Chapter XI: Introduction (6)

Every morning we get up at dawn, and start off by six
o'clock or thereabouts, Merrifield and I riding off among
the hills or ravines after game, while the battered "prairie
schooner," with the two spare ponies led behind, is driven
slowly along by old Lebo, who is a perfect character. He is
a weazened, wiry old fellow, very garrulous, brought up on
the frontier, and a man who is never put out or disconcerted
by any possible combination of accidents. Of course we have
had the usual incidents of prairie travel happen to us. One
day we rode through a driving rainstorm, at one time
developing into a regular hurricane of hail and wind, which
nearly upset the wagon, drove the ponies almost frantic, and
forced us to huddle into a gully for protection. The rain
lasted all night and we all slept in the wagon, pretty wet
and not very comfortable. Another time a sharp gale of wind
or rain struck us in the middle of the night, as we were
lying out in the open (we have no tent), and we shivered
under our wet blankets till morning. We go into camp a
little before sunset, tethering two or three of the horses,
and letting the others range. One night we camped in a most
beautiful natural park; it was a large, grassy hill, studded
thickly with small, pine-crowned chalk buttes, with very
steep sides, worn into the most outlandish and fantastic
shapes. All that night the wolves kept up a weird concert
around our camp--they are most harmless beasts.

The second letter was to his friend Lodge, who was in the midst of a stiff fight to hold his seat in Congress.

You must pardon the paper and general appearance of this
letter, as I am writing out in camp, a hundred miles or so
from any house; and indeed, whether this letter is, or is
not, ever delivered depends partly on Providence, and
partly on the good-will of an equally inscrutable personage,
either a cowboy or a horse-thief, whom we have just met, and
who has volunteered to post it--my men are watching him with
anything but friendly eyes, as they think he is going to try
to steal our ponies. (To guard against this possibility he
is to sleep between my foreman and myself--delectable
bedfellow he'll prove, doubtless.)

I have no particular excuse for writing, beyond the fact
that I would give a good deal to have a talk with you over
political matters, just now. I heartily enjoy this life,
with its perfect freedom, for I am very fond of hunting, and
there are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over
these rolling, limitless prairies, rifle in hand, or winding
my way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque
deserts of the so-called Bad Lands; and yet I cannot help
wishing I could be battling along with you, and I cannot
regret enough the unfortunate turn in political affairs that
has practically debarred me from taking any part in the
fray. I have received fifty different requests to speak in
various places--among others, to open the campaign in
Vermont and Minnesota. I am glad I am not at home; I get so
angry with the "mugwumps," and get to have such scorn and
contempt for them, that I know I would soon be betrayed into
taking some step against them, much more decided than I
really ought to take.

The hunting trips which Roosevelt and Merrifield made on this side or the other of the trail had their charm, and their perils also. There was one excursion, while the wagon was crawling up the Clear Fork of the Powder River, which for several reasons remained memorable.

The party was out of food, for the country they had been traversing was not favorable for game, and Roosevelt and Merrifield started forth one afternoon, with hope goaded by necessity, to replenish the larder.

Where the hilly country joined the river bottom, it broke off into steep bluffs, presenting an ascent before which even a bronco, it seemed, had his hesitations. Roosevelt and his companion rode into a wash-out, and then, dismounting, led their ponies along a clay ledge from which they turned off and went straight up an almost perpendicular sandy bluff. As Merrifield, who was in the lead, turned off the ledge, his horse, plunging in his attempt to clamber up the steep bluff, overbalanced himself, and for a second stood erect on his hind legs trying to recover his equilibrium. As Roosevelt, who was directly beneath him, made a frantic leap with his horse to one side, Merrifield's pony rolled over backwards, turned two complete somersaults and landed with a crash at the bottom of the wash-out, feet uppermost. They did not dare to hope that the horse would not be "done for," but he proved on investigation to be very much alive. Without aid he struggled to his feet, looking about in a rather shame-faced fashion, apparently none the worse for his fall. With vigorous pulling, they drew Roosevelt's pony to the top, and by the same method, augmented with coaxing and abuse, they brought his fellow to his side at last, and proceeded on their excursion.

Late in the afternoon they came on three blacktail deer. Roosevelt took a running shot at two hundred yards and missed, took another and missed again, though this time he managed to turn the animals in their flight. They disappeared round the shoulder of a bluff, and Roosevelt, suspecting that they would reappear when they had recovered from their terror, elevated his sights to four hundred yards and waited. It was not long before one of the three stepped out. Roosevelt raised his rifle. The shot, at that distance, was almost impossible, but there was zest in the trying. Suddenly another buck stepped out and walked slowly toward the first. Roosevelt waited until the heads were in line and fired. Over went both bucks. Roosevelt paced off the distance. It was just four hundred and thirty-one long paces.

It was while they were ascending the Clear Fork of the Powder that they discovered a band of Indians camped a short distance from the place where they themselves had halted for the night.

"I'm going over to see those Indians," remarked Merrifield after dinner that evening.

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

"Out in this country," responded the hunter dryly, "you always want to know who your neighbors are."

