Chapter II: Part 2

“When they’re on horseback they yell,” Roosevelt said. “But you’ll be prowling Indians. They know how to be still as mice. And twice as deadly.” He twined a spray of hay through Archie’s hair for a feather. Instantly Ted and Kermit had to have feathers too and tying knots in their short hair to hold a dry wisp of hay erect was a slow business.

“I wish we had some war paint,” said Ted, studying his brothers with grudging approval. “I could have used some of my water colors if I’d known we were going to play Indians.”

“You’d get it on your shirt and Mame would scold,” Kermit reminded him.

“She scolds anyway,” remarked Ted. “Mame is a very scoldy person.”

“Your faces are dirty enough to pass for Indians,” stated their father. “And remember that Mame is good and faithful and devoted to you children. You must always be kind to Mame and respectful and never talk back to her.”

“Ethel kicked her once,” Ted tattled.

“She swept up my paper doll hats. Anyway, I didn’t kick her hard and I got punished for it.”

Theodore Roosevelt knew that his children, indulged as they were in many ways, were sure that retribution for any misbehavior was certain and swift, relentlessly applied after any wrongdoing. His was always the correcting hand when he was at home, Edith always resigning that job to her husband, and he comforted himself with the idea that when they were bad they were still pretty good children. At least they were truthful, only Kermit now and then letting his facile imagination run ahead of him too fast but he was always sternly corrected for it, and as a rule his brothers and sisters dealt scornfully with his fancies.

“Now, the settlers will hide, and the Indians have to find them, and any redskin who is recognized gets shot,” Roosevelt outlined the rules.

“I wish I had a sunbonnet,” said Alice, as she made a little nest for herself far down in the warm hay. “Settlers’ wives always wore sunbonnets.”

“You’re wearing an imaginary sunbonnet,” said her father. “Tie it tightly under your chin and I’ll get my imaginary gun ready. Keep quiet, boys, and hide far down there behind the hay.”

He helped the girls to crouch deep in the dry stack, Alice disliking the tickle of the hay on her neck and impatiently slapping at it while Ethel burrowed happily as a mole.

“Holler when you’re ready,” called Ted from the opposite side of the stack.

“Settlers never let Indians know where they are hiding,” objected their father, who had dug himself deep into a pile; more excited and intrigued by the game than the young ones.

The Indians finally advanced, stealth being somewhat diminished by giggles from Archie and muttered orders to be quiet from Ted. Kermit gave a war whoop as he sprang at his father but landed in a heap where Roosevelt promptly dispatched him with an imaginary pistol and a very realistic “Bang.” Farther around the pile there were screams and snarls as Ted crept down on Ethel and grabbed her pig-tailed hair.

“You’re scalped!” he shouted. “You’re dead and scalped!”

Ethel promptly rolled on her back, walled up her eyes and made a melancholy face so realistic that Ted began to whimper.

“Make her stop, Father! She’s scaring me!”

“The game is over,” announced Roosevelt, lifting Kermit to his feet. Close by Alice and Archie had been tussling, Alice subduing the attack by tickling the Indian till he squirmed and giggled. “Brush the hay off your clothes. Now we’ll mend the stack again and see who can jump the farthest.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” bragged Ethel, reviving from the dead. “I can. I always do beat the boys.”

“You can’t beat me if Father will hold my glasses,” Ted objected.

“Stack hay and don’t argue. Archie, take off your jacket, you’ve got the back of your shirt full of hay.”

“It’s inside mine too,” said Kermit. “It scratches.”

“If we had been real Indians we wouldn’t have on shirts, we’d just have some stripes of war paint.” Ted began busily piling up the hay. “That game wasn’t fair anyway because Archie giggled and Alice forgot to shoot quick.”

“He fell on me.” She stood up. “Oh me! There’s Mame, scared to death to climb the ladder. Father, don’t make us go in yet.”

Mame’s head, wrapped in a crocheted wool scarf, showed halfway up the ladder. “Gentlemen to see the Colonel,” she announced, “Mrs. Roosevelt says it’s important.”

“Don’t go, Father,” pleaded Ted. “Tell Mother to send them away.”

