IN COWBOY LAND
Though I had previously made a trip into the then Territory of Dakota,
beyond the Red River, it was not until 1883 that I went to the Little
Missouri, and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the Chimney Butte
and the Elkhorn.
It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, the West of
Owen Wister's stories and Frederic Remington's drawings, the West of
the Indian and the buffalo-hunter, the soldier and the cow-puncher. That
land of the West has gone now, "gone, gone with lost Atlantis," gone to
the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories. It was a land of vast
silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where the wild game
stared at the passing horseman. It was a land of scattered ranches, of
herds of long-horned cattle, and of reckless riders who unmoved looked
in the eyes of life or of death. In that land we led a free and hardy
life, with horse and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer
sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the heat; and we knew
the freezing misery of riding night guard round the cattle in the late
fall round-up. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our
eyes each night before we fell asleep; and in the winter we rode through
blinding blizzards, when the driven snow-dust burned our faces. There
were monotonous days, as we guided the trail cattle or the beef herds,
hour after hour, at the slowest of walks; and minutes or hours teeming
with excitement as we stopped stampedes or swam the herds across rivers
treacherous with quicksands or brimmed with running ice. We knew toil
and hardship and hunger and thirst; and we saw men die violent deaths
as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with
one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours
was the glory of work and the joy of living.
It was right and necessary that this life should pass, for the safety of
our country lies in its being made the country of the small home-maker.
The great unfenced ranches, in the days of "free grass," necessarily
represented a temporary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks
of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners, were
the first enemies of the cattlemen; and owing to the way they ate out
the grass and destroyed all other vegetation, these roving sheep
bands represented little of permanent good to the country. But the
homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own
farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these represented from
the National standpoint the most desirable of all possible users of,
and dwellers on, the soil. Their advent meant the breaking up of the big
ranches; and the change was a National gain, although to some of us an
individual loss.
I first reached the Little Missouri on a Northern Pacific train about
three in the morning of a cool September day in 1883. Aside from the
station, the only building was a ramshackle structure called the Pyramid
Park Hotel. I dragged my duffle-bag thither, and hammered at the door
until the frowsy proprietor appeared, muttering oaths. He ushered me
upstairs, where I was given one of the fourteen beds in the room which
by itself constituted the entire upper floor. Next day I walked over
to the abandoned army post, and, after some hours among the gray log
shacks, a ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me
out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte ranch, where he was living with his
brother and their partner.
The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for the horses
near by, and a chicken-house jabbed against the rear of the ranch house.
Inside there was only one room, with a table, three or four chairs, a
cooking-stove, and three bunks. The owners were Sylvane and Joe Ferris
and William J. Merrifield. Later all three of them held my commissions
while I was President. Merrifield was Marshal of Montana, and as
Presidential elector cast the vote of that State for me in 1904; Sylvane
Ferris was Land Officer in North Dakota, and Joe Ferris Postmaster at
Medora. There was a fourth man, George Meyer, who also worked for me
later. That evening we all played old sledge round the table, and at one
period the game was interrupted by a frightful squawking outside which
told us that a bobcat had made a raid on the chicken-house.
After a buffalo hunt with my original friend, Joe Ferris, I entered into
partnership with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, and we started a cow
ranch, with the maltese cross brand--always known as "maltee cross," by
the way, as the general impression along the Little Missouri was that
"maltese" must be a plural. Twenty-nine years later my four friends of
that night were delegates to the First Progressive National Convention
at Chicago. They were among my most constant companions for the few
years next succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the game
of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them
and many others like them on the round-up; and I brought out from
Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two
backwoods friends Sewall and Dow. My brands for the lower ranch were the
elkhorn and triangle.
I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous
young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine,
healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the
value of instant decision--in short, the virtues that ought to come
from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After the
first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, low ranch house of
hewn logs, with a veranda, and with, in addition to the other rooms, a
bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room with a big fire-place. I got out
a rocking-chair--I am very fond of rocking-chairs--and enough books to
fill two or three shelves, and a rubber bathtub so that I could get
a bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived more
comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We
always kept the house clean--using the word in a rather large sense.
There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the
bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay
of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer,
sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days,
buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned
tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their
wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made
from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the
forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most ranchmen at
that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with ten thousand
head of cattle where there was not a cow that could be milked. We made
up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we started
to domesticate some of the cows. Our first effort was not successful,
chiefly because we did not devote the needed time and patience to the
matter. And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on
horseback, then rope her, throw her, and turn her upside down to milk
her, while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of results.
Gradually we accumulated tame cows, and, after we had thinned out the
bobcats and coyotes, more chickens.
The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad,
shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there
ran only a trickle of water, while in times of freshet it was filled
brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor
for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down
in long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer cliff walls,
for the Bad Lands, a chaos of peaks, plateaus, and ridges, rose abruptly
from the edges of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows.
In front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cottonwood trees with
gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of
air. From these trees came the far-away, melancholy cooing of mourning
doves, and little owls perched in them and called tremulously at night.
In the long summer afternoons we would sometimes sit on the piazza, when
there was no work to be done, for an hour or two at a time, watching the
cattle on the sand-bars, and the sharply channeled and strangely carved
amphitheater of cliffs across the bottom opposite; while the vultures
wheeled overhead, their black shadows gliding across the glaring white
of the dry river-bed. Sometimes from the ranch we saw deer, and once
when we needed meat I shot one across the river as I stood on the
piazza. In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was
white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a
bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes traveled up and
down it as if it had been a highway passing in front of the ranch house.
Often in the late fall or early winter, after a hard day's hunting, or
when returning from one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the
ranch until hours after sunset; and after the weary tramping in the
cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the fire-lit
windows across the snowy wastes.
The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall and Dow, who, like
most men from the Maine woods, were mighty with the ax. I could chop
fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third the work they
could. One day when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees, to begin
our building operations, I heard some one ask Dow what the total cut had
been, and Dow not realizing that I was within hearing, answered: "Well,
Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered
down seventeen." Those who have seen the stump of a tree which has
been gnawed down by a beaver will understand the exact force of the
comparison.
In those days on a cow ranch the men were apt to be away on the various
round-ups at least half the time. It was interesting and exciting work,
and except for the lack of sleep on the spring and summer round-ups
it was not exhausting work; compared to lumbering or mining or
blacksmithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor. The ponies
were of course grass-fed and unshod. Each man had his own string of
nine or ten. One pony would be used for the morning work, one for the
afternoon, and neither would again be used for the next three days. A
separate pony was kept for night riding.
