Chapter XIII: Introduction (8)

At Medora it was customary, when the Little Missouri was high, to ride to the western side on the narrow footpath between the tracks on the trestle; and after the Marquis built a dam nearby for the purpose of securing ice of the necessary thickness for use in his refrigerating plant, a venturesome spirit now and then guided his horse across its slippery surface. It happened one day early in April that Fisher was at the river's edge, with a number of men, collecting certain tools and lumber which had been used in the cutting and hauling of the ice, when Roosevelt, riding Manitou, drew up, with the evident intention of making his way over the river on the dam. The dam, however, had disappeared. The ice had broken up, far up the river, and large cakes were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a giraffe."

"Where does the dam start?" asked Roosevelt.

"You surely won't try to cross on the dam," exclaimed Fisher, "when you can go and cross on the trestle the way the others do?"

"If Manitou gets his feet on that dam," Roosevelt replied, "he'll keep them there and we can make it finely."

"Well, it's more than likely," said Fisher, "that there's not much of the dam left."

"It doesn't matter, anyway. Manitou's a good swimmer and we're going across."

Fisher, with grave misgivings, indicated where the dam began. Roosevelt turned his horse into the river; Manitou did not hesitate.

Fisher shouted, hoping to attract the attention of some cowboy on the farther bank who might stand ready with a rope to rescue the venturesome rider. There was no response.

On the steps of the store, however, which he had inherited from the unstable Johnny Nelson, Joe Ferris was watching the amazing performance. He saw a rider coming from the direction of the Maltese Cross, and it seemed to him that the rider looked like Roosevelt. Anxiously he watched him pick his way out on the submerged dam.

Manitou, meanwhile, was living up to his reputation. Fearlessly, yet with infinite caution, he kept his course along the unseen path. Suddenly the watchers on the east bank and the west saw horse and rider disappear, swallowed up by the brown waters. An instant later they came in sight again. Roosevelt flung himself from his horse "on the downstream side," and with one hand on the horn of the saddle fended off the larger blocks of ice from before his faithful horse.

Fisher said to himself that if Manitou drifted even a little with the stream, Roosevelt would never get ashore. The next landing was a mile down the river, and that might be blocked by the ice.

The horse struck bottom at the extreme lower edge of the ford and struggled up the bank. Roosevelt had not even lost his glasses. He laughed and waved his hand to Fisher, mounted and rode to Joe's store. Having just risked his life in the wildest sort of adventure, it was entirely characteristic of him that he should exercise the caution of putting on a pair of dry socks.

Joe received him with mingled devotion and amazement. "Landsake, man!" he cried, "weren't you afraid?"

"I was riding Manitou," Roosevelt responded quietly. "Just," exclaimed Joe later, "as though Manitou was a steam engine." He bought a new pair of socks, put them on, and proceeded on his journey.

Fisher saw him shortly after and accused him of being reckless.

"I suppose it might be considered reckless," Roosevelt admitted. "But it was lots of fun."

Roosevelt spent his time alternately at the two ranches, writing somewhat and correcting the proofs of his new book, but spending most of his time in the saddle. The headquarters of his cattle business was at the Maltese Cross where Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield were in command. Elkhorn was, for the time being, merely a refuge and a hunting-lodge where Sewall and Dow "ran" a few hundred cattle under the general direction of the more experienced men of the other "outfit."

* * * * *

At the Maltese Cross there were now a half-dozen hands, Sylvane and "our friend with the beaver-slide," as Merrifield, who was bald, was known; George Myers, warm-hearted and honest as the day; Jack Reuter, known as "Wannigan," with his stupendous memory and his Teutonic appetite; and at intervals "old man" Thompson who was a teamster, and a huge being named Hank Bennett. Roosevelt liked them all immensely. They possessed to an extraordinary degree the qualities of manhood which he deemed fundamental,--courage, integrity, hardiness, self-reliance,--combining with those qualities a warmth, a humor, and a humanness that opened his understanding to many things. He had come in contact before with men whose opportunities in life had been less than his, and who in the eyes of the world belonged to that great mass of "common people" of whom Lincoln said that "the Lord surely loved them since he made so many of them." But he had never lived with them, day in, day out, slept with them, eaten out of the same dish with them. The men of the cattle country, he found, as daily companions, wore well.

They called him "Mr. Roosevelt," not "Theodore" nor "Teddy." For, though he was comrade and friend to all, he was also the "boss," and they showed him the respect his position and his instinctive leadership merited. More than once a man who attempted to be unduly familiar with Roosevelt found himself swiftly and effectively squelched. He himself entered with enthusiasm into the work of administration. He regarded the ranch as a most promising business venture, and felt assured that, with ordinary luck, he should make his livelihood from it. On every side he received support for this assurance. The oldest cattleman as well as the youngest joined in the chorus that there never had been such a country for turning cattle into dollars. In the Territorial Governor's Report for 1885, Packard is quoted, waxing lyric about it:

Bunch and buffalo-grass cover almost every inch of the
ground. The raw sides of buttes are the only places where
splendid grazing cannot be found. On many of the buttes,
however, the grass grows clear to the summit, the slopes
being the favorite pasture-lands of the cattle. Generally no
hay need be cut, as the grass cures standing, and keeps the
cattle in as good condition all winter as if they were
stall-fed. The only reason for putting up hay is to avoid a
scarcity of feed in case of heavy snow. This very seldom
happens, however, as very little snow falls in the Bad
Lands. A curious fact with cattle is that the ones that have
been here a year or two, and know how to rustle, will turn
away from a stack of hay, paw away the snow from the grass,
and feed on that exclusively. Even in the dead of winter a
meadow has a very perceptible tinge of green.

