He had written "Bamie," earlier in the summer, that he was "curious to

see how the fall sales would come out." Dow's report completely

satisfied his curiosity.

He called the two men into his room. He told them that he too had been

"figuring up things." He would stand by his agreement, he said, if,

facing an uncertain outcome, they wished to remain. But, if they were

willing, he thought they had "better quit the business and go back."

Sewall and Dow did not hesitate. They said they would go back.

"I never wanted to fool away anybody else's money," Sewall added.

"Never had any of my own to fool away."

"How soon can you go?" asked Roosevelt.

Sewall turned and went into the kitchen "to ask the womenfolks." It

happened that three or four weeks previous the population of Elkhorn

had been increased by two. Baby sons had arrived in the same week in

the families of both Sewall and Dow. The ministrations of Dr. Stickney

had not been available, and the two mothers had survived because they

had the constitutions of frontierswomen rather than because they had

the benefit of the nursing of the termagant who was Jerry Tompkins's

wife. The babies--known to their families, and to the endless

succession of cowboys who came from near and far to inspect them, as

"the Bad Lands babies"--were just six weeks old.

"The womenfolks say they can go in three weeks," Sewall reported.

"Three weeks from to-day," answered Roosevelt, "we go."

And so the folks from Maine, who had made a rough and simple house in

the wilderness into a home, began to gather together their belongings

and pack up. Wise old Bill Sewall had been right.

"You'll come to feel different," he had said, two years before, when

Roosevelt had been lonely and despondent. "And then you won't want to

stay here."

Life, which for a while had seemed to Roosevelt so gray and dismal,

had, in fact, slowly taken on new color. At times he had imagined that

Dakota might satisfy him for a permanent residence, but that fancy,

born of grief and disappointment, had vanished in the radiance of a

new happiness. He had become engaged to Edith Carow, and he knew that

the world for him and for her was that busy world where his friends

were, and hers, and where he and she had been boy and girl together.

The lure of politics, moreover, was calling him. And yet, during those

last weeks at Elkhorn, he was not at all sure that he wished to

reënter the turmoil. He rode out into the prairie one day for a last

"session" with Bill Sewall shortly before the three weeks were up. He

told Sewall he had an idea he ought to go into law.

"You'd be a good lawyer," said Bill, "but I think you ought to go into

politics. Good men like you ought to go into politics. If you do, and

if you live, I think you'll be President."

Roosevelt laughed. "That's looking a long way ahead."

"It may look a long way ahead to you," Sewall declared stoutly, "but

it isn't as far ahead as it's been for some of the men who got there."

"I'm going home now," said Roosevelt, "to see about a job my friends

want me to take. I don't think I want it. It will get me into a row.

And I want to write."

An Easterner, whose name has slipped from the record, hearing possibly

that Roosevelt was making changes in the management of his herds,

offered to buy all of Roosevelt's cattle. Roosevelt refused. The man

offered to buy Merrifield's share, then Sylvane's. Both rejected the

offer. The herd had increased greatly in value since they had

established it. The coming spring, they said, they would begin to get

great returns....

"September 25, 1886," runs an item in Bill Sewall's account-book,

"squared accounts with Theodore Roosevelt." On the same day Roosevelt

made a contract with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris by which he agreed,

as the contract runs, "to place all his cattle branded with the

Maltese cross and all his she-stock and bulls branded with the elkhorn

and triangle, some twenty-odd hundred head in all, valued at sixty

thousand dollars," in charge of Ferris and Merrifield on shares for

the term of four years; the men of the Maltese Cross agreeing on their

part to take charge of the Elkhorn steer brand which was Roosevelt's

exclusive property.

Then, knowing that his cattle were in good hands, Roosevelt once more

turned his face to the East, conscious in his heart, no doubt, that,

however soon he might return, or however often, the Dakota idyl was

ended.

XXV

I may not see a hundred

Before I see the Styx,

But coal or ember, I'll remember

Eighteen-eighty-six.

The stiff heaps in the coulee,

The dead eyes in the camp,

And the wind about, blowing fortunes out

As a woman blows out a lamp.

From _Medora Nights_

Roosevelt accepted the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York

City, "with the most genuine reluctance," as he wrote Lodge. He

recognized that it was "a perfectly hopeless contest; the chance for

success being so very small that it may be left out of account." It

was a three-cornered fight, with Henry George as the nominee of a

United Labor Party on a single-tax platform, and Abram S. Hewitt as

the candidate of Tammany Hall.

The nomination gave Dakota an occasion to express its mind concerning

its adopted son, and it did so, with gusto.

Theodore is a Dakota cowboy [said the _Press_ of Sioux

Falls], and has spent a large share of his time in the

Territory for a couple of years. He is one of the finest

thoroughbreds you ever met--a whole-souled, clearheaded,

high-minded gentleman. When he first went on the range, the

cowboys took him for a dude, but soon they realized the

stuff of which the youngster was built, and there is no man

now who inspires such enthusiastic regard among them as he.

Roosevelt conducted a lively campaign, for it was not in him to make

anything but the best fight of which he was capable even with the odds

against him. The thoughtful element of the city, on whose support

against the radicalism of Henry George on the one hand and the

corruption of Tammany on the other, he should have been able to count,

became panic-stricken at the possibility of a labor victory, and gave

their votes to Hewitt. He was emphatically defeated; in fact he ran

third. "But anyway," he remarked cheerfully, "I had a bully time."

He went abroad immediately after election, and in December, at St.

George's, Hanover Square, London, he married Edith Kermit Carow.

* * * * *

Once more, winter descended upon the Bad Lands.

Medora [remarked the Bismarck _Tribune_ in November] has

pretty nearly gone into winter quarters. To be sure, the

slaughter-house establishment of Marquis de Mores will not

formally shut down until the end of the month, but there are

many days on which there is no killing done and the workmen

have to lay off. The past season has not been of the

busiest, and the near approach of winter finds this about

the quietest place in western Dakota. The hotel is closed.

There is only one general store and its proprietor declared

that the middle of December will find him, stock and all,

hundreds of miles from here. The proprietor of the drug

store will move early in December, as he cannot make his

board in the place.

A. T. Packard, the editor of the _Bad Lands Cowboy_, which

now has a circulation of 650, is evidently prospering well,

and, with the managers of the Northern Pacific Refrigerator

Company and the railroad agents, seems to be about the only

person who expresses an intention of spending the season

here.

Fortunate were those who spent that season elsewhere. Old-timers,

whose wits had been sharpened by long life in the open, had all the

autumn been making ominous predictions. They talked of a hard winter

ahead, and the canniest of them defied the skeptics by riding into

Medora trailing a pack-horse and purchasing six months' supplies of

provisions at one time.

Nature, they pointed out, was busier than she had ever been, in the

memory of the oldest hunter in that region, in "fixin' up her folks

for hard times." The muskrats along the creeks were building their

houses to twice their customary height; the walls were thicker than

usual, and the muskrats' fur was longer and heavier than any old-timer

had ever known it to be. The beavers were working by day as well as by

night, cutting the willow brush, and observant eyes noted that they

were storing twice their usual winter's supply. The birds were acting

strangely. The ducks and geese, which ordinarily flew south in

October, that autumn had, a month earlier, already departed. The

snowbirds and the cedar birds were bunched in the thickets, fluttering

about by the thousands in the cedar brakes, obviously restless and

uneasy. The Arctic owls, who came only in hard winters, were about.

There was other evidence that the winds were brewing misery. Not only

the deer and the antelope, the wolves and the coyotes, but the older

range cattle and the horses were growing unusually long coats.

Other signs of strange disturbances of Nature were not lacking. During

October the usual Indian-summer haze seemed to have lifted to a higher

altitude, interposing, as it were, a curtain between earth and sun.

The light became subdued and unnatural. Halos appeared about the sun,

with sun-dogs at opposite sides of the circle. The superstitious were

startled, in the time of the full moon, at four shafts of light, which

could be seen emanating from it, giving an eerie effect as of a cross

over the silver disc.

There was usually a wet snowstorm in late October; this year it did

not come. A weird, dull stillness was in the air. Then, one evening

toward the end of the first week in November, the snow came, falling

lightly and noiselessly. As the evening advanced, the wind arose; and

even as it increased in violence, the spirit in the thermometer fell.

The wind became a gale, and before midnight a blizzard was howling and

sweeping through the Bad Lands such as no one there had ever known

before. The snow was like the finest powder, driving through every

crack and nail hole, and piling snowdrifts within the houses as well

as without.

"Upon getting up in the morning," said Lincoln Lang long afterward,

describing that storm, "the house was intensely cold, with everything

that could freeze frozen solid. The light was cut off from the

windows looking south. As we opened the front door, we were confronted

by a solid wall of snow reaching to the eaves of the house. There was

no drift over the back door, looking north, but, as I opened it, I was

blown almost from my feet by the swirl of the snow, which literally

filled the air, so that it was impossible to see any of the

surrounding ranch-buildings or even the fence, less than fifty feet

distant. It was like a tornado of pure white dust or very fine sand,

icy cold, and stinging like a whip-lash."

As fast as the fine dry snow fell, it drifted and packed itself into

the coulees, gulches, and depressions, filling them to a depth of a

hundred feet or more. The divides and plateaus, and other exposed

places, were left almost bare, except where some mound or rock or bit

of sagebrush created an obstruction, about which the eddying currents

piled snowdrifts which rose week after week to huge proportions. On

the river bottoms where the sagebrush was thick, the snow lay level

with the top of the brush, then drove on to lodge and pack about the

cottonwood trees and beneath the river-banks, forming great drifts,

extending here and there from bank to bank.

The blizzard abated, but the icy cold did not; another blizzard came,

and another and another. Save as it was whirled by the wind,

ultimately to become a part of some great drift, the snow remained

where it fell. No momentary thaw came to carry away a portion of the

country's icy burden, or to alleviate for a few hours the strain on

the snowbound men and women in the lonely ranch-houses. On the bottoms

the snow was four feet deep.

November gave way to December, and December to January. The terrible

cold persisted, and over the length and breadth of the Bad Lands the

drifts grew monstrous, obliterating old landmarks and creating new, to

the bewilderment of the occasional wayfarer.

Blizzard followed blizzard. For the men and women on the scattered

ranches, it was a period of intense strain and privation; but for the

cattle, wandering over the wind-swept world of snow and ice, those

terrible months brought an affliction without parallel.

No element was lacking to make the horror of the ranges complete. The

country, as Roosevelt had pointed out in July, was over-stocked. Even

under favorable conditions there was not enough grass to feed the

cattle grazing in the Bad Lands. And conditions throughout the summer

of 1886 had been menacingly unfavorable. The drought had been intense.

