fun. My life on the ranch this summer is not

going to be an especially adventurous or exciting one; and

my work will be mainly one of supervision so that there will

be no especial hardship or labor.

I really enjoy being with the men out here; they could be

more exactly described as my retainers than as anything

else; and I am able to keep on admirable terms with them and

yet avoid the familiarity which would assuredly breed

contempt.

On the 30th of March the blizzard which had been raging a day or two

moderated, and Roosevelt, hoping a thaw had set in, determined to set

off after the thieves. They left Rowe as guard over the ranch and "the

womenfolks," and with their unwieldy but water-tight craft, laden with

two weeks' provision of flour, coffee, and bacon, started to drift

down the river.

The region through which they passed was bare and bleak and terrible.

On either side, beyond the heaped-up piles of ice, rose the scarred

buttes, weather-worn into fantastic shapes and strangely blotched with

spots of brown and yellow, purple and red. Here and there the black

coal-veins that ran through them were aflame, gleaming weirdly through

the dusk as the three men made their camp that night.

The weather was cold and an icy wind blew in their faces.

"We're like to have it in our faces all day," remarked Will Dow

cheerfully, paddling at the bow.

"We can't, unless it's the crookedest wind in Dakota," answered

Sewall, who was steering.

They followed the river's course hither and thither in and out among

the crags, east and west, north and south.

"It _is_ the crookedest wind in Dakota," muttered Sewall to himself.

The thermometer dropped to zero, but there was firewood in plenty, and

they found prairie fowl and deer for their evening meals. Late the

third day, rounding a bend, they saw their boat moored against the

bank. Out of the bushes, a little way back, the smoke of a camp-fire

curled up through the frosty air.

"There's your boat!" cried Sewall, who had, in his own phrase, been

"looking sharp." "Get your guns ready. I'll handle the boat."

They flung off their heavy coats. Sewall was in the stern, steering

the boat toward shore. Dow was at Roosevelt's side in the bow.

Roosevelt saw the grim, eager look in their eyes, and his own eyes

gleamed.

He was the first ashore, leaping out of the boat as it touched the

shore ice and running up behind a clump of bushes, so as to cover the

landing of the others. Dow was beside him in an instant. Sewall was

fastening the boat.

It was rather funny business [Sewall wrote his brother

subsequently] for one of the men was called a pretty hard

ticket. He was also a shooting man. If he was in the bushes

and saw us first he was liable to make it very unhealthy for

us.

Roosevelt and Dow peered through the bushes. Beside a fire in a grove

of young cottonwoods a solitary figure was sitting; his guns were on

the ground at his side.

"Hands up!"

Roosevelt and Dow rushed in on the man, who was not slow to do as he

was told. He was a halfwitted German named Wharfenberger, a tool of

rogues more keen than he, whom Sewall later described as "an oldish

man who drank so much poor whiskey that he had lost most of the

manhood he ever possessed."

They searched the old man, taking his gun and his knives from him, and

telling him that if he did exactly as he was told they would use him

well; but if he disobeyed or tried to signal the other men, they would

kill him instantly. Knowing something of the frontier, he was ready to

believe that he would be given short shrift, and was thoroughly

submissive.

Finnegan and the third man, a half-breed named Bernstead, had, it

seems, gone hunting, believing themselves safe. Sewall guarded the

German, while Roosevelt and Dow, crouching under the lee of a cutbank,

prepared to greet the others.

The ground before them was as level as a floor, with no growth on it

of any sort beside the short dead grass which would not have given

cover to a rabbit. Beyond, to the east lay a wide stretch of level

bottom covered with sagebrush as high as a man's waist, and beyond

that was a fringe of bushes bordering a stretch of broken butte

country. The wind had fallen. Save for the rush of the river, there

was no sound.

Will and I [Sewall wrote his brother] kept watch and

listened--our eyes are better than Roosevelt's, Will on the

right and I on the left. R. was to rise up and tell them to

hands up, Will and I both with double barrel guns loaded

with Buck shot, and we were all going to shoot if they

offered to raise a gun. It is rather savage work but it

don't do to fool with such fellows. If there was any killing

to be done we meant to do it ourselves.

About an hour before sunset they heard Finnegan and his companion

crawling through the stunted bushes at the foot of the clay hill. The

men started to go upstream.

"We are going to lose them," Roosevelt whispered; "they are not coming

to camp."

"I think," answered Sewall, "they are looking for the camp smoke."

He was evidently right, for suddenly they saw it and came straight

through the sagebrush toward the watchers. Roosevelt and his men

watched them for some minutes as they came nonchalantly toward them,

the barrels of their rifles glinting in the sunlight. Now they were

forty yards away, now thirty, now twenty.

"Hands up!"

The half-breed obeyed, but for an instant Finnegan hesitated, glaring

at his captors with wolfish eyes. Roosevelt walked toward him,

covering the center of the man's chest to avoid over-shooting him.

"You thief, put up your hands!"

Finnegan dropped his rifle with an oath and put up his hands.

They searched the thieves and took away their weapons. "If you'll keep

quiet," said Roosevelt, "and not try to get away, you'll be all right.

If you try anything we'll shoot you."

This was language which the thieves understood, and they accepted the

situation. Sewall took an old double-barrel ten-gauge Parker shot-gun

and stood guard.

Dow was a little uneasy about the gun.

"The right-hand barrel goes off very easily," he warned Sewall. "It's

gone off with me several times when I did not mean it to, and if you

are going to cover the men with it you better be careful."

"I'll be careful," remarked Sewall in his deliberate fashion, "but if

it happens to go off, it will make more difference to them than it

will to me."

They camped that night where they were. Having captured their men,

they were somewhat in a quandary how to keep them. The cold was so

intense that to tie them tightly hand and foot meant in all likelihood

freezing both hands and feet off during the night; there was no use

tying them at all, moreover, unless they tied them tightly enough to

stop in part the circulation. Roosevelt took away everything from the

thieves that might have done service as a weapon, and corded his

harvest in some bedding well out of reach of the thieves.

"Take off your boots!" he ordered.

It had occurred to him that bare feet would make any thought of flight

through that cactus country extremely uninviting. The men surrendered

their boots. Roosevelt gave them a buffalo robe in return and the

prisoners crawled under it, thoroughly cowed.

Captors and captives started downstream in the two boats the next

morning. The cold was bitter. Toward the end of the day they were

stopped by a small ice-jam which moved forward slowly only to stop

them again. They ran the boats ashore to investigate, and found that

the great Ox-Bow jam, which had moved past Elkhorn a week ago, had

come to a halt and now effectually barred their way. They could not

possibly paddle upstream against the current; they could not go on

foot, for to do so would have meant the sacrifice of all their

equipment. They determined to follow the slow-moving mass of ice, and

hope, meanwhile, for a thaw.

They continued to hope; day after weary day they watched in vain for

signs of the thaw that would not come, breaking camp in the morning

on one barren point, only to pitch camp again in the evening on

another, guarding the prisoners every instant, for the trouble they

were costing made the captors even more determined that, whatever was

lost, Finnegan and Company should not be lost.

Roosevelt's journal for those days tells the story:

April 1. Captured the three boat-thieves.

April 2. Came on with our prisoners till hung up by ice-jam.

April 3. Hung up by ice.

April 4. Hung up by ice.

April 5. Worked down a couple of miles till again hung up by

ice.

April 6. Worked down a couple of miles again to tail of ice-jam.

Their provisions ran short. They went after game, but there was none

to be seen, no beast or bird, in that barren region. The addition to

their company had made severe inroads on their larder and it was not

long before they were all reduced to unleavened bread made with muddy

water. The days were utterly tedious, and were made only slightly more

bearable for Roosevelt by Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" and Matthew

Arnold, interlarded with "The History of the James Brothers," which

the thieves quite properly carried among their belongings. And the

thieves had to be watched every minute, and the wind blew and chilled

them to the bone.

Roosevelt thought that it might be pleasant under certain

circumstances to be either a Dakota sheriff or an Arctic explorer. But

he did not find great joy in being both at the same time.

When the flour was nearly gone, Roosevelt and his men had a

consultation.

"We can't shoot them," said Roosevelt, "and we can't feed them. It

looks to me as though we'd have to let them go."