“I can’t do that, Ted, because from now on I’m the servant of the people of New York. Ask them to wait by the fire, Mame, tell them I’ll be in presently.” Roosevelt shook the hay from his shirt and jacket and studied the disappointed faces of his children. All the faces were definitely grimy but each one reflected woe.

“Go ahead,” Roosevelt directed when Mame had backed gingerly down the ladder. “Oldest jump first. See how high you can land on the hay. We can jump for ten minutes.” He took out his watch.

Fifteen minutes later he led his bedraggled, breathless crew back to the house, entering through the rear door though usually he was most unconcerned about his own appearance, especially when the children were with him. But now, with his new responsibilities, he was beginning to be aware that he owed a certain distinction of attire to these people who had elected him to the most important office in the most important state. Also he was thinking uneasily of Edith’s carefully disciplined but inwardly disapproving attitude.

Mame met them in the hall, her own disapproval not masked at all. “I declare, you always seem to bring them back looking like ragamuffins, Colonel Roosevelt! Hurry up, all of you! Colonel, you’ve got a dirty face yourself. Your guests are in the library. Mrs. Roosevelt had me serve them some wine.”

As he hurried up the stairs Roosevelt was hoping that this waiting group would not be church dignitaries or any others who would resent being served wine. Edith was in their room changing for dinner after tending Quentin all afternoon. She looked at him and shook her head.

“Well, at least you did come up to change.” She sounded relieved. “I don’t know who they are. Mame let them in. After tending the baby all afternoon I wasn’t presentable myself. The nurse will be back at nine o’clock, thank goodness. I let her go home for Christmas. Hurry and change. They’ve already been there half an hour, with a horse waiting out there in the cold.”

Through the window they could see a handsome bay horse and smart carriage waiting outside, the horse well blanketed and secured by an iron weight.

“Looks really important,” said Theodore, as he washed the dust of the loft off his face. “But they could have waited till Christmas was over and given a man a chance for a day in peace with his family.”

“Tomorrow it will be worse,” she reminded him. “You’ll have to be excused to sort your papers and I shall have to oversee the packing. We have just four days to get to Albany and I’d hate you to miss your own inauguration ceremony.”

“Is this jacket all right? After all, I’m supposed to be informal at home.”

“It will do. Straighten your tie. You always seem to get the knot slightly crooked.”

“So you will have some reason to notice me, my dear.”

He kissed her, grinning like a boy, and hurried down the stairs thinking that his Edith was still the loveliest thing alive and the best thing that had ever happened to one Theodore Roosevelt.

The three men rose as he entered the library and introduced themselves, though he already knew their identity having had some dealings with them when he was Police Commissioner of New York City. They were all members of the Board of Authority, a department of the city government, and immediately Roosevelt sensed that their mission was to gain some advantage in advance from the governor-elect.

The idea angered him and he made an excuse to mend the fire, poking and banging till he had worked off his momentary attack of spleen. Then he was ready for their proposal which came promptly, voiced in turn by each of the three. Roosevelt said nothing, sitting rubbing the back of his neck as he often did absently when he was trying to keep a cool head, a thing that with his impetuous nature and itch for action was not easy for him to do.

Finally, when their bland recital of their purpose in coming here—intruding on a father’s holiday at home—was all stated, the last part in concert, he jumped to his feet, paced across the room and back and braced himself facing them.

“Gentlemen, you have asked me to intervene in this matter which primarily affects only the City of New York, and your office, authority and functions in that city. Let me remind you in the first instance that I am not yet governor of New York nor will I be for several days. Secondly, I remind you that interference of this type is no function of the governor, and that your appeal (if it is an appeal) should be lodged with the proper authority to consider it. After that, gentlemen, I bid you good day.”

The three men went out grumbling and Theodore stamped up the stairs angrily, to where Edith sat by the fire, rocking Quentin, who had the sniffles, to sleep.

“Low, unprincipled scoundrels,” he stormed, “coming out here on Christmas Day to ask a favor of me knowing all the time it would be utterly outside all order and sense for me even to consider it.”