A realist might have remarked that very little snow fell in the Bad Lands mainly because the wind would not let it. The _Cowboy_ editor's exultant optimism has an aspect of terrible irony in the light of the tragedy that was even then building itself out of the over-confidence of a hundred enthusiasts.

Bill Sewall and Will Dow alone remained skeptical.

Perhaps we are wrong [Sewall wrote his brother], but we
think it is too cold and barren for a good cattle country.
Nobody has made anything at it yet. _All expect to._ Guess
it's very much like going into the woods in fall. All are
happy, _but the drive is not in yet_. When it does get in,
am afraid there will be a shortness somewhere. The men that
furnish the money are not many of them here themselves and
the fellows that run the business and are supposed to know,
all look for a very prosperous future, consider the troubles
and discouragements, losses, etc., _temporary_. They are
like us--_getting good and sure pay_.

Roosevelt recognized the possibility of great losses; but he would have been less than human if in that youthful atmosphere of gorgeous expectation he had not seen the possibilities of failure less vividly than the possibilities of success. Sylvane and Merrifield were confident that they were about to make their everlasting fortunes; George Myers invested every cent of his savings in cattle, "throwing them in," as the phrase went, with the herd of the Maltese Cross. In their first year the Maltese Cross "outfit" had branded well over a hundred calves; the losses, in what had been a severe winter, had been slight. It was a season of bright hopes. Late in April, Roosevelt sent Merrifield to Minnesota with Sewall and Dow and a check for twelve thousand five hundred dollars to purchase as many more head of stock as the money would buy.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, was proving himself as capable as a ranchman as he was courageous as an investor. The men who worked with him noted with satisfaction that he learned quickly and worked hard; that he was naturally progressive; that he cared little for money, and yet was thrifty; that, although conferring in all matters affecting the stock with Sylvane and Merrifield, and deferring to their experience even at times against his own judgment, he was very much the leader. He was never "bossy," they noted, but he was insistent on discipline, on regularity of habits, on prompt obedience, on absolute integrity.

He was riding over the range one day with one of his ablest cowpunchers, when they came upon a "maverick," a two-year-old steer, which had never been branded. They lassoed him promptly and built a fire to heat the branding-irons.

It was the rule of the cattlemen that a "maverick" belonged to the ranchman on whose range it was found. This particular steer, therefore, belonged, not to Roosevelt, but to Gregor Lang, who "claimed" the land over which Roosevelt and his cowboy were riding. The Texan started to apply the red-hot iron.

"It is Lang's brand--a thistle," said Roosevelt.

"That's all right, boss," answered the cowboy. "I know my business."

"Hold on!" Roosevelt exclaimed an instant later, "you are putting on my brand."

"That's all right. I always put on the boss's brand."

"Drop that iron," said Roosevelt quietly, "and go to the ranch and get your time. I don't need you any longer."

The cowpuncher was amazed. "Say, what have I done? Didn't I put on your brand?"

"A man who will steal _for_ me will steal _from_ me. You're fired."

The man rode away. A day or so later the story was all over the Bad Lands.

Roosevelt was scarcely more tolerant of ineffectiveness than he was of dishonesty. When a man was sent to do a piece of work, he was expected to do it promptly and thoroughly. He brooked no slack work and he had no ear for what were known as "hard-luck stories." He gave his orders, knowing why he gave them; and expected results. If, on the other hand, a man "did his turn" without complaint or default, Roosevelt showed himself eager and prompt to reward him.

His companions saw these things, and other things. They saw that "the boss" was quick-tempered and impatient of restraint; but they saw also that in times of stress the hot-headed boy seemed instantly to grow into a cautious and level-headed man, dependable in hardship and cool in the face of danger. He was, as one of them put it, "courageous without recklessness, firm without being stubborn, resolute without being obstinate. There was no element of the spectacular in his make-up, but an honest naturalness that won him friends instantly."

"Roosevelt out in Dakota was full of life and spirit, always pleasant," said Bill Sewall in after years. "He was hot-tempered and quick, but he kept his temper in good control. As a rule, when he had anything to say, he'd spit it out. His temper would show itself in the first flash in some exclamation. In connection with Roosevelt I always think of that verse in the Bible, 'He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.'"

"He struck me like a sort of rough-an'-ready, all-around frontiersman," said "Dutch Wannigan." "Wasn't a bit stuck up--just the same as one of the rest of us."

Joe Ferris, who frankly adored Roosevelt, declared to a crowd at his store one day, "I wouldn't be surprised if Roosevelt would be President."

His hearers scoffed at him. "That fool Joe Ferris," remarked one of them at his own ranch that night, "says that Roosevelt will be President some day."