Sewall disagreed. "The flour'll last a day or two more," he said, "and

it's something to know that if we're punishing ourselves, we're

punishing the thieves also."

"Exactly!" cried Roosevelt. "We'll hold on to them!"

The next day Sewall, on foot, searched the surrounding region far and

wide for a ranch, and found none. The day after, Roosevelt and Dow

covered the country on the other side of the river, and at last came

on an outlying cow-camp of the Diamond C Ranch, where Roosevelt

secured a horse.

It was a wiry, rebellious beast.

"The boss ain't no bronco-buster," remarked Dow, apologetically, to

the cowboys.

But "the boss" managed to get on the horse and to stay on. Dow

returned to Sewall and the thieves, while Roosevelt rode fifteen miles

to a ranch at the edge of the Killdeer Mountains. There he secured

supplies and a prairie-schooner, hiring the ranchman himself, a rugged

old plainsman, to drive it to the camp by the ice-bound river. Sewall

and Dow, now thoroughly provisioned, remained with the boats.

Roosevelt with the thieves started for the nearest jail, which was at

Dickinson.

It was a desolate two days' journey through a bleak waste of burnt,

blackened prairie, and over rivers so rough with ice that they had to

take the wagon apart to cross. Roosevelt did not dare abate his watch

over the thieves for an instant, for they knew they were drawing close

to jail and might conceivably make a desperate break any minute. He

could not trust the driver. There was nothing for it but to pack the

men into the wagon and to walk behind with the Winchester.

Hour after hour he trudged through the ankle-deep mud, hungry, cold,

and utterly fatigued, but possessed by the dogged resolution to carry

the thing through, whatever the cost. They put up at the squalid hut

of a frontier granger overnight, but Roosevelt, weary as he was, did

not dare to sleep. He crowded the prisoners into the upper bunk and

sat against the cabin door all night, with the Winchester across his

knees.

Roosevelt's journal gives the stages of his progress.

April 7. Worked down to C Diamond Ranch. Two prairie chickens.

April 8. Rode to Killdeer Mountains to arrange for a wagon

which I hired.

April 9. Walked captives to Killdeer Mountains.

April 10. Drove captives in wagon to Captain Brown's ranch.

"What I can't make out," said the ranchman from the Killdeers, with a

puzzled expression on his deeply wrinkled, tough old face, which

Sewall said "looked like the instep of an old boot that had lain out

in the weather for years,"--"what I can't make out is why you make all

this fuss instead of hanging 'em offhand."

Roosevelt grinned, and the following evening, after a

three-hundred-mile journey, deposited three men who had defied the

laws of Dakota in the jail at Dickinson.

He was not a vision of beauty as he emerged from the jail to find a

place to scrape off two weeks' accumulation of Dakota mud. His feet

were in bad shape from the long march through the gumbo, and he asked

the first man he met where he could find a physician. By a curious

coincidence the man he addressed happened to be the only physician

within a hundred and fifty miles in any direction. It was Dr.

Stickney.

They had heard of each other, and Roosevelt was glad, for more reasons

than one, to follow him to his office. For the quiet man with the

twinkling eyes, who combined the courage and the humanness of a

cowpuncher with the unselfish devotion of a saint, was a great figure

in the Bad Lands. Like Roosevelt he was under thirty.

The doctor, in after years, told of that morning's visit. "He did not

seem worn out or unduly tired," he said. "He had just come from the

jail, having deposited his prisoners at last, and had had no sleep for

forty-eight hours, and he was all teeth and eyes; but even so he

seemed a man unusually wide awake. You could see he was thrilled by

the adventures he had been through. He did not seem to think he had

done anything particularly commendable, but he was, in his own phrase,

'pleased as Punch' at the idea of having participated in a real

adventure. He was just like a boy.

"We talked of many things that day while I was repairing his blistered

feet. He impressed me and he puzzled me, and when I went home to

lunch, an hour later, I told my wife that I had met the most peculiar,

and at the same time the most wonderful, man I had ever come to know.

I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not

understand why he was out there on the frontier. I had heard his name

and I had read something of his work in the New York Legislature and

in the Republican Convention, two years previous, and it seemed to me

that he belonged, not here on the frontier, but in the East, in the

turmoil of large affairs."

I got the three horse-thieves in fine style [Roosevelt wrote

to Lodge]. My two Maine men and I ran down the river three

days in our boat, and then came on their camp by surprise.

As they knew there was no other boat on the river but the

one they had taken, and as they had not thought of our

building another, they were completely taken unawares, one

with his rifle on the ground, and the others with theirs on

their shoulders; so there was no fight, nor any need of

pluck on our part. We simply crept noiselessly up and

rising, when only a few yards distant, covered them with the

cocked rifles while I told them to throw up their hands.

They saw that we had the drop on them completely, and I

guess they also saw that we surely meant shooting if they

hesitated, and so their hands went up at once. We kept them

with us nearly a week, being caught in an ice-jam; then we

came to a ranch where I got a wagon, and I sent my two men

on downstream with the boat, while I took the three captives

overland a two days' journey to a town where I could give

them to the sheriff. I was pretty sleepy when I got there,

as I had to keep awake at night a good deal in guarding; and

we had gotten out of food and the cold had been intense.

To his sister Corinne he admitted that he was well satisfied to part

from his prisoners.

I was really glad to give them up to the sheriff this

morning [he writes from Dickinson], for I was pretty well

done out with the work, the lack of sleep, and the constant

watchfulness, but I am as brown and as tough as a pine knot

and feel equal to anything.

It happened that the editor of the _Herald_ of Newburyport,

Massachusetts, had a friend in Dickinson who occasionally sent him

news of the frontier which he printed as the "Dickinson (Dakota)

Letter to the Newburyport Herald."

[Illustration: Dow and Sewall in the boat they made themselves, laden

with the loot of the thieves.]

To illustrate what manner of men we need [he wrote during

the week following the successful conclusion of Roosevelt's

adventure], I will relate an incident which is to the point.

I presume you are all acquainted, through the newspapers,

with the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, who is quite prominent in

New York politics and society. He owns a ranch on the Little

Missouri, about eighty miles northwest from here, and

created quite a stir last Sunday by bringing to town

three horse-thieves whom he had captured with the help of

two of his "cow men."

Thereupon follows the story of the capture and jailing of Finnegan and

Company.

When I saw him [the correspondent continues], Mr. Roosevelt

had been on the "trail" for three weeks, and wore a cowboy's

hat, corduroy jacket, flannel shirt, and heavy shoes, but

was in excellent health and spirits.

Said he, "I don't know how I look, but I feel first-rate!"

The next morning he appeared in the justice's court, saw the

outlaws indicted, and a little later took the train bound

west, for his "cow camp." I had never seen Mr. Roosevelt

before, although I had read many articles from his pen; and

when I left home I had no idea of meeting a gentleman of his

standing on the frontier masquerading in the character of an

impromptu sheriff. But, only such men of courage and energy

can hope to succeed in this new, beautiful, but undeveloped

country.

The justice of the peace who indicted the thieves was Western Starr.

He turned out to be an old acquaintance of Roosevelt's, a classmate in

the Columbia Law School. The coincidence gave an added flavor to the

proceeding.

In Medora there seemed to be only one opinion concerning Roosevelt's

adventure, though it was variously expressed.

"Roosevelt," said his friend, John Simpson, a Texan, who was owner of

the "Hash-knife" brand and one of the greatest cattlemen in the

region, "no one but you would have followed those men with just a

couple of cow-hands. You are the only real damn fool in the county."

The rest of the population echoed the bewildered query of the teamster

from the Killdeers. "Why didn't you _kill_ them?" every one asked.

"They would have killed you."

"I didn't come out here to kill anybody," Roosevelt answered. "All I

wanted to do was to defend myself and my property. There wasn't any

one around to defend them for me, so I had to do it myself."

And there the matter rested. But the people of Medora began to see a

little more clearly than they had ever seen before the meaning of

government by law.[21]

[Footnote 21: The thieves were tried at Mandan in

August, 1886. The German, known as "Dutch Chris," was

acquitted, but Finnegan, and Bernstead, known as "the

half-breed," were sentenced to twenty-five months in the

Bismarck Penitentiary. Finnegan glared at Roosevelt as

he passed him in the court room. "If I'd had any show at

all," he cried, "you'd have sure had to fight!"