A plague of grasshoppers had swept over the hills. Ranchmen, who were

accustomed to store large quantities of hay for use in winter,

harvested little or none, and were forced to turn all their cattle out

on the range to shift for themselves. The range itself was barren. The

stem-cured grass which generally furnished adequate nutriment had been

largely consumed by the grasshoppers. What there was of it was buried

deep under successive layers of snow. The new stock, the "yearlings,"

driven into the Bad Lands from Texas or Iowa or Minnesota, succumbed

first of all. In the coulees or the creek-beds, where they sought

refuge in droves from the stinging blasts of the driven snow, they

stood helpless and were literally snowed under, or imprisoned by the

accumulation of ice about their feet, and frozen to death where they

stood. The native stock, in their shaggier coats, faced the iron

desolation with more endurance, keeping astir and feeding on sagebrush

and the twigs of young cottonwoods. Gaunt and bony, they hung about

the ranches or drifted into Medora, eating the tar-paper from the

sides of the shacks, until at last they dropped and died. There was no

help that the most sympathetic humanitarian or the most agonized

cattle-owner could give them; for there was no fodder. There was

nothing that any one could do, except, with aching and apprehensive

heart, to watch them die.

They died by thousands and tens of thousands, piled one on the other

in coulees and wash-outs and hidden from sight by the snow which

seemed never to cease from falling. Only the wolves and coyotes throve

that winter, for the steers, imprisoned in the heavy snow, furnished

an easy "kill." Sage chickens were smothered under the drifts, rabbits

were smothered in their holes.

It was a winter of continuous and unspeakable tragedy. Men rode out

into the storms and never reached their destinations, wandering

desperately in circles and sinking down at last, to be covered like

the cattle with the merciless snow. Children lost their way between

ranch-house and stable and were frozen to death within a hundred yards

of their homes. The "partner" of Jack Snyder, a pleasant "Dutchman,"

whom Roosevelt knew well, died and could not be buried, for no pick

could break through that iron soil; and Snyder laid him outside the

cabin they had shared, to remain there till spring came, covered also

by the unremitting snow.

Here and there a woman went off her head. One such instance was

productive of a piece of unconscious humor that, in its grimness, was

in key with the rest of that terrible winter:

Dear Pierre [wrote a friend to Wibaux, who had gone to

France for the winter, leaving his wife in charge of the

ranch].--No news, except that Dave Brown killed Dick Smith

and your wife's hired girl blew her brains out in the

kitchen. Everything O.K. here.

Yours truly

Henry JACKSON

Early in March, after a final burst of icy fury, a quietness came into

the air, and the sun, burning away the haze that lay over it, shone

down once more out of a blue sky. Slowly the temperature rose, and

then one day, never to be forgotten, there came a warm moistness into

the atmosphere. Before night fell, the "Chinook" was pouring down from

beyond the mountains, releasing the icy tension and softening all

things.

Last Sunday [the Dickinson _Press_ recorded, on March 5th]

the welcome Chinook wind paid us a visit, and before noon

the little rills were trickling down the hills and the brown

herbage began to appear through the snow in every direction;

the soft, balmy wind fanning the cheek brought memories and

hopes of spring to the winter-wearied denizens of our

community.

"Within a day or so," said Lincoln Lang afterward, "the snow had

softened everywhere. Gullies and wash-outs started to run with

constantly increasing force, until at length there was a steady roar

of running water, with creeks out of bounds everywhere. Then, one day,

we suddenly heard a roar above that of the rushing water, coming from

the direction of the Little Missouri, and hurrying there saw a sight,

once seen, never to be forgotten. The river was out of banks clear up

into the cottonwoods and out on to the bottom, going down in a raging,

muddy torrent, literally full of huge, grinding ice-cakes, up-ending

and rolling over each other as they went, tearing down trees in their

paths, ripping, smashing, tearing at each other and everything in

their course in the effort to get out and away. The spectacle held us

spellbound. None of us had ever seen anything to compare with it, for

the spring freshets of other years had been mild affairs as compared

to this. But there was something _else_ that had never been seen

before, and doubtless never will be seen again, for as we gazed we

could see countless carcasses of cattle going down with the ice,

rolling over and over as they went, so that at times all four of the

stiffened legs of a carcass would point skyward as it turned under

the impulsion of the swiftly moving current and the grinding

ice-cakes. Now and then a carcass would become pinched between two

ice-floes, and either go down entirely or else be forced out on the

top of the ice, to be rafted along for a space until the cake upon

which it rested suddenly up-ended or turned completely over in the

maelstrom of swirling water and ice. Continuously carcasses seemed to

be going down while others kept bobbing up at one point or another to

replace them."

And this terrible drama continued, not for an hour or for a few hours,

but for days. Only as the weeks went by and the snow retreated was it

possible for the cattlemen to make any estimate of their losses. The

coulees were packed with dead cattle; the sheltered places in the

cottonwood trees in the bottoms along the river were packed with them.

Here and there a carcass was discovered high up in a crotch of a tree

where the animal had struggled over the drifts to munch the tender

twigs.

"I got a saddle horse and rode over the country," said Merrifield

afterward, "and I'm telling you, the first day I rode out I never saw

a live animal."

The desolation of the Bad Lands was indescribable. Where hundreds of

thousands of cattle had grazed the previous autumn, shambled and

stumbled a few emaciated, miserable survivors. Gregor Lang, who had

gone into the winter with three thousand head all told, came out of it

with less than four hundred. The "Hash-Knife outfit," which had owned

a hundred thousand head, lost seventy-five thousand. Not a ranchman up

and down the Little Missouri lost less than half his herd.

The halcyon days of Billings County were over. What had been a

flourishing cattle country was a boneyard where the agents of

fertilizer factories bargained for skeletons.

XXVI

Some towns go out in a night,

And some are swept bare in a day,

But our town like a phantom island,

Just faded away.

Some towns die, and are dead,

But ours, though it perished, breathes;

And, in old men and in young dreamers

Still, glows and seethes.

From _Medora Nights_

Roosevelt returned from Europe on March 28th.

The loss among the cattle has been terrible [he wrote Sewall

from New York early in April]. About the only comfort I have

out of it is that, at any rate, you and Wilmot are all

right; I would not mind the loss of a few hundred if it was

the only way to benefit you and Will--but it will be much

more than that.

I am going out West in a few days to look at things for

myself.

Well, I must now try to worry through as best I may.

Sometime I hope to get a chance to go up and see you all.

Then I shall forget my troubles when we go off into the

woods after caribou or moose.

There was no merriment this time when Roosevelt arrived in Medora.

With Sylvane he rode over the ranges.

You cannot imagine anything more dreary than the look of the

Bad Lands [he wrote Sewall]. Everything was cropped as bare

as a bone. The sagebrush was just fed out by the starving

cattle. The snow lay so deep that nobody could get around;

it was almost impossible to get a horse a mile.

In almost every coulee there were dead cattle. There were

nearly three hundred on Wadsworth bottom. Annie came through

all right; Angus died. Only one or two of our horses died;

but the O K lost sixty head. In one of Munro's draws I

counted in a single patch of brushwood twenty-three dead

cows and calves.

You boys were lucky to get out when you did; if you had

waited until spring, I guess it would have been a case of

walking.

"I don't know how many thousand we owned at Elkhorn and the Maltese

Cross in the autumn of 1886," said Merrifield afterward. "But after

that terrible winter there wasn't a cow left, only a few hundred

sick-looking steers."

I am bluer than indigo about the cattle [Roosevelt wrote his

sister Corinne]. It is even worse than I feared; I wish I

was sure I would lose no more than half the money I invested

out here. I am planning how to get out of it.

With Sylvane and Merrifield, with whom in other days Roosevelt had

talked of golden prospects, he gloomily reviewed the tragic situation.

The impulse was strong in them all to start afresh and retrieve their

losses. Most of the cattlemen were completely discouraged and were

selling at ridiculously low prices the stock which had survived the

winter. But Roosevelt resisted the temptation.

"I can't afford to take a chance by putting in any more capital," said

Roosevelt. "I haven't the right to do it."

And there the discussion ended.

There was a matter beside the wreck of his cattle business which

required Roosevelt's immediate attention. George Myers was under

suspicion (honest George Myers, of all men!) of being a cattle-thief.

Roosevelt would have jumped to George's defense in any case, but the

fact that the man who brought the charges against him was Joe Morrill,

whom the forces of disorder had elected sheriff the previous April,

added an extra zest to the fight.

George had, for some years, "run" a few cattle of his own with the

Maltese Cross herd. Of these, two steers had, through an oversight,

remained unbranded and been sent to Chicago with what was known as a

"hair-brand" picked on the hide. Morrill was stock inspector as well

as sheriff and allowed the animals to pass, but when Myers, shortly

after, went East to visit his family, Morrill swore out a warrant for

his arrest and started in pursuit.

He found Myers at Wooster, Ohio, arrested him, obtained his

extradition and then, to the amazement of the local judge, released

him.

"You can go now, George," he said. "When will you be ready to start

back?"

"Oh, in a day or two, I guess," said George.

"That's a hell of a way to use a prisoner," exclaimed the judge.

"Thanks, judge," Morrill replied coolly, "but he's my prisoner."

[Illustration: George Myers.]

[Illustration: The Little Missouri at Elkhorn.]

They returned West shortly after, living high on the way. The sheriff

had his wife with him, and it dawned on George that Joe Morrill was

having an extraordinarily pleasant vacation at the expense of the

taxpayers and of George's own reputation, and, in addition, was

making a tidy sum of money out of the trip. His transportation,

reservations, and allowance _per diem_ were paid, of course, by the

county he represented. George, having brought a load of cattle to the

stock-yards, had a pass for his return. But that was the sheriff's

luck, it appeared, not the county's. Morrill treated him most affably.

As they were nearing Medora, in fact, he informed his prisoner that he

would appear before the justice of the peace, explain that he had

discovered that the charge was baseless, and ask for a dismissal of

the case without a hearing on the ground that a mistake had been made.

But the sheriff was not taking into account the fact that Medora had,

during the past two or three years, emerged from barbarism, and that

there was such a thing as public opinion to be confronted and

satisfied. To the majority of the citizens, an accusation of

cattle-thieving was almost identical with a conviction, and feeling

ran high for a time against George Myers. But Packard jumped into the

fight and in the columns of the _Bad Lands Cowboy_ excoriated Joe

Morrill.

The affair spilled over beyond the limits of Billings County, for the

Bismarck _Tribune_ printed Morrill's version of the case, and a day or

so later published a stinging letter from Packard, who was nothing if

not belligerent. It did not hurt his cause that he was able to quote a

statement, made by Morrill, that "there's plenty in it if the justice

of the peace and the sheriff work together."

Myers, backed by Packard, refused to have the case dismissed and it

was put on the calendar at Mandan. There it rested until the following

spring.

Roosevelt, arriving in Medora in April, saw at once that a larger

issue was at stake than even the question of doing justice to a man

wrongfully accused. To have a man like Morrill officially responsible

for the detection of cattle-thieves was a travesty.

He promptly sought Joe Morrill, finding him at the "depot." In his

capacity as chairman of the Little Missouri River Stockmen's

Association, he was in a position to speak as Morrill's employer, and

he spoke with his customary directness. Gregor Lang, who happened to

be present, told Lincoln afterward that he had "never heard a man get

such a scathing" as Roosevelt gave the shifty stock inspector.

"Roosevelt was taking a lot of chances," said Lincoln Lang later,

"because Morrill was cornered. He was known to be a gunman and a risky

man to mix with."

Roosevelt ordered Morrill to resign his inspectorship at once. Morrill

refused.

The annual meeting of the Montana Stock-grower's Association was to be

held in Miles City the middle of the month. Roosevelt knew that the

Association would not consent to sit in judgment on the case as

between Myers and Morrill. He determined, therefore, to demand that

the inspectorship at Medora be abolished on the ground that the

inspector was worse than useless.