They rode over together. The Indians were Cheyennes. Experience had taught Merrifield that nothing was so conducive to peaceful relations with a red neighbor as to prove to him that you could beat him at his own game. He consequently suggested a shooting-match. The Indians agreed. To Roosevelt's astonishment they proved to be very bad shots, and not only Merrifield, but Roosevelt himself, completely outclassed them in the competition. The Indians were noticeably impressed. Merrifield and Roosevelt rode back to their camp conscious that so far as those particular Indians were concerned no anxiety need disturb their slumbers.

"Indians," remarked Merrifield later, "are the best judges of human nature in the world. When an Indian finds out that you are a good shot, he will leave you absolutely alone to go and come as you like. Indians are just like white men. They are not going to start something when they know you can out-shoot them."

For three weeks they traveled through desolation before they came at last to the goal of their journey. At the foot of the first steep rise, on the banks of Crazy Woman Creek, a few miles south of the army post at Buffalo, they left the wagon, and following an old Indian trail started into the mountains, driving their pack-ponies before them.

It was pleasant, after three burning weeks of treeless prairie, to climb into the shadowy greenness of the mountains. All about them was the music of running water, where clear brooks made their way through deep gorges and under interlacing boughs. Groves of great pines rose from grassy meadows and fringed the glades that lay here and there like quiet parks in the midst of the wilderness.

The hunters pitched their camp at last in a green valley beside a boisterous mountain brook. The weather was clear, with thin ice coursing the dark waters of the mountain tarns, and now and again slight snowfalls that made the forest gleam and glisten in the moonlight like fairyland. Through the frosty air they could hear the vibrant, musical notes of the bull elk far off, calling to the cows or challenging one another.

No country could have been better adapted to still hunting than the great, pine-clad mountains, studded with open glades. Roosevelt loved the thrill of the chase, but he loved no less the companionship of the majestic trees and the shy wild creatures which sprang across his path or ran with incredible swiftness along the overhanging boughs. Moving on noiseless moccasins he caught alluring glimpses of the inner life of the mountains.

The days passed very pleasantly in the crystal air and vibrant solitude of their mountain hunting grounds. The fare that old Lebo provided was excellent, and to the three men, who had for weeks been accustomed to make small fires from dried brush or from sagebrush roots laboriously dug out of the ground, it was a treat to sit at night before the roaring pine-logs.

"We've come to a land at last," remarked the quaint old teamster with satisfaction, "where the wood grows on trees."

They shot several elk promptly, but the grizzlies they were after eluded them. At last, after a week Merrifield, riding into camp one dusk, with a shout announced that he had come upon grizzly-bear signs some ten miles away. They shifted camp at once.

That afternoon, on a crag overlooking a wild ravine, Roosevelt shot another great bull elk. To Merrifield it seemed as though the elk might constitute a day's satisfactory achievement. But Roosevelt was indefatigable. "Now," he said with gusto, contemplating the magnificent antlers, "we'll go out to-night and get a bear."

But that night they found nothing. Returning next day with Merrifield for the carcass of the elk however, they found that a grizzly had been feeding on it. They crouched in hiding for the bear's return. Night fell, owls began to hoot dismally from the tops of the tall trees, and a lynx wailed from the depths of the woods, but the bear did not come.

Early next morning they were again at the elk carcass. The bear had evidently eaten his fill during the night. His tracks were clear, and they followed them noiselessly over the yielding carpet of moss and pine-needles, to an elk-trail leading into a tangled thicket of young spruces.

Suddenly Merrifield sank on one knee, turning half round, his face aflame with excitement. Roosevelt strode silently past him, his gun "at the ready."

There, not ten steps off, was the great bear slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces. He had heard the hunters and reared himself on his haunches. Seeing them, he dropped again on all-fours, and the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders bristled as he turned toward them.

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

Doubtless my face was pretty white [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie"
a week later,] but the blue barrel was as steady as a rock
as I glanced along it until I could see the top of the bead
fairly between his two sinister-looking eyes; as I pulled
the trigger I jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if
he charged, but it was needless, for the great brute was
struggling in his death agony, and as you will see when I
bring home his skin, the bullet hole was as exactly between
his eyes as if I had measured the distance with a
carpenter's rule.

At last, one cool morning, when the branches of the evergreens were laden with the feathery snow that had fallen overnight, the hunters struck camp, and in single file, with the pack-ponies laden with the trophies of the hunt, moved down through the woods and across the canyons to the edge of the great table-land, then slowly down the steep slope to its foot, where they found the canvas-topped wagon. Next day they set out on the three-hundred-mile journey home to the Maltese Cross.

For once I have made a very successful hunting trip
[Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Fort McKinney.] I have just
come out of the mountains and will start at once for the
Little Missouri, which I expect to reach in a fortnight,
and a week afterwards will be on my way home. Merrifield
killed two bears and three elk; he has been an invaluable
guide for game, and of course the real credit for the bag
rests with him, for he found most of the animals. But I
really shot well this time. Merrifield, who is a perfectly
fearless and reckless man, has no more regard for a grizzly
bear than he has for a jack-rabbit; the last one he killed,
he wished to merely break his leg with the first shot "so as
to see what he'd do." I had not at all this feeling, and
fully realized that we were hunting dangerous game; still I
never made steadier shooting than at the grizzlies. I had
grand sport with the elk, too, and the woods fairly rang
with my shouting when I brought down my first lordly bull,
with great branching antlers; but after I had begun
bear-killing, other sport seemed tame.