That was no doubt true, but his anger evidently wore off

in the cool of the prison, for a little later he wrote

Roosevelt a long and friendly epistle, which was

intended to explain many things:

In the first place I did not take your boat Mr.

Roosevelt because I wanted to steal something, no

indeed, when I took that vessel I was labouring

under the impression, die dog or eat the

hachette.... When I was a couple of miles above

your ranch the boat I had sprung a leak and I saw I

could not make the Big Missouri in it in the shape

that it was in. I thought of asking assistance of

you, but I supposed you had lost some saddles and

blamed me for taking them. Now there I was with a

leaky boat and under the circumstances what was I

two do, two ask you for help, the answer I expected

two get was two look down the mouth of a

Winchester. I saw your boat and made up my mind two

get possession of it. I was bound two get out of

that country cost what it might, when people talk

lynch law and threaten a persons life, I think that

it is about time to leave. I did not want to go

back up river on the account that I feared a

mob.... I have read a good many of your sketches of

ranch life in the papers since I have been here,

and they interested me deeply. Yours sincerely.

&c.

P.S. Should you stop over at Bismarck this fall

make a call to the Prison. I should be glad to meet

you.]

XXIII

Oh, I am a Texas cowboy, light-hearted, brave, and free,

To roam the wide, wide prairie, 'tis always joy to me.

My trusty little pony is my companion true,

O'er creeks and hills and rivers he's sure to pull me through.

When threatening clouds do gather and herded lightnings flash,

And heavy rain drops splatter, and rolling thunders crash;

What keeps the herds from running, stampeding far and wide?

The cowboy's long, low whistle and singing by their side.

_Cowboy song_

By a curious coincidence the culmination of Roosevelt's dramatic

exposition of the meaning of government by law coincided in point of

time precisely with the passing of the Bad Lands out of a state of

primeval lawlessness into a condition resembling organized government.

Since the preceding summer, Packard had, in the columns of the

_Cowboy_, once more been agitating for the organization of Billings

County. The conditions, which in the past had militated against the

proposal, were no longer potent. The lawless element was still large,

but it was no longer in the majority. For a time a new and naïve

objection made itself widely heard. The stock-growers protested that

if the county were organized, they would be taxed! The Mandan

_Pioneer_ explained that, according to the laws of Dakota Territory,

the nearest organized county was authorized to tax all the cattle and

other stock in Billings County, and that "the only possible difference

that could result in organization would be to keep the taxes at home

and allow them to be expended for home improvements such as roads,

bridges, schoolhouses, and public buildings." The cattlemen were not

in a position to explain publicly what they probably meant, namely,

that a board of county commissioners and a tax assessor sitting in

Medora would have far less difficulty than a similar group sitting a

hundred and fifty miles east in Mandan in following the mysterious

movements of their cattle during the season when assessments were

made. An active agent of the county might conceivably note that when

Billings County, Dakota, was making its assessments, the herds could

generally be found in Fallon County, Montana, and that when Fallon

County was making its assessments, the cattle were all grazing in

Billings. But even in the Bad Lands it was no longer politic to

protest openly against what was palpably the public welfare, and the

petition for the organization of the county received the necessary

signatures, and was sent to the governor. "This is a step in the right

direction," patronizingly remarked the Mandan _Pioneer_. "Billings

County is rich enough and strong enough to run its own affairs."

Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris had been active in the work of

organization, and were eager to "run" Bill Sewall for County

commissioner. But that shrewd individual pleaded unfitness and lack of

time and refused to be cajoled into becoming a candidate.

There is some doubt concerning the exact date of the first election.

Roosevelt's diary would indicate that it was held on April 12th, but

the paragraph printed in the Minneapolis _Tribune_ of April 15th would

indicate that it was held on the 14th. Both statements are probably

wrong, and the election in all likelihood was held on the 13th.

Roosevelt, having testified against the three thieves, returned to

Medora late on the afternoon of election. There had been many threats

that the party of disorder would import section hands from the

neighboring railway stations to down the legions of the righteous. An

especial watcher had been set at the polling-places. It was none other

than Hell-Roaring Bill Jones. He was still on most cordial terms with

his old intimates, the ruffians who congregated at Bill Williams's

saloon, but he liked Roosevelt and the men who surrounded the young

Easterner, and had cast in his lot with them. The effectiveness, as a

guardian of the peace, of the man who had at the beginning of his

career in the Bad Lands been saloon "bouncer" for Bill Williams was

notable.

Roosevelt found a group of his friends at the polling-place.

"Has there been any disorder?" he asked.

"Disorder, hell!" said one of the men in the group. "Bill Jones just

stood there with one hand on his gun and the other pointin' over

toward the new jail whenever any man who didn't have the right to vote

come near the polls. There was only one of them tried to vote, and

Bill knocked him down. Lord!" he concluded meditatively, "the way

that man fell!"

"Well," struck in Bill Jones, "if he hadn't fell, I'd of walked round

behind him to see what was proppin' him up!"

The candidates for the various offices had been selected in a spirit

of compromise between the two elements in the town, the forces of

order securing every office except one. The county commissioners

elected were "Johnny" Goodall, a blacksmith named Dan Mackenzie, and

J. L. Truscott, who owned a large ranch south of the Big Ox Bow. Van

Driesche, the best of all valets, was elected treasurer, and Bill

Dantz superintendent of schools; but the forces of disorder could

afford to regard the result without apprehension, for they had been

allowed to elect the sheriff; and they had elected Joe Morrill.

Election night was lurid. Morrill, evidently desiring to make a good

impression without serious inconvenience to his friends, served notice

immediately after his election that there must be no "shooting up" of

the town, but "the boys" did not take Morrill very seriously. Fisher,

who had a room in Mrs. McGeeney's hotel next to Joe Ferris's store,

found the place too noisy for comfort, and adjourned to the office of

the _Bad Lands Cowboy_. The little shack was unoccupied, for Packard,

having recently married, had moved his residence into one of the

deserted cantonment buildings on the western side of the river.

Truscott had neglected to secure a room in the hotel and Fisher

invited him to join him in the _Cowboy_ office.

The day had been strenuous, and the two men were soon sound asleep.

Fisher was awakened by a sharp object striking him in the face. An

instant later he heard a round of shots, followed instantly by another

shower of broken glass. He discovered that one of the windows, which

faced the Tamblyn Saloon, was completely shattered. He shook Truscott.

"I guess," he said, "we'd better look for some place not quite so

convenient for a target."

They adjourned to Fisher's room in Mrs. McGeeney's hotel. After all,

noise was preferable to bullets.

"The boys" were full of apologies the next morning, declaring that

they had not realized that the place was occupied. Packard, it seemed,

had been publishing certain editorials shortly before dealing with the

criminal responsibility of drunkards, and they just thought they would

give the _Cowboy_ a "touching up."

Medora's new régime began with a call which Howard Eaton made upon

Merrifield.

"Now that we're organized, we'll have some fun with Deacon Cummins,"

said Eaton, with a chuckle.

Eaton had apprehensions that the "Deacon" would ask for improvements,

a road to his ranch, for instance, or possibly a bridge or two, so he

suggested to Merrifield that they draw up a statement calculated to

discourage any such aspirations. This was the statement as they

finally submitted it to their fellow citizens:

We the undersigned do hereby solemnly covenant and agree to

hang, burn, or drown any man that will ask for public

improvements made at the expense of the County.

Eaton and Merrifield signed it, together with a dozen others; then

they laid it before Mrs. Cummins's husband for his signature. "The

Deacon" took it with extreme seriousness, and signed his name to it;

and there was no call for improvements from the solemn couple at Tepee

Bottom.

The day after the election, the Little Missouri Stock Association held

its semi-annual meeting. Roosevelt presided, "preserving," as he wrote

to Lodge a day or so later, "the most rigid parliamentary decorum." He

was elected a representative of the Association at the meeting of the

Montana Stock growers' Association in Miles City, to be held a day or

two later, and, after a hurried trip to Elkhorn Ranch with Merrifield,

started west for Miles City, taking Sylvane with him.