Roosevelt presented his charges before the Board of Stock

Commissioners on April 18th. The Board was evidently reluctant to act,

and, at the suggestion of certain members of it, Roosevelt, on the

following day, presented the matter before the Executive Committee of

the Association. He asked that the Committee request the Board of

Stock Commissioners to do away with the inspectorship at Medora, but

the Committee, too, was wary of giving offense. He asked twice that

the Committee hear the charges. The Committee refused, referring him

back to the Board of Stock Commissioners.

That Board, meanwhile, was hearing from other cattlemen in the Bad

Lands. Boyce, of the great "Three-Seven outfit," supported Roosevelt's

charges, and Towers, of the Towers and Gudgell Ranch near the Big Ox

Bow, supported Boyce. Morrill was sent for and made a poor showing. It

was evidently with hesitant spirits that the Board finally acted.

Morrill was dismissed, but the Board hastened to explain that it was

because its finances were too low to allow it to continue the

inspectorship at Medora and passed a vote of thanks for Morrill's

"efficiency and faithful performance of duty."

What Roosevelt said about the vote of thanks is lost to history. He

was, no doubt, satisfied with the general result and was ready to let

Morrill derive what comfort he could out of the words with which it

was adorned.

Through the records of that meeting of the cattlemen, Roosevelt looms

with singular impressiveness. At the meeting of the previous year he

had been an initiate, an effective follower of men he regarded as

better informed than himself; this year he was himself a leader.

During the three years that had elapsed since he had last taken a

vigorous part in the work of an important deliberative body, he had

grown to an extraordinary extent. In the Legislature in Albany, and in

the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1884, he had been nervous,

vociferous, hot-headed, impulsive; in Miles City, in 1887, there was

the same vigor, the same drive but with them a poise which the younger

man had utterly lacked. On the first day of the meeting he made a

speech asking for the elimination, from a report which had been

submitted, of a passage condemning the Interstate Commerce Law. The

house was against him almost to a man, for the cattlemen considered

the law an abominable infringement of their rights.

In the midst of the discussion, a stockman named Pat Kelly, who was

incidentally the Democratic boss of Michigan, rose in his seat. "Can

any gentleman inform me," he inquired, "why the business of this

meeting should be held up by the talk of a broken-down New York State

politician?"

There was a moment's silence. The stockmen expected a storm. There was

none. Roosevelt took up the debate as though nothing had interrupted

it. The man from Michigan visibly "flattened out." Meanwhile,

Roosevelt won his point.

He spent most of that summer at Elkhorn Ranch.

Merrifield had, like Joe Ferris, gone East to New Brunswick for a

wife, and the bride, who, like Joe's wife, was a woman of education

and charm, brought new life to the deserted house on Elkhorn bottom.

But something was gone out of the air of the Bad Lands; the glow that

had burned in men's eyes had vanished. It had been a country of dreams

and it was now a country of ruins; and the magic of the old days could

not be re-created.

The cattle industry of the Bad Lands, for the time being, was dead;

and the pulses of the little town at the junction of the railroad and

the Little Missouri began to flutter fitfully and ominously. Only the

indomitable pluck of the Marquis and his deathless fecundity in

conceiving new schemes of unexampled magnitude kept it alive at all.

The Marquis's ability to create artificial respiration and to make the

dead take on the appearance of life never showed to better effect than

in that desolate year of 1887. His plan to slaughter cattle on the

range for consumption along the line of the Northern Pacific was to

all intents and purposes shattered by the autumn of 1885. But no one,

it appears, recognized that fact, least of all the Marquis. He changed

a detail here, a detail there; then, charged with a new enthusiasm, he

talked success to every reporter who came to interview him, flinging

huge figures about with an ease that a Rockefeller might envy; and the

newspapers from coast to coast called him one of the builders of the

Northwest.

His plan to sell dressed beef along the railroad gave way to a project

to sell it at the wholesale stalls in Chicago. That failed. Thereupon,

he evolved an elaborate and daring scheme to sell it direct to

consumers in New York and other Eastern seaboard cities.

"The Marquis actually opened his stores in Fulton Market," said

Packard afterward, "and there sold range beef killed in Medora. Of

course his project failed. It was shot full of fatal objections. But

with his magnetic personality, with his verbalistic short-jumps over

every objection, with every newspaper and magazine of the land an

enthusiastic volunteer in de Mores propaganda, and with the halo of

the von Hoffman millions surrounding him and all his deeds, bankers

and business men fell into line at the tail of the de Mores chariot.

We of the Bad Lands were the first to see the fatal weaknesses in his

plans, but we were believers, partly because the Marquis seemed to

overcome every difficulty by the use of money, and mainly because we

wanted to believe."

Dozens of shops were in fact opened by the Marquis, but the public

refused to trade, even at a saving, in stores where only one kind of

meat could be bought. The Marquis had all the figures in the world to

prove that the public should buy; but human nature thwarted him.

The plan failed, but the Marquis, with his customary dexterity,

obscured the failure with a new and even more engaging dream.

"Our company is to be merged into another very large cattle

syndicate," he said in March, 1887, "and having abundant capital, we

propose to buy up every retail dealer in this city either by cash or

stock."

The National Consumers' Company was the name of the new organization.

There was a fine mixture of altruism and business in the first

prospectus which the Marquis's new company issued:

Crushed, as so many others, by monopoly, we have been

looking for the means of resisting it by uniting in a

practical way with those who, like ourselves, try to make

their future by their work. This has led to the organization

of this company. The name of the company shows its aims. It

must be worked by and for the people.

That sounded very impressive, and the newspapers began to speak of the

Marquis as a true friend of the people. Meanwhile, the _Bad Lands

Cowboy_ announced:

Marquis de Mores has completed contracts with the French

Government to supply its soldiers with a newly invented

soup. He intends to visit Europe soon to make contracts with

Western range cattle companies who have their headquarters

there, for the slaughtering of their cattle.

The soup scheme evidently died stillborn, for history records nothing

further of it, and less than three months after the National

Consumers' Company was founded with blare of trumpets, it had

collapsed. It was characteristic of von Hoffman, whose fortune was

behind the undertaking, that he paid back every subscriber to the

stock in full. If any one was to lose, he intimated, it was von

Hoffman. But, having settled with the creditors of his expensive

son-in-law, he explained to that gentleman, in words which could not

be misunderstood, that he would have no more of his schemes. Von

Hoffman thereupon betook himself to Europe, and the Marquis to Medora.

His optimism remained indomitable to the last. To reporters he denied

vigorously that he had any intentions "of removing his business

interests from Dakota."

"I like Dakota and have come to stay," he remarked. Thereupon he

launched one more grandiose scheme, announcing that he had discovered

a gold mine in Montana and was planning to begin working it for all it

was worth as soon as his prospectors had completed their labors; and

sailed for India with his intrepid Marquise to hunt tigers.

Dakota knew him no more, and under the heading, "An Ex-Dakota

Dreamer," the Sioux Falls _Press_ pronounced his epitaph:

The Marquis is a most accomplished dreamer, and so long as

his fortune lasted, or his father-in-law, Baron von Hoffman,

would put up the money, he could afford to dream. He once

remarked confidentially to a friend, "I veel make ze

millions and millions by ze great enterprizes in America,

and zen I veel go home to France, and veel capture my

comrades in ze French armee, an veel plot and plan, and

directly zey veel put me in command, and zen I veel swoop

down on ze government, and first zing you know I veel mount

the zrone." One time his agent at Medora, his ranch on the

Northern Pacific, wrote him at New York about the loss of

three thousand head of sheep, the letter going into all the

details of the affair. The Marquis turned the sheet over and

wrote, "Please don't trouble me with trifles like these." He

is a very pleasant gentleman to meet, but unfortunately his

schemes are bigger than he is.

Medora was a town whose glory had departed. A pall was on all things,

and the _Cowboy_ was no longer present to dispel it with the cheerful

optimism of old. For, one night, when the cold was most bitter, and

the wind was high, a fire had started in the old cantonment building

where Packard lived with his newly wedded wife, and printed the pages

that had for three years brought gayety to the inhabitants of Medora,

and stability to its infant institutions. The files were burned up,

the presses destroyed; the _Cowboy_ was a memory. It was as though the

soul of Medora had gone out of its racked body. The remains lay rigid

and voiceless.

One by one its leading citizens deserted it. Roosevelt came and went,

making his long stays no longer in the West, but in the East, where

"home" was now. Packard went, then Fisher, then Van Driesche.

[J. C. Maunders,] of Medora [runs an item in the Dickinson

_Press_], is talking of moving two or three of his buildings

from there to Dickinson.

It was followed by other items full of mournful import.

[J. C. Maunders,] [Joseph Morrill,] and John W. Goodall, of

Medora, were here Thursday and closed contracts for several

lots. They will build.

Two weeks later, the exodus began. The telling of it has a Shaksperean

flavor:

Medora is coming to Dickinson. On Thursday a train came in

from the west with a number of flat-cars on which were

loaded the buildings of [J. C. Maunders,] who recently

bought lots here.

Thus it was that the Pyramid Park Hotel, where Roosevelt had spent his

first night in Little Missouri, four years previous, came to Dickinson

to become a most respectable one-family dwelling. Mrs. McGeeney's

hotel followed it two weeks later.

In August came the final blow:

D. O. Sweet and family have moved from Medora to Dickinson.

Mr. Sweet desired to reside where there was some life and

prospect of growth.

Alas, for earthly greatness, when a son of the town that was to rival

Omaha should desert her with such a valedictory!

XXVII

The range is empty and the trails are blind,

And I don't seem but half myself to-day.

I wait to hear him ridin' up behind

And feel his knee rub mine the good old way.

He's dead--and what that means no man kin tell.

Some call it "gone before."

Where? I don't know, but, God! I know so well

That he ain't here no more!

Badger CLARK

This, then, is the story of Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. What remains

is epilogue.

In the autumn of 1887, Roosevelt was again with the Merrifields at

Elkhorn and with Sylvane at the Maltese Cross, to assist in the

round-up of a train-load of cattle which he subsequently sold at

Chicago (again at a loss, for the prices for beef were even lower than

the previous year). He went on a brief hunt after antelope in the

broken country between the Little Missouri and the Beaver; he fought a

raging prairie fire with the split and bleeding carcass of a steer; he

went on another hunt late in December with a new friend named Fred

Herrig, and was nearly frozen to death in a blizzard, attempting (not

without success) to shoot mountain sheep; whereupon, feeling very fit,

he returned East to his family and his books.

He was now increasingly busy with his writing, completing that winter

a volume of vigorous sketches of the frontier, called "Ranch Life and

the Hunting Trail," beside his "Life of Gouverneur Morris," and a

book of "Essays on Practical Politics." In the autumn of 1888, he was

again at Elkhorn and again on the chase, this time in the Selkirks in

northern Idaho, camping on Kootenai Lake, and from there on foot with

a pack on his back, ranging among the high peaks with his old guide

John Willis and an Indian named Ammal, who was pigeon-toed and

mortally afraid of hobgoblins.