The spring and early summer round-ups were especially for the branding
of calves. There was much hard work and some risk on a round-up, but
also much fun. The meeting-place was appointed weeks beforehand, and all
the ranchmen of the territory to be covered by the round-up sent their
representatives. There were no fences in the West that I knew, and their
place was taken by the cowboy and the branding-iron. The cattle wandered
free. Each calf was branded with the brand of the cow it was following.
Sometimes in winter there was what we called line riding; that is, camps
were established and the line riders traveled a definite beat across the
desolate wastes of snow, to and fro from one camp to another, to prevent
the cattle from drifting. But as a rule nothing was done to keep the
cattle in any one place. In the spring there was a general round-up in
each locality. Each outfit took part in its own round-up, and all the
outfits of a given region combined to send representatives to the two or
three round-ups that covered the neighborhoods near by into which their
cattle might drift. For example, our Little Missouri round-up generally
worked down the river from a distance of some fifty or sixty miles above
my ranch toward the Kildeer Mountains, about the same distance below.
In addition we would usually send representatives to the Yellowstone
round-up, and to the round-up along the upper Little Missouri; and,
moreover, if we heard that cattle had drifted, perhaps toward the Indian
reservation southeast of us, we would send a wagon and rider after them.
At the meeting-point, which might be in the valley of a half-dry stream,
or in some broad bottom of the river itself, or perchance by a couple of
ponds under some queerly shaped butte that was a landmark for the region
round about, we would all gather on the appointed day. The chuck-wagons,
containing the bedding and food, each drawn by four horses and driven
by the teamster cook, would come jolting and rattling over the
uneven sward. Accompanying each wagon were eight or ten riders, the
cow-punchers, while their horses, a band of a hundred or so, were driven
by the two herders, one of whom was known as the day wrangler and one
as the night wrangler. The men were lean, sinewy fellows, accustomed
to riding half-broken horses at any speed over any country by day or by
night. They wore flannel shirts, with loose handkerchiefs knotted round
their necks, broad hats, high-heeled boots with jingling spurs, and
sometimes leather shaps, although often they merely had their trousers
tucked into the tops of their high boots. There was a good deal of rough
horse-play, and, as with any other gathering of men or boys of high
animal spirits, the horse-play sometimes became very rough indeed; and
as the men usually carried revolvers, and as there were occasionally one
or two noted gun-fighters among them, there was now and then a shooting
affray. A man who was a coward or who shirked his work had a bad time,
of course; a man could not afford to let himself be bullied or treated
as a butt; and, on the other hand, if he was "looking for a fight," he
was certain to find it. But my own experience was that if a man did not
talk until his associates knew him well and liked him, and if he did
his work, he never had any difficulty in getting on. In my own round-up
district I speedily grew to be friends with most of the men. When I went
among strangers I always had to spend twenty-four hours in living
down the fact that I wore spectacles, remaining as long as I could
judiciously deaf to any side remarks about "four eyes," unless it became
evident that my being quiet was misconstrued and that it was better to
bring matters to a head at once.
If, for instance, I was sent off to represent the Little Missouri brands
on some neighboring round-up, such as the Yellowstone, I usually showed
that kind of diplomacy which consists in not uttering one word that
can be avoided. I would probably have a couple of days' solitary ride,
mounted on one horse and driving eight or ten others before me, one of
them carrying my bedding. Loose horses drive best at a trot, or canter,
and if a man is traveling alone in this fashion it is a good thing to
have them reach the camp ground sufficiently late to make them desire
to feed and sleep where they are until morning. In consequence I never
spent more than two days on the journey from whatever the point was at
which I left the Little Missouri, sleeping the one night for as limited
a number of hours as possible.
As soon as I reached the meeting-place I would find out the wagon
to which I was assigned. Riding to it, I turned my horses into the
saddle-band and reported to the wagon boss, or, in his absence, to the
cook--always a privileged character, who was allowed and expected to
order men around. He would usually grumble savagely and profanely about
my having been put with his wagon, but this was merely conventional on
his part; and if I sat down and said nothing he would probably soon ask
me if I wanted anything to eat, to which the correct answer was that I
was not hungry and would wait until meal-time. The bedding rolls of
the riders would be strewn round the grass, and I would put mine down a
little outside the ring, where I would not be in any one's way, with my
six or eight branding-irons beside it. The men would ride in, laughing
and talking with one another, and perhaps nodding to me. One of their
number, usually the wagon foreman, might put some question to me as to
what brands I represented, but no other word would be addressed to me,
nor would I be expected to volunteer any conversation. Supper would
consist of bacon, Dutch oven bread, and possibly beef; once I won
the good graces of my companions at the outset by appearing with two
antelope which I had shot. After supper I would roll up in my bedding as
soon as possible, and the others would follow suit at their pleasure.
At three in the morning or thereabouts, at a yell from the cook, all
hands would turn hurriedly out. Dressing was a simple affair. Then each
man rolled and corded his bedding--if he did not, the cook would leave
it behind and he would go without any for the rest of the trip--and came
to the fire, where he picked out a tin cup, tin plate, and knife and
fork, helped himself to coffee and to whatever food there was, and ate
it standing or squatting as best suited him. Dawn was probably breaking
by this time, and the trampling of unshod hoofs showed that the night
wrangler was bringing in the pony herd. Two of the men would then run
ropes from the wagon at right angles to one another, and into this as
a corral the horses would be driven. Each man might rope one of his own
horses, or more often point it out to the most skillful roper of the
outfit, who would rope it for him--for if the man was an unskillful
roper and roped the wrong horse or roped the horse in the wrong place
there was a chance of the whole herd stampeding. Each man then saddled
and bridled his horse. This was usually followed by some resolute
bucking on the part of two or three of the horses, especially in
the early days of each round-up. The bucking was always a source of
amusement to all the men whose horses did not buck, and these fortunate
ones would gather round giving ironical advice, and especially adjuring
the rider not to "go to leather"--that is, not to steady himself in the
saddle by catching hold of the saddle-horn.