So I have had good sport; and enough excitement and fatigue
to prevent overmuch thought; and, moreover, I have at last
been able to sleep well at night. But unless I was
bear-hunting all the time I am afraid I should soon get as
restless with this life as with the life at home.

XI

The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings,
The mosquito delights you with buzzing wings;
The sand-burrs prevail, and so do the ants,
And those who sit down need half-soles on their pants.

_Cowboy song_

The day that Roosevelt started south on his journey to the mountains, Sewall returned north down the river to rejoin his nephew. Will Dow was watching the cattle on the plateau a few miles south of Elkhorn Bottom, near the mouth of the defile which the cowboys called Shipka Pass.

"You never looked so good to me," he said to Sewall that night, "as you did when I saw your head coming up the Shipka Pass."

They worked together among the cattle for another two or three weeks. They were on the best of terms with Captain Robins by this time, for there was much to like and much to respect in the gruff, dark little seafaring man, who had suffered shipwreck in more ways than one, and was out on the plains because of a marriage that had gone on the rocks. He was an excellent man with the horses, and good company about a camp-fire, for somewhere he had picked up an education and was well-informed. He gave the two tenderfeet a good training in the rudiments of "cattle-punching," sending first one and then the other off to distant round-ups to test their abilities among strangers. Sewall proved unadaptable, for he was rather old to learn new tricks so far removed from the activities that were familiar to him; but Dow became a "cowhand" overnight.

Experience was not greatly mollifying Sewall's opinion of the region in which his lot had been cast.

The sun when it shines clear [he wrote his brother Sam after
he had been in the Bad Lands six weeks] strikes the bare
sides of the Buttes and comes down on the treeless bottoms
hot enough to make a Rattlesnake pant. If you can get in the
shade there is most always a breeze. The grand trouble is
you can't get in the shade. There's no shade to get into and
the great sandy Desert is cool compared with some of the
gulches, but as you ride it is not quite so bad. The Ponys
when they are up to some trick are lively and smart, all
other times they are tired, are very tame and look very meek
and gentle. But just let one of them get the start of you in
any way and you are left. Am glad to say mine has never
really got the start yet. We have had a number of
differences and controverseys, but my arguments have always
prevailed so far.

About the middle of September, the two backwoodsmen moved down to Elkhorn Bottom, leaving Robins in charge of the cattle. Dow went away on a round-up and Sewall undertook to put in livable shape a dugout that stood on the river-bank some thirty or forty yards from the place which Roosevelt had, on a previous visit, selected as the site for the ranch-house which Sewall and Dow were to build. The shack had belonged to a hunter who had left the country, and was not sumptuous in its fittings.

CHIMNEY BUTTE RANCH.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor.
FERRIS & MERRIFIELD, Managers.

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

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

Horse brand, [brand drawing] on left hip.

ELKHORN RANCH.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor.
SEAWALL & DOW, Managers.

P. O. address, Little Missouri, D. T. Range, Little Missouri,
twenty-five miles north of railroad.

as in cut, [brand drawing] on left side, on right, [brand drawing]
or the reverse.

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

Dow returned from the round-up with interesting news. The Marquis, it seemed, had by no means resigned his claim to the territory on which Roosevelt had established "squatter's rights." Dow overheard one of the Marquis's men confiding to another that "there'd be some dead men round that Elkhorn shack some day."

Sewall received the news with calm satisfaction. "Well," he drawled, "if there's going to be any dead men hereabouts, I cal'late we can fix it so it won't be us."

Sewall and Dow began cutting timber for the house in a thick grove of cottonwoods two or three hundred yards from the river, keeping a weather eye open for trouble. A day or two after Dow's return from the round-up, one of the Marquis's men rode up to them where they were working.

"There's a vigilance committee around, I hear," he remarked casually. "You haven't seen anything of 'em yet hereabouts, have you? I hear they're considerin' makin' a call on you folks."

The men from Maine said to each other that the thing began to look "smoky." They consulted Captain Robins, who agreed that "smoky" was the word, and they carried rifles after that when they went to cut timber.

For they knew very well that the hint which the Marquis's man had lightly thrown out was no idle attempt at intimidation based on nothing but the hope that the Easterners were timid. The activities of Granville Stuart's raiders had stimulated the formation of other vigilance committees, inspired in part by less lofty motives than those which impelled the president of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association and his friends. On the border between Dakota and Montana a company of rough characters who called themselves vigilantes began to make themselves the topic of excited conversation. They were said to be after horse-thieves, but it became noticeable that their activities seemed to be directed mainly against the small ranchers on the edge of the Bad Lands. It was rumored that certain large ranchmen were backing them in the hope of driving the "nesters" out of the country.