In 1889 he became a member of the Civil Service Commission in

Washington, and thereafter he saw the Bad Lands only once a year,

fleeing from his desk to the open country every autumn for a touch of

the old wild life and a glimpse of the old friends who yet lingered in

that forsaken country.

Medora had all the desolation of "a busted cowtown" whose inhabitants,

as one cowpuncher remarked in answer to a tenderfoot's inquiry, were

"eleven, including the chickens, when they were all in town." All of

the wicked men and most of the virtuous ones, who had lent

picturesqueness to Medora in the old days, were gone. Sylvane Ferris

still lingered as foreman of the cattle which Roosevelt still retained

in the Bad Lands, and Joe Ferris still ran his store, officiated as

postmaster, and kept a room for Roosevelt on his infrequent visits.

Bill Williams shot a man and went to jail, and with him went the glory

of his famous saloon. Of his old cronies, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones only

remained. He was a man of authority now, for he had been elected

sheriff when Joe Morrill moved his _lares et penates_ to Dickinson.

His relations with Roosevelt criss-crossed, for, as sheriff,

Roosevelt was his deputy, but whenever Roosevelt went on an extended

hunting trip, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones was his teamster. He was,

incidentally, an extraordinarily efficient teamster. He had certain

profane rituals which he repeated on suitable occasions, word for

word, but with an emphasis and sincerity that made them sound each

time as though he had invented them under the inspiration of the

immediate necessity. He had a special torrent of obscenity for his

team when they were making a difficult crossing somewhere on the

Little Missouri. It was always the same succession of terrifying

expletives, and it always had the desired effect. It worked better

than a whip.

Meanwhile, the devotion of Bill Jones to Theodore Roosevelt was a

matter of common report throughout the countryside, and it was said

that he once stayed sober all summer in order to be fit to go on a

hunting trip with Roosevelt in the fall.

Sylvane married, like his "partners" going for his bride to New

Brunswick, whose supply of delightful young ladies seemed to be

inexhaustible. They went to live in a "martin's cage," as they called

it, under the bluff at Medora, and there Roosevelt visited them, after

Joe moved to Montana and his store passed into other hands. The Langs

remained at Yule. After the evil winter, Sir James Pender threw them

upon their own resources, and the years that followed were hard. Lang

had long recognized the mistake he had made in not accepting

Roosevelt's offer that September of 1883, and the matter remained a

sore subject for Mrs. Lang, who never ceased regretting the lapse of

judgment which had made her otherwise excellent husband miss what she

knew, as soon as she met Roosevelt, had been the greatest opportunity

which Gregor Lang would ever have placed in his hands. Lang, as county

commissioner, became an important factor in the development of the

county, and his ranch flourished. Lincoln Lang turned to engineering

and became an inventor. He went East to live, but his heart remained

among the buttes where he had spent his adventurous boyhood.

[Illustration: Lincoln Lang.]

[Illustration: William T. Dantz.]

[Illustration: Margaret Roberts.]

[Illustration: "Dutch Wannigan".]

The Eatons forsook the punching of cattle, and engaged in "dude"

ranching on a grand scale, and the "Eaton Ranch" began to be famous

from coast to coast even before they moved to Wolf, Wyoming, in the

foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. Mrs. Cummins drifted away with

her family, carrying, no doubt, her discontent with her. Lloyd Roberts

disappeared, as though the earth had swallowed him, murdered, it was

supposed, in Cheyenne, after he had loaned Bill Williams seven hundred

dollars. Mrs. Roberts was not daunted. She kept the little ranch on

Sloping Bottom and fed and clothed and educated her five daughters by

her own unaided efforts. The Vines, father and son, drifted eastward.

Packard and Dantz took to editing newspapers, Packard in Montana,

Dantz in Pennsylvania. Edgar Haupt became a preacher, and Herman Haupt

a physician. Fisher grew prosperous in the State of Washington;

Maunders throve mightily in Dickinson; Wilmot Dow died young; Bill

Sewall resumed his life in Maine as a backwoodsman and guide; Foley

remained custodian of the deserted de Mores property at Medora;

"Redhead" Finnegan was hanged.

Poor "Dutch" Van Zander drank up his last remittance. "There," he

cried, "I have blown in a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, but

I've given the boys a whale of a good time!" He gave up drinking

thereafter and went to work for the "Three Seven" outfit as an

ordinary cowhand. He became a good worker, but when the call of gold

in Alaska sounded, he responded and was seen no more in his old

haunts. A few years later he appeared again for a day, saying that he

was on his way to his old home in Holland. A month or two later news

filtered into Medora that the brilliant and most lovable Dutch

patrician's son had been found, dead by his own hand, in a cemetery in

Amsterdam, lying across his mother's grave.

Twice Roosevelt's path crossed Joe Morrill's, and each time there was

conflict. Morrill opened a butcher-shop in a town not far from Medora,

and it devolved on Roosevelt, as chairman of the Stockmen's

Association, to inform him that, unless he changed his manner of

acquiring the beef he sold, he would promptly go to jail. The shifty

swashbuckler closed his shop, and not long after, Roosevelt, who was

at the time serving on the Civil Service Commission in Washington,

heard that Morrill was endeavoring to have himself made marshal of

one of the Northwestern States. The "reference" Roosevelt gave him on

that occasion was effective. Morrill was not appointed; and what

happened to him thereafter is lost to history.

In 1890, Roosevelt was at the ranch at Elkhorn with Mrs. Roosevelt; a

year later he hunted elk with an English friend, R. H. M. Ferguson, at

Two Ocean Pass in the Shoshones, in northwestern Wyoming. That autumn

the Merrifields moved to the Flathead country in northwestern Montana,

and Roosevelt closed the ranch-house. A year later he returned to

Elkhorn for a week's hunting. The wild forces of nature had already

taken possession. The bunch-grass grew tall in the yard and on the

sodded roofs of the stables and sheds; the weather-beaten log walls of

the house itself were one in tint with the trunks of the gnarled

cottonwoods by which it was shaded. "The ranch-house is in good

repair," he wrote to Bill Sewall, "but it is melancholy to see it

deserted."

Early the next spring Roosevelt took Archibald D. Russell, R. H. M.

Ferguson, and his brother-in-law Douglas Robinson into partnership

with him and formed the Elkhorn Stock Company, transferring his equity

in the Elkhorn Ranch to the new corporation.[24]

[Footnote 24: See Appendix for a statement of

Roosevelt's cattle investment.]

It was at the end of a wagon-trip to the Black Hills, which Roosevelt

took with Sylvane and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones in 1893, that Roosevelt

met Seth Bullock.

Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district

[wrote Roosevelt in his "Autobiography"], and a man he had

wanted--a horse-thief--I finally got, I being at the time

deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north. The

man went by a nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve." It

was some time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to

Deadwood on business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback,

while Bill Jones drove the wagon. At a little town,

Spearfish, I think, after crossing the last eighty or ninety

miles of gumbo prairie, we met Seth Bullock. We had had

rather a rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I

suppose we looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with

rather distant courtesy at first, but unbent when he found

out who we were, remarking, "You see, by your looks I

thought you were some kind of a tin-horn gambling outfit,

and that I might have to keep an eye on you!" He then

inquired after the capture of "Steve"--with a little of the

air of one sportsman when another has shot a quail that

either might have claimed--"My bird, I believe?"

In a letter to John Hay, Roosevelt described that meeting.

When somebody asked Seth Bullock to meet us, he at first

expressed disinclination. Then he was told that I was the

Civil Service Commissioner, upon which he remarked genially,

"Well, anything civil goes with me," and strolled over to be

introduced.

During these years, while Roosevelt was working on the Civil Service

Commission, fighting the spoilsmen and rousing the conscience of the

American people with a new ideal of public service, even while he

stimulated their national pride with a fresh expression of the

American spirit, his old rival, the Marquis de Mores, was noticeably

stirring the Old World. A year in India had been succeeded by a long

stay in China, where the Marquis had conceived a scheme to secure

concessions for France, which somehow went the way of all the

Marquis's schemes; nothing came of it.

He returned to France. The French people were in a restless, unhappy

state. More than once, war with Germany seemed imminent. The

Government was shot through with intrigue and corruption. The Marquis,

with all the faults of his temperament, was an idealist, with a noble

vision for his country. He saw that it had fallen into the hands of

base, self-seeking men, and he grasped at every means that presented

itself to overthrow the powers that seemed to him to be corrupting and

enfeebling France. He became an enthusiastic follower of Boulanger;

when Boulanger fell, he became a violent anti-Semite, and shortly

after, a radical Socialist. Meanwhile, he fought one duel after

another, on one occasion killing his man. More than once he came into

conflict with the law, and once was imprisoned for three months,

accused of inciting the populace to violence against the army. There

were rumors of plots with the royalists and plots with the anarchists.

It did not apparently seem of particular importance to the Marquis by

whom the Government was overthrown, so it was overthrown.

His plans did not prosper. Anti-Semitism grew beyond his control. The

Dreyfus affair broke, and set the very foundations of France

quivering. What the Marquis's part in it was, is obscure, but it was

said that he was deeply involved.

His attention was turning in another direction. France and England

were struggling for the possession of Central Africa, and the Marquis

conceived the grandiose dream of uniting all the Mohammedans of the

world against England. He went to Tunis in the spring of 1896,

commissioned, it was said, by the French Government to lead an

expedition into the Soudan to incite the Arabs to resist the English

advance in Africa.

Whether the Marquis actually had the support of the Government is more

than dubious. When he set out on his expedition to the wild tribes of

the Tunisian desert, he set out practically alone. At the last moment,

the Marquis changed his Arab escort for a number of Touaregs, who

offered him their services. They were a wild, untrustworthy race, and

men who knew the country pleaded with him not to trust himself to

them. But the Marquis, who had prided himself on his judgment in

Little Missouri in 1883, had not changed his spots in 1896. His

camel-drivers led him into an ambush near the well of El Ouatia. He

carried himself like the game fighting man that he had always been,

and there was a ring of dead men around him when he himself finally

succumbed.

Nineteen days later an Arab official, sent out by the French military

commander of the district, found his body riddled with wounds and

buried in the sand near a clump of bushes close to where he had

fallen. His funeral in Paris was a public event.

It was a tragic but a fitting close to a dreamer's romantic career.

But the end was not yet, and the romance connected with the Marquis de

Mores was not yet complete. The investigation into his death which the

French Government ordered was abandoned without explanation. The

Marquis's widow protested, accusing the Government of complicity in

her husband's death, and charging that those who had murdered the

Marquis were native agents of the French authorities and had been

acting under orders.

The Marquise herself went to Tunis, determined that the assassins of

her husband should be brought to justice. There is a ring in her

proclamation to the Arabs which might well have made the stripped

bones of the Marquis stir in their leaden coffin.

In behalf of the illustrious, distinguished, and noble lady,

the Marquise of Mores, wife of the deceased object of God's

pity, the Marquis of Mores, who was betrayed and murdered at

El Ouatia, in the country of Ghadames, salutations,

penitence, and the benediction of God!