As soon as the men had mounted, the whole outfit started on the long
circle, the morning circle. Usually the ranch foreman who bossed a given
wagon was put in charge of the men of one group by the round-up foreman;
he might keep his men together until they had gone some ten or fifteen
miles from camp, and then drop them in couples at different points. Each
couple made its way toward the wagon, gathering all the cattle it could
find. The morning's ride might last six or eight hours, and it was still
longer before some of the men got in. Singly and in twos and threes they
appeared from every quarter of the horizon, the dust rising from the
hoofs of the steers and bulls, the cows and calves, they had collected.
Two or three of the men were left to take care of the herd while the
others changed horses, ate a hasty dinner, and then came out to the
afternoon work. This consisted of each man in succession being sent into
the herd, usually with a companion, to cut out the cows of his brand or
brands which were followed by unbranded calves, and also to cut out any
mavericks or unbranded yearlings. We worked each animal gently out to
the edge of the herd, and then with a sudden dash took it off at a run.
It was always desperately anxious to break back and rejoin the herd.
There was much breakneck galloping and twisting and turning before its
desire was thwarted and it was driven to join the rest of the cut--that
is, the other animals which had been cut out, and which were being held
by one or two other men. Cattle hate being alone, and it was no easy
matter to hold the first one or two that were cut out; but soon they
got a little herd of their own, and then they were contented. When
the cutting out had all been done, the calves were branded, and all
misadventures of the "calf wrestlers," the men who seized, threw, and
held each calf when roped by the mounted roper, were hailed with yelling
laughter. Then the animals which for one reason or another it was
desired to drive along with the round-up were put into one herd and left
in charge of a couple of night guards, and the rest of us would loaf
back to the wagon for supper and bed.
By this time I would have been accepted as one of the rest of the
outfit, and all strangeness would have passed off, the attitude of my
fellow cow-punchers being one of friendly forgiveness even toward my
spectacles. Night guards for the cattle herd were then assigned by the
captain of the wagon, or perhaps by the round-up foreman, according to
the needs of the case, the guards standing for two hours at a time
from eight in the evening till four in the morning. The first and last
watches were preferable, because sleep was not broken as in both of
the other two. If things went well, the cattle would soon bed down and
nothing further would occur until morning, when there was a repetition
of the work, the wagon moving each day eight or ten miles to some
appointed camping-place.
Each man would picket his night horse near the wagon, usually choosing
the quietest animal in his string for that purpose, because to saddle
and mount a "mean" horse at night is not pleasant. When utterly
tired, it was hard to have to get up for one's trick at night herd.
Nevertheless, on ordinary nights the two hours round the cattle in the
still darkness were pleasant. The loneliness, under the vast empty sky,
and the silence, in which the breathing of the cattle sounded loud, and
the alert readiness to meet any emergency which might suddenly arise
out of the formless night, all combined to give one a sense of subdued
interest. Then, one soon got to know the cattle of marked individuality,
the ones that led the others into mischief; and one also grew to
recognize the traits they all possessed in common, and the impulses
which, for instance, made a whole herd get up towards midnight, each
beast turning round and then lying down again. But by the end of the
watch each rider had studied the cattle until it grew monotonous, and
heartily welcomed his relief guard. A newcomer, of course, had any
amount to learn, and sometimes the simplest things were those which
brought him to grief.
One night early in my career I failed satisfactorily to identify the
direction in which I was to go in order to reach the night herd. It was
a pitch-dark night. I managed to get started wrong, and I never found
either the herd or the wagon again until sunrise, when I was greeted
with withering scorn by the injured cow-puncher, who had been obliged to
stand double guard because I failed to relieve him.
There were other misadventures that I met with where the excuse was
greater. The punchers on night guard usually rode round the cattle in
reverse directions; calling and singing to them if the beasts seemed
restless, to keep them quiet. On rare occasions something happened that
made the cattle stampede, and then the duty of the riders was to keep
with them as long as possible and try gradually to get control of them.
One night there was a heavy storm, and all of us who were at the wagons
were obliged to turn out hastily to help the night herders. After a
while there was a terrific peal of thunder, the lightning struck right
by the herd, and away all the beasts went, heads and horns and tails in
the air. For a minute or two I could make out nothing except the dark
forms of the beasts running on every side of me, and I should have been
very sorry if my horse had stumbled, for those behind would have trodden
me down. Then the herd split, part going to one side, while the other
part seemingly kept straight ahead, and I galloped as hard as ever
beside them. I was trying to reach the point--the leading animals--in
order to turn them, when suddenly there was a tremendous splashing in
front. I could dimly make out that the cattle immediately ahead and to
one side of me were disappearing, and the next moment the horse and I
went off a cut bank into the Little Missouri. I bent away back in the
saddle, and though the horse almost went down he just recovered himself,
and, plunging and struggling through water and quicksand, we made the
other side. Here I discovered that there was another cowboy with
the same part of the herd that I was with; but almost immediately we
separated. I galloped hard through a bottom covered with big cottonwood
trees, and stopped the part of the herd that I was with, but very soon
they broke on me again, and repeated this twice. Finally toward morning
the few I had left came to a halt.
It had been raining hard for some time. I got off my horse and leaned
against a tree, but before long the infernal cattle started on again,
and I had to ride after them. Dawn came soon after this, and I was
able to make out where I was and head the cattle back, collecting other
little bunches as I went. After a while I came on a cowboy on foot
carrying his saddle on his head. He was my companion of the previous
night. His horse had gone full speed into a tree and killed itself, the
man, however, not being hurt. I could not help him, as I had all I could
do to handle the cattle. When I got them to the wagon, most of the other
men had already come in and the riders were just starting on the long
circle. One of the men changed my horse for me while I ate a hasty
breakfast, and then we were off for the day's work.
As only about half of the night herd had been brought back, the circle
riding was particularly heavy, and it was ten hours before we were back
at the wagon. We then changed horses again and worked the whole herd
until after sunset, finishing just as it grew too dark to do anything
more. By this time I had been nearly forty hours in the saddle, changing
horses five times, and my clothes had thoroughly dried on me, and I fell
asleep as soon as I touched the bedding. Fortunately some men who had
gotten in late in the morning had had their sleep during the daytime, so
that the rest of us escaped night guard and were not called until four
next morning. Nobody ever gets enough sleep on a round-up.
The above was the longest number of consecutive hours I ever had to be
in the saddle. But, as I have said, I changed horses five times, and it
is a great lightening of labor for a rider to have a fresh horse. Once
when with Sylvane Ferris I spent about sixteen hours on one horse,
riding seventy or eighty miles. The round-up had reached a place called
the ox-bow of the Little Missouri, and we had to ride there, do some
work around the cattle, and ride back.