The cowmen here are opposed, not only to the Indians, but
also to white settlers [wrote the Western correspondent of
the New York _Sun_]. They want the land these white and red
settlers are taking up. Vast tracts--uncultivated ranges,
not settlements--are what they desire. The small holder--the
man with a little bunch of cattle--is not wanted. They
freeze him out. Somehow he loses cattle, or they are killed
by parties unknown.

Sewall and Dow had a right to keep their guns near them while they were at work in the grove on Elkhorn Bottom.

Meanwhile, the endeavors of Granville Stuart's vigilantes were having their results. The precipitous methods of the "stranglers," as they were grimly called, began to give the most hardened "the creeps." Who the "stranglers" themselves were, nobody seemed to know. It was rumored, on the one hand, that they included the biggest ranch-owners in the Northwest; on the other hand, it was stated that they were bands of lawless Texans driven out of the Panhandle and hired by the ranchmen at thirty dollars a month "to clean up the country." Whoever they were, they moved swiftly and acted without hesitation. The newspapers said little about them, partly because they knew little, partly because there was a general tacit understanding that the whole thing, though necessary, was a disagreeable business, and the less said of it the better.

The truth seems to be that behind the whole movement to rid eastern Montana and western Dakota of the horse-thieves was a loose organization of cattlemen of which Granville Stuart and his friends were the directing heads. What funds were needed they provided. They designated, moreover, certain responsible men in the different round-up districts, to whom subordinate bands of the "stranglers" reported from time to time for orders. Each subordinate band operated independently of the others, and the leader in one district knew nothing as a rule of the operations of the other bands. He told the "stranglers" what men to "get," and that was all; and a day or two later a man here and a man there would be found dangling from a cottonwood.

In certain cases, Packard, who successfully combined the functions of law officer and news-gatherer, knew beforehand what men were to be hanged. On one occasion he was informed that two notorious characters were to be done away with on the following Thursday. The operations of the stranglers were as a rule terrifyingly punctual, and as Thursday was the day on which the _Cowboy_ went to press, he announced in it, with an awful punctuality of his own, the sudden demise of the thieves in question.

He carried the papers to the depot to put them on the afternoon train bound for the west, for the _Cowboy_ was popular with the passengers and he disposed of an edition of seven or eight hundred weekly with them in excess of his regular edition. As he was about to step on the train, two men stepped down. They were the horse-thieves whose death he had too confidently announced.

He stared at them, shocked to the marrow, feeling as though he had seen ghosts. Would they stay in Medora, or would they go on to where frontier justice was awaiting them? Would they see the announcement in the _Cowboy_? He remembered that they could not read.

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

That night they were hanged.

Exactly what relation the vigilance committee which was seeking to drive the "nesters" out of western Montana bore to Granville Stuart's organization, is difficult to determine. They had probably originally been one of the subordinate bands, who were "feeling their oats," and, under the pretense of "cleaning up the country," were cleaning up personal scores. The captain of the band was a man called "Flopping Bill," a distinctly shady character, and the band itself was made up of irresponsible creatures who welcomed the opportunity to do, in the cause of righteousness, a number of things for which under ordinary circumstances they would have been promptly hanged. Their first act as a body was to engage a French Canadian named Louis La Pache as guide. La Pache was himself awaiting trial at Miles City for horse-stealing, but there is no indication in the records that he was chosen because he was ready to turn State's evidence. He was merely the type that Flopping Bill's guardians of law and order would naturally choose.

The raiders began their activities near the mouth of Beaver Creek, not ten miles from the spot where Sewall and Dow (with their rifles at hand) were hewing timber for the new house. Two cowpunchers had recently started a ranch there. They were generally considered honest, but the vigilantes had marked them for destruction, and descended upon the ranch ready to hang any one in sight. They found only a hired man, an Englishman, for the ranchmen had got wind of the raid and fled; and spent their enthusiasm for order in "allowing the Englishman to feel the sensation of a lariat round his neck," as the record runs, releasing him on his promise to leave the country forever. Thereupon they nailed a paper, signed with skull and cross-bones, on the door of the cabin ordering the ranchmen "to vacate"; and proceeded to other pastures.

They stopped at a half dozen ranches, terrorizing and burning, but catching no horse-thieves. It is impossible through the obscurity that shrouds the grim events of that autumn to determine to what extent they were honestly in pursuit of lawbreakers or were merely endeavoring, at the behest of some of the great cattle-owners, to drive the small stockmen out of the country. Their motives were possibly mixed. The small ranchers were notoriously not always what they seemed. Most of the horse-thieves posed as "nesters," hiding in underground stables by day the horses they stole by night. Each registered his own brand and sometimes more than one; but the brands were carefully contrived. If you intended, for instance, to prey on the great herds of the "Long X outfit," thus [X brand], you called your brand "Four Diamonds," marking it thus [diamond brand]. A quick fire and a running iron did the trick. It was all very simple and very profitable and if you were caught there was always a Certain Person (to whom you were accustomed to give an accounting), and beyond him a vague but powerful Somebody Else to stand between you and the law. There would be no trial, or, if there were a trial, there would be no witnesses, or, if there were witnesses, there would be a lenient judge and a skeptical jury. The methods of Flopping Bill's party were no doubt reprehensible, but in attacking some of the little "nesters" the raiders came close to the heart of many troubles.