“There will be a great deal of that in a state like New York,” Edith reminded him. “You might as well make up your mind to accept it and be able to combat it calmly. Your experience as Police Commissioner certainly taught you that.” Edith was not too certain in her mind that anything she said would do any good. Theodore’s first impulse was always to fight any imposition or injustice toward himself or any other innocent party, whether the war was waged against the oppressed Cubans or against civic or national righteousness.

That he was usually effective only increased his crusader’s urge and his wife had her own moments of trepidation about facing his career as governor. She had a clear and analytic mind that was always able to face truth even in its ugliest mien and she had a quiet dread of all those stone walls of intrenched selfishness and evil against which Theodore Roosevelt’s militant nature might hurl itself in vain. He had had so many high periods of satisfaction and achievement these past years he had become an idol to many but she knew that from the dawn of the history of the world the lands of it had been paved with the scattered dust of fallen idols.

She said then, “Mame is bathing the boys and Ethel, and they’ll go to bed early. Then you and I and Alice will have a quiet supper downstairs. The cook came in just a few minutes ago. Poor soul, she spent nearly the whole of Christmas afternoon just going over to see her sister and carry her a white fascinator she had crocheted. She was too conscientious about her duty here to take time even for a Christmas visit.”

But Theodore was still not soothed or mollified. “Those fellows who came here had the presumption to ask me to intervene in a civic matter that concerns only their own interests in the City of New York.” He resumed his angry self-justification, “I practically showed them the door. They were important men and politically powerful and now I have undoubtedly made three powerful and influential enemies.”

“You’ll make more, Theodore. You always have when you were in a position of power just as every man does.”

“Those fellows infuriated me by implying that at this stage of my public life I would risk being devious. All right, my dear, I won’t let them spoil our Christmas, what’s left of it. You are an angel to listen so understandingly to my tantrums. And before I forget it let me tell you you are just as pretty and sweet and cute as you were when you were sixteen years old.” He bent and kissed her.

“When I was sixteen I was an awful prig,” she said. “I remember. I wasn’t much better when you married me.”

“You were perfect when you married me. I was the humblest, most grateful man on earth that you were willing to risk a life with a rough, tactless fellow like me. But it has all been pretty good, hasn’t it, Edie? Now,” he promised, “it will be even better.”

Alice came in then looking a trifle wan. “Aren’t we going to have supper soon? I’m starving. The boys and Ethel are eating already in the nursery. I tried to beg a piece of cold turkey but Mame made me go out and leave them alone. Mame,” she remarked, with a little flare of self-importance, “ought to realize that I’m almost a young lady.”

“Mame will realize it when you act like a young lady,” said her father, “and not like a spoiled child. Let’s go now. Mother has to put the baby to bed, then she’ll be down.”

He took his daughter’s hand, though he sensed that irritated her, but squeezed it gently with a comradely pressure and they ran down the last few steps laughing as they entered the dining room, where a cold supper was spread.

“We’re both out of breath,” he remarked. “We’ve got to run more. We’ll start tomorrow. In Albany—”

“I don’t want to go,” she wailed abruptly. “I want to stay here.”

“We’d all like to stay here,” he said, “even if there are times when this house is as hard to heat as it has been lately.”

“Davis tends the furnace better,” said Alice with the bluntness that was beginning to be a characteristic of hers. It was like his own forthrightness, he admitted. Fortunately as the years went on an acquired tact and his innate kindness saved him from too many blunders, and Edith’s influence helped tame his impetuous instinct to speak out before he thoughtfully considered a subject.

Edith came in then and Roosevelt gallantly seated his wife and daughter, making both gestures equally formal to Alice’s evident approval. Then he picked up the carving knife but laid it down at an admonishing look from Edith.

“Alice, will you say grace?” he asked politely.

When she had finished he surveyed the remains of what had been a huge turkey.

“Our bird seems to have suffered from the ravages of a hungry tribe of Roosevelts,” he turned it over. “I do find a little dark meat left and some dressing. And oh yes, here is the intact remainder of the liver. Alice, you may have that. It makes red blood and you’ll need it when you tackle the beginnings of algebra and French. My dear,” he bowed across the table, “how will you have your bones?”

“Anything edible,” said Edith. “I’m not at all particular.”