Miles City was a feverish little cowtown under ordinary circumstances,

but in April of every year, when the cattlemen of Montana and western

Dakota gathered there for the annual meeting of the Montana

Stockgrowers' Association, it was jubilant and noisy beyond

description. For a week before the convention was called to order,

stockmen from near and far began to arrive, bringing in their train

thirsty and hilarious cowboys who looked upon the occasion mainly as

a golden opportunity for a spree. They galloped madly up and down the

wide, dusty streets at every hour of the day and night, knowing no

sober moment as long as the convention lasted.

Roosevelt and Sylvane arrived on April 18th, taking what quarters they

could get in the Macqueen House which was crowded to the doors and was

granting nobody more than half a bed. The ceremonies began early next

morning with a blast from the Fifth Infantry band from Fort Keogh, the

army post two miles to the west.

Promptly at 9:30 A.M. [runs the story in the Minneapolis

_Tribune_] a procession was formed in front of the Macqueen

House, with the Fifth Infantry band at its head, followed by

carriages containing the officers of the Association and

ladies; next a cavalcade of wild cowboys just brought in

from the adjacent ranges, followed by about 150 cowmen

marching four abreast. The procession was about two and

one-half blocks long from end to end, and the line of march

was through the principal streets to the skating rink, where

the public meetings of the Association are held.

As the procession was nearing the rink, the horses of the

foremost carriage, containing the president, vice-president,

and secretary, took fright and dashed into the band. Both

horses took the same side of the tongue and made things

unpleasant. At this stage of the game President Bryan and

others abandoned the carriage, and Secretary R. B. Harrison,

with his large minute book, made a leap for life, and the

subsequent proceedings interested him no more. The

procession then broke up with a wild charge of cowboys,

accompanied with such yells as would strike terror to the

heart of the tenderfooted.

The actual meeting of the Stockgrowers' Association was, contrary to

what might have been expected from its prelude, a thoroughly dignified

affair. Roosevelt was, as one of the other stockmen later declared,

"rather inclined to listen and take the advice of older men"; but it

was significant that he was, nevertheless, elected to the Executive

Committee as the successor of the Marquis de Mores as representative

for Dakota Territory; and was appointed to one or two other committees

of lesser importance.

"Roosevelt was of a restless, nervous, but aggressive disposition,"

said H. H. Hobson, of Great Falls, who was present at that meeting,

"and took a keen interest in the proceedings. He was a great admirer

of Granville Stuart, and was always on his side of every question."

The absorbing issues before the convention were the Texas fever and

the overstocking of the range. Feeling ran high, and "the debates," as

Hobson later remarked, "were more than warm. Roosevelt," he added,

"was at all times eager and ready to champion his side."

At one of the sessions there was a fierce debate between two prominent

cattlemen, which was renewed, after the meeting, at the Miles City

Club. Each man had his hot partisans, who began to send messengers out

for reinforcements. Most of the men were armed. It was clear that if

hostilities once broke out, they would develop instantly into a

miniature war.

Roosevelt saw that the situation was critical, and jumped to his feet.

"If you can't settle your own difficulties," he cried to the two men

who had started the quarrel, "why don't you fight it out? I'll

referee."

The suggestion was received with favor. Roosevelt formed a ring and

the two men expended their anger in a furious fist fight. Which man

won, history does not record. The important point is that Roosevelt,

by his resolute action, had prevented a fight with "six-shooters."

I have just returned from the Stockmen's Convention in Miles

City [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Elkhorn on April 22d],

which raw, thriving frontier town was for three days

thronged with hundreds of rough-looking, broad-hatted men,

numbering among them all the great cattle and horse raisers

of the Northwest. I took my position very well in the

convention, and indeed these Westerners have now pretty well

accepted me as one of themselves, and as a representative

stockman. I am on the Executive Committee of the

Association, am President of the Dakota branch, etc.--all of

which directly helps me in my business relations here.

There is something almost touching in Roosevelt's efforts to persuade

his sisters that his cattle venture was not the piece of wild

recklessness which they evidently considered it.

This winter has certainly been a marvelously good one for

cattle [he wrote in another letter]. My loss has been so

trifling as hardly to be worth taking into account;

although there may be a number who have strayed off. I

think my own expenses out here this summer will be very

light indeed, and then we will be able to start all square

with the beginning of the New Year.

In another letter he wrote, "Unless we have a big accident, I shall

get through this all right, if only I can get started square with no

debt!" And a little later he sent "Bamie" a clipping from a review of

his "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," which referred to him as "a man of

large and various powers in public matters _as well as shrewd and

enterprising in the conduct of business_." "I send the enclosed slip,"

he wrote, "on account of the awful irony of the lines I have

underscored; send it to Douglas when you write him."

"Douglas" was Douglas Robinson, the husband of Roosevelt's sister

Corinne, and distinctly the business man of the family.

Bill Sewall was apprehensive. "There was always a cloud over me," he

said long afterward, "because I never could see where he was going to

get his money. I tried to make him see it. He was going to buy land. I

urged him not to. I felt sure that what he was putting into those

cattle he was going to lose."

Roosevelt admitted that spring that Sewall's conviction, that the cows

would not be able in the long run to endure the hard winters, was not

without reason. "Bill," he said, after he had made a careful study of

the herd, "you're right about those cows. They're not looking well,

and I think some of them will die."

But on the whole the herd was in good condition. He had every right to

believe that with average luck his investment would emphatically

justify itself.

While I do not see any great fortune ahead [he wrote to his

sister Corinne], yet, if things go on as they are now going,

and have gone for the past three years, I think I will each

year net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital,

and yet be adding to my herd all the time. I think I have

more than my original capital on the ground, and this year I

ought to be able to sell between two and three hundred head

of steer and dry stock.

Sewall as usual, was less sanguine.

As for hard times [he wrote his brother that April] they are

howling that here, and lots are leaving the country. Lots

more would if they could. We are all right. Roosevelt is the

same good fellow he always has been and though I don't think

he expects to make much, his upper lip is stiff and he is

all right.

Meanwhile, he was hammering ahead on his Life of Benton. He was a slow

and rather laborious writer, but his persistence evidently atoned for

his lack of speed in composition, for whereas, on April 29th, he wrote

his sister that he had written only one chapter and intended to devote

"the next three weeks to getting this work fairly under way," by the

7th of June he announced that the book was "nearly finished."

"Some days," Sewall related afterward, "he would write all day long;

some days only a part of the day, just as he felt. He said sometimes

he would get so he could not write. Sometimes he could not tell when

a thing sounded right. Then he would take his gun and saunter off,

sometimes alone, sometimes with me or Dow, if he was around."

Occasionally he would "try out" a passage on Sewall. "Bill," he

exclaimed one morning, "I am going to commit the unpardonable sin and

make you sit down and listen to something I've written."

Bill was willing. The passage was from the first chapter of the

biography of the Tennessee statesman and dealt with the attitude of

the frontier toward law and order and the rights of "the other

fellow." Bill gave his approval and the passage stood.

Day after day Roosevelt pushed forward into his subject, writing with

zest, tempered by cool judgment. He did not permit an occasional trip

to Medora to interrupt his work. He had a room over Joe Ferris's

store, and after Joe and his wife had gone to bed, he would throw open

the doors of the kitchen and the dining-room and walk to and fro

hammering out his sentences.

"Every once in a while," said Joe later, "everything would be quiet,

then after fifteen minutes or so he would walk again as though he was

walkin' for wages."

Mrs. Ferris, who had a maternal regard for his welfare, was always

careful to see that a pitcher of milk was in his room before the

night's labors commenced; for Roosevelt had a way of working into the

small hours. "The eight-hour law," he remarked to Lodge, "does not

apply to cowboys"; nor, he might have added, to writers endeavoring

to raise the wherewithal to pay for a hunting trip to the Coeur

d'Alênes in the autumn.

I wonder if your friendship will stand a very serious strain

[he wrote Lodge, early in June]. I have pretty nearly

finished Benton, mainly evolving him from my inner

consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have

nothing whatever to go by; and, being by nature both a

timid, and, on occasions, by choice a truthful, man, I would

prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how

slender, on which to build the airy and arabesque

superstructure of my fancy--especially as I am writing a

history. Now I hesitate to give him a wholly fictitious date

of death and to invent all of the work of his later years.