But Joe held his ground.[12]

[Footnote 12: Joe Ferris was made aware of this scornful
reference to his judgment through a cowboy, Carl
Hollenberg, who overheard it, and sixteen years later
came into Joe's store one September day shouting, "That
fool, Joe Ferris, says that Roosevelt will be President
some day!" The point was that Roosevelt had that week
succeeded McKinley in the White House.]

The neighbors up and down the river were warm-hearted and friendly. Mrs. Roberts had decided that she wanted a home of her own, and had persuaded her husband to build her a cabin some three miles north of the Maltese Cross, where a long green slope met a huge semi-circle of gray buttes. The cabin was primitive, being built of logs stuck, stockade-fashion, in the ground, and the roof was only dirt until Mrs. Roberts planted sunflowers there and made it a garden; but for Mrs. Roberts, with her flock of babies, it was "home," and for many a cowboy, passing the time of day with the genial Irishwoman, it was the nearest approach to "home" that he knew from one year's end to another.

Shortly after Mrs. Roberts had moved to her new house, Roosevelt and Merrifield paid her a call. Mrs. Roberts, who had the only milch cow in the Bad Lands, had been churning, and offered Roosevelt a glass of buttermilk. He drank it with an appreciation worthy of a rare occasion. But as he rode off again, he turned to Merrifield with his teeth set.

"Heavens, Merrifield!" he exclaimed, "don't you ever do that again!"

Merrifield was amazed. "Do what?"

"Put me in a position where I have to drink buttermilk. I loathe the stuff!"

"But why did you drink it?"

"She brought it out!" he exclaimed, "And it would have hurt her feelings if I hadn't. But look out! I don't want to have to do it again!"

Mrs. Roberts spared him thenceforward, and there was nothing, therefore, to spoil for Roosevelt the merriment of the Irishwoman's talk and the stimulus of her determination and courage. There were frequent occasions consequently when "the boys from the Maltese Cross" foregathered in the Roberts cabin, and other occasions, notably Sundays (when Sylvane and Merrifield and George Myers had picked up partners in Medora) when they all called for "Lady Roberts" as chaperon and rode up the valley together. They used to take peculiar delight in descending upon Mrs. Cummins and making her miserable.

It was not difficult to make that poor lady unhappy. She had a fixed notion of what life should be for people who were "nice" and "refined," and her days were a succession of regrets at the shortcomings of her neighbors. She was in many ways an admirable woman, but she seemed incapable of extending the conception of gentility which a little Pennsylvania town had given her, and she never caught a gleam of the real meaning of the life of which she was a part. She wanted everything in the Bad Lands exactly as she had had it at home. "Well," as Mrs. Roberts subsequently remarked, "she had one time of it, I'm telling you, in those old rough days."

Mrs. Cummins was not the only neighbor who furnished amusement during those spring days of 1885 to the boys at the Maltese Cross. The Eatons' "dude ranch" had developed in a totally unexpected direction. From being a headquarters for Easterners who wanted to hunt in a wild country, it had become a kind of refuge to which wealthy and distracted parents sent such of their offspring as were over-addicted to strong drink. Why any parent should send a son to the Bad Lands with the idea of putting him out of reach of temptation is beyond comprehension. The Eatons did their part nobly and withheld intoxicating drinks from their guests, but Bill Williams and the dozen or more other saloon-keepers in Medora were under no compulsion to follow their example. The "dudes" regularly came "back from town" with all they could carry without and within; and the cowboys round about swore solemnly that you couldn't put your hand in the crotch of any tree within a hundred yards of the Eatons' ranch-house without coming upon a bottle concealed by a dude being cured of "the drink."

The neighbors who were most remote from Roosevelt in point of space continued to be closest in point of intimacy. The Langs were now well established and Roosevelt missed no opportunity to visit with them for an hour or a day, thinking nothing apparently of the eighty-mile ride there and back in comparison with the prospect of an evening in good company. The Langs were, in fact, excellent company. They knew books and they knew also the graces of cultivated society. To visit with them was to live for an hour or two in the quietude of an Old World home, with all the Old World's refinements and the added tang of bizarre surroundings; and even to one who was exuberantly glad to be a cowboy, this had its moments of comfort after weeks of the rough frontier existence. Cultivated Englishmen were constantly appearing at the Langs', sent over by their fathers, for reasons sometimes mysterious, to stay for a week or a year. Some of them proved very bad cowboys, but all of them were delightful conversationalists. Their efforts to enter into the life of the Bad Lands were not always successful, and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones on one notable occasion, when the son of a Scotch baronet undertook to criticize him for misconduct, expressed his opinion of the scions of British aristocracy that drifted into Medora, in terms that hovered and poised and struck like birds of prey. Lincoln Lang, who was present, described Bill Jones's discourse as "outside the pale of the worst I have ever heard uttered by human mouth," which meant something in that particular place. But Bill Jones was an Irishman, and he was not naturally tolerant of idiosyncrasies of speech and manner. Roosevelt, on the whole, liked the "younger sons," and they in turn regarded him with a kind of awe. He was of their own class, and yet there was something in him which stretched beyond the barriers which confined them, into regions where they were lost and bewildered, but he was completely at home.