Let it herewith be known to all faithful ones that I place

myself in the hands of God and of you, because I know you to

be manly, energetic, and courageous. I appeal to you to help

me avenge the death of my husband by punishing his

assassins. I am a woman. Vengeance cannot be wreaked by my

own hand. For this reason I inform you, and swear to you,

by the one Almighty God, that to whosoever shall capture and

deliver to the authorities at El-Qued, at Ouargia, or at

El-Goleah one of my husband's assassins I will give 1000

douros ($750), 2000 douros for two assassins, 3000 douros

for three assassins. As to the principal assassins, Bechaoui

and Sheik Ben Abdel Kader, I will give 2000 douros for each

of them. And now, understand, make yourselves ready, and may

God give you success.

Marquise de MORES

The murderers were captured, convicted, and executed. Then the little

American woman, with her hair of Titian red, whom the cowboys of

Little Missouri had christened "The Queen of the West," quietly

withdrew from the public gaze; and the curtain fell on a great

romantic drama.

Theodore Roosevelt was just coming into national eminence as Police

Commissioner of New York City when the Marquis de Mores died beside

the well of El Ouatia. As a member of the Civil Service Commission in

Washington he had caught the imagination of the American people, and a

growing number of patriotic men and women, scattered over the country,

began to look upon him as the leader they had been longing for. He

came to Medora no more for the round-up or the chase.

In May, 1897, Roosevelt became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Less

than a year later the Spanish War broke out. The dream he had dreamed

in 1886 of a regiment recruited from the wild horsemen of the plains

became a reality. From the Canadian border to the Rio Grande, the men

he had lived and worked with on the round-up, and thousands of others

whose imaginations had been seized by the stories of his courage and

endurance, which had passed from mouth to mouth and from camp-fire to

camp-fire through the cattle country, offered their services. The

Rough Riders were organized, and what they accomplished is history.

There were unquestionably more weighty reasons why he should become

Governor of New York State than that he had been the successful leader

of an aggregation of untamed gunmen in Cuba. But it was that fact in

his career which caught the fancy of the voters, and by a narrow

margin elected him a Republican Governor of his State in what, as

everybody knew, was a "Democratic year."

The men and women of the Bad Lands, scattered far and wide over the

Northwest, watched his progress with a glowing feeling in their hearts

that was akin to the pride that a father feels at the greatness of a

son whom he himself has guided in the way that he should go. There was

none of them but felt that he had had a personal share in the making

of this man who was beginning to loom larger and larger on the

national horizon. They had been his mentors, and inasmuch as they had

shown him how to tighten a saddle cinch or quiet a restless herd, they

felt that they had had a part in the building of his character. They

had a great pride, moreover, in the bit of country where they had

spent their ardent youth, and they felt assured that the experiences

which had thrilled and deepened them, had thrilled and deepened him

also. In their hearts they felt that they knew something of what had

made him--"the smell, the singing prairies, the spirit that thrilled

the senses there, the intoxicating exhilaration, the awful silences,

the mysterious hazes, the entrancing sunsets, the great storms and

blizzards, the quiet, enduring people, the great, unnoted tragedies,

the cheer, the humor, the hospitality, the lure of fortunes at the end

of rainbows"--all those things they felt had joined to build America's

great new leader; and they, who had experienced these things with him,

felt that they were forever closer to him than his other countrymen

could ever possibly be.

Roosevelt was nominated for the vice-presidency in June, 1900, and in

July he began a campaign tour over the country which eclipsed even

Bryan's prodigious journeyings of 1896. Early in September he came to

Dakota.

Joe Ferris was the first to greet him after he crossed the border at a

way-station at six o'clock in the morning.[25]

[Footnote 25: The account of Roosevelt's triumphant

return to Medora is taken verbatim from contemporary

newspapers.]

"Joe, old boy," cried Roosevelt exuberantly, "will you ever forget the

first time we met?"

Joe admitted that he would not.

"You nearly murdered me. It seemed as if all the ill-luck in the world

pursued us."

Joe grinned.

"Do you remember too, Joe," exclaimed Roosevelt, "how I swam the

swollen stream and you stood on the bank and kept your eyes on me?

The stream was very badly flooded when I came to it," said the

Governor, turning to the group that had gathered about them. "I forced

my horse into it and we swam for the other bank. Joe was very much

distressed for fear we would not get across."

"I wouldn't have taken that swim for all of Dakota," said Joe.

At Dickinson, a gray-faced, lean man pushed his way through the crowd.

It was Maunders, who had prospered, in spite of his evil ways. "Why,"

exclaimed Roosevelt, "it does me good to see you. You remember when I

needed a hammer so badly and you loaned it to me? You loaned me a

rifle also. I never shall forget how badly I needed that hammer just

then."

Maunders, who had always been affable, grinned with delight and joined

the Governor's party.

The train moved on to Medora. Roosevelt and Joe Ferris sat by the

window, and it seemed that every twisted crag and butte reminded them

of the days when they had ridden over that wild country together.

As the train neared Medora, Roosevelt was palpably moved. "The romance

of my life began here," he said.

There were forty or fifty people at the station in Medora. They hung

back bashfully, but he was among them in an instant.

"Why, this is Mrs. Roberts!" he exclaimed. "You have not changed a

bit, have you?"

She drew his attention to George Myers, who was all smiles.

"My, my, George Myers!" exclaimed Roosevelt, "I did not even hope to

see you." Roosevelt turned to the crowd. "George used to cook for me,"

he said, with a wry expression.

"Do you remember the time I made green biscuits for you?" asked

George, with a grin.

"I do," said Roosevelt emphatically, "I do, George. And I remember the

time you fried the beans with rosin instead of lard. The best proof in

the world, George, that I have a good constitution is that I ate your

cooking and survived."

"Well, now, Governor," exclaimed George, "I was thinking it would be a

good idea to get that man Bryan up here and see what that kind of

biscuit would do for him."

Roosevelt looked about him, where the familiar buttes stretched gray

and bleak in every direction. "It does not seem right," he exclaimed,

"that I should come here and not stay."

Some one brought a bronco for Roosevelt. A minute later he was

galloping eastward toward the trail leading up to the bluff that rose

a thousand feet behind Medora. "Over there is Square Butte," he cried

eagerly, "and over there is Sentinel Butte. My ranch was at Chimney

Butte. Just this side of it is the trail where Custer marched westward

to the Yellowstone and the Rosebud to his death. There is the church

especially erected for the use of the wife of the Marquis de Mores.

His old house is beyond. You can see it."

For a minute he sat silent. "Looking back to my old days here," he

said, "I can paraphrase Kipling and say, 'Whatever may happen, I can

thank God I have lived and toiled with men.'"

Roosevelt was inaugurated as Vice-President in March, 1901. Six months

later he was President of the United States. From a venturesome

cowpuncher who made his way shyly into the White House, the glad

tidings were spread to the Bad Lands and through the whole Northwest

that Roosevelt was the same Roosevelt, and that everybody had better

take a trip to Washington as soon as he could, for orders had gone

forth that "the cowboy bunch can come in whenever they want to."

Occasionally one or the other had difficulty in getting past the

guards. It took Sylvane two days, once, to convince the doorkeeper

that the President wanted to see him. Roosevelt was indignant. "The

next time they don't let you in, Sylvane," he exclaimed, "you just

shoot through the windows."

No one shot through the windows. It was never necessary. The cowboys

dined at the President's table with Cabinet ministers and ambassadors.

"Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British Ambassador

to make him dance," Roosevelt whispered to one of his cowboy guests on

one occasion, "it would be likely to cause international

complications."

"Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it," exclaimed Jim. "I shouldn't

think of it!"

The cowpunchers were the only ones who refused to take altogether

seriously the tradition that an invitation to the White House was

equivalent to a command. John Willis on one occasion came down from

Montana to discuss reclamation with the President, and Roosevelt asked

him to take dinner at the White House that night. Willis murmured that

he did not have a dress-suit, and it would not do to dine with the

President of the United States "unless he were togged out proper."

"Oh, that needn't bother you," exclaimed the President.

"It makes a heap of difference," said Willis. "I may not always do the

right thing, but I know what's proper."

"You would be just as welcome at my table if you came in buckskin

trousers."

"I know that's true," Willis replied, "but I guess I will have to

side-step this trip. If you are taking any horseback rides out on the

trail here to-morrow, I'm your man, but I guess I will get my grub

downtown at the hashery where I'm bunking."

That was all there was to it. John Willis could not be persuaded.

Once more, for the last time, Roosevelt in 1903 went back to Medora.

As they came into the Bad Lands, he stood on the rear platform of his

car, gazing wistfully over the forbidding-looking landscape.

"I know all this country like a book," he said to John Burroughs, who

was beside him. "I have ridden over it and hunted in it and tramped

over it in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to me."

As soon as I got west of the Missouri I came into my own

former stamping-ground [he wrote to John Hay, describing

that visit]. At every station there was somebody who

remembered my riding in there when the Little Missouri

round-up went down to the Indian reservation and then worked

north across the Cannon Ball and up Knife and Green Rivers;

or who had been an interested and possibly malevolent

spectator when I had ridden east with other representatives

of the cowmen to hold a solemn council with the leading

grangers on the vexed subject of mavericks; or who had been

hired as a train-hand when I had been taking a load of

cattle to Chicago, and who remembered well how he and I at

the stoppages had run frantically down the line of the cars

and with our poles jabbed the unfortunate cattle who had

lain down until they again stood up, and thereby gave

themselves a chance for their lives; and who remembered how

when the train started we had to clamber hurriedly aboard

and make our way back to the caboose along the tops of the

cattle cars.

At Mandan two of my old cow-hands, Sylvane and Joe Ferris,

joined me. At Dickinson all of the older people had known me

and the whole town turned out with wild and not entirely

sober enthusiasm. It was difficult to make them much of a

speech, as there were dozens of men each earnestly desirous

of recalling to my mind some special incident. One man, how

he helped me bring in my cattle to ship, and how a blue roan

steer broke away leading a bunch which it took him and me

three hours to round up and bring back; another, how

seventeen years before I had come in a freight train from

Medora to deliver the Fourth of July oration; another, a

gray-eyed individual named [Maunders], who during my early

years at Medora had shot and killed an equally objectionable

individual, reminded me how, just twenty years before, when

I was on my first buffalo hunt, he loaned me the hammer off

his Sharp's rifle to replace the broken hammer of mine;

another recalled the time when he and I worked on the

round-up as partners, going with the Little Missouri

"outfit" from the head of the Box Alder to the mouth of the

Big Beaver, and then striking over to represent the Little

Missouri brands on the Yellowstone round-up; yet another

recalled the time when I, as deputy sheriff of Billings

County, had brought in three cattle-thieves named Red

Finnegan, Dutch Chris, and the half-breed to his keeping, he

being then sheriff in Dickinson, etc., etc., etc.

At Medora, which we reached after dark, the entire

population of the Bad Lands down to the smallest baby had

gathered to meet me. This was formerly my home station. The

older men and women I knew well; the younger ones had been

wild tow-headed children when I lived and worked along the

Little Missouri. I had spent nights in their ranches. I

still remembered meals which the women had given me when I

had come from some hard expedition, half famished and

sharp-set as a wolf. I had killed buffalo and elk, deer and

antelope with some of the men. With others I had worked on

the trail, on the calf round-up, on the beef round-up. We

had been together on occasions which we still remembered

when some bold rider met his death in trying to stop a

stampede, in riding a mean horse, or in the quicksands of

some swollen river which he sought to swim. They all felt I

was their man, their old friend; and even if they had been

hostile to me in the old days, when we were divided by the

sinister bickering and jealousies and hatreds of all

frontier communities, they now firmly believed they had

always been my staunch friends and admirers. They had all

gathered in the town hall, which was draped for a

dance--young children, babies, everybody being present. I

shook hands with them all, and almost each one had some

memory of special association with me he or she wished to

discuss. I only regretted that I could not spend three hours

with them.