Another time I was twenty-four hours on horseback in company with
Merrifield without changing horses. On this occasion we did not travel
fast. We had been coming back with the wagon from a hunting trip in
the Big Horn Mountains. The team was fagged out, and we were tired of
walking at a snail's pace beside it. When we reached country that the
driver thoroughly knew, we thought it safe to leave him, and we loped in
one night across a distance which it took the wagon the three following
days to cover. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the ride was
delightful. All day long we had plodded at a walk, weary and hot. At
supper time we had rested two or three hours, and the tough little
riding horses seemed as fresh as ever. It was in September. As we rode
out of the circle of the firelight, the air was cool in our faces.
Under the bright moonlight, and then under the starlight, we loped
and cantered mile after mile over the high prairie. We passed bands of
antelope and herds of long-horn Texas cattle, and at last, just as the
first red beams of the sun flamed over the bluffs in front of us, we
rode down into the valley of the Little Missouri, where our ranch house
stood.
I never became a good roper, nor more than an average rider, according
to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many
bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents,
and of these I had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another
occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a
doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my
work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed
of itself. When I had the opportunity I broke my own horses, doing it
gently and gradually and spending much time over it, and choosing the
horses that seemed gentle to begin with. With these horses I never had
any difficulty. But frequently there was neither time nor opportunity
to handle our mounts so elaborately. We might get a band of horses, each
having been bridled and saddled two or three times, but none of them
having been broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and
saddling. Then each of us in succession would choose a horse (for his
string), I as owner of the ranch being given the first choice on each
round, so to speak. The first time I was ever on a round-up Sylvane
Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and I each chose his string in this fashion.
Three or four of the animals I got were not easy to ride. The effort
both to ride them and to look as if I enjoyed doing so, on some cool
morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered round "to see
whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off," doubtless was of
benefit to me, but lacked much of being enjoyable. The time I smashed
my rib I was bucked off on a stone. The time I hurt the point of my
shoulder I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went
over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to go anywhere;
so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on
its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all
four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground. When they released
the ropes it lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started; so
Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never
went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my
discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked,
"Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle
horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's
all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me
out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged Sylvane
from under him the first thing the rescued Sylvane did was to execute
a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous Ben. We could do nothing
with him that day; subsequently we got him so that we could ride him;
but he never became a nice saddle-horse.
As with all other forms of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary
power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are
disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders
and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their
own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the
circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush
and refuse to come out; or when it was getting late we would pass some
bad lands that would probably not contain cattle, but might; or a steer
would turn fighting mad, or a calf grow tired and want to lie down.
If in such a case the man steadily persists in doing the unattractive
thing, and after two hours of exasperation and harassment does finally
get the cow out, and keep her out, of the bulberry bushes, and drives
her to the wagon, or finds some animals that have been passed by in the
fourth or fifth patch of bad lands he hunts through, or gets the calf
up on his saddle and takes it in anyhow, the foreman soon grows to treat
him as having his uses and as being an asset of worth in the round-up,
even though neither a fancy roper nor a fancy rider.
When at the Progressive Convention last August, I met George Meyer for
the first time in many years, and he recalled to me an incident on one
round-up where we happened to be thrown together while driving some cows
and calves to camp. When the camp was only just across the river, two of
the calves positively refused to go any further. He took one of them
in his arms, and after some hazardous maneuvering managed to get on
his horse, in spite of the objections of the latter, and rode into the
river. My calf was too big for such treatment, so in despair I roped
it, intending to drag it over. However, as soon as I roped it, the calf
started bouncing and bleating, and, owing to some lack of dexterity on
my part, suddenly swung round the rear of the horse, bringing the rope
under his tail. Down went the tail tight, and the horse "went into
figures," as the cow-puncher phrase of that day was. There was a cut
bank about four feet high on the hither side of the river, and over this
the horse bucked. We went into the water with a splash. With a "pluck"
the calf followed, described a parabola in the air, and landed beside
us. Fortunately, this took the rope out from under the horse's tail,
but left him thoroughly frightened. He could not do much bucking in the
stream, for there were one or two places where we had to swim, and the
shallows were either sandy or muddy; but across we went, at speed, and
the calf made a wake like Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.
On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geography books of my
youth prairie fires were always portrayed as taking place in long grass,
and all living things ran before them. On the Northern cattle plains the
grass was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or beast.
The fires were nothing like the forest fires in the Northern woods. But
they destroyed large quantities of feed, and we had to stop them where
possible. The process we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it
in two lengthwise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the
rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, and that of
the other to the hind leg. One of the men would spur his horse over or
through the line of fire, and the two would then ride forward, dragging
the steer bloody side downward along the line of flame, men following
on foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets, to beat out any flickering
blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire and the
twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened
the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding
in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very
exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips
and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task.
In those years the Stockman's Association of Montana was a powerful
body. I was the delegate to it from the Little Missouri. The meetings
that I attended were held in Miles City, at that time a typical cow
town. Stockmen of all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the
stock business, men like old Conrad Kohrs, who was and is the finest
type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain country; and Granville
Stewart, who was afterwards appointed Minister by Cleveland, I think
to the Argentine; and "Hashknife" Simpson, a Texan who had brought his
cattle, the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and
I grew to be great friends. I can see him now the first time we met,
grinning at me as, none too comfortable, I sat a half-broken horse at
the edge of a cattle herd we were working. His son Sloan Simpson went to
Harvard, was one of the first-class men in my regiment, and afterwards
held my commission as Postmaster at Dallas.
At the stockmen's meeting in Miles City, in addition to the big
stockmen, there were always hundreds of cowboys galloping up and down
the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a
picturesque sight during the three days the meetings lasted. There was
always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits,
but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances
most of the men knew the figures far better than I did. With such a
crowd in town, sleeping accommodations of any sort were at a premium,
and in the hotel there were two men in every bed. On one occasion I had
a roommate whom I never saw, because he always went to bed much later
than I did and I always got up much earlier than he did. On the last
day, however, he rose at the same time and I saw that he was a man I
knew named Carter, and nicknamed "Modesty" Carter. He was a stalwart,
good-looking fellow, and I was sorry when later I heard that he had been
killed in a shooting row.