Would it be too infernal a nuisance for you to hire some of

your minions on the _Advertiser_ (of course, at my expense)

to look up, in a biographical dictionary or elsewhere, his

life after he left the Senate in 1850? He was elected once

to Congress; who beat him when he ran the second time; what

was the issue; who beat him, and why, when he ran for

Governor of Missouri; and the date of his death? I hate to

trouble you; don't do it if it is any bother; but the Bad

Lands have much fewer books than Boston has.

The Executive Committee of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association, of

which Roosevelt was a member, had, in order to unify the work of the

rounding-up of the cattle throughout Montana and western Dakota,

issued directions at its meeting in April for the delimitation of the

various round-up districts and the opening of the round-ups. The

round-up for "District No. 6," which included the valley of the Little

Missouri,

commences [so ran the order] at Medora, May 25, 1886; works

down the Little Missouri to the mouth of Big Beaver Creek;

thence up the Big Beaver to its head; thence across to the

Little Beaver at the crossing of the old government road

(Keogh trail); thence down Little Beaver to its mouth;

thence across to Northern Hash-knife Camp on Little

Missouri, and down to Medora. John Goodall, foreman.

Roosevelt apparently could not resist the temptation which the

round-up offered, especially as its course would take him back in the

direction of Elkhorn, and he deserted his study and entered once more

into what was to him the most fascinating activity of the cowboy's

life.

There were half a dozen wagons along [he wrote

subsequently]. The saddle bands numbered about a hundred

each; and the morning we started, sixty men in the saddle

splashed across the shallow ford of the river that divided

the plain where we had camped from the valley of the long

winding creek up which we were first to work.

By the 7th of June he was back at Elkhorn Ranch again on a flying

visit.

I will get a chance to send this note to-morrow [he wrote

his sister "Bamie"] by an old teamster who is going to town.

I have been on the round-up for a fortnight, and really

enjoy the work greatly; in fact I am having a most pleasant

summer, though I miss all of you very, very much. We

breakfast at three and work from sixteen to eighteen hours a

day counting night-guard; so I get pretty sleepy; but I feel

as strong as a bear. I took along Tolstoy's "La Guerre et La

Paix" which Madame de Mores had lent me; but I have had

little chance to read it as yet. I am very fond of Tolstoy.

In "The Wilderness Hunter" Roosevelt, two or three years later, told

of that "very pleasant summer" of 1886.

I was much at the ranch, where I had a good deal of writing

to do; but every week or two I left, to ride among the line

camps, or spend a few days on any round-up which happened to

be in the neighborhood.

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were themselves

full of pleasure. At dawn we were in the saddle, the morning

air cool in our faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across

the grassy reaches of prairie land, or climbing in single

file among the rugged buttes. All forenoon we spent riding

the long circle with the cowpunchers of the round-up; in the

afternoon we worked the herd, cutting the cattle, with much

breakneck galloping and dextrous halting and wheeling. Then

came the excitement and hard labor of roping, throwing, and

branding the wild and vigorous range calves; in a corral, if

one was handy, otherwise in a ring of horsemen. Soon after

nightfall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line

camp; under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon.

After ten days or so of such work, in which every man had to

do his full share,--for laggards and idlers, no matter who,

get no mercy in the real and healthy democracy of the

round-up,--I would go back to the ranch to turn to my books

with added zest for a fortnight. Yet even during these weeks

at the ranch there was some outdoor work; for I was breaking

two or three colts. I took my time, breaking them gradually

and gently, not, after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry,

by sheer main strength and rough riding, with the attendant

danger to the limbs of the man and very probable ruin to

the manners of the horse. We rose early; each morning I

stood on the low-roofed veranda, looking out under the line

of murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the shallow

river, to see the sun flame above the line of bluffs

opposite.

Almost every day he was off among the buttes or across the prairie

with a rifle in his hand, shooting now a whitetail buck within a few

hundred yards of the ranch-house; now a blacktail, in the hills

behind. Occasionally, rising before dawn, he would hunt in the rolling

prairie country ten or fifteen miles away, coming home at dusk with a

prong-buck across his saddle-bow. Now and then he would take the

ranch-wagon and one of the men, driving to some good hunting ground,

and spending a night or two, returning usually with two or three

antelope; and not infrequently he would ride away by himself on

horseback for a couple of days, lying at night, as he wrote, "under

the shining and brilliant multitude of stars," and rising again in the

chill dawn to crawl upon some wary goat of the high hills.

After writing his sister on the 7th of June, he evidently stayed at

the ranch for ten days to work on his Life of Benton. Then he was away

with the round-up again. His diary succinctly records his progress:

June 18. Rode to Medora on Sorrel Joe.

June 19. Out on round-up with Maltese Cross wagon.

June 20. Worked down to South Heart.

June 21. Worked up Rocky Ridge.

June 22. Worked to Davis Creek.

[Illustration: Catholic Chapel. Hotel Rough Riders. The "depot". The

company store of the Marquis. Bill Williams's saloon. Joe Ferris's

store. Medora in 1919.]

Early next morning Roosevelt was in Medora.

The round-up is swinging over from the East to the West

Divide [he wrote to Lodge]. I rode in to get my mail and

must leave at once. We are working pretty hard. Yesterday I

was in the saddle at 2 A.M., and except for two very hearty

meals, after each of which I took a fresh horse, did not

stop working till 8.15 P.M.; and was up at half-past three

this morning.

They worked next day down to Andrews Creek.

While the round-up was camped at Andrews Creek an incident occurred

which revealed Roosevelt's influence over the cowpunchers, not alone

of his own "outfit." Andrews Creek was not more than a mile from

Medora, and after the day's work was done, the cowboys naturally

adjourned with much enthusiasm to that oasis for the thirsty. As the

evening wore on, the men, as "Dutch Wannigan" remarked long afterward,

"were getting kinda noisy." Roosevelt, who had also ridden to town,

possibly to keep an eye on "the boys," heard the commotion, and,

contrary to his usual habit, which was to keep out of such centers of

trouble, entered the saloon where the revelry was in progress.

"I don't know if he took a drink or not," said "Dutch Wannigan"

afterward. "I never saw him take one. But he came in and he paid for

the drinks for the crowd. 'One more drink, boys,' he says. Then, as

soon as they had their drinks, he says, 'Come on,' and away they went.

He just took the lead and they followed him home. By gollies, I never

seen anything like it!"

The round-up now worked southward. Roosevelt's diary gives its course

from day to day.

June 24. To Gardiner Creek.

June 25. To Bullion's Creek.

June 26. Down Bullion's Creek.

June 27. To Chimney Butte.

June 28. Rode in to Medora.

From Medora he wrote his sister Corinne:

I have been off on the round-up for five weeks, taking a

holiday of a few days when we had a cold snap, during which

time I killed two elk and six antelopes, all the meat being

smoke-dried and now hanging round the trees, till the ranch

looks like an Indian encampment. Since June 24th, I have

never once had breakfast as late as 4 o'clock. I have been

in the saddle all the day and work like a beaver and am as

happy and rugged as possible.

To "Bamie" he wrote:

If I did not miss all at home so much, and also my beautiful

home, I would say that this free, open-air life, without any

worry, was perfection.

The round-up ended in Medora, where it had begun.

You would hardly know my sunburned and wind-roughened face

[Roosevelt wrote "Bamie"]. But I have really enjoyed it and

am as tough as a hickory nut.

He evidently did not think he needed any vacation after the strenuous

labors of the preceding weeks, for his diary records no interlude.

June 29. Rode back to Elkhorn Ranch with Merrifield.

June 30. Benton.

July 1. Benton; rode out with Bill Rowe to get and brand

calves.

July 2. Benton; rode out with Bill Rowe after calves; got

them into corral and branded them. Rode little black horse.

July 3. Rode up to Medora on Manitou.

Roosevelt had been invited to be the orator at Dickinson's first

celebration of Independence Day, and, on the morning of the Fourth,

accompanied by two New York friends, Lispenard Stewart and Dr. Taylor,

and half the cowboys of Billings County, "jumped" an east-bound

freight for the scene of the festivities.