Hell-Roaring Bill Jones was supposed to be at Gardiner, Wyoming, and

Roosevelt, arriving there a few days later for a camping trip through

the Yellowstone, asked eagerly for his old friend. Bill Jones was down

in the world. He had had to give up his work as sheriff in Medora

because he began to lose his nerve and would break down and weep like

a child when he was called upon to make an arrest. He was driving a

team in Gardiner outside the Park, and during the days preceding

Roosevelt's arrival took so many drinks while he was telling of his

intimacy with the man who had become President of the United States,

that he had to be carried into the sagebrush before Roosevelt actually

arrived. Roosevelt left word to keep Bill Jones sober against his

return, and when Roosevelt emerged from the Park, they met for the

last time. It was a sad interview, for what was left of Hell-Roaring

Bill Jones was only a sodden, evil-looking shell.

[Illustration: Joe and Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield. Overlooking the

site of the Maltese Cross Ranch (1919).]

[Illustration: Rough Riders Hotel, 1919. Known as the "Metropolitan"

during the Eighties.]

"Bill Jones did not live long after that," said Howard Eaton. "The

last I saw of him was two or three miles from Old Faithful. He said,

'I'm going to the trees.' We went out to look for him, but couldn't

find a trace. This was in March. He wandered way up one of those

ravines and the supposition is that he froze to death. Some fellow

found him up there in June, lying at the edge of a creek. The coyotes

had carried off one of his arms, and they planted him right there. And

that was the end of old Bill Jones."

Years passed, and bitter days came to Roosevelt, but though other

friends failed him, the men of the Bad Lands remained faithful.

In 1912, four of them were delegates to the Progressive

Convention--Sylvane Ferris from North Dakota, where he was president

of a bank; Joe Ferris, George Myers, and Merrifield from Montana. Even

"Dutch Wannigan," living as a hermit in the wilderness forty miles

west of Lake MacDonald, became an ardent Progressive. "I can't afford

to go to Helena," he wrote in answer to an appeal from Merrifield to

attend the State Progressive Convention, "but if you think there'll be

a row, I'll try to make it." Packard and Dantz gave their pens to the

cause.

George Myers was the last of the "cowboy bunch" to see him. They met

in Billings in October, 1918. The town was filled with the crowds who

had come from near and far to see the man who, everybody said, was

sure again to be President of the United States.

"Have you got a room, George?" cried Roosevelt, as they met.

Myers shook his head cheerfully.

"Share mine with me," said Roosevelt, "and we'll talk about old

times."

Three months later to a day, the man who had been Little Missouri's

"four-eyed tenderfoot" was dead.

* * * * *

The Bad Lands are still the Bad Lands, except that the unfenced

prairies are fenced now and on each bit of parched bottom-land a

"nester" has his cabin and is struggling, generally in vain, to dig a

living out of the soil in a region which God never made for farming.

The treacherous Little Missouri is treacherous still; here and there a

burning mine still sends a tenuous wisp toward the blue sky; the

buttes have lost none of their wild magnificence; and dawn and dusk,

casting long shadows across the coulees, reveal the old heart-rending

loveliness.

Medora sleeps through the years and dreams of other days. Schuyler

Lebo, who was shot by the Indians, delivers the mail; "Nitch" Kendley

operates the pump for the water-tank at the railroad station; a

nonogenarian called "Frenchy," who hunted with Roosevelt and has lost

his wits, plays cribbage all day long at the "Rough Riders Hotel."

These three are all that remain of the gay aggregation that made life

a revel at the "depot" and at Bill Williams's saloon. And yet, even in

its desolation, as the cook of the "Rough Riders Hotel" remarked,

"There's something fascinating about the blinkety-blank place. I don't

know why I stay here, but I do."

The ranch-house of the Maltese Cross has been moved to Bismarck, where

it stands, wind-beaten and neglected, in the shadow of the capitol.

The Elkhorn ranch-house is gone, used for lumber, but the great

foundation stones that Bill Sewall and Will Dow laid under it remain,

and the row of cottonwoods that shaded it still stand, without a gap.

Near by are the ruins of the shack which Maunders claimed and

Roosevelt held, in spite of threats. The river flows silently beneath

a grassy bank. There is no lovelier spot in the Bad Lands.

THE END

APPENDIX

ROOSEVELT'S FIRST CONTRACT WITH SYLVANE FERRIS AND A. W. MERRIFIELD.

(A copy of this contract, in Mr. Roosevelt's handwriting, is

in the ranch-ledger, kept, somewhat fitfully, by Mr.

Roosevelt and his foremen. This ledger, which contains also

the minutes of the first meeting of the Little Missouri

River Stockmen's Association, held in Medora on December 19,

1884, is now in the possession of Mr. Joseph A. Ferris, of

Terry, Montana.)

We the undersigned, Theodore Roosevelt, party of the first part, and

William Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, parties of the second part, do

agree and contract as follows:

1. The party of the first part, Theodore Roosevelt, agrees and

contracts with the parties of the second part, William Merrifield and

Sylvanus Ferris, to put in on their ranch on the Little Missouri

River, Dakota, four hundred head of cattle or thereabouts, the cost

not to exceed twelve thousand dollars ($12,000) and the parties of the

second part do agree to take charge of said cattle for the party of

the first part; said cattle to be thus placed and taken charge of for

the term of seven years.

2. At the end of said seven years the equivalent in value of said four

hundred head of cattle, as originally put in, is to be returned to the

party of the first part; provided that the parties of the second part

are to have the privilege of paying off at any time or times prior to

the expiration of said seven years, in sums of not less than one

thousand dollars at any one time, said claim of the party of the first

part to the equivalent in value of the original herd of cattle.

3. Any additional cattle put into the herd by said party of the first

part are to be put in on the same terms as the original herd, and are

to remain in the herd for as much of the seven years mentioned in this

contract as is unexpired at the time they are put in.

4. One half of the increase of value of said herd is to belong to the

party of the first part and one-half to the parties of the second

part.

5. The parties of the second part are to have the power from time to

time to make such sales as they in the exercise of their best judgment

shall deem wisest, provided that no sale shall be made sufficient in

amount to decrease the herd below its original value except by the

consent of all parties in writing.

6. All monies obtained by such sales of cattle from the herd shall be

divided equally between said party of the first part and said parties

of the second part.

7. During the continuance of said contract the parties of the second

part agree not to take charge of nor have interest in any other stock

than that of said party of the first part without his consent in

writing.

8. Said parties of the second part are to keep accurate and complete

accounts in writing of the purchases and sales of stock and of the

expenditures of all monies entrusted to their care, which accounts are

to be submitted to said party of the first part whenever he may desire

it.

9. Any taxes upon said cattle are to be paid half by the party of the

first part, half by the parties of the second part.

10. Said cattle are to be branded with the maltese cross on the left

hip and are to have the cut dewlap, these brands to be the property of

the owner of the cattle; the vent mark to be the letter R under the

maltese cross.

Witness: Signed:

Roger S. KENNEDY Theodore ROOSEVELT

M. HANLEY (_party of the first part_)

William MERRIFIELD

Sylvanus FERRIS

(_parties of the second part_)

_St. Paul, Minn., September 27th, 1883._

ROOSEVELT'S CONTRACT WITH WILLIAM W. SEWALL AND WILMOT S. DOW

LITTLE MISSOURI, DAKOTA

_June 20, 1885_

We the undersigned, Theodore Roosevelt, party of the first part, and

William Sewall and Wilmot S. Dow, parties of the second part, do agree

and contract as follows:

(1) The party of the first part having put eleven hundred head of

cattle, valued at twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) on the

Elkhorn Ranche, on the Little Missouri River, the parties of the

second part do agree to take charge of said cattle for the space of

three years, and at the end of this time agree to return to said party

of the first part the equivalent in value of the original herd

(twenty-five thousand dollars); any increase in value of the herd over

said sum of twenty-five thousand dollars is to belong two-thirds to

said party of the first part and one-third to said parties of the

second part.

(2) From time to time said parties of the second part shall in the

exercise of their best judgment make sales of such cattle as are fit

for market, the moneys obtained by said sales to belong two-thirds to

said party of the first part and one-third to said parties of the

second part; but no sales of cattle shall be made sufficient in amount

to reduce the herd below its original value save by the direction in

writing of the party of the first part.

(3) The parties of the second part are to keep accurate accounts of

expenditures, losses, the calf crop, etc.; said accounts to be always

open to the inspection of the party of the first part.

(4) The parties of the second part are to take good care of the

cattle, and also of the ponies, buildings, etc., belonging to said

party of the first part.

Signed:

Theodore ROOSEVELT

(_party of the first part_)

W. W. SEWALL

W. S. DOW

(_parties of the second part_)

ROOSEVELT'S DAKOTA INVESTMENT

Mr. Roosevelt's accounts were kept by Mr. Frank C. Smith, confidential

clerk in the office of his brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson. The

ledgers reveal the following facts concerning his Dakota investments:

Expended from September, 1884, to July, 1885 $82,500.00

Returns from cattle sales, from September, 1885,

to December, 1891 42,443.32

Estimated value of cattle on the range, December, 1891 16,500.

Loss, not considering the interest on the investment 23,556.68

On March 28, 1892, Roosevelt formed the Elkhorn Stock Company,

incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, with Archibald

D. Russell, R. H. M. Ferguson, and Douglas Robinson, and on December

5, 1892, transferred his cattle holdings to this Company at a

valuation of $16,500. Subsequently he invested a further sum of

$10,200.

Investment, Elkhorn Stock Company $26,700.00

Returns in capital and dividends from January,

1893, to February, 1899 29,964.05

Profit, not considering interest 3,264.05

Loss on two ventures 20,292.63

The computation of Roosevelt's loss in interest on his investment of

$82,500.00 figured at 5 per cent from September 1884, to February,

1899, the author gladly leaves to any class in arithmetic which may

care to grapple with it. It approximates $50,000.

INDEX

Axelby, Mr., 140, 141.

Bad Lands, the, their appearance, 5-7, 18, 23;

the name, 6;

the opening up of, 24, 25;

the lawless element in, 54, 126-30, 136;

horse and cattle thieves in, 139-42;

winter in, 223-28, 236-38;

spring in, 248-50;

styles in, 321, 322;

religion in, 325-28;

law and order enter, 328-30;

obtain organized government, 387;

a hard winter in, 430-39;

to-day, 474.

_Bad Lands Cowboy, The_, 76, 77, 131-33, 329;

burned out, 451.

Bear-hunting, 185-88.

"Ben Butler," 276, 289-91.

Bennett, Hank, 252, 253.

Benton, Thomas Hart, Roosevelt's _Life_ of, 371, 397-99.

Bernstead, 375, 386 _n._

Berry-Boyce Cattle Co., 94.

Big Horn Mountains, hunting in, 168, 175-88.