When I went West, the last great Indian wars had just come to an end,
but there were still sporadic outbreaks here and there, and occasionally
bands of marauding young braves were a menace to outlying and lonely
settlements. Many of the white men were themselves lawless and brutal,
and prone to commit outrages on the Indians. Unfortunately, each race
tended to hold all the members of the other race responsible for the
misdeeds of a few, so that the crime of the miscreant, red or white,
who committed the original outrage too often invited retaliation upon
entirely innocent people, and this action would in its turn arouse
bitter feeling which found vent in still more indiscriminate
retaliation. The first year I was on the Little Missouri some Sioux
bucks ran off all the horses of a buffalo-hunter's outfit. One of the
buffalo-hunters tried to get even by stealing the horses of a Cheyenne
hunting party, and when pursued made for a cow camp, with, as a result,
a long-range skirmish between the cowboys and the Cheyennes. One of the
latter was wounded; but this particular wounded man seemed to have
more sense than the other participants in the chain of wrong-doing, and
discriminated among the whites. He came into our camp and had his wound
dressed.
A year later I was at a desolate little mud road ranch on the Deadwood
trail. It was kept by a very capable and very forceful woman, with sound
ideas of justice and abundantly well able to hold her own. Her husband
was a worthless devil, who finally got drunk on some whisky he obtained
from an outfit of Missouri bull-whackers--that is, freighters, driving
ox wagons. Under the stimulus of the whisky he picked a quarrel with his
wife and attempted to beat her. She knocked him down with a stove-lid
lifter, and the admiring bull-whackers bore him off, leaving the lady
in full possession of the ranch. When I visited her she had a man named
Crow Joe working for her, a slab-sided, shifty-eyed person who later,
as I heard my foreman explain, "skipped the country with a bunch of
horses." The mistress of the ranch made first-class buckskin shirts of
great durability. The one she made for me, and which I used for years,
was used by one of my sons in Arizona a couple of winters ago. I had
ridden down into the country after some lost horses, and visited the
ranch to get her to make me the buckskin shirt in question. There
were, at the moment, three Indians there, Sioux, well behaved and
self-respecting, and she explained to me that they had been resting
there waiting for dinner, and that a white man had come along and tried
to run off their horses. The Indians were on the lookout, however, and,
running out, they caught the man; but, after retaking their horses and
depriving him of his gun, they let him go. "I don't see why they let him
go," exclaimed my hostess. "I don't believe in stealing Indians' horses
any more than white folks'; so I told 'em they could go along and hang
him--I'd never cheep. Anyhow, I won't charge them anything for their
dinner," concluded my hostess. She was in advance of the usual morality
of the time and place, which drew a sharp line between stealing
citizens' horses and stealing horses from the Government or the Indians.
A fairly decent citizen, Jap Hunt, who long ago met a violent death,
exemplified this attitude towards Indians in some remarks I once heard
him make. He had started a horse ranch, and had quite honestly purchased
a number of broken-down horses of different brands, with the view of
doctoring them and selling them again. About this time there had been
much horse-stealing and cattle-killing in our Territory and in Montana,
and under the direction of some of the big cattle-growers a committee
of vigilantes had been organized to take action against the rustlers,
as the horse thieves and cattle thieves were called. The vigilantes, or
stranglers, as they were locally known, did their work thoroughly; but,
as always happens with bodies of the kind, toward the end they grew
reckless in their actions, paid off private grudges, and hung men on
slight provocation. Riding into Jap Hunt's ranch, they nearly hung him
because he had so many horses of different brands. He was finally let
off. He was much upset by the incident, and explained again and again,
"The idea of saying that I was a horse thief! Why, I never stole a horse
in my life--leastways from a white man. I don't count Indians nor the
Government, of course." Jap had been reared among men still in the stage
of tribal morality, and while they recognized their obligations to one
another, both the Government and the Indians seemed alien bodies, in
regard to which the laws of morality did not apply.
On the other hand, parties of savage young bucks would treat lonely
settlers just as badly, and in addition sometimes murder them. Such a
party was generally composed of young fellows burning to distinguish
themselves. Some one of their number would have obtained a pass from
the Indian Agent allowing him to travel off the reservation, which pass
would be flourished whenever their action was questioned by bodies of
whites of equal strength. I once had a trifling encounter with such a
band. I was making my way along the edge of the bad lands, northward
from my lower ranch, and was just crossing a plateau when five Indians
rode up over the further rim. The instant they saw me they whipped
out their guns and raced full speed at me, yelling and flogging their
horses. I was on a favorite horse, Manitou, who was a wise old fellow,
with nerves not to be shaken by anything. I at once leaped off him and
stood with my rifle ready.
It was possible that the Indians were merely making a bluff and intended
no mischief. But I did not like their actions, and I thought it likely
that if I allowed them to get hold of me they would at least take my
horse and rifle, and possibly kill me. So I waited until they were a
hundred yards off and then drew a bead on the first. Indians--and, for
the matter of that, white men--do not like to ride in on a man who is
cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the
side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards,
having altered their course as quickly as so many teal ducks.
After this one of them made the peace sign, with his blanket first, and
then, as he rode toward me, with his open hand. I halted him at a fair
distance and asked him what he wanted. He exclaimed, "How! Me good
Injun, me good Injun," and tried to show me the dirty piece of paper on
which his agency pass was written. I told him with sincerity that I was
glad that he was a good Indian, but that he must not come any closer. He
then asked for sugar and tobacco. I told him I had none. Another Indian
began slowly drifting toward me in spite of my calling out to keep back,
so I once more aimed with my rifle, whereupon both Indians slipped to
the other side of their horses and galloped off, with oaths that did
credit to at least one side of their acquaintance with English. I now
mounted and pushed over the plateau on to the open prairie. In those
days an Indian, although not as good a shot as a white man, was
infinitely better at crawling under and taking advantage of cover; and
the worst thing a white man could do was to get into cover, whereas out
in the open if he kept his head he had a good chance of standing off
even half a dozen assailants. The Indians accompanied me for a couple of
miles. Then I reached the open prairie, and resumed my northward ride,
not being further molested.
In the old days in the ranch country we depended upon game for fresh
meat. Nobody liked to kill a beef, and although now and then a maverick
yearling might be killed on the round-up, most of us looked askance at
the deed, because if the practice of beef-killing was ever allowed to
start, the rustlers--the horse thieves and cattle thieves--would be sure
to seize on it as an excuse for general slaughter. Getting meat for the
ranch usually devolved upon me. I almost always carried a rifle when I
rode, either in a scabbard under my thigh, or across the pommel. Often
I would pick up a deer or antelope while about my regular work, when
visiting a line camp or riding after the cattle. At other times I would
make a day's trip after them. In the fall we sometimes took a wagon
and made a week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and
perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a
fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either
failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some
blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back,
I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was
that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many
other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were very
hungry, I never killed anything but bucks.
Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and among the Rocky
Mountains with my ranch foreman Merrifield; or in later years with
Tazewell Woody, John Willis, or John Goff. We hunted bears, both the
black and the grizzly, cougars and wolves, and moose, wapiti, and white
goat. On one of these trips I killed a bison bull, and I also killed a
bison bull on the Little Missouri some fifty miles south of my ranch on
a trip which Joe Ferris and I took together. It was rather a rough trip.
Each of us carried only his slicker behind him on the saddle, with some
flour and bacon done up in it. We met with all kinds of misadventures.
Finally one night, when we were sleeping by a slimy little prairie pool
where there was not a stick of wood, we had to tie the horses to the
horns of our saddles; and then we went to sleep with our heads on the
saddles. In the middle of the night something stampeded the horses, and
away they went, with the saddles after them. As we jumped to our feet
Joe eyed me with an evident suspicion that I was the Jonah of the party,
and said: "O Lord! I've never done anything to deserve this. Did you
ever do anything to deserve this?"
In addition to my private duties, I sometimes served as deputy sheriff
for the northern end of our county. The sheriff and I crisscrossed in
our public and private relations. He often worked for me as a hired hand
at the same time that I was his deputy. His name, or at least the
name he went by, was Bill Jones, and as there were in the neighborhood
several Bill Joneses--Three Seven Bill Jones, Texas Bill Jones, and
the like--the sheriff was known as Hell Roaring Bill Jones. He was a
thorough frontiersman, excellent in all kinds of emergencies, and a
very game man. I became much attached to him. He was a thoroughly good
citizen when sober, but he was a little wild when drunk. Unfortunately,
toward the end of his life he got to drinking very heavily. When, in
1905, John Burroughs and I visited the Yellowstone Park, poor Bill
Jones, very much down in the world, was driving a team in Gardiner
outside the park. I had looked forward to seeing him, and he was equally
anxious to see me. He kept telling his cronies of our intimacy and of
what we were going to do together, and then got drinking; and the result
was that by the time I reached Gardiner he had to be carried out and
left in the sage-brush. When I came out of the park, I sent on in
advance to tell them to be sure to keep him sober, and they did so. But
it was a rather sad interview. The old fellow had gone to pieces, and
soon after I left he got lost in a blizzard and was dead when they found
him.
Bill Jones was a gun-fighter and also a good man with his fists. On one
occasion there was an election in town. There had been many threats that
the party of disorder would import section hands from the neighboring
railway stations to down our side. I did not reach Medora, the forlorn
little cattle town which was our county seat, until the election was
well under way. I then asked one of my friends if there had been any
disorder. Bill Jones was standing by. "Disorder hell!" said my friend.
"Bill Jones just stood there with one hand on his gun and the other
pointing over toward the new jail whenever any man who didn't have a
right to vote came near the polls. There was only one of them tried to
vote, and Bill knocked him down. Lord!" added my friend, meditatively,
"the way that man fell!" "Well," struck in Bill Jones, "if he hadn't
fell I'd have walked round behind him to see what was propping him up!"
In the days when I lived on the ranch I usually spent most of the
winter in the East, and when I returned in the early spring I was always
interested in finding out what had happened since my departure. On one
occasion I was met by Bill Jones and Sylvane Ferris, and in the course
of our conversation they mentioned "the lunatic." This led to a question
on my part, and Sylvane Ferris began the story: "Well, you see, he was
on a train and he shot the newsboy. At first they weren't going to do
anything to him, for they thought he just had it in for the newsboy. But
then somebody said, 'Why, he's plumb crazy, and he's liable to shoot any
of us!' and then they threw him off the train. It was here at Medora,
and they asked if anybody would take care of him, and Bill Jones said he
would, because he was the sheriff and the jail had two rooms, and he was
living in one and would put the lunatic in the other." Here Bill Jones
interrupted: "Yes, and more fool me! I wouldn't take charge of another
lunatic if the whole county asked me. Why" (with the air of a man
announcing an astounding discovery), "that lunatic didn't have his right
senses! He wouldn't eat, till me and Snyder got him down on the shavings
and made him eat." Snyder was a huge, happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted
Pennsylvania Dutchman, and was Bill Jones's chief deputy. Bill
continued: "You know, Snyder's soft-hearted, he is. Well, he'd think
that lunatic looked peaked, and he'd take him out for an airing. Then
the boys would get joshing him as to how much start he could give him
over the prairie and catch him again." Apparently the amount of the
start given the lunatic depended upon the amount of the bet to which the
joshing led up. I asked Bill what he would have done if Snyder hadn't
caught the lunatic. This was evidently a new idea, and he responded that
Snyder always did catch him. "Well, but suppose he hadn't caught him?"
"Well," said Bill Jones, "if Snyder hadn't caught the lunatic, I'd have
whaled hell out of Snyder!"
Under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and always did catch the
patient. It must not be gathered from this that the lunatic was badly
treated. He was well treated. He become greatly attached to both Bill
Jones and Snyder, and he objected strongly when, after the frontier
theory of treatment of the insane had received a full trial, he was
finally sent off to the territorial capital. It was merely that all the
relations of life in that place and day were so managed as to give ample
opportunity for the expression of individuality, whether in sheriff or
ranchman. The local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at
the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result. "You
know Bixby, don't you? Well," with deep disapproval, "Bixby thinks he
is funny, he does. He'd come and he'd wake that lunatic up at night, and
I'd have to get up and soothe him. I fixed Bixby all right, though. I
fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic
out on him. He 'most bit Bixby's nose off. I learned Bixby!"
Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of
sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the
police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor
over the head with his gun one day." He added: "The Mayor, he didn't
mind it, but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I'd better
resign." His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent of Police
was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life.
It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth
Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, 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"; a year or two afterwards
I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly
respectable man in a Western State; and later this uncle and I met at
Washington when I was President and he a United States Senator. 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 prairies, 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?" Later Seth Bullock became, and has ever
since remained, one of my stanchest and most valued friends. He served
as Marshal for South Dakota under me as President. When, after the close
of my term, I went to Africa, on getting back to Europe I cabled Seth
Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet me in London, which he did;
by that time I felt that I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my
neighborhood dialect.