Dickinson was in holiday mood. The West Missouri slope had never

celebrated the Fourth with fitting ceremonies before and Dickinson,

which, with its seven hundred inhabitants, considered itself somewhat

of a metropolis, made up its mind to "spread itself." From near and

far eager crowds streamed into the little town, on foot and on

horseback. The _Press_ reported the celebration with zest:

A BIG DAY

The First Fourth of July Celebration

in Dickinson a Grand Success

An Epoch in the History of Our Town

that Will Long be Remembered

Addresses by Hon. Theodore Roosevelt

and Hon. John A. Rea

The first Fourth of July celebration, attempted in

Dickinson, took place last Monday. It exceeded the

anticipations of all and proved to be a grand success--a day

that will long be remembered. The day dawned bright and

cool. Early in the morning people began to arrive and by ten

o'clock the largest crowd ever assembled in Stark County

lined the principal streets. The train from the west brought

a number of Medora people, amongst them Hon. Theodore

Roosevelt, the orator of the day.

The first exercise was the parade, consisting of three

divisions, under charge of Chief Marshal Auld, assisted by

C. S. Langdon and Western Starr. About ten o'clock

everything was in readiness and the parade began to move,

headed by the Dickinson Silver Cornet Band. Following the

band were the lady equestriennes, a large number of ladies

being in line. They were followed by the members of Fort

Sumter Post G.A.R. and Onward Lodge R.R.B. Next came a

beautifully decorated wagon drawn by four white horses,

containing little girls dressed in white, representing the

States of the Union. This was one of the most attractive

features of the parade, and was followed by a display of

reaping and other farm machinery. The "Invincibles" were

next in line and created considerable mirth by their

fantastic and grotesque appearance. Citizens in carriages

and on horseback brought up the rear. After parading through

the principal streets the procession marched to the public

square and were dismissed.

"The trouble with the parade," remarked Bill Dantz long after, "was

that every one in town was so enthusiastic they insisted on joining

the procession, and there was no one to watch except two men who were

too drunk to notice anything"; which was Dantz's way of saying that

the "first exercise" was eminently successful.

Western Starr [continues the _Press_] was introduced by Dr.

V. H. Stickney, master of ceremonies, and read the

Declaration of Independence in a clear, forcible tone, after

which the entire audience joined in singing that familiar

and patriotic song, "America." The people then partook of

the free dinner prepared for the occasion. After dinner the

people were called to order and Rev. E. C. Dayton offered up

a prayer, followed by music by the band.

The speeches followed. The first speaker was a typical politician of

the old school.

This is a big country [he said]. At a dinner party of

Americans in Paris during the Civil War this toast was

offered by a New Englander: "_Here's to the United States,

bounded on the north by British America, on the south by the

Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west

by the Pacific Ocean._"

An Ohio man followed with a larger notion of our greatness:

"_Here's to the United States, bounded on the north by the

North Pole, on the south by the South Pole, on the east by

the rising sun, and on the west by the setting sun._"

It took the Dakota man, however, to rise to the greatness of

the subject: "_I give you the United States, bounded on the

north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession

of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the

west by the Day of Judgment._"

The politician proceeded with the eloquence of the professional

"orator," and the audience applauded him vociferously. Then Roosevelt

rose and spoke. He looked very slim and young and embarrassed.

I am peculiarly glad [he said] to have an opportunity of

addressing you, my fellow citizens of Dakota, on the Fourth

of July, because it always seems to me that those who dwell

in a new territory, and whose actions, therefore, are

peculiarly fruitful, for good and for bad alike, in shaping

the future, have in consequence peculiar responsibilities.

You have already been told, very truthfully and effectively,

of the great gifts and blessings you enjoy; and we all of us

feel, most rightly and properly, that we belong to the

greatest nation that has ever existed on this earth--a

feeling I like to see, for I wish every American always to

keep the most intense pride in his country, and people. But

as you already know your rights and privileges so well, I am

going to ask you to excuse me if I say a few words to you

about your duties. Much has been given to us, and so, much

will be expected of us; and we must take heed to use aright

the gifts entrusted to our care.

The Declaration of Independence derived its peculiar

importance, not on account of what America was, but because

of what she was to become; she shared with other nations the

present, and she yielded to them the past, but it was felt

in return that to her, and to her especially, belonged the

future. It is the same with us here. We, grangers and

cowboys alike, have opened a new land; and we are the

pioneers, and as we shape the course of the stream near its

head, our efforts have infinitely more effect, in bending it

in any given direction, than they would have if they were

made farther along. In other words, the first comers in a

land can, by their individual efforts, do far more to

channel out the course in which its history is to run than

can those who come after them; and their labors, whether

exercised on the side of evil or on the side of good, are

far more effective than if they had remained in old settled

communities.

So it is peculiarly incumbent on us here to-day so to act

throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage,

for which we will receive their blessing and not their

curse.

Stickney, sitting on the platform as presiding officer, was struck by

the contrast which Roosevelt offered to the man who had preceded him.

The first speaker had been "eloquent" in the accepted meaning of the

word; Roosevelt was not consciously eloquent at all. He talked as he

always talked, simply, directly, earnestly, emphatically.

We have rights [he went on], but we have correlative duties;

none can escape them. We only have the right to live on as

free men, governing our own lives as we will, so long as we

show ourselves worthy of the privileges we enjoy. We must

remember that the Republic can only be kept pure by the

individual purity of its members; and that if it become once

thoroughly corrupted, it will surely cease to exist. In our

body politic, each man is himself a constituent portion of

the sovereign, and if the sovereign is to continue in power,

he must continue to do right. When you here exercise your

privileges at the ballot box, you are not only exercising a

right, but you are also fulfilling a duty; and a heavy

responsibility rests on you to fulfill your duty well. If

you fail to work in public life, as well as in private, for

honesty and uprightness and virtue, if you condone vice

because the vicious man is smart, or if you in any other way

cast your weight into the scales in favor of evil, you are

just so far corrupting and making less valuable the

birthright of your children. The duties of American

citizenship are very solemn as well as very precious; and

each one of us here to-day owes it to himself, to his

children, and to all his fellow Americans, to show that he

is capable of performing them in the right spirit.

It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it

is the way in which we use it.

I do not undervalue for a moment our material prosperity;

like all Americans, I like big things; big prairies, big

forests and mountains, big wheat-fields, railroads,--and

herds of cattle, too,--big factories, steamboats, and

everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no

people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity

corrupted their virtue. It is of more importance that we

should show ourselves honest, brave, truthful, and

intelligent, than that we should own all the railways and

grain elevators in the world. We have fallen heirs to the

most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one

must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is

worthy of its good fortune. Here we are not ruled over by

others, as in the case of Europe; we rule ourselves. All

American citizens, whether born here or elsewhere, whether

of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we

welcome every honest immigrant no matter from what country

he comes, provided only that he leaves off his former

nationality, and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither

Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of

fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.

When we thus rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of

sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our

rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to

preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper

use of them. In a new portion of the country, especially

here in the Far West, it is peculiarly important to do so;

and on this day of all others we ought soberly to realize

the weight of the responsibility that rests upon us. I am,

myself, at heart as much a Westerner as an Easterner; I am

proud, indeed, to be considered one of yourselves, and I

address you in this rather solemn strain to-day, only

because of my pride in you, and because your welfare, moral

as well as material, is so near my heart.

It was a hilarious party of cowpunchers who took the afternoon train

back to Medora. For a part of the brief journey Packard sat with

Roosevelt discussing his speech.

"It was during this talk," said Packard afterward, "that I first

realized the potential bigness of the man. One could not help

believing he was in deadly earnest in his consecration to the highest

ideals of citizenship. He had already made his mark in the New York

Legislature. He was known as a fighter who dared to come out in the

open and depend upon the backing of public opinion. He was reputed to

be wealthy enough to devote his life to any work he chose, and I

learned, on the return journey to the Bad Lands that day, that he

believed he could do better work in a public and political way than in

any other. My conclusion was immediate, and I said, 'Then you will

become President of the United States.'