"Big Jack" and "Little Jack," 141, 142.

Bismarck, Dakota, 73.

Bismarck _Tribune_, on Roosevelt, 341.

Black Jack, 135.

Blaine, James G., nomination of, 88.

Blizzard, a, 431-33.

Boice, Henry, 25.

Bolan, Pierce, 143, 197, 198.

Bronco-busting, 225-27.

Buffalo, hunting, 23, 24, 28-39, 44, 45;

extermination of, 29.

Bullock, Seth, 459.

Buttes, 6, 7, 13, 18, 202, 203.

Carow, Edith, engagement to Roosevelt, 426;

marriage of, 430.

Cattle, trailing, 268-70.

Cattle companies, 242.

Cattle torture, 266, 267.

Chicago _Tribune_, on Roosevelt, 350.

Chimney Butte, trail to, 13;

account of, 15.

Coeur d'Alênes, 419.

County organization, 55, 133-35, 324, 387.

Cowboys, talk of, 100;

their attitude toward Roosevelt, 101, 102;

reading of, 228;

a song of, 280;

diversions of, 281;

character of, 282;

profanity of, 283;

practical jokes of, 283, 284.

Cummins, Mr., 111, 323.

Cummins, Mrs., and Mrs. Roberts, 111, 112;

her views, 259, 260;

Roosevelt dines with, 293, 294;

and Mrs. Ferris, 361, 362;

the last of, 456.

"Custer Trail," 13, 109, 110.

Dantz, Bill, 56;

a singer of songs and a spinner of yarns, 281;

made Superintendent of Education at Medora, 319;

elected superintendent of schools, 390;

the last of, 456, 473.

Day, Chancellor, 289 _n._

Deadwood stage-line, the Marquis's project of, 77, 78, 120-24, 170,

209-14.

"Devil, The," 271-75.

Dickinson, first Fourth of July celebration of, 405-11;

growth of, 452.

Dickinson _Press_, the, helps county organization, 133, 134;

fashion notes in, 321, 322.

Dow, Wilmot, 88, 159, 163;

Roosevelt's contract with, 156, 157, 481;

as a cowhand, 189, 190, 206, 225;

and the vigilantes, 191, 192, 195;

good company, 217;

his andirons, 240;

goes East to get married, 307;

character of, 313, 314;

on a thief hunt, 372-80;

terminates engagement with Roosevelt, 424-28;

the last of, 457.

Dow, Mrs., 313.

Dutch Chris, 386 _n._

"Dutch Wannigan." _See_ Reuter.

Dynamite Jimmie. _See_ McShane.

Eaton, Howard, 8, 13;

and the Marquis de Mores, 60, 61;

his appearance, 110;

calls on Roosevelt, 164, 165;

neighbor of Roosevelt, 315.

Eaton Ranch, 456.

Eatons, the, 25, 109, 110, 260, 263, 456.

Elkhorn, ranch, 202, 240;

life at, 310-17;

to-day, 475.

Elkhorn Stock Co., 458.

Ferguson, R. H. M., 458.

Ferris, Joe, 10, 11;

his career, 14-16;

and the extra saddle horse, 17;

brings down a buck, 24;

on the buffalo hunt, 28-39, 44, 45;

firm for law and order, 55, 56, 328;

becomes storekeeper, 80, 81;

prophesies Presidency for Roosevelt, 258;

removes to Medora, 319;

banker of Bad Lands, 347;

gets married, 360;

in Medora in its desolation, 454;

greeted by Roosevelt in 1900, 465;

delegate to Progressive Convention, 473.

Ferris, Mrs. Joe, 360-64.

Ferris, Sylvane, 12;

his career, 14-16;

becomes partner of Roosevelt, 42-44;

for law and order, 55, 56;

signs contract with Roosevelt, 69, 70, 479, 480;

and the Marquis's cattle, 84-86;

confident of success in cattle raising, 255;

rides Ben Butler, 290, 291;

gets involved in the law, 300-04;

in Medora in its desolation, 454;

marries, 455;

delegate to Progressive Convention, 473.

Finnegan, Redhead, 368-86, 457.

Fisher, John C, and Roosevelt, 102-04;

for county commissioner, 134;

and horse thieves, 143;

and Maunders, 199;

and Medora's Great White Way, 319;

at Medora's first election, 390, 391;

the last of, 456.

Fitzgerald, Mrs., 52.

Fitz James, Count, 59.

Flopping Bill, 195.

Foley, 457.

Frazier, George, 417.

Frenchy, 474.

Gentling the Devil, 271-75.

Goat hunting, 419-24.

Goodall, Johnny, 334, 390.

Gorringe, H. H., 8, 9, 20, 23, 25.

Hainsley, Jake, 85.

Haupt brothers, the, 61, 67-69, 79, 456.

Herrig, Fred, 453.

Hewitt, Abram S., 20.

Hobson, H. H., 394.

Hoffman, Baron von, 210, 450.

Hoffman, Medora von, 59.

Hogue, Jess, 7, 9, 51, 55, 420-23.

Hollenberg, Carl, 258 _n._

Horse-thieves. _See_ Thieves.

Huidekoper, A. D., 25, 110.

Indians, shooting-match with, 183, 184;

trouble between whites and, 351-54, 357, 358;

Roosevelt's view of, 355;

the psychology of, 356.

Jameson, Mr., 146.

Jones, Hell-Roaring Bill, 113-16;

Roosevelt makes friends with, 116;

of the gay life of Medora, 128, 322;

expresses his opinion on the scions of British aristocracy, 261, 262;

and "Deacon" Cummins, 323;

and the Elk Hotel, 360;

watches at the polling-places, 389, 390;

in later years, 454, 455;

the last of, 472, 473.

Jones, Three-Seven Bill, 246, 247, 278.

Kelly, Pat, 446.

Kendley, Nitch, 264, 265, 474.

La Pache, Louis, 195.

Lang, Gregor, 11, 12;

his cabin, 19;

enjoys talks with Roosevelt, 19, 24-28;

how he established himself at Little Missouri, 20-22;

ranching offer made by Roosevelt to, 41;

makes prophecy concerning Roosevelt, 46;

refuses to make friends with Marquis de Mores, 62;

the Marquis braves grudge against, 118;

his ranch, 160;

his love of argument, 263, 264;

dogmatic in his theories, 264;

relations with Roosevelt and the Marquis, 338;

in later years, 456.

Lang, Mrs. Gregor, 160, 161.

Lang, Lincoln, 23, 27, 28, 41;

biscuits made by, 34;

his description of Bill Williams, 50;

refuses Roosevelt's shot-gun, 96;

his description of Bill Jones, 115 _n._;

on grudge of Marquis for Gregor Lang, 118 _n._;

on anecdote concerning Roosevelt and Mrs. Maddox, 150 _n._;

on the round-up, 277 _n._;

in later years, 456.

Langs, the, on the "Three Seven" ranch, 93, 94, 261-63.

Lebo, Norman, 175, 176, 180, 185.

Lebo, Schuyler, 353, 474.

Little Missouri, 7, 8;

society in, 47-57;

proceedings of Marquis de Mores at, 58-65;

begins to flourish, 65, 66;

continues to grow, 70-73;

setback for, 77;

the jail in, 135;

to-day, 474.

Little Missouri Land and Stock Co., the, 20, 61, 77.

Little Missouri Stock Association.

_See_ Stockmen's Association.

Luffsey, Riley, 63, 64, 119.

Macdonald, 214 _n._

Mackenzie, Dan, 390.

MacNab, 49.

Maddox, Mrs., 95, 96, 150, 356.

Maltese Cross, the, 15, 91, 148;

outfit of, 92;

first year of, 255;

callers at, 264, 265;

to-day, 474.

Mandan _Pioneer_, the, 65, 154, 158.

Marlow, Pete, 84, 85.

Matthews, 84-86.

Maunders, Archie, 53, 54.

Maunders, Jake, 7, 9, 12, 49, 54-57;

disliked Roosevelt, 58;

and the Marquis de Mores, 62-65;

cleans out Johnny Nelson, 80, 81;

clings to the Marquis, 126;

and horse and cattle thieves, 142;

marked for hanging, 198;

his discreetness, 199;

visits Sewall in the dugout, 199-201;

threatens to shoot Roosevelt, 207, 208;

a _bona-fide_ "bad man," 320;

in Dickinson, 457;

greets Roosevelt, 466.

McFay, 345.

McGee, Chris, 110, 165.

McGeeney, Pete, 52.

McGeeney, Mrs. Pete, 7, 52, 55, 56.

McShane, Jimmie, 347.

Medicine buttes, 202, 203.

Medora, 8, 48;

founded by Marquis de Mores, 61;

blossoms forth, 77;

life of, dominated by the Marquis, 116-18;

gay life of, 127;

notorious for its iniquity, 128-30;

attempts at reform in, 131-35;

in need of a jail, 135;

mass meeting at, 136, 137;

police force and fire department of, 137, 138;

growth of, 170, 318-20;

possessed deputy marshal, 221;

the coming of law in, 323, 328;

religion at, 325;

first election at, 389-91;

its glory departed, 451, 452, 454;

visited by Roosevelt as nominee for vice-presidency, 466;

Roosevelt's last visit to, 469;

to-day, 474.

Merrifield, A. W., 12;

his career, 14-16;

becomes partner of Roosevelt, 42-44;

tries to establish law in Little Missouri, 56;

signs contract with Roosevelt, 69, 70, 479, 480;

and the Marquis's cattle, 84-86;

tries out Roosevelt on the Sully Trail, 103, 104;

on hunting trip, 175-88;

confident of success in cattle raising, 255;

carries news of Mrs. Ferris's adherence to cowboys, 361, 362;

marries, 447;

delegate to Progressive Convention, 473.

Mexico, flurry over, 413, 414.

Miles City, 392-95.

Mingusville, 151-54, 242-47.

Montana Live Stock Association, 219.

Montana Stockgrowers' Association, 392-95, 444-46.

Mores, Marquis de, 25;

arrival at Little Missouri, 58-60;

his views, 60, 61;

and the Northern Pacific Refrigerator Car Co., 61, 79;

founds Medora, 61;

tries to win supporters, 62;

and Maunders, 62-65;

and Riley Luffsey, 63, 64, 119;

in business, 67-69;

extends his business, 70-72;

and _The Bad Lands Cowboy_, 76;

and the Deadwood stage, 77, 78, 120-24, 170, 209-14;

loss of his sheep, 78;

his cabbage project, 79, 80;

removes his cattle from the Roosevelt bottom-land, 84-86;

description of, 116;

dominates life of Medora, 117;

his grudge against Gregor Lang, 118;

lacked judgment, 119;

and Roosevelt, 124;

on the side of violence, 125, 130;

tries to join Stuart's vigilantes, 147;

claims Roosevelt's range, 165, 191;

member of stockmen's association, 234;

his idea of the Western climate, 236;

and his abattoir, 331-34: and kaoline, 334;

without friends in Medora, 334;

liked the Bad Lands, 335;

his genealogy, 335, 336;

relations with Roosevelt, 336-42, 345-49;

indicted for murder, 342, 343;

in jail, 344;

his trial, 345, 346;

goes to France, 359;

new schemes of, 447-50;

leaves for India, 450;

article in Sioux Falls Press on, 450;

later career and death of, 460-63.

