Chapter XIV: Introduction (9)

The practical jokes, moreover, which the cowboys played on each other were not such as to make life easy for the timid. "The boys played all kinds of tricks," remarked Merrifield long after; "sometimes they'd stick things under the horses' tails and play tricks of that kind an' there'd be a lot of hilarity to see the fellow get h'isted into the air; but they never bothered Mr. Roosevelt. He commanded everybody's respect."

They did play one joke on him, however, but it did not turn out at all as they expected.

Roosevelt's hunting proclivities were well known, for he never missed an opportunity, even on the round-up, to wander up some of the countless coulees with a rifle on his shoulder after deer, or to ride away over the prairies after antelope; and the cowpunchers decided that it would be rather good fun to send him on a wild-goose chase. So they told him with great seriousness of a dozen antelope they had seen five or six miles back, suggesting that he had better go and get one.

He "bit," as they knew he would, and, in spite of the fact that he had had a hard day on the round-up, saddled a horse and rode off in the direction which they had indicated. The cowboys speculated as to the language he would use when he came back.

He was gone several hours, and he had two antelope across his saddle-bow when he rode back into camp.

"I found them all right," he cried, "just a quarter-mile from where you said."

There was a shout from the cowboys. By general consent the joke was declared as not to be on the "four-eyed tenderfoot."

Most of the men sooner or later accepted Roosevelt as an equal, in spite of his toothbrush and his habit of shaving; but there was one man, a surly Texan, who insisted on "picking on" Roosevelt as a dude. Roosevelt laughed. But the man continued, in season and out of season, to make him the butt of his gibes.

It occurred to the object of all this attention that the Texan was evidently under the impression that the "dude" was also a coward. Roosevelt decided that, for the sake of general harmony, that impression had better be corrected at once.

One evening, when the man was being particularly offensive, Roosevelt strode up to him.

"You're talking like an ass!" he said sharply. "Put up or shut up! Fight now, or be friends!"

The Texan stared, his shoulder dropped a little, and he shifted his feet. "I didn't mean no harm," he said. "Make it friends."

They made it friends.

XVII

At a round-up on the Gily,
One sweet mornin' long ago,
Ten of us was throwed right freely
By a hawse from Idaho.
And we thought he'd go a-beggin'
For a man to break his pride,
Till, a-hitchin' up one leggin',
Boastful Bill cut loose and cried--

"_I'm an on'ry proposition for to hurt;
I fulfill my earthly mission with a quirt;
I kin ride the highest liver
'Tween the Gulf and Powder River,
And I'll break this thing as easy as I'd flirt._"

So Bill climbed the Northern Fury,
And they mangled up the air,
Till a native of Missouri
Would have owned his brag was fair.
Though the plunges kep' him reelin'
And the wind it flapped his shirt,
Loud above the hawse's squealin'
We could hear our friend assert--

"_I'm the one to take such rakin's as a joke.
Some one hand me up the makin's of a smoke!
If you think my fame needs bright'nin',
Why, I'll rope a streak of lightnin',
And I'll cinch 'im up and spur 'im till he's broke._"

Then one caper of repulsion
Broke that hawse's back in two.
Cinches snapped in the convulsion;
Skyward man and saddle flew.
Up he mounted, never laggin',
While we watched him through our tears,
And his last thin bit of braggin'
Came a-droppin' to our ears--

"_If you'd ever watched my habits very close,
You would know I've broke such rabbits by the gross.
I have kep' my talent hidin';
I'm too good for earthly ridin',
And I'm off to bust the lightnin'--Adios!_"

Badger CLARK

If Roosevelt anticipated that he would have trouble with his untamed broncos, he was not disappointed. "The effort," as he subsequently remarked, "both to ride them, and to look as if I enjoyed doing so, on some cool morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered round 'to see whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off,' doubtless was of benefit to me, but lacked much of being enjoyable."

One morning, when the round-up "outfits" were camped on the Logging Camp Range, south of the Big Ox Bow, Roosevelt had a memorable struggle with one of his four broncos. The camp was directly behind the ranch-house (which the Eaton brothers owned), and close by was a chasm some sixty feet deep, a great gash in the valley which the torrents of successive springs had through the centuries cut there. The horse had to be blindfolded before he would allow a saddle to be put on him.

Lincoln Lang was among the cowboys who stood in an admiring circle, hoping for the worst.

"Mr. Roosevelt mounted, with the blind still on the horse," Lang said, telling the story afterward, "so that the horse stood still, although with a well-defined hump on his back, which, as we all knew very well, meant trouble to come. As soon as Mr. Roosevelt got himself fixed in the saddle, the men who were holding the horse pulled off the blind and turned him loose."

Here Bill Dantz, who was also in the "gallery," takes up the story:

"The horse did not buck. He started off quietly, in fact, until he was within a few feet of the chasm. Then he leapt in the air like a shot deer, and came down with all four feet buckled under him, jumped sideways and went in the air a second time, twisting ends."

Here Lang resumes the narrative:

"Almost any kind of a bucking horse is hard to ride, but the worst of all are the 'sunfishers' who change end for end with each jump, maintaining the turning movement in one direction so that the effect is to get the rider dizzy. This particular horse was of that type