But indiscriminate terrorizing by any one in any cause was not to the taste of the ranchmen up and down the Little Missouri who happened to be law-abiding. The raiders were starting prairie fires, moreover, with the purpose evidently of destroying the pasture of the small stockmen, and were in consequence vitally affecting the interests of every man who owned cattle anywhere in the valley. That these acts of vandalism were the work of a body from another Territory, invading the Bad Lands for purposes of reform, did not add greatly to their popularity. The ranchmen set about to organize a vigilance committee of their own to repel the invaders, if necessary, by force.

Whether the raiders got wind of this purpose is not known, but they evidently decided that they had overplayed their hand, for they suddenly veered in their course and troubled the Bad Lands no more. But before they went they dropped a bomb which did more than many conflagrations to carry out their ostensible mission as discouragers of evil-doing.

It happened that not far from Elkhorn Bottom the vigilantes came upon Pierce Bolan, who, it will be remembered, had some time previous discoursed to Fisher on the merits of the "considerate treatment" in relations with horse-thieves. He was himself as honest as daylight, but, as ill-luck would have it, the raiders found him afoot, and, assuming that he was about to steal a horse, called on him to confess. He declared that he had nothing to confess. The raiders thereupon threw a rope around his neck and drew him up in such a way that his feet just touched the ground. The victim continued to proclaim his innocence and the vigilantes finally released him, but not until he was unconscious. When he came to, the raiders were gone, but nearby he found a paper possibly dropped not altogether inadvertently. It bore the names of fifteen men along the Little Missouri whom Granville Stuart's committee had marked for punishment.

What Bolan did with the list, to whom he showed the list, in what way he reached the men whose names were on the list--all that is lost to history. All that we know is that there was a great scattering during the succeeding days, and certain men who were thought most reputable discovered suddenly that they had pressing business in California or New York.

"I never saw a full list of the names on that paper," said Fisher years afterward, "and knew nothing of what was going on until two of them came to me about the matter. They found that I was really ignorant and then asked what I would do if in their place. I advised hiding out for a while until matters had cooled off, which they did."

Who the men were whose names were on that list is a secret which those who held it never revealed and inquisitive minds along the Little Missouri could never definitely solve. Rumor suggested this man and that whose ways had been devious, but only one name was ever mentioned with certainty. That name was Maunders. No one seemed to question that if any one was going to be hanged, Maunders was the most likely candidate.

That gentleman, meanwhile, was fully aware that he had been marked for slaughter, but he kept his head, and, trusting no doubt to the protection of the Marquis, calmly remained in Medora, refusing by flight to present his enemies with evidence of an uneasy conscience. To his friends he declared that Fisher alone was responsible for having his name placed on the list, and breathed dire threats against the manager of the Marquis's Refrigerator Company.

Fisher was not greatly disturbed by the rumors that reached him of Maunders's determination to kill him at the first opportunity. He even went hunting alone with the outwardly affable "bad man."

Some of the "boys" thought he was taking unnecessary risks, and told him so. "You're taking a big chance in going out alone with Maunders. He's got it in for you."

Fisher smiled. "Perhaps you haven't noticed," he said, "that I always make certain that one or the other of you fellows sees us leave. Maunders would break his neck to see me get back safely."

Unquestionably, Maunders had an almost over-developed bump of caution. He left Fisher unharmed and turned his attention to the two backwoodsmen from Maine who were holding down the most desirable claim north of Medora for an Eastern tenderfoot.

One Sunday morning late in September Sewall was alone in the dugout at the river-bank. Dow was off on a stroll and Sewall was writing his weekly letter home, when he suddenly heard hoof-beats punctuated with shots. He went to the door. Six rough-looking characters on horseback were outside with smoking rifles in their hands. He knew only one of them, but he was evidently the leader. It was Maunders. Sewall took in the situation and invited them all inside.

The men had been drinking, and, suspecting that they would be hungry, Sewall offered them food. Dow was an excellent cook and in the ashes of the hearth was a pot of baked beans, intended for their own midday meal. Sewall, keeping carefully within reach of one or the other of his weapons which hung on the wall, set the pot before the evil-faced gunmen.

Maunders, who was slightly drunk, ate ravenously and directly began to sing the praises of the beans. Sewall filled his plate, and filled it again.

"I thought I would do everything I could to make them comfortable," he remarked, telling about it later, "and then if they cooked up any racket we should have to see what the end would be. I knew that if they were well filled, it would have a tendency to make them good-natured, and besides that it puts a man in rather an awkward position, when he's got well treated, to start a rumpus."

Sewall watched the men unostentatiously, but with an eagle eye. He had made up his mind that if there were to be any dead men thereabouts Maunders was to be the first. "He being the leader I thought I would make sure of him whatever happened to me."