"One would suppose that I could remember the actual words he used in

reply, but I cannot. I remember distinctly that he was not in the

least surprised at my statement. He gave me the impression of having

thoroughly considered the matter and to have arrived at the same

conclusion that I had arrived at. I remember only this of what he

said, 'If your prophecy comes true, I will do my part to make a good

one.'"

XXIV

The road is wide and the stars are out, and the breath of night is sweet,

And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet,

But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,

And leave the splendor of out-of-doors for a human dwelling-place.

Joyce KILMER

A few days after the celebration in Dickinson. Roosevelt went East.

The political sirens were calling. He was restless for something to do

that would bring into service the giant's strength of which he was

becoming increasingly conscious, and, incidentally, would give him an

opportunity to win distinction. He had been half inclined to accept an

offer from Mayor Grace of New York to head the Board of Health, but

Lodge, as Roosevelt wrote to his sister Corinne, thought it "_infra

dig_," and he reluctantly rejected it. There were rumors in the air

that he might have the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York if

he wanted it. He went East, possibly for the purpose of investigating

them, returning to Elkhorn early in August.

Roosevelt was unquestionably restless. He loved the wild country, but

he had tasted all the various joys and hardships it had to offer, and,

although he said again and again that if he had no ties of affection

and of business to bind him to the East, he would make Dakota his

permanent residence, down in his heart he was hungering for a wider

field of action. The frontier had been a challenge to his manhood;

now that he had stood every test it had presented to him, its glamour

faded and he looked about for a sharper challenge and more exacting

labors.

For a few weeks that August he half hoped that he might find them on

the field of battle. Several American citizens, among them a man named

Cutting, had been arrested in Mexico, apparently illegally, and

Bayard, who was President Cleveland's Secretary of State, had been

forced more than once to make vigorous protests. Relations became

strained. The anti-Mexican feeling on the border spread over the whole

of Texas, regiments were organized, and the whole unsettled region

between the Missouri and the Rockies, which was inclined to look upon

Mexico as the natural next morsel in the fulfillment of the nation's

"manifest destiny," began to dream of war.

Roosevelt, seeing how matters were tending, set about to organize a

troop of cavalry in the Bad Lands. He notified the Secretary of War

that it stood at the service of the Government.

I have written to Secretary Endicott [Roosevelt wrote to

Lodge on August 10th], offering to try to raise some

companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of

trouble with Mexico. Won't you telegraph me at once if war

becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand

that I might not hear of things for a week. I have not the

least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of

doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow

continually smaller, I intend to grasp at every opportunity

that turns up. The cowboys were all eager for war, not

caring much with whom. They were fond of adventure and to

tell the truth [as Roosevelt wrote later], they were by no

means averse to the prospect of plunder. News from the

outside world came to us very irregularly, and often in

distorted form, so that we began to think we might get

involved in a conflict not only with Mexico, but with

England also. One evening at my ranch the men began talking

over English soldiers, so I got down "Napier" and read them

several extracts from his descriptions of the fighting in

the Spanish peninsula, also recounting as well as I could

the great deeds of the British cavalry from Waterloo to

Balaklava, and finishing up by describing from memory the

fine appearance, the magnificent equipment, and the superb

horses of the Household Cavalry and of a regiment of hussars

I had once seen.

All of this produced much the same effect on my listeners

that the sight of Marmion's cavalcade produced in the minds

of the Scotch moss-troopers on the eve of Flodden; and at

the end, one of them, who had been looking into the fire and

rubbing his hands together, said, with regretful emphasis,

"Oh, how I _would_ like to kill one of them!"

Roosevelt went to Bismarck and found the Territorial Governor friendly

to his project.

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, the famous statesman,

ranchman, and hunter [runs the story in the Bismarck

_Tribune_], has been making inquiries since the announcement

of the Mexican difficulties as to the available volunteer

troops in the Northwest, and in the event of action being

required, it is confidently believed Mr. Roosevelt would

tender to the Government the services of an entire regiment

of cowboys, under his command. At a recent visit here he was

assured of two companies of Dakota cowboys to accompany

him. Mr. Roosevelt has been the captain of a company of

militia in New York, and no better man could be found to

lead the daring cowboys to a seat of war and no commander

would have more effective troops.

The war cloud blew over. Roosevelt evidently received a letter from

Lodge explaining that the Mexican incident was of a trivial nature,

for, on the 20th of August, he wrote him rather apologetically:

I wrote as regards Mexico _qua_ cowboy, not _qua_ statesman;

I know little of the question, but conclude Bayard is wrong,

for otherwise it would be phenomenal; he ought to be

idolized by the mugwumps. If a war had come off, I would

surely have had behind me as utterly reckless a set of

desperadoes as ever sat in the saddle.

It is no use saying that I would like a chance at something

I thought I could really do; at present I see nothing

whatever ahead. However, there is the hunting in the fall,

at any rate.

The season which began with Finnegan and Company was richer in varied

experiences than it was in financial returns. Roosevelt recognized

that there were already too many cattlemen in the business to make

large profits possible.

In certain sections of the West [he told a reporter of the

Mandan _Pioneer_ in July] the losses this year are enormous,

owing to the drought and overstocking. Each steer needs from

fifteen to twenty-five acres, but they are crowded on very

much thicker, and the cattlemen this season have paid the

penalty. Between the drought, the grasshoppers, and the late

frosts, ice forming as late as June 10th, there is not a

green thing in all the region I have been over. A stranger

would think a donkey could not live there. The drought has

been very bad throughout the region, and there is not a

garden in all of it.

Sewall was aware of that fact to his sorrow, for the garden he himself

had planted and tended with infinite care had died between dawn and

dusk on that memorable Fourth of July on which Roosevelt addressed the

citizens of Dickinson.

They say dry years are best for cattle [he wrote his

brother]. If so, this must be a nice one and they do seem to

be doing well so far, but if we have much snow next winter

it looks to me as if they would have short picking.

The prospect was not engaging. But, though Roosevelt was not getting

much financial return on his rather generous investment, he was

getting other things, for him at this time of far greater value. He

who had been weak in body and subject to racking illnesses had in

these three years developed a constitution as tough and robust as an

Indian's. He had achieved something beside this. Living, talking,

working, facing danger, and suffering hardships with the Sewalls and

the Dows, the Ferrises and the Langs, and Merrifield and Packard and

Bill Dantz and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones, and countless other stalwart

citizens of the Bad Lands, he had come very close to the heart of the

"plain American." He loved the companions of his joys and labors, and

they in turn regarded him with an admiration and devotion which was

all the deeper because of the amazing fact that he had come from the

ranks of the "dudes."

They admired him for his courage and his feats of endurance, but,

being tender-hearted themselves, they loved him for his tenderness,

which had a way that they approved, of expressing itself, not in

words, but in deeds. Bill Sewall had a little girl of three, "a

forlorn little mite," as Roosevelt described her to "Bamie," and it

was Roosevelt who sent the word East which transported the child, that

had neither playmates nor toys, into a heaven of delight with picture

blocks and letter blocks, a little horse and a rag doll.

His warm human sympathy found expression in a dramatic manner a day or

two before his departure late that August for the Coeur d'Alênes. He

was rounding up some cattle with his men near Sentinel Butte, twenty

miles west of Medora, when word came that a cowpuncher named George

Frazier had been struck by lightning and killed, and that his body had

been taken to Medora. Frazier belonged to the "outfit" of the Marquis

de Mores, but he had worked for Roosevelt two years previous, digging

post-holes with George Myers in June, 1884. Roosevelt knew that the

man had no relatives in that part of the world, to see that a fitting

disposition of the body was made, and instantly expressed his

determination to take charge of the arrangements for the funeral.

"We will flag the next train and go to Medora," he said.

The next train, they knew, was "No. 2," the finest train running over

the road. It did not, on the surface, look probable that it would stop

at a desolate spot in the prairie to permit a handful of cowboys to

get on. "They won't stop here for nuthin'," one of the men insisted.

"By Godfrey, they'll have to stop!" Roosevelt retorted, and sent a man

down to the track to flag the train.

The engineer saw the warning signal and slowed down, but did not stop.