They all had delightful evenings together at Yule, with charades and punning contests, and music on the piano which Lincoln Lang had brought out through the gumbo against all the protests of nature. Mrs. Lang was an admirable cook and a liberal and hospitable hostess, which was an added reason for riding eighty miles.

To the Scotch family, exiled far up the Little Missouri, Roosevelt's visits were notable events. "We enjoyed having him," said Lincoln Lang long afterward, "more than anything else in the world."

To Gregor Lang, Roosevelt's visits brought an opportunity for an argument with an opponent worthy of his steel. The Scotchman's alert intelligence pined sometimes, in those intellectually desolate wastes, for exercise in the keen give-and-take of debate. The average cowboy was not noted for his conversational powers, and Gregor Lang clutched avidly at every possibility of talk. It was said of him that he loved a good argument so much that it did not always make much difference to him which side of the argument he took. On one occasion he was spending the night at the Eatons', when the father of the four "Eaton boys" was visiting his sons. "Old man" Eaton was a Republican; Lang was a Democrat. They began arguing at supper, and they argued all night long. To Eaton, his Republicanism was a religion (as it was to many in those middle eighties), and he wrestled with the error in Lang's soul as a saint wrestles with a devil. As the day dawned, Gregor Lang gave an exclamation of satisfaction. "It's been a fine talk we've had, Mistur-r Eaton," he cried. "Now suppose you tak' my side and I tak' yours?" What Eaton said thereupon has not been recorded; but Gregor Lang went home happy.

With all his love for forensics as such, Lang had solid convictions. They were a Democrat's, and in consequence many of them were not Roosevelt's. Roosevelt attacked them with energy and Lang defended them with skill. Roosevelt, who loved rocking-chairs, had a way of rocking all over the room in his excitement. The debates were long, but always friendly; and neither party ever admitted defeat. The best that Gregor Lang would say was, "Well, Mr. Roosevelt, when you ar-re Pr-resident of the United States, you may r-run the gover-rnment the way you mind to." He did admit in the bosom of his family, however, that Roosevelt made "the best ar-rgument for the other side" he had ever heard.

Lang's love of an argument, which to unfriendly ears might have sounded like contentiousness, did not serve to make the excellent Scotchman popular with his neighbors. He had a habit, moreover, of saying exactly what he thought, regardless of whom he might hit. He was not politic at all. He had, in fact, come to America and to Dakota too late in life altogether to adapt a mind, steeped in the manners and customs of the Old World, to the new conditions of a country in almost every way alien to his own. He was dogmatic in his theories of popular government and a little stubborn in his conviction that there was nothing which the uneducated range-rider of the Bad Lands could teach a thinking man like him. But his courage was fine. Against the protests of his Southern neighbors, he insisted on treating a negro cowboy in his outfit as on complete equality with his white employees; and bore the storm of criticism with equanimity. Such a spirit was bound to appeal to Roosevelt.

At the Maltese Cross there was a steady stream of callers. One of them, a hawk-eyed, hawk-nosed cowpuncher named "Nitch" Kendley, who was one of the first settlers in the region, arrived one day when Roosevelt was alone.

"Come on in," said Roosevelt, "and we'll have some dinner. I can't bake biscuits, but I can cook meat. If you can make the biscuits, go ahead, and I will see what I can do for the rest of the dinner."

So "Nitch" made the biscuits and put them in the oven, and Roosevelt cut what was left of a saddle of venison and put it in a pan to fry. Then the two cooks went outdoors, for the cabin was small, and the weather was hot.

Roosevelt began to talk, whereupon "Nitch," who had ideas of his own, began to talk also with a fluency which was not customary, for he was naturally a taciturn man. They both forgot the dinner. "Nitch" never knew how long they talked.

They were brought back to the world of facts by a smell of burning. The cabin was filled with smoke, and "you could not," as "Nitch" subsequently remarked, "have told your wife from your mother-in-law three feet away." On investigation it proved that "Nitch's" biscuits and Roosevelt's meat were burnt to cinders.

Merrifield and Sylvane were out after deer, and Roosevelt and his companion waited all afternoon in vain for the two men to return. At last, toward evening, Roosevelt made some coffee, which, as "Nitch" remarked, "took the rough spots off the biscuits."

"If we'd talked less," reflected "Nitch," "we'd have had more dinner."

Roosevelt laughed. He did not seem to mind the loss of a meal. "Nitch" was quite positive that he was well repaid. They went on talking as before.

XVI

He went so high above the earth,
Lights from Jerusalem shone.
Right thar we parted company,
And he came down alone.
I hit terra firma,
The buckskin's heels struck free,
And brought a bunch of stars along
To dance in front of me.

_Cowboy song_

Early in May, Roosevelt's men returned from Fergus Falls with a thousand head of cattle. In a letter to his brother, Sewall describes what he terms the "Cattle Torture," in which he had been engaged. "It will perhaps interest you," he adds. "It certainly must have been interesting to the cattle."