She sat at the foot of the table looking every inch the poised, self-contained and gracious mistress of his house. He knew that she was good for him, taming his occasional warlike impulses as perhaps no other woman could have done. One quieting word from her was usually enough to steady him and calm his rages as she had just done without in the least appearing to do, upstairs.

Alice began her argument again. “Mother, why can’t I go to Albany with the rest of the family?”

“Because your mother’s family want you to have every advantage, Alice.” Edith spoke quietly, waving off an interruption from Theodore with a flick of her hand, “You must be grateful for them and for the education they are able to give you. A girl like you is born with an obligation to make the most of herself and I am sure you will, as I hope my own children will too.”

“That sounds like a lecture,” fretted Alice. “I’ll get enough lectures from my aunts and grandmother. They are always lecturing me to be a lady and I think ladies are stupid. I’d like to go to Dakota with Father and be a cowgirl. I ride better then the boys do now.”

“Your aunt will probably see to it that you have riding lessons in New York,” Edith said.

“I know about those. Side saddle and a derby hat and horses so slow and stodgy they won’t gallop. I had some the last time I was there at grandmother’s, with a silly groom leading the horse around by the bridle.”

Edith sighed. She had devotedly tried to do her best for Theodore’s daughter but Alice, like her father, had been born a rebel with an individuality that would always resent any set pattern of behavior. At least, Edith comforted herself, the responsibility was not hers alone nor could she reproach herself if inherited traits were too strong. Thank goodness there was no rampant individuality in her own small daughter! Ethel was usually as placid as a Dutch housewife, though she could not be imposed upon and always stood stubbornly for her own rights.

Dinner was not quite over when two small figures appeared at the dining room door. In their nightclothes Kermit and Ethel stood there, their small feet blue with cold.

“Go back to bed quickly, you’ll catch your death of cold!” their mother scolded, herding them back toward the stairway.

“I’ll come along,” said Theodore. “I’ll just go back and find the chivalry book, as Ted calls it.”

“You spoil them,” protested his wife. “They were up before dawn this morning.”

“Early yet,” he made excuse, “only a little after eight.”

“It’s almost nine,” she corrected. “Supper was late because Christmas upset the household routine. Jump in bed, both of you. Kermit, wait—we’ll have to wipe off the bottoms of your feet. You forgot your slippers again.”

“They fall off. Anyway, they’re not so very dirty.”

“Too black for the sheets.” Mame came in then as Edith was tucking the covers around Ethel.

“They slipped out when I was back in my room,” she explained. “Kermit is always slipping out of his bed. He’d sleep under it half the time if I didn’t watch him, makes me feel like tying him into it.”

“I can untie knots,” he said defiantly, “or I could chew the rope in two.”

“Don’t be saucy,” his mother said, sponging the thin grimy toes. “Run along, Mame, Colonel Roosevelt is coming up to read to them.”

“It’ll be battles or Injun fighting and get them all stirred up and excited,” grumbled Mame as she went out.

Alice followed her father into the nursery. “I’m surely glad I have my own room,” she said. “There’s just no peace or privacy in this nursery any more.”

“It’s time you were in bed too, Alice,” said her stepmother. “You were up before dawn this morning.”

“I want to hear the story,” Alice was plaintive. “I promise to go to bed right after. After all I won’t be with Father very much longer.”

“Let her stay, I’ll hustle her to bed right after,” said Roosevelt.

Ted sat up, regarded the book his father was opening. “I vote for Sir Lancelot,” he announced firmly.

“I vote for dragons,” said Kermit. “I like stories with dragons with fire coming out their noses.”

“Are there any dragons in Dakota, Father?” Ethel wanted to know. “Where you shot all the animals? Those up on the wall?”

“Of course not!” Alice was scornful. “Dragons are a fairy tale like gnomes and giants.”

“Goliath wasn’t a fairy tale,” declared Ted. “He is in the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God.”

“Goliath was a tall, strong man,” said his father. “We still see and hear of very tall, strong men who in that day when most men were short would have been called giants. I knew a cowhand in the West who was seven feet tall without his boots. When he rode an average size cow pony his feet almost touched the ground, he could step over a yearling calf or a fence as easily as you can step over a threshold.”