When serving as deputy sheriff I was impressed with the advantage the
officer of the law has over ordinary wrong-doers, provided he thoroughly
knows his own mind. There are exceptional outlaws, men with a price on
their heads and of remarkable prowess, who are utterly indifferent to
taking life, and whose warfare against society is as open as that of a
savage on the war-path. The law officer has no advantage whatever over
these men save what his own prowess may--or may not--give him. Such a
man was Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of New
Mexico, who was himself finally slain by a friend of mine, Pat Garrett,
whom, when I was President, I made collector of customs at El Paso.
But the ordinary criminal, even when murderously inclined, feels just a
moment's hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the
law engaged in his duty. I took in more than one man who was probably a
better man than I was with both rifle and revolver; but in each case I
knew just what I wanted to do, and, like David Harum, I "did it first,"
whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in
a position where it was useless for him to resist.
I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of course means to
the men and women I met in the West. There were a few people of bad type
in my neighborhood--that would be true of every group of men, even in a
theological seminary--but I could not speak with too great affection and
respect of the great majority of my friends, the hard-working men and
women who dwelt for a space of perhaps a hundred and fifty miles along
the Little Missouri. I was always as welcome at their houses as they
were at mine. Everybody worked, everybody was willing to help everybody
else, and yet nobody asked any favors. The same thing was true of the
people whom I got to know fifty miles east and fifty miles west of my
own range, and of the men I met on the round-ups. They soon accepted me
as a friend and fellow-worker who stood on an equal footing with them,
and I believe the most of them have kept their feeling for me ever
since. No guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these
old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps--the men with whom
I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a
chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washington during my Presidency.
I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one day just before
lunch, a huge, powerful man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a
fighting character. It happened that on that day another old friend,
the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was among those coming to lunch. Just
before we went in I turned to my cow-puncher friend and said to him with
great solemnity, "Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the
British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause
international complications"; to which Jim responded with unaffected
horror, "Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of
it!"
Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite
unconsciously help me, by the insight which working and living with them
enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the
right type, but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind that
the men were of just the kind whom it would be well to have with me if
ever it became necessary to go to war. When the Spanish War came, I gave
this thought practical realization.
Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, have made these
men live as long as our literature lives. I have sometimes been asked
if Wister's "Virginian" is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have
mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real
life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked
with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards
in my regiment might have walked out of Wister's stories or Remington's
pictures.
There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of
course, and under the conditions of life they were probably more
dangerous than they would have been elsewhere. I hardly ever had any
difficulty, however. I never went into a saloon, and in the little
hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the
bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I
always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade
my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the
semblance of trouble.
Of course amusing incidents occurred now and then. Usually these took
place when I was hunting lost horses, for in hunting lost horses I was
ordinarily alone, and occasionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred
and fifty miles away from my own country. On one such occasion I
reached a little cow town long after dark, stabled my horse in an empty
outbuilding, and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my
request for a bed that I could have the last one left, as there was only
one other man in it. The room to which I was shown contained two double
beds; one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one man,
also asleep. This man proved to be a friend, one of the Bill Joneses
whom I have previously mentioned. I undressed according to the fashion
of the day and place, that is, I put my trousers, boots, shaps, and
gun down beside the bed, and turned in. A couple of hours later I was
awakened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed in my face,
the light gleaming on the muzzle of a cocked .45. Another man said to
the lantern-bearer, "It ain't him"; the next moment my bedfellow was
covered with two guns, and addressed, "Now, Bill, don't make a fuss,
but come along quiet." "I'm not thinking of making a fuss," said Bill.
"That's right," was the answer; "we're your friends; we don't want to
hurt you; we just want you to come along, you know why." And Bill pulled
on his trousers and boots and walked out with them. Up to this
time there had not been a sound from the other bed. Now a match was
scratched, a candle lit, and one of the men in the other bed looked
round the room. At this point I committed the breach of etiquette of
asking questions. "I wonder why they took Bill," I said. There was no
answer, and I repeated, "I wonder why they took Bill." "Well," said the
man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted him," and with that
he blew out the candle and conversation ceased. Later I discovered that
Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern Pacific train at
a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him
dance. This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific
people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint
the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the ground that by
delaying the train he had interfered with the mails.
The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive
little hotel than the one in question. It was also on an occasion when
I was out after lost horses. Below the hotel had merely a bar-room, a
dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or
twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the place.
I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked
going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night.
Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were
wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like
what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked
gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident
profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or
three holes in its face.
He was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer
type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully
who for the moment was having things all his own way. As soon as he saw
me he hailed me as "Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said,
"Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the
stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however,
and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more
offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very
foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels
were close together, so that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in
response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I
said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the
point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then
again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this
was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to
shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his
head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and
if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he
was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room,
who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put
him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner
of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed
where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting
at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant
came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight.
As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just such men as
those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, some of my ranch friends were
in the regiment--Fred Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose
company I shot my biggest mountain ram. After the regiment was disbanded
the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents. Our
relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt
"as if I was a father" to them. The manifestations of this feeling were
sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly
used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed. The
great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the
business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months
previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another
as the occasion arose; no man ever had more cause to be proud of his
regiment than I had of mine, both in war and in peace. But there was
a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of
peaceful regularity, although often enough they had been first-class
soldiers.
It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped opening which
always caused my heart to sink--"Dear Colonel: I write you because I am
in trouble." The trouble might take almost any form. One correspondent
continued: "I did not take the horse, but they say I did." Another
complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy. In
the case of another the incident was more markworthy. I will call him
Gritto. He wrote me a letter beginning: "Dear Colonel: I write you
because I am in trouble. I have shot a lady in the eye. But, Colonel,
I was not shooting at the lady. I was shooting at my wife," which he
apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.
I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear
any more of the incident for several years.
Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn,
who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a
letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting
gossip about the comrades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last
wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado. I understand
that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the man sat into the game
and used such language that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot. Comrade Webb
has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona. Comrade Webb is in the Forest
Service, and the killing was in the line of professional duty. I was out
at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade Gritto, who, you may
remember, was put there for shooting his sister-in-law [this was the
first information I had had as to the identity of the lady who was shot
in the eye]. Since he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old
Mexico with his (Gritto's) wife, and the people of Grant County think he
ought to be let out." Evidently the sporting instincts of the people of
Grant County had been roused, and they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had
had a fair start, the other comrade should be let out in order to see
what would happen.