The cattle were driven in from the country [Sewall writes]
and put in a yard. This was divided in the middle by a fence
and on one side was a narrow lane where you could drive six
or eight Cattle at a time. This narrowed so when you got to
the fence in the middle only one could pass by the post, and
beyond the post there was a strong gate which swang off from
the side fence at the top so to leave it wide enough to go
through. Well, they would rush them into the shoot and when
they came to the gate would let it swing off at the top. The
animal would make a rush but it was so narrow at the bottom
it would bother his feet and there was a rope went from the
top of the gate over his back to a lever on the outside of
the yard. While he was trying to get through, the fellow on
the lever would catch him with the gate and then the frying
began.

They had two good big fires and about four irons in each
and they would put an iron on each side. One is a Triangle
about four inches on a side, the other an Elkhorn about six
inches long with two prongs. It smelt around there as if
Coolage was burning Parkman,[13] or was it Webster? I
remember hearing father read about the smell of meat burning
when I was a boy, and I kept thinking of that and Indians
burning Prisoners at the stake. Well, we burnt them all in
less than a day and a half and then hustled them into the
cars.

[Footnote 13: A celebrated murder case in Boston.]

They of course did not get much to eat for two or three days
before they started. Then we put from 50 to 57 yearlings in
a carr and from 32 to 37 two year olds and started. The poor
cattle would lay down, then of course as many as could stand
on them would do so. The ones that got down would stay there
till they were completely trod under and smothered unless
you made them get up. So I would go in and shove and crowd
and get them off of the down ones, then I would seize a tail
and the man with me would punch from outside with a pole
with a brad in it. This would invigorate the annimal as he
used the pole with great energy, and with my help they would
get up.

I did not dislike the work though it was very warm and the
cattle were rather slippery to hold on to after they had
been down, but it was lively and exciting climbing from one
carr to the other when they were going, especially in the
night. We went to see them every time they stopped and some
times we did not have time before we started. Then we would
have to go from one to the other while they were going, and
after we had got through run back over the tops of the cars.

Ours were all alive when we got to Medora. How they ever
lived through, I don't see. John Bean would liked to have
bought me by the cord, and if he had been around Medora,
think I could have sold myself for dressing.

Roosevelt met them at Medora and set out with them to drive the cattle north to Elkhorn Ranch. It was customary to drive cattle along the river bottom, but there had been a series of freshets that spring which had turned the Little Missouri into a raging torrent and its bottom into a mass of treacherous quicksands. The river valley would consequently have been dangerous even for mature stock. For the young cattle the dangers of the crossings were too great even for a none too prudent man to hazard. Accordingly Roosevelt decided to drive the animals down along the divide west of Medora between the Little Missouri and the Beaver.

Owing to a variety of causes, the preparations for the trip had been inadequate. He had only five men to help him; Sewall and Dow and Rowe and two others. Of these, only one was a cowpuncher of experience. Roosevelt placed him in charge. It was not long, however, before he discovered that this man, who was a first-rate cowhand, was wholly incapable of acting as head. Cattle and cowpunchers, chuck-wagon and saddle-band, in some fashion which nobody could explain became so snarled up with each other that, after disentangling the situation, he was forced to relegate his expert to the ranks and take command himself.

His course lay, for the most part, through the Bad Lands, which enormously increased the difficulty of driving the cattle. A herd always travels strung out in lines, and a thousand head thus going almost in single file had a way of stretching out an appreciable distance, with the strong, speedy animals in the van and the weak and sluggish ones inevitably in the rear. Roosevelt put two of his men at the head of the column, two more at the back, and himself with another man rode constantly up and down the flanks. In the tangled mass of rugged hills and winding defiles through which the trail led, it was no easy task for six men to keep the cattle from breaking off in different directions or prevent the strong beasts that formed the vanguard from entirely outstripping the laggards. The spare saddle-ponies also made trouble, for several of them were practically unbroken.

Slowly and with infinite difficulty they drove the herd northward. To add to their troubles, the weather went through "a gamut of changes," as Roosevelt wrote subsequently, "with that extraordinary and inconsequential rapidity which characterizes atmospheric variations on the plains." The second day out, there was a light snow falling all day, with a wind blowing so furiously that early in the afternoon they were obliged to drive the cattle down into a sheltered valley to keep them overnight. The cold was so intense that even in the sun the water froze at noon. Forty-eight hours afterwards it was the heat that was causing them to suffer.

The inland trail which they were following had its disadvantages, for water for the stock was scarce there, and the third day, after watering the cattle at noon, Roosevelt and his men drove them along the very backbone of the divide through barren and forbidding country. Night came on while they were still many miles from the string of deep pools which held the nearest water. The cattle were thirsty and restless, and in the first watch, which Roosevelt shared with one of his cowboys, when the long northern spring dusk had given way at last to complete darkness, the thirsty animals of one accord rose to their feet and made a break for liberty. Roosevelt knew that the only hope of saving his herd from hopeless dispersion over a hundred hills lay in keeping the cattle close together at the very start. He rode along at their side as they charged, as he had never ridden in his life before. In the darkness he could see only dimly the shadowy outline of the herd, as with whip and spur he ran his pony along its edge, turning back the beasts at one point barely in time to wheel and keep them in at another. The ground was cut up by numerous gullies, and more than once Roosevelt's horse turned a complete somersault with his rider. Why he was not killed a half-dozen times over is a mystery. He was dripping with sweat, and his pony was quivering like a quaking aspen when, after more than an hour of the most violent exertion, he and his companion finally succeeded in quieting the herd.