He noted, not without satisfaction, that the men were looking around the cabin, regarding the weapons with attention. He showed Maunders about. The gunman agreed without enthusiasm that they had "got things fixed up in very fine shape," and departed. He treated Sewall most affably thereafter, but the backwoodsmen were made aware in one way and another that the old mischief-maker had not yet given up the idea of driving Theodore Roosevelt and his "outfit" off the claim at Elkhorn Bottom.

XII

It was underneath the stars, the little peeking stars,
That we lay and dreamed of Eden in the hills:
We were neither sad nor gay, but just wondering, while we lay,
What a mighty lot of space creation fills.

Our fire was just a spark; dot of red against the dark,
And around the fire an awful lot of night.
The purple, changing air was as quiet as a prayer,
And the moon came up and froze the mountains white.

Henry Herbert KNIBBS

The "boss" of Elkhorn Ranch, meanwhile, oblivious of the heat which he was generating in the Marquis's Prime Minister, was taking his slow course northeastward across Wyoming to the Bad Lands. It was long and weary traveling across the desolate reaches of burnt prairie. The horses began to droop. At last, in some heavy sand-hills east of the Little Beaver, one of the team pulling the heavily laden wagon played out completely, and they had to put the toughest of the saddle ponies in his place. Night was coming on fast as they crossed the final ridge and came in sight of as singular a bit of country as any of them had ever seen. Scattered over a space not more than three quarters of a mile square were countless isolated buttes of sandstone, varying in height from fifteen to fifty feet. Some of them rose as sharp peaks or ridges or as connected chains, but the greater number by far were topped with diminutive table-lands, some thirty feet across, some seventy, some two hundred. The sides were perpendicular, and were cut and channeled by the weather into most curious caves and columns and battlements and spires. Here and there ledges ran along the faces of the cliffs and eerie protrusions jutted out from the corners. Grave pine-trees rose loftily among the strange creations of water and wind set in a desert of snow-white sand. It was a beautiful and fantastic place and they made their camp there.

The moon was full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall, made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to life, the buttes in the moonlight had their own still magic. Against the shining silver of the cliffs the pines showed dark and somber, and when the branches stirred, the bright light danced on the ground making it appear like a sheet of molten metal.

It was like a country seen in a dream.

The next morning all was changed. A wild gale was blowing and rain beat about them in level sheets. A wet fog came and went and gave place at last to a steady rain, as the gale gave place to a hurricane. They spent a miserable day and night shifting from shelter to shelter with the shifting wind; another day and another night. Their provisions were almost gone, the fire refused to burn in the fierce downpour, the horses drifted far off before the storm....

"Fortunately," remarked Roosevelt later, "we had all learned that, no matter how bad things were, grumbling and bad temper can always be depended upon to make them worse, and so bore our ill-fortune, if not with stoical indifference, at least in perfect quiet."

The third day dawned crisp and clear, and once more the wagon lumbered on. They made camp that night some forty miles southwest of Lang's. They were still three days from home, three days of crawling voyaging beside the fagged team. The country was monotonous, moreover, without much game.

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

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

Merrifield argued the matter. Roosevelt had been in the saddle all day and it was eighty miles to the Maltese Cross.

"I'm going with you. I want to wind up this trip myself," said Roosevelt, and there the argument ended.

At nine o'clock they saddled their tough little ponies, and rode off out of the circle of firelight. The October air was cool in their faces as they loped steadily mile after mile over the moonlit prairie.

Roosevelt later described that memorable ride.

The hoof-beats of our horses rang out in steady rhythm
through the silence of the night, otherwise unbroken save
now and then by the wailing cry of a coyote. The rolling
plains stretched out on all sides of us, shimmering in the
clear moonlight; and occasionally a band of spectral-looking
antelope swept silently away from before our path. Once we
went by a drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at the
intruders; as we passed they charged down by us, the ground
rumbling beneath their tread, while their long horns knocked
against each other with a sound like the clattering of a
multitude of castanets. We could see clearly enough to keep
our general course over the trackless plain, steering by the
stars where the prairie was perfectly level and without
landmarks; and our ride was timed well, for as we galloped
down into the valley of the Little Missouri the sky above
the line of the level bluffs in our front was crimson with
the glow of the unrisen sun.

Roosevelt rode down to Elkhorn a day or two after his return to the Maltese Cross, and found Sewall and Dow busy cutting the timber for the new house, which was to stand in the shade of a row of cottonwood trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with the stalwart backwoodsmen.

One evening he overheard Captain Robins ask Dow what the day's cut had been. "Well, Bill cut down fifty-three," answered Dow. "I cut forty-nine, and the boss," he added dryly, not realizing that Roosevelt was within hearing--"the boss he beavered down seventeen."

Roosevelt remembered the tree-stumps he had seen gnawed down by beavers, and grinned.

Roosevelt found that the men from Maine were adapting themselves admirably to their strange surroundings. Dow was already an excellent cowhand. Sewalls abilities ran in other directions.