“I can jump over a fence,” bragged Kermit, “if I can climb up a little way.”

“Ponies can jump over without climbing,” said Ted, “but they have very strong muscles in their back legs. They can kick hard too. Grant kicked a pig once and made him roll over and squeal loud. He tried to eat my straw hat once too.”

“You were crawling around under his front legs. He saw the hat and thought it was good to eat,” Alice defended her pet pony.

“That was the summer Father found the big hollow tree and he let us down inside it on a rope. You wouldn’t remember that, Ethel, you were just a baby.”

“She was three. Father let her down too,” Alice recalled, “and she was scared to death and screamed.”

“It was dark down there,” said their father. “We will now end all reminiscing and read the book. But first, Alice, toss a little light wood on that fire.”

“I like open fires better than radiators,” Alice said. “On radiators you can’t toast marshmallows. And if you put your feet on one with rubbers on they smell awful.”

The old tale of Sir Lancelot and the wicked Sir Modred, the wizard and the dragon, held them enthralled for fifteen minutes. Theodore was a slow and dramatic reader and though the book was a simplified version for children it was not too simplified and he skipped none of the long words, but enunciated each clearly, sometimes pausing to make the older ones say what the word meant and speak it several times. Ted already had a mature vocabulary for his age and the children had heard very little baby talk from their parents, though an occasional visitor was apt to gush and coo, to the boys’ thinly veiled disgust.

Archie was already asleep when the story was finished and Kermit’s eyes were glazing though he fought to keep them open. When Alice followed her father out she observed in a suave tone of superiority that reminded Theodore vaguely of his own mother. “After all, Father, we have to remember that they are only children. Archie is practically an infant yet.”

“We’ll remember that, Alice, and be very charitable in our judgments,” he answered with the same gravity. “Now you scamper before Mother scolds both of us.”

Suddenly she flung her arms around him. “Oh, Father, I don’t want to go back to New York. I hate it! Why can’t I go to Albany with you?”

“That has been all decided and explained to you. Your mother’s family are very fond of you and do a great deal for you, and you must be grateful. Not many young girls are so lucky.”

“There are so many rules,” she sighed. “Life is too bewildering and mixed up for a young girl.”

“What a young girl needs at this stage of her growth is sleep.” He gave her a fatherly smack. “Get along with you now, and be content for a few years to leave the problems to older people who love you and want the best for you.”

She was halfway down the stairs and she left him very reluctantly and backed up the rest of the flight, calling “Good night, Father.”

When she was safely in her room he went back to the library fire where Edith was sitting, on her knee a piece of embroidery stretched on a hoop.

“All should now be silent.” He dropped gratefully into a deep chair. “From the way my own eyelids feel I’ll be ready to join them in unconsciousness very soon. This has been a long day.”

“And tomorrow will be another,” she said, “but this has been a good day. For me at least. When none of the children are ailing with anything,” spoke the mother, “I am content. I hope and pray we don’t have too many visitors to usurp your time tomorrow, as no one else can sort and pack most of your personal papers.”

“Undoubtedly the locusts will descend as they usually do on a new man in office. Favors, always favors, and if they can get in a word before the other fellow they have the urge to speak it. And only one answer I can give them now, no matter how righteous their plea. When that is no longer timely I’ll have to depend on the grace of God to give me wisdom but fortunately there will be other people between me and so much importunity.” He got to his feet looking aghast. “Don’t tell me that’s somebody else! I hear a horse and wheels.”

“It may be Davis. Sometimes he borrows a horse to go to his preaching service. You assured him it was all right.” She folded her work and stood too, listening. “No, they are stopping outside, whoever it may be. I’ll go up now, Theodore. No one wants to see me at this time of night.”

The wheels outside were silent and though it was too dark and lowering to see anything, Theodore heard two persons mounting the front steps, moving very lightly. He went to the front door carrying a lamp with him, and held it high to study the faces of his visitors. One was a gaunt, middle-aged woman in a thin coat, her head tied up in a wool scarf, the other a lank boy about fifteen who clawed off his hat and ducked his head in embarrassment.