I have had hard work and a good deal of fun since I came out
[Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on the fifteenth of May].
To-morrow I start for the round-up; and I have just come in
from taking a thousand head of cattle up on the trail. The
weather was very bad and I had my hands full, working night
and day, and being able to take off my clothes but once
during the week I was out.

The river has been very high recently, and I have had on two
or three occasions to swim my horse across it; a new
experience to me. Otherwise I have done little that is
exciting in the way of horsemanship; as you know I am no
horseman, and I cannot ride an unbroken horse with any
comfort. The other day I lunched with the Marquis de Mores,
a French cavalry officer; he has hunted all through France,
but he told me he never saw in Europe such stiff jumping as
we have on the Meadowbrook hunt.

Whether he was or was not a horseman is a question on which there is authority which clashes with Roosevelt's. A year's experience with broncos had taught him much, and though Sylvane remained indisputably the crack rider of the Maltese Cross outfit, Roosevelt more than held his own. "He was not a purty rider," as one of his cowpunching friends expressed it, "but a hell of a good rider."

Roosevelt was a firm believer in "gentling" rather than "breaking" horses. He had no sentimental illusions concerning the character of the animals with which he was dealing, but he never ceased his efforts to make a friend instead of a suspicious servant of a horse. Most of Roosevelt's horses became reasonably domesticated, but there was one that resisted all Roosevelt's friendly advances. He was generally regarded as a fiend incarnate. "The Devil" was his name.

"The trouble with training the Devil," said Packard, who was present at the Maltese Cross one day when Roosevelt was undertaking to ride him, "was that he was a wild four-year-old when first ridden and this first contest was a victory for the horse. If the rider had won, Devil might have become a good saddle horse. But when the horse wins the first contest, one can look for a fight every time he is saddled. The chances favor his becoming a spoiled horse. I happened to arrive at the Chimney Butte Ranch one day just as the horse-herd was being driven into the corral. Devil knew he was due for a riding-lesson. It was positively uncanny to see him dodge the rope. On several occasions he stopped dead in his tracks and threw his head down between his front legs; the loop sliding harmlessly off his front quarters, where not even an ear projected. But Devil couldn't watch two ropes at once, and Roosevelt 'snared' him from the corral fence while Merrifield was whirling his rope for the throw. Instantly Devil stopped and meekly followed Roosevelt to the snubbing-post, where he was tied up for a period of 'gentling.' The ordinary procedure was to throw such a horse and have one man sit on his head while another bound a handkerchief over his eyes. He was then allowed to get on his feet and often made little resistance while the saddle and bridle were being adjusted. The rider then mounted and the fireworks began as soon as he jerked the handkerchief from the horse's eyes.

"Devil had gone through this procedure so often that he knew it by heart. He had, however, not become accustomed to being 'gentled' instead of 'busted.' As Roosevelt walked toward him, the horse's fear of man overcame his dread of the rope, and he surged back until the noose was strangling him.

"It was half an hour before he allowed Roosevelt to put a hand on his neck. All this was preliminary to an attempt to blindfolding Devil without throwing, and at last it was accomplished. He then submitted to being saddled and bridled, though he shrank from every touch as though it were a hot iron. The handkerchief was then taken from his eyes, and he began bucking the empty saddle like a spoiled horse of the worst type. Every one took a seat on top of the corral fence to await the time when he had strangled and tired himself to a standstill. Several times he threw himself heavily by tripping on the rope or by tightening it suddenly. And at last he gave it up, standing with legs braced, with heaving flanks and gasping breath.

"Roosevelt walked toward him with a pail of water and the first real sign that 'gentling' was better than 'busting' was when the wild-eyed Devil took a swallow; the first time in his life he had accepted a favor from the hand of man. It was too dangerous to attempt riding in the corral, and Devil was led out to some bottom-land which was fairly level; the end of the rope around the horn of Merrifield's saddle and Sylvane Ferris on another saddle horse ready to urge Devil into a run as soon as Roosevelt had mounted. A vain attempt at mounting was made, and finally Devil had to be blindfolded. Then came the mounting, and, almost instantly with the lifting of the blindfold, Roosevelt was sprawling in the sagebrush. Somewhat scratched he was, and his teeth glittered in the way which required a look at his eyes to tell whether it was a part of a smile or a look of deadly determination. It required no second glance to know that Devil was going to be ridden or Roosevelt was going to be hurt. There was no disgrace in being thrown. It was done in the same way that Devil had unhorsed other men whom Roosevelt would have been first to call better riders than himself. There was a sudden arching of the back which jolted the rider at least six inches from the saddle, then a whirling jump which completed a half-turn, and a landing, stiff-legged, on the fore feet while the hind hoofs kicked high in the air. In his six-inch descent the rider was met with the saddle or the flanks of the horse and catapulted into space. The only way to 'stay with the leather' was to get the horse to running instead of making this first jump.