The men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped me when I was
running for office. On one occasion Buck Taylor, of Texas, accompanied
me on a trip and made a speech for me. The crowd took to his speech from
the beginning and so did I, until the peroration, which ran as follows:
"My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel! vote for my Colonel! _and he
will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter_!" This hardly
seemed a tribute to my military skill; but it delighted the crowd, and
as far as I could tell did me nothing but good.
On another tour, when I was running for Vice-President, a member of
the regiment who was along on the train got into a discussion with
a Populist editor who had expressed an unfavorable estimate of my
character, and in the course of the discussion shot the editor--not
fatally. We had to leave him to be tried, and as he had no money I
left him $150 to hire counsel--having borrowed the money from Senator
Wolcott, of Colorado, who was also with me. After election I received
from my friend a letter running: "Dear Colonel: I find I will not have
to use that $150 you lent me, as we have elected our candidate for
District Attorney. So I have used it to settle a horse transaction in
which I unfortunately became involved." A few weeks later, however, I
received a heartbroken letter setting forth the fact that the District
Attorney--whom he evidently felt to be a cold-blooded formalist--had
put him in jail. Then the affair dropped out of sight until two or three
years later, when as President I visited a town in another State,
and the leaders of the delegation which received me included both my
correspondent and the editor, now fast friends, and both of them ardent
supporters of mine.
At one of the regimental reunions a man, who had been an excellent
soldier, in greeting me mentioned how glad he was that the judge had let
him out in time to get to the reunion. I asked what was the matter, and
he replied with some surprise: "Why, Colonel, don't you know I had
a difficulty with a gentleman, and . . . er . . . well, I killed the
gentleman. But you can see that the judge thought it was all right or he
wouldn't have let me go." Waiving the latter point, I said: "How did it
happen? How did you do it?" Misinterpreting my question as showing
an interest only in the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher
replied: "With a .38 on a .45 frame, Colonel." I chuckled over the
answer, and it became proverbial with my family and some of my friends,
including Seth Bullock. When I was shot at Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired
an inquiry to which I responded that it was all right, that the weapon
was merely "a .38 on a .45 frame." The telegram in some way became
public, and puzzled outsiders. By the way, both the men of my regiment
and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a
little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being
shot. This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing
for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the non-performance of
which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being
creditable. They would not have expected a man to leave a battle, for
instance, because of being wounded in such fashion; and they saw no
reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty.
One of the best soldiers of my regiment was a huge man whom I made
marshal of a Rocky Mountain State. He had spent his hot and lusty youth
on the frontier during its viking age, and at that time had naturally
taken part in incidents which seemed queer to men "accustomed to die
decently of zymotic diseases." I told him that an effort would doubtless
be made to prevent his confirmation by the Senate, and therefore that
I wanted to know all the facts in his case. Had he played faro? He had;
but it was when everybody played faro, and he had never played a brace
game. Had he killed anybody? Yes, but it was in Dodge City on occasions
when he was deputy marshal or town marshal, at a time when Dodge City,
now the most peaceful of communities, was the toughest town on the
continent, and crowded with man-killing outlaws and road agents; and he
produced telegrams from judges of high character testifying to the need
of the actions he had taken. Finally I said: "Now, Ben, how did you
lose that half of your ear?" To which, looking rather shy, he responded:
"Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you
see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and
he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben,
looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about
even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on
the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by
the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service,
exactly as he had already made one of the best soldiers in the regiment;
and I never wish to see a better citizen, nor a man in whom I would more
implicitly trust in every way.
When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was sent by the
National Committee on a trip into the States of the high plains and the
Rocky Mountains. These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on
the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was thought that I,
because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people, might
accomplish something towards bringing them back into line. It was
an interesting trip, and the monotony usually attendant upon such a
campaign of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashion by
occasional hostile audiences. One or two of the meetings ended in riots.
One meeting was finally broken up by a mob; everybody fought so that the
speaking had to stop. Soon after this we reached another town where we
were told there might be trouble. Here the local committee included an
old and valued friend, a "two-gun" man of repute, who was not in the
least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We marched round to
the local opera-house, which was packed with a mass of men, many of them
rather rough-looking. My friend the two-gun man sat immediately behind
me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking at the audience; fixing
his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which
there came so much as a whisper. The audience listened to me with
rapt attention. At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which
proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the
chairman: "I held that audience well; there wasn't an interruption." To
which the chairman replied: "Interruption? Well, I guess not! Seth had
sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he'd kill him!"
There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should like to see
imitated in more advanced communities. Certain crimes of revolting
baseness and cruelty were never forgiven. But in the case of ordinary
offenses, the man who had served his term and who then tried to make
good was given a fair chance; and of course this was equally true of
the women. Every one who has studied the subject at all is only too
well aware that the world offsets the readiness with which it condones
a crime for which a man escapes punishment, by its unforgiving
relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who _is_ punished,
and who therefore has made his atonement. On the frontier, if the man
honestly tried to behave himself there was generally a disposition to
give him fair play and a decent show. Several of the men I knew and whom
I particularly liked came in this class. There was one such man in my
regiment, a man who had served a term for robbery under arms, and who
had atoned for it by many years of fine performance of duty. I put him
in a high official position, and no man under me rendered better service
to the State, nor was there any man whom, as soldier, as civil officer,
as citizen, and as friend, I valued and respected--and now value and
respect--more.
Now I suppose some good people will gather from this that I favor men
who commit crimes. I certainly do not favor them. I have not a
particle of sympathy with the sentimentality--as I deem it, the
mawkishness--which overflows with foolish pity for the criminal and
cares not at all for the victim of the criminal. I am glad to see
wrong-doers punished. The punishment is an absolute necessity from the
standpoint of society; and I put the reformation of the criminal second
to the welfare of society. But I do desire to see the man or woman
who has paid the penalty and who wishes to reform given a helping
hand--surely every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he
too may stumble, and should be anxious to help his brother or sister who
has stumbled. When the criminal has been punished, if he then shows a
sincere desire to lead a decent and upright life, he should be given the
chance, he should be helped and not hindered; and if he makes good, he
should receive that respect from others which so often aids in creating
self-respect--the most invaluable of all possessions.