“Evening, sir,” said the woman, bobbing stiffly. Her ungloved hands were blue with cold, and her lips were blue and bitten. “I’m Dorsie Witten come from away up in Oneida. I’ve come a long way to see you, sir. Part of the ways by train and the rest with this hired rig. I sold two good cows to fetch the money to come to see you when you got elected governor and I hope you’ll listen patient to a heart-broke mother’s story.”

“Come in! Come in out of the cold.” Theodore held the door wide, the raw wind flaring the lamp. When they were inside he said, “Any woman who has come so far deserves to be heard though I can’t promise I can do anything for you. I’m not even governor of New York yet, you know.”

“Well, you will be, sir. Clint here said I should wait till you come to Albany that wasn’t so fur for us to travel, but I said there’d be so many bigwigs crowding in to see you then I’d never even get let in much less get a chance to talk to you.”

“I hope no one will be turned away who really needs to see me, madam, but the governor of a big state like New York is a mighty busy man as you can understand,” he said. “Please sit down here by the fire and tell me your business and make it brief if you don’t mind, for with five children and the Christmas holiday I’ve had a long day.”

“Is this Christmas?” she looked bewildered. “You know since Ollie got in trouble I’ve been so worried and upset I don’t know Sunday from Monday. You see, Governor, Ollie—Oliver he was named for his grandfather—is my oldest boy and my dependence. I tried to raise both of my boys good and honorable and Ollie wasn’t bad, Governor, he wasn’t a bad boy, he was just quick-tempered like his daddy. Eph, my husband, was fire and tow, he had a terrible temper and was easy to get mad, that’s how come Eph to get into trouble.”

“You’re here to see me about your husband?” he asked.

“No, sir, can’t nothing be done for Eph. I been to the other governor a’ready. He’s in Sing Sing for the rest of his life. He got mad years ago and cut a man terrible so he died and they sent him up the river for it but it’s Ollie that’s worrying me. Ollie’s only nineteen years old. Ollie killed a man, Governor, and I ain’t defending him but it was in a fair fight. Ollie shot to save his own life.”

“He did not claim he shot in self-defense? A man has a right to defend himself, in law, Mrs. Witten,” Roosevelt said.

“Well, they brought out in the trial that the other feller was shot in the back and didn’t have a gun with him. But he was heading for where it stood, Governor, Ollie said so and I believe him. Ollie was just smart and shot quick, knowing the other feller was a crack shot and would get him from a long ways off. Now they’re sending Ollie up where his father is, and I got nobody to depend on but Clint, and he ain’t just right in his head, and I got three little ones, all girls. Clint forgets everything. Come in from the field and wander off to town and leave the mules out there hitched to the plow all night if the children and I didn’t go out and fetch ’em in. I’ve finished many a field myself, leaving my children playing in a furrow.” She twisted her thin hands together, casting reproachful glances at Clint, whose stolid face showed no emotion whatever.

Roosevelt looked with some compassion at the woman’s ravaged face and thin body. How many such would he see in the next two years, harassed, frightened women, all desperately pleading mercy for violent-tempered husbands or sons? For an instant the prospect appalled him and briefly he dreaded the heavy responsibility of a great human population.

Then sober judgment came, steadying his nerves, and he spoke in a calm, fatherly voice. “Mrs. Witten, I know nothing of the facts in this case of your son. A man who shoots another in the back condemns himself from the first in the minds of all sober men.”

“I been tellin’ Ma that,” stated Clint, speaking for the first time in a voice surprisingly masculine and deep coming from such an undersized, emaciated body. “All the way down here I told her it was a waste of money comin’ way down here just to see you. Them was good cows we sold to pay for it too.”

“You know I’m not yet governor of New York,” Roosevelt reminded her. “I have no legal right to do anything about any case, especially one that has been already settled in the courts and the defendant convicted. What possible defense could your son have for shooting an unarmed man in the back? Didn’t he testify in his own defense?”

“He swore he thought that feller—Morgan Tuttle was his name—was going after his gun and Ollie knowed Morgan was a dead shot. He could have killed Ollie from a hundred yards off and Ollie knowed it. They was huntin’ together up in the mountains.”

“That was what the fight was about,” put in Clint. “Deer they shot up in them hills. Morgan wasn’t going to divide fair.”