"About every other jump we could see twelve acres of bottom-land between Roosevelt and the saddle, but now the rider stayed with the animal a little longer than before. Four times that beast threw him, but the fifth time Roosevelt maneuvered him into a stretch of quicksand in the Little Missouri River. This piece of strategy saved the day, made Roosevelt a winner, and broke the record of the Devil, for if there is any basis of operations fatal to fancy bucking it is quicksand. After a while Roosevelt turned the bronco around, brought him out on dry land, and rode him until he was as meek as a rabbit."

The round-up that spring gave Roosevelt an opportunity to put his horsemanship to the severest test there was.

Theodore Roosevelt is now at Medora [the Mandan _Pioneer_
reported on May 22d], and has been there for some time past.
He is preparing his outfit for the round-up, and will take
an active part in the business itself.

Roosevelt had, in fact, determined to work with the round-up as an ordinary cowpuncher, and shortly after the middle of May he started with his "outfit" south to the appointed meeting-place west of the mouth of Box Elder Creek in southeastern Montana. With him were all the regular cowboys of the Maltese Cross, besides a half-dozen other "riders," and Walter Watterson, a sandy-haired and faithful being who drove Tony and Dandy, the wheel team, and Thunder and Lightning, the leaders, hitched to the rumbling "chuck-wagon." Watterson was also the cook, and in both capacities was unexcelled. Each cowpuncher attached to the "outfit," or to "the wagon" as it was called on the round-up, had his own "string" of ten or a dozen ponies, thrown together into a single herd which was in charge of the "horse-wranglers," one for the night and one for the morning, customarily the youngest (and most abused) cowboys on the ranch.

Roosevelt's "string" was not such as to make him look forward to the round-up with easy assurance. He had not felt that he had a right, even as "the boss," to pick the best horses for himself out of the saddle band of the Maltese Cross. With Sylvane, Merrifield, Myers, and himself choosing in succession, like boys picking teams for "one ol' cat," "the boss" having first choice on each round, he took what Fate and his own imperfect judgment gave him. At the conclusion of the "picking," he found that, of the nine horses he had chosen, four were broncos, broken only in the sense that each had once or twice been saddled. One of them, he discovered promptly, could not possibly be bridled or saddled single-handed; it was very difficult to get on him and very difficult to get off; he was exceedingly nervous, moreover, if his rider moved his hands or feet; "but he had," Roosevelt declared, "no bad tricks," which, in view of his other qualities, must have been a real comfort. The second allowed himself to be tamed and was soon quiet. The third, on the other hand, turned out to be one of the worst buckers Roosevelt possessed; and the fourth had a habit which was even worse, for he would balk and throw himself over backward. It struck Roosevelt that there was something about this refractory animal's disposition, to say nothing of his Roman nose, which greatly reminded him of the eminent Democrat, General Ben Butler, and "Ben Butler" became that bronco's name. Roosevelt had occasion to remember it.

The encampment where the round-up was to begin furnished a scene of bustle and turmoil. From here and there the heavy four-horse wagons one after another jolted in, the "horse-wranglers" rushing madly to and fro in the endeavor to keep the different saddle bands from mingling. Single riders, in groups of two or three, appeared, each driving his "string." The wagons found their places, the teamsters unharnessed the horses and unpacked the "cook outfit," the foreman sought out the round-up captain, the "riders" sought out their friends. Here there was larking, there there was horse-racing, elsewhere there was "a circus with a pitchin' bronc'," and foot-races and wrestling-matches. A round-up always had more than a little of the character of a county fair. For though the work was hard, and practically continuous for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, it was full of excitement. The cowboys regarded it largely as sport, and the five weeks they spent at it very much of a holiday.[14]

[Footnote 14: _Roosevelt: Ranch Life and the Hunting
Trail._

"Am inclined to think that this assertion of Mr.
Roosevelt's would be open to criticism on the part of
the real old-time cowpunchers. Much depended upon the
weather, of course, but in a general way most of them
regarded the work as anything but a picnic. Usually, it
came closer to being 'Hell,' before we got through with
it, as was the case on that particular round-up in 1885,
when Mr. Roosevelt was along. Rained much of the time,
and upon one occasion kept at it for a week on end. Tied
the whole outfit up for several days at one point and I
recall we had to wring the water out of our blankets
every night before retiring. The boys liked to work on
general round-ups, hard and all as they were, mainly
because it brought them into contact with the boys from
other ranges, so that they had a chance to renew old
acquaintances. Generally the boys were all inclined to
be a little wild at the start, or until cooled down by a
few days of hard work. After that things got into a
steady groove, eighteen hours per day in the saddle
being nothing unusual.

"At the start, the round-up bore many of the aspects of
a county fair, just as Mr. Roosevelt states, and unless
the trip proved to be unusually hard there was always
more or less horse-play in the air."--_Lincoln Lang._]

Roosevelt reported to the captain of the round-up, a man named Osterhaut, saying that he expected to be treated as a common cowhand and wanted to be shown no favors; and the captain took him at his word. He promptly justified his existence. He did not pretend to be a good roper, and his poor eyesight forbade any attempt to "cut" the cattle that bore his brand out of the milling herd; but he "wrestled calves" with the best of them; he rode "the long circle"; he guarded the day-herd and the night-herd and did the odd (and often perilous) jobs of the cowpuncher with the same cool unconcern that characterized the professional cowboy.