Mores, Marquise de, 462, 463.

Morrill, Joe, 143;

deputy marshal in Medora, 221, 222;

stock inspector, 324;

sheriff, 390;

vs. George Myers, 442-44;

dismissed from inspectorship, 444, 445;

later encounters with Roosevelt, 457.

Mountain sheep, hunting, 228-32.

Mugwumps, the, 88, 172, 208.

Myers, George, cowpuncher, 93;

his cookery, 106, 107, 232;

invests in cattle, 255;

accused of cattle stealing, 442-44;

in later years, 467, 473.

Nelson, Johnny, 7, 80, 81.

Nesters, 194-96.

Newburyport Herald, quoted, 384.

Nolan, Mrs., 242, 245-47.

Northern Pacific Refrigerator Car Co., 61, 79, 117.

Nugent, Lord, 25.

O'Donald, Frank, 63, 64, 66, 67.

O'Hara, Johnny, 329.

Olmstead, Mrs., 96 _n._

Osterhaut, 278, 324.

Packard, A. T., arrival in Little Missouri, 73;

and the cowboy, 73-75;

starts a newspaper, 76;

and the Deadwood stage-line, 123, 124, 170, 209-14;

a civilizing influence, 130, 131;

endeavors to introduce law and order in the Bad Lands, 131-35;

issues call for mass meeting, 136;

chief of police at Medora, 137-39;

announces demise of horse-thieves, 193, 194;

enthusiastic over the Bad Lands, 254;

his account of Roosevelt and the Devil, 271-75;

tries again for county organization, 324, 387;

firm for order and decency, 328, 329;

realizes bigness of Roosevelt, 411;

excoriates Morrill, 443;

supports Progressive cause, 473.

Paddock, Jerry, 51, 52, 62.

Paddock, Mrs., 52.

Pender, Sir John, 20-22, 25, 455.

Prairie fires, 351, 357, 358.

Presidential Convention, the, 1884, 88.

Putnam, George Haven, 359.

Ranges, cattle, 91, 92;

claims on, 219;

need of law of, 220.

Religion, in the Bad Lands, 325-28.

Reuter, John, 16;

and Riley Luffsey, 63, 64;

returns to old occupations, 169;

one of Roosevelt's scow-hands, 338, 339;

and the Marquis, 347;

becomes Progressive, 473.

Roberts, Lloyd, 456.

Roberts, Margaret, in, 112, 258-60, 456.

Robins, Captain, 160, 189;

his bout with Sewall, 161-64.

Robinson, Douglas, 458.

Roderick, Mrs., 52.

Roosevelt, Anna, 104-06.

Roosevelt, James, 40, 70.

Roosevelt, Theodore, arrives in Little Missouri, 3-5;

his reason for going to the Bad Lands, 8;

starts on buffalo hunt, 12-14;

gets an extra saddle horse, 16, 17;

enjoys talks with Gregor Lang, 19, 24-28;

hunting buffalo, 28-39;

desirous of buying a large farm, 39;

interested in ranching projects, 40, 41;

secures two partners, 42, 43;

gives check for fourteen thousand dollars without receipt, 43;

kills his buffalo, 44-46;

relished things blood-curdling, 47;

signs contract with Sylvane and Merrifield, 69, 70, 479, 480;

his cattle venture is disapproved of by family, 70;

enters upon third term in New York Legislature, 81, 82;

death of mother and wife, 82;

of public activities of, 82, 83, 87, 88;

refuses to join Mugwumps, 88, 172, 208;

description of, 89;

describes Presidential Convention, 90, 91;

makes new contract, 94;

gets buckskin suit, 95, 96;

shoots antelope, 97;

enters into life of ranchman, 97, 98;

on the round-up, 99, 275-307, 400-03;

attitude of cowboys toward, 101, 102;

tried out on the Sully Trail, 103, 104;

his life as cowboy, 104, 105;

on solitary hunting trip, 105, 106;

tries cooking, 107;

his reading and writing, 108, 109;

a good mixer, 112;

and Bill Jones, 115, 116;

and the Marquis, 124;

tries to join Stuart's vigilantes, 146;

determines upon spot for home-ranch, 149;

and Mrs. Maddox, 150;

adventures at Mingusville, 150-54, 244-47;

editorial on, in the Mandan _Pioneer_, 154;

on the Bad Lands, in the New York _Tribune_, 156;

contract with Sewall and Dow, 156, 157, 481;

interviewed by the _Pioneer_, 158, 159;

on the ranch, 159-65;

prepares for hunting trip, 168, 169, 173, 174;

demanded as first Congressional representative of Dakota, 171;

his political standing in the East, 172;

always wanted to make the world better, 174, 219;

his hunting trip in the Big Horn Mountains, 175-88;

shoots a grizzly, 185-88;

returns to Elkhorn, 202-05;

threatened by Maunders, 207, 208;

makes campaign speeches in New York, 208;

night ride of, 216, 217;

depression of, 217-19;

starts a reform, 219, 222;

in winter on the ranch, 223-28;

hunts mountain sheep, 228-32;

forms stockmen's association, 231-34.

Returns to New York and works on "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," 235,

239;

his derby hat, 239;

illness of, 240, 241;

swims the Little Missouri, 249-52;

and his ranching companions, 252, 253;

a capable ranchman, 255;

intolerant of dishonesty and ineffectiveness, 256, 257;

how esteemed by the ranchmen, 257, 258;

and the buttermilk, 259;

and the neighbors, 260-64;

tries cooking again, 265;

trailing cattle, 268-70;

his horsemanship, 270, 271;

gentles the Devil, 271-75;

on the round-up, 275-307;

breaks bronco, 287-89;

tries Ben Butler, 289-91;

breaks point of shoulder, 290, 291, 293;

attends dinner at Mrs. Cummins's, 293, 294;

in the stampede, 295-97;

rescues Englishman with lasso, 297, 298;

his enjoyment of the cowboy life, 305, 306;

interviewed at St. Paul, 308, 309;

his life at Elkhorn, 310-12, 316, 317;

adventure with Wadsworth's dog, 315, 316;

relations with the Marquis, 336-42, 345-49;

did not intend to enter Dakota politics, 350, 351;

adventure with Indians, 353, 354;

his attitude toward the Indians, 355, 356;

breaks his arm, 359;

writes articles for press, 359;

and Mrs. Ferris, 363, 364;

anger at theft of boat, 365-71;

undertakes _Life_ of T. H. Benton, 371;

on a thief hunt, 372-86;

representative of stockmen's association, 392-95;

his cattle prospects, 395-97;

continues his _Life_ of Benton, 397-99;

his enjoyable summer of 1886, 401, 402;

his influence over the cowboys, 403;

Fourth of July oration, 407-11;

restlessness of, 412;

feelings at prospect of war with Mexico, 413-15;

what he got from the Western life, 416;

his human sympathy, 417;

holds up train, 418, 419;

goes goat hunting with John Willis, 419-24;

terminates engagement with Sewall and Dow, 424-28;

becomes engaged to Edith Carow, 426;

nominated for Mayor of New York City, 429;

marriage, 430;

his losses, 440, 441;

assumes leadership in stockmen's association, 446;

later visits to Bad Lands, 453, 454, 458;

books of, 453, 454;

member of Civil Service Commission, 454;

later encounters with Morrill, 457, 458;

meets Seth Bullock, 459;

member of Civil Service Commission, Police Commissioner, and

Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 463;

in Spanish War, 463, 464;

Governor of New York, 464;

goes to Dakota as nominee for vice-presidency, 465-68;

becomes President, 468;

entertains cowboys at White House, 468, 469;

visits Medora for last time, 469-72;

death, 473;

Dakota investment, 482.

Rough Riders, the, 464.

Round-up, the, 99, 220, 275-307, 403-03.

Rowe, 313, 314.

Russell, Archibald D., 458.

St. Paul _Pioneer Press_, its version of the Roosevelt-Mores bargain,

341.

Sewall, Bill, 87;

Roosevelt's contract with, 156, 157, 481;

his opinion of the West as a cattle-raising country, 159, 160, 206,

238, 240, 254, 306, 307, 396;

his bout with Captain Robins, 162-64;

his description of the Bad Lands, 167, 168, 190;

begs off on hunting trip, 175;

as a cowhand, 189, 190, 206, 225;

and the vigilantes, 191, 192, 195;

visited by Maunders in the dugout, 199-201;

had good knowledge of the ways of cattle, 206, 207;

consoles Roosevelt, 217-19;

refuses to ride broncos, 225-27;

on the cold of the Bad Lands, 236, 238;

describes "cattle torture," 266, 267;

superintends the house at Elkhorn, 312;

level-headed, 313;

helps clean up country of thieves, 324;

lectures Roosevelt, 359;

on a thief hunt, 372-80;

terminates engagement with Roosevelt, 424-28;

in later years, 457.

Sewall, Mrs., 310-13.

Simpson, John, 25, 385.

Sioux Falls _Press_, on Roosevelt, 429.

Smith, "Vic," 9 _n._

Snyder, Jack, 436.

Stage-line, the Deadwood, 77, 78, 120-24, 170, 209-14, 334.

Stampede, 295-97.

Starr, Western, 303, 304, 385.

Stickney, Dr., 291-93, 325, 382, 383.

Stockmen's association, Roosevelt makes move to form, 222, 223;

formation of, 232-34;

activity of, 323, 324;

its action on prairie fires, 358;

Roosevelt representative of, 390.

Stranglers, the, 192-94.

Stuart, Granville, 144-46;

his vigilantes, 146, 147, 157-59, 192-94.

Styles in the Bad Lands, 321, 322.

Sully Trail, the, 102-04.

"Tepee Bottom," 111.

Thieves, horse and cattle, 139-47;

rounding up of, 157-59, 192-94.

"Three Seven," the, 94.

"Tolu Tonic," 22.

Trimble, Richard, 40.

Truscott, J. L., 390.

Valentine scrip, 61.

Vallombrosa, Antoine de. _See_ Mores.

Van Brunt, 110.

Van Driesche, 334, 390.

Van Zander, 128, 322, 363, 457.

"V-Eye," 110.

Vigilantes, Stuart's, 146, 147, 157-59, 192-94;

other, 192, 194-96.

Vine, Captain, 10, 21.

Vine, Darius, 21, 53, 54.

Vine, Frank, 10, 22-24, 56, 61;

his joke on Packard, 73-75.

Vines, the, 456.

Wadsworth dog, the, 315, 316.

Wadsworth family, 15, 25.

Walker, J. B., 360.

Wannigan. See Reuter.

Watterson, Walter, 275.

Wharfenberger, 375.

Wibaux, Pierre, 242.

Williams, Bill, 7, 9;

description of, 50, 51;

thief, 54, 81;

starts freight-line, 120;

and stage-line, 122;

in the gay life of Medora, 128;

hissaloon, 319, 320;

a _bona-fide_ "bad man," 320;

and the preacher, 325 _n._;

the last of his saloon, 454.

Willis, John, 419-24. 454, 469.

Wister, Owen, _The Virginian_, 214 _n._

Young, Farmer, 315.

End of Project Gutenberg's Roosevelt in the Bad Lands, by Hermann Hagedorn