“Was that the legal season to kill a deer?” Roosevelt asked. “I thought they were protected by law.”

“No, it wasn’t, but it come out in the trial anyway because Morgan’s wife blabbed to the law,” Clint supplied. “We ain’t paid Ollie’s lawyer yet but he didn’t do nothin’ nohow.”

“There was little he could do in the face of the evidence,” said Roosevelt.

“He said that,” she admitted, “and he said he aimed to charge us a hundred dollars when he didn’t do nothing.”

“Did he make you any promises?”

“No, sir, he wouldn’t do that. He just said he’d do his best but he didn’t do nothin’,” insisted Clint.

“It’s hard to justify any man who shoots another in the back, even if he has a weapon handy,” argued Roosevelt. “After all Ollie could have run. He didn’t have to stand still and let the other man shoot at him.”

“That’s what the judge said,” Clint added.

“My men wasn’t never no hand to run away from trouble,” remarked Mrs. Witten. “They always faced up to trouble mighty bold.”

“It’s not being bold to shoot a man in the back,” commented the hero of San Juan Hill, letting a little twinge of guilty memory come over him briefly. How many men of the Spanish troops had he shot in the back in Cuba? But that was war. The enemy had had the same chance to get him from the rear and he had known it. As Ollie had had the chance to run, so had the soldiers of Spain the chance to surrender but no man liked the thought of killing a human being and soldiers had to be hardened before they could do it, except in desperation to save their own lives. Only the toughest ones had no qualms, and it was ironic that usually they made the best infantry troops.

He had had a few timorous and squeamish fellows in his Rough Riders but when the fighting got hot they forgot their scruples and came through gallantly.

He sent the two Wittens away finally, promising to look into the case of Ollie Witten further when he came into office:

“I assume you want an official pardon for your son? There is nothing else that can be done when a man is already serving his sentence except a parole. And with Ollie’s record of violence I doubt that could be attained. A pardon on a hardship plea would be your only hope.”

“He got life like Pa,” Clint said, “and they told us he was mighty lucky.”

“He was lucky to escape the death penalty. How long has he been in prison?”

“Since October it was,” said the mother. “We a’ready been to the governor—him that was governor before you got elected, sir, but he said he couldn’t do nothin’. So I told Clint we’d wait till a new governor got elected and soon as the corn was in we got somebody to tend the place and we come here.”

“I fear you had a long, expensive and fruitless trip,” said Roosevelt dubiously, escorting them to the door. “Do you plan to go home tonight?”

“Train leaves at midnight and it’s a fur piece from here,” Clint answered. “Come on, Ma, we got to hurry. I told you he wasn’t going to do nothin’, that we was just wastin’ time and money. And a cow home fixing to come fresh any day.”

Theodore Roosevelt went back up the stairs feeling heavy and depressed. Edith looked up from the bed as he came into the room with a lighted candle.

“You look unhappy,” she said. “More office seekers? But I thought I heard a woman’s voice.”

“You did. A poor woman whose husband is in Sing Sing and her son has just been sent there, both for murder. The son killed another man, shot him in the back, but she thought I could do something about it, because she has other children and needs him on the farm. She had a boy with her about fifteen years old, she said he was not right in the head but he seemed shrewd enough, talked as intelligently as his mother and had a clearer idea of the difficulties of doing anything in a case like this than she did.”

“Mothers have too tender hearts always to have good sober judgment,” said Edith quietly. “They have a way of letting their emotions obscure their common sense, especially where their children are concerned. Aren’t you coming to bed? You have a hard day tomorrow with Heaven knows how many interruptions to frustrate you in getting things done.”

“I think I’ll walk outside a little. I don’t feel like sleeping yet. A bit of exercise will steady my nerves.”

“I didn’t know you had that sort of nerves, Theodore.”

“Now and then they take possession of me. Do you know, Edie,” he sat on the edge of the bed, “there are times when I shrink a little from this job I have set myself? After all New York is a big state, the most important state in the Union.”

“And you are a big man,” she consoled him. “And since San Juan Hill you have been about the biggest man in the Union.”