"Three-Seven" Bill Jones was on the round-up as foreman of the "Three-Seven Ranch." ("There," as Howard Eaton remarked with enthusiasm, "was a cowboy for your whiskers!") He was a large, grave, taciturn man, capable of almost incredible feats of physical endurance. Dantz overheard him, one day, discussing Roosevelt.

"That four-eyed maverick," remarked "Three-Seven" Bill, "has sand in his craw a-plenty."

As with all other forms of work [Roosevelt wrote years
after], 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.[15]

[Footnote 15: _Autobiography._]

It was an active life,[16] and Roosevelt had no opportunity to complain of restlessness. Breakfast came at three and dinner at eight or nine or ten in the morning, at the conclusion sometimes of fifty miles of breakneck riding. From ten to one, while the experts were "cutting out the cows," Roosevelt was "on day-herd," as the phrase went, riding slowly round and round the herd, turning back into it any cattle that attempted to escape. In the afternoon he would "ride circle" again, over the hills; and at night, from ten to twelve, he would again be on guard, riding round the cattle, humming some eerie lullaby. It was always the same song that he sang, but what the words were or the melody is a secret that belongs to the wind.

[Footnote 16: Roosevelt gives an admirable description
of a round-up in his _Ranch Life and the Hunting
Trail_.]

When utterly tired, it was hard to have to get up for one's
trick at night-herd [Roosevelt wrote in his
"Autobiography"]. 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.

As he lay on the ground near by, after his watch, he liked to listen to the wild and not unmusical calls of the cowboys as they rode round the half-slumbering steers. There was something magical in the strange sound of it under the stars. Now and then a song would float through the clear air.

"The days that I was hard up,
I never shall forget.
The days that I was hard up--
I may be well off yet.
In days when I was hard up,
And wanted wood and fire,
I used to tie my shoes up
With little bits of wire."

It was a favorite song with the night-herders.

One night, early in the round-up, Roosevelt failed satisfactorily to identify the direction in which he was to go in order to reach the night-herd. It was a pitch-dark night, and he wandered about in it for hours on end, finding the cattle at last only when the sun rose. He was greeted with withering scorn by the injured cowpuncher who had been obliged to stand double guard because Roosevelt had failed to relieve him.

Sixteen hours of work left little time for social diversions, but even when they were full of sleep the cowboys would draw up around the camp-fire, to smoke and sing and "swap yarns" for an hour. There were only three musical instruments in the length and breadth of the Bad Lands, the Langs' piano, a violin which "Fiddling Joe" played at the dances over Bill Williams's saloon, and Howard Eaton's banjo. The banjo traveled in state in the mess-wagon of the "Custer Trail," and hour on hour, about the camp-fire on the round-up, Eaton would play to the dreamy delight of the weary men. The leading spirit of those evenings was Bill Dantz, who knew a hundred songs by heart, and could spin an actual happening into a yarn so thrilling and so elaborate in every detail that no one could tell precisely where the foundation of fact ended and the Arabian dome and minaret of iridescent fancy began.

Roosevelt found the cowboys excellent companions. They were a picturesque crew with their broad felt hats, their flannel shirts of various colors, overlaid with an enamel of dust and perspiration, baked by the Dakota sun, their bright silk handkerchiefs knotted round the neck, their woolly "shaps," their great silver spurs, their loosely hanging cartridge-belts, their ominous revolvers. Roosevelt was struck by the rough courtesy with which the men treated each other. There was very little quarreling or fighting, due, Roosevelt suspected, to the fact that all the men were armed; for, it seemed, that when a quarrel was likely to end fatally, men rather hesitated about embarking upon it. The moral tone of the round-up camp seemed to Roosevelt rather high. There was a real regard for truthfulness, a firm insistence on the sanctity of promises, and utter contempt for meanness and cowardice and dishonesty and hypocrisy and the disposition to shirk. The cowpuncher was a potential cattle-owner and good citizen, and if he went wild on occasion it was largely because he was so exuberantly young. In years he was generally a boy, often under twenty. But he did the work of a man, and he did it with singular conscientiousness and the spirit less of an employee than of a member of an order bound by vows, unspoken but accepted. He obeyed orders without hesitation, though it were to mount a bucking bronco or "head off" a stampede. He worked without complaint in a smother of dust and cattle fumes at temperatures ranging as high as 136 degrees; or, snow-blinded and frozen, he "rode line" for hours on end when the thermometer was fifty or more below zero. He was in constant peril of his life from the horns of milling cattle or the antics of a "mean" horse. Roosevelt was immensely drawn to the sinewy, hardy, and self-reliant adventurers; and they in turn liked him.

Life in the camps was boisterous and the language beggared description.

"With some of these fellows around here," Dr. Stickney, the Bad Lands' surgeon, once remarked, "profanity ceases to be a habit and becomes an art."

"That's right," assented Sylvane. "Some strangers will get the hang of it, but others never do. There was 'Deacon' Cummins, for instance. He'd say such a thing as 'damned calf.' You could tell he didn't know anything about it."