We are hewing away at the stuff for the house [Sewall wrote
his brother on October 19th]. It is to be 60 ft. long and 30
wide, the walls 9 ft. high, so you can see it is quite a job
to hew it out on three sides, but we have plenty of time.
Theodore wants us to ride and explore one day out of each
week and we have to go to town after our mail once a week,
so we don't work more than half the time. It is a good job
and a big one, but we have lots of time between this and
spring.

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

I think I already see a good many drawbacks to this country
[he wrote]. The Stock business is a new business in the Bad
Lands and I can't find as anybody has made anything at it,
yet _they all expect to_. I think they have all lost as yet.
Talked the other day with one of the biggest Stock men here.
He is hired by the month to boss. He said nobody knew
whether there was anything in it or not, yet. He had been
here three years and sometimes thought there was not much in
it, said it was very expensive and a great many outs to it
and I believe he told the truth. Out about town they blow it
up, want to get everybody at it they can. We shall see in
time. Can tell better in the spring after we see how they
come in with their cattle.

The truth was, Bill knew the ways of cattle, for he had run cattle in the open in Maine under climatic conditions not dissimilar to those of the Dakota country. His experience had taught him that when a cow is allowed to have one calf after another without special feeding, she is more than likely to die after the third calf. He knew also that when a cow calves in cold weather, she is likely to freeze her udder and be ruined, and lose the calf besides.

"Those cows will either have to be fed," he said to Roosevelt, "or they'll die."

Roosevelt took Sewall's pessimism with a grain of salt. "No one hereabouts seems to think there's any danger of that sort," he said. "I think, Bill, you're wrong."

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

It was while Roosevelt was working at Elkhorn that further rumors of trouble came from the party of the Marquis. Maunders insisted that he had a prior claim to the shack in which Sewall and Dow were living and all the land that lay around it, and demanded five hundred dollars for his rights. Roosevelt had from the first scouted the claim, for Maunders had a way of claiming any shack which a hunter deserted anywhere. Vague threats which Maunders was making filled the air, but did not greatly disturb Roosevelt. Sewall and Dow, however, had heard a rumor which sounded authentic and might require attention. Maunders had said that he was going to shoot Roosevelt at the next opportunity. They passed the news on to "the boss."

This was decidedly interesting. Maunders was known as a good shot and was well protected by the Marquis.

Roosevelt promptly saddled his horse and rode back up the river. Maunders's shack stood on the west bank a few hundred yards from the Pyramid Park Hotel. Roosevelt knocked on the door. Maunders opened it.

"Maunders," said Roosevelt sharply, "I understand that you have threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing and to let you know that, if you have anything to say against me, now is the time for you to say it."

Maunders looked unhappy. After a brief conversation it appeared that Maunders did not after all want to shoot him. He had been "misquoted," he said. They parted, understanding one another perfectly.

Roosevelt left Medora on October 7th, bound for New York. He had decided, after all, not to remain aloof from the political campaign. He deeply distrusted the Democratic Party, on the one hand, and he was enraged at the nominations of the Republican Party, on the other; but the "Mugwumps," those Republicans who, with a self-conscious high-mindedness which irritated him almost beyond words, were supporting the Democratic nominee, he absolutely despised. Besides, it was not in him to be neutral in any fight. He admitted that freely. During the final weeks of the campaign he made numerous speeches in New York and elsewhere which were not neutral in the least.

By leaving Medora on the 7th of October he missed a memorable occasion, for on the following day Packard at last opened his stage-line. The ex-baseball player had met and surmounted an array of obstacles that would have daunted anybody but a youngster on the Western frontier. He had completed his building operations by the end of September, and by the first of October he had distributed his hostlers, his eating-house keepers, his helpers and his "middle-route" drivers, among the sixteen relay-stations that lined the wheel-tracks which the Marquis was pleased to call the "highway" to the Black Hills. The horses which he had purchased in a dozen different places in the course of the summer were not such as to allay the trepidation of timid travelers. They had none of them been broken to harness before Packard's agents had found them and broken them in their own casual and none too gentle fashion. Packard would have preferred to have horses which had become accustomed to the restraining hand of man, but "harness-broke" horses where rare in that country. Besides, they were expensive, and, with the money coming from the Marquis only in little sums, long-delayed, Packard that summer was hunting bargains. As it was, Baron von Hoffman, who was a business man of vision and ability, was none too pleased with the mounting expenses of his son-in-law's new venture.

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

"A hundred and sixty-six."

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

"A hundred and sixty."

"What are you doing with the other six?"

"They're out on the line."

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

What the Baron said to the Marquis is lost to history. The family in the new house across the river from Medora had plenty of dignity and pride. Whatever disagreements they had they kept securely within their own walls, and there was nothing but a growing querulousness in the voice of the man who held the purse-strings to reveal to the world that Baron von Hoffman was beginning to think he was laying away his money in a hole that had no bottom. Something of that feeling seems to have been in the Marquis's own mind, for in the interviews he gave to the newspapers the words "I won't be bled" recur.