“Hero worship. Public hysteria. It can die as quickly as it flames and it leaves some mighty cold and bitter ashes. There are vast numbers of forgotten heroes in this country, men who rode the crest of a popular wave and deluded themselves into thinking it would last forever. You can be an old story overnight, and forgotten in a month if another object of exciting interest appears. And there’s nothing so forlorn and pitiable as an out-of-date and out-of-fashion hero. Well, I’ll try the open air for a little. Usually it helps my thinking to use my legs and from now on through the rest of the winter I’ll have little time or opportunity to do it.”

He went downstairs and let himself quietly out the front door, first remembering his wife’s admonition to put on a heavy jacket. Buttoning an old army coat up to his chin, he pulled on a battered old campaign hat, rain- and sun-stained and faded, with the insigne of the Rough Riders still pinned upon it, but now slightly tarnished.

A thin spit of snow was still drifting and the air was damp with the feel of the sea in it, but not bitterly freezing. He strode down the hill from the house and took a path that led through the wooded land where he had so often worked off his surplus energies by chopping down trees and carefully cutting them into firewood. There was a pile of cordwood on the edge of the timber and he stopped there and hefted a log, lifting it off the top of the pile, balancing it on his shoulder as woodsmen learn to do.

The rough bark, held close to his face, smelled sharply of acid, so he knew it was a branch from the wild cherry tree that had rotted at the heart. It had been hard and tough to cut, requiring all his muscles to shape it for sawing into logs for the fireplaces, but he had exulted in the job of conquering this old tree just as he had gloried in every strenuous task he had ever set himself.

He laid the log back on the stack, sending down a shower of dry bark, wondering when he would be free to chop wood again or wander these hills followed by his adoring children, or swim in the Bay or teach Quentin to dive off the diving board. He had instructed all the youngsters there, tossing them into deep water relentlessly, ready to fish them out if they foundered, but confident that they would conquer their fears and learn to paddle about, being his own children.

At any rate, he told himself, he was a lucky man, and if there were times when public life irked him a little, bringing a faint regret that outside affairs kept him from the quiet life he loved, he had to balance all the rewards against the slight feeling of frustration, count the honors as recompense.

Destiny had somehow set his feet upon a road and he felt at times a deep secret apprehension of where the road might lead. So far he had found himself adequate to any task that confronted him, and standing still in the quiet night air he felt the muscles of his spirit tense and a glow pervade his body.

He was not blind or deaf to certain portents in the air and, though he never spoke of them or let his mind dwell upon them, they still lingered, buried deep in his consciousness. There was always the echo of casual words spoken, of gay songs being sung.

_We’ll send you to the White House for the gallant deeds you’ve done._

All doggerel, all wishful thinking, he told himself, yet the idea lingered, and now he let it float uppermost in his mind till there came over him a sense of exhilaration, a promise of yet greater things ahead. Impatiently he put the thought down, but it kept creeping up again till his nerves tightened and he itched to do something tangible, attack something conquerable. On an impulse he strode back to the house and in a tool room found his ax, by the light of a single match.

Back at the log pile he laid a huge branch across two others and hacked away at it with the ax in the faint snow light, planting vigorous strokes and telling blows, though it was difficult to aim a tool in the thin light from the winter sky and more chips flew through the air than bespoke an expert woodsman.

When the branch was all reduced to proper lengths for burning he piled the sticks carefully, wiping the sticky sap from his hands on the sleeves of the old jacket. Then, shouldering the ax, he tramped back to the house, feeling suddenly relaxed and weary in nerve and bone. The sky, he noted, was slowly clearing and now and then a pale wisp of a moon shone fleetingly against the scud of the wind-driven clouds. Over the water a pale whiteness lighted the clouds as the moonlight increased.

Theodore Roosevelt was no mystic or fatuous dreamer, indeed the factual and actual had always been paramount in his mind. He had never had the weakness of nursing hopeful visions trying to bring them to reality. Instead he had always gone out to fight for what he believed in and let dreamers have their dreams.

But why now was that faint glow in the eastern sky slowly taking on the semblance of a great white dome towering against the horizon? In only one place in the land was reared a majestic dome like that.

Very humbly Theodore Roosevelt went back to his bed.

Transcriber’s Notes

—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.