The cowboys dashed alongside the engine, firing shots in the air. The

engineer, believing that he was being held up by bandits and that the

next shot might be aimed at himself, brought the train to a

standstill. There was a wild scramble among the passengers; even the

train crew expected the worst. Valuables were hurriedly secreted. "I

don't believe," remarked George Myers afterward, "some of the

passengers ever did find all the things that was hid away."

Leaving their horses in charge of one of the cowboys, Roosevelt,

followed by Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Myers, and Johnny Goodall,

boarded the train. The conductor was resigned by this time to a

hold-up; but when he discovered the actual nature of their mission, he

flew into a rage and threatened to put them all off.

"You be good," cried Roosevelt, "or you'll be the one to get off!" His

vigorous advice was supplemented by impressive injunctions from other

members of the party. When they finally did get off, it was at Medora.

A salvo of profanity from the train crew followed them. "You'll hear

from this!" thundered the conductor. They did not hear from it. It

would not have greatly disturbed Roosevelt if they had. He opened a

subscription to cover the expenses of the funeral. Everybody "chipped

in," and the unfortunate received the burial that a God-fearing

cowpuncher deserved.

Roosevelt went with Merrifield west to the Coeur d'Alênes, in northern

Idaho, almost immediately after Frazier's funeral. He was to meet a

hunter named John Willis, who was to take him and Merrifield out after

white goat. He had never met Willis, but his correspondence with him

had suggested possibilities of interest beside the chase. Roosevelt

had written Willis in July that he had heard of his success in pursuit

of the game of the high peaks. "If I come out," he concluded, "do you

think it will be possible for me to get a goat?"

The answer he received was written on the back of his own letter and

was quite to the point. "If you can't shoot any better than you can

write, I don't think it will be."

Roosevelt's reply came by wire. "Consider yourself engaged."

It would have been strange if, after this epistolary exchange, the two

men should not have been rather curious about each other's

personalities. Roosevelt, descending from the train at a way-station

in the mountains, found a huge, broad-shouldered man his own age,

waiting for him, The man was not over-cordial. He did not, he later

admitted, regard Roosevelt's corduroy knee-pants with favor.

Roosevelt, knowing how to catch a hunter, showed Willis his guns.

"Will you go on a trip with me?" he asked.

"I am going to start out day after to-morrow for a three or four

weeks' hunt," Willis answered. "If you want to go along as my guest,

you are welcome to. But I want to tell you before we go, I won't take

any booze."

"Why do you say that?" asked Roosevelt, thoroughly interested in this

strange creature.

"Why, I've an idea you are some brewer's son who's made a lot of

money. You look as if you'd been raised on beer."

Roosevelt roared with delight. "I want to make a contract with you,"

he said. "I will give you twenty-five dollars for everything that you

show me in the way of game."

"I don't want it," said Willis gruffly.

"Then I will buy the grub."

"All the grub I'll take along won't amount to more than three or four

dollars--a hundred pounds of flour, twenty-five pounds of bacon, dried

apples, and black tea. That's all you'll get."

"By George," cried Roosevelt, "that's fine!"

"You can't stand a trip like this," Willis remarked with deadly

frankness.

"You take me on the trip and I'll show you. I can train myself to walk

as far as you can."

Willis doubted it and said so.

They camped far up in the mountains, hunting day after day through the

deep woods just below the timber-line. Roosevelt and Merrifield were

accustomed to life in the saddle, and although they had varied it with

an occasional long walk after deer or sheep, they were quite unable to

cope with Willis when it came to mountaineering. The climbing was

hard, the footing was treacherous, and the sharp rocks tore their

moccasins into ribbons. There was endless underbrush, thickets of

prickly balsam or laurel--but there were no goats.

At last, one mid-afternoon, as he was supporting himself against a

tree, halfway across a long landslide, Roosevelt suddenly discovered

one of the beasts he was after, a short distance away, making his way

down a hill, looking for all the world like a handsome tame billy. He

was in a bad position for a shot, and as he twisted himself about he

dislodged some pebbles. The goat, instantly alert, fled. Roosevelt

fired, but the shot went low, only breaking a fore-leg.

The three men raced and scrambled after the fleeing animal. It leaped

along the hillside for nearly a mile, then turned straight up the

mountain. They followed the bloody trail where it went up the sharpest

and steepest places, skirting the cliffs and precipices.

Roosevelt, intent on the quarry, was not what Bill Sewall would have

called "over-cautious" in the pursuit.

He was running along a shelving ledge when a piece of loose slate

with which the ledge was covered slipped under his foot. He clutched

at the rock wall, he tried to fling himself back, but he could not

recover himself.

He went head first over the precipice.

Roosevelt's luck was with him that day. He fell forty or fifty feet

into a tall pine, bounced through it, and landed finally, not

uncomfortably, in a thick balsam, somewhat shaken and scratched, but

with no bones broken and with his rifle still clutched in his hand.

From above came the hoarse voice of John Willis. "Are you hurt?" he

asked.

"No," answered Roosevelt, a trifle breathless.

"Then come on!"

Roosevelt "came on," scrambling back up the steep height he had so

swiftly descended, and raced after the guide. He came upon the goat at

last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot

too high, cutting the skin above the spine. The goat plunged downhill

and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal until

darkness covered the trail.

"Now," said Willis, "I expect you are getting tired."

"By George," said Roosevelt, "how far have we gone?"

"About fifteen or twenty miles up and down the mountains."

"If we get that goat to-morrow, I will give you a hundred dollars."

"I don't want a hundred dollars. But we'll get the goat."

Roosevelt brought him down the next day at noon.

Roosevelt spent two weeks with Willis in the mountains. It was a rich

experience for the Easterner, but for the tall Missourian it proved to

be even more. Willis was a child of the frontier, who had knocked

about between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border ever since his

boyhood, doing a hundred different things upon which the law and

civilized men were supposed to look with disapproval.[22]

[Footnote 22: Willis was a great teller of tales. See

_Hunting the Grizzly_, by Theodore Roosevelt (The

Sagamore Series, G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 216 ff.), for

the most lurid of his yarns.]

To this odd child of nature, bred in the wilderness, Roosevelt opened

the door to a world which John Willis did not know existed.

"He was a revelation to me," said Willis long afterward. "He was so

well posted on everything. He was the first man that I had ever met

that really knew anything. I had just been with a lot of roughnecks,

cowpunchers, horse-thieves, and that sort. Roosevelt would explain

things to me. He told me a lot of things."

Among other things, Roosevelt told Willis some of his experiences in

the New York Assembly. Huge sums had been offered him to divert him

from this course or that which certain interests regarded as dangerous

to their freedom of action. To Willis it was amazing that Roosevelt

should not have accepted what was offered to him, and he began to be

aware of certain standards of virtue and honor.

To Roosevelt the trip was a splendid adventure; to Willis it proved a

turning-point in his life.[23]

[Footnote 23: When Roosevelt came to Helena in 1911,

John Willis was one of the crowd that greeted him.

Willis clapped Roosevelt on the back familiarly. "I made

a man out of you," he cried. Quick as a flash, came

Roosevelt's retort: "Yes. John made a man out of me, but

I made a Christian out of John."]

Roosevelt returned to Elkhorn the middle of September, to find that

Sewall and Dow had come to a momentous decision. Dow had, during his

absence, taken a train-load of cattle to Chicago, and had found that

the best price he was able to secure for the hundreds of cattle he had

taken to the market there was less by ten dollars a head than the sum

it had cost to raise and transport them. Sewall and Dow had "figured

things over," and had come to the conclusion that the sooner they

terminated their contract with Roosevelt the less money he would lose.

They recognized that they themselves were safe enough, for by the

"one-sided trade," as Sewall called it, which Roosevelt had made with

them, they were to share in whatever profits there were, and in case

there were no profits were to receive wages. But neither of them

enjoyed the part he was playing in what seemed to both of them a piece

of hopeless business.

[Illustration: Ferris and Merrifield on the ruins of the first shack

at Elkhorn. It was this shack which Maunders claimed.]

[Illustration: Corrals at Elkhorn. Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt.]

Roosevelt himself had been wondering whether it was wise to allow the

two backwoodsmen to continue in an enterprise in which the future was

so clouded and full of the possibilities of disaster. He himself

might win through, and he might not. The thing was a gamble, in any

event. He could afford to take the risk. Sewall and Dow could not.