On the first of October, Packard was ready for the "dress rehearsal" of his stage-line. That performance partook of more than the usual quantity of hazard connected with such occasions. At every station, for instance, some or all of the six horses had to be roped, thrown, and blindfolded before they would let themselves be harnessed. To adjust the harness was itself a ticklish undertaking and had to be done with minute regard for sensitive nerves, for if any part of it struck a horse except with the pressure of its own weight, the devil was loose again, and anything might happen. But even when the harness was finally on the refractory backs, the work was not half done. Still blindfolded, the horses had to be driven, pulled, pushed, and hauled by main force to their appointed places in front of the coach. Noiselessly, one at a time, the tugs were attached to the single-tree, and carefully, as though they were dynamite, the reins were handed to the driver. At the Moreau Station, two thirds of the way to Deadwood, all six horses, it happened were practically unbroken broncos. The driver was on his box with Packard at his side, as they prepared to start, and at the head of each horse stood one of the station-hands.

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

"All set," answered the other helpers.

"Let 'er go!" called the driver.

The helpers jerked the blinds from the horses' eyes. The broncos jumped into their collars as a unit. As a unit, however, they surged back, as they became suddenly conscious of the horror that they dreaded most--restraint. The off leader made a wild swerve to the right, backing toward the coach, and dragging the near leader and the near swing-horse from their feet. The off leader, unable to forge ahead, made a wild leap for the off swing horse, and fairly crushed him to earth with his feet, himself tripping on the harness and rolling at random in the welter, his snapping hoofs flashing in every direction. The wheel team, in the meantime, was doing what Packard later described as "a vaudeville turn of its own." The near wheeler was bucking as though there were no other horse within a hundred miles; the off wheeler had broken his single-tree and was facing the coach, delivering kicks at the mêlée behind him with whole-hearted abandon and rigid impartiality.

"It was exactly the kind of situation," Packard remarked later, "that George Myers would have called 'a gol-darned panorama.'"

But the horses were not to have matters altogether their own way, for the helpers were experienced "horse-wranglers." By main strength they pulled the off leader to his place and blindfolded him, delegating one of their number to sit on his head until the snarl might be untangled. The process was repeated with the other horses. The damage proved to be negligible. A few small harness straps had snapped, and a single-tree was broken. A second trial resulted no better than the first. After the half-crazy animals had been a second time disentangled and a third time harnessed, quivering, to the coach, the driver had his way with them. The horses jumped forward into a wild run, thrashing the heavy coach about as a small boy might be thrashed about as the tail in "crack the whip." It was a wild ride, but they reached Spearfish with no bones broken.

"Our entrance into Deadwood was spectacular," said Packard later, "and ended in an invitation ride to Lead City with Mayor Seth Bullock at the head of the local dignitaries, riding in state inside the coach."

On the 8th of October, Packard offered the dubious joys of his stage-line for the first time to the public; and began to see a faint prospect of return on his rather extravagant investment of energy and time. But his satisfaction died stillborn. The Marquis's sanguine temperament had once more proved the undoing of what might have been a profitable venture. The mail contract, which the easy-going Frenchman had thought that he had secured, proved illusory. Packard, who had been glad to leave that part of the business to his principal, discovered, as soon as he began to inquire for the mail-bags, that what his principal had actually secured from the Postmaster-General was not a contract at all, but merely a chance to bid when the annual offers for star routes came up for bidding the following May. It was a body blow to the putative owner of a stage-line.

Long after the last of his Deadwood coaches had been rattled to kindlings in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Packard told the last chapter of his connection with the Medora and Black Hills Forwarding and Transportation Company.

"No mail contract; hardly a month of earnings before winter, when there was no chance of paying operating expenses; responsible for the pay-roll, but not on it; with a private pay-roll and expenses equal to or greater than my private income; with all my cash savings gone in the preliminary expenses of putting on the line, and finally with no chance, under my contract, of getting a cent from the stage-line before that nebulous time when it had paid for itself. The Marquis soon returned and I told him I could not consider myself bound by the contract. The delay in providing funds I had condoned by staying with the proposition, but a mail contract which was essential in helping to pay expenses was not even a possibility for seven or more months in the future. I stayed until another man was hired and left my duties with a grunt of relief."[9]

[Footnote 9: It was Packard's stage-line which brought
Scipio le Moyne (in Owen Wister's novel) from the Black
Hills to Medora to become the substitute cook of the
Virginian's mutinous "outfit." The cook whom the
Virginian kicked off the train at Medora, because he was
too anxious to buy a bottle of whiskey, is said to have
been a man named Macdonald. He remained in the Bad Lands
as cook for one of the ranches, but he was such an
inveterate drinker that "Nitch" Kendley was forced to
take drastic measures. Finding him unconscious one day,
just outside of Medora, he tied him hand and foot to the
sagebrush. The cook struggled twelve hours in the
broiling sun before he could free himself. Tradition has
it that he did not touch another drop of liquor for
three years.]

For Packard the failure of his venture was not a serious matter. The _Cowboy_ was flourishing and there was enough in all conscience to keep him occupied in his duties as Chief of Police. But for the Marquis it was bad business. He had, as it was, few enough honest men at his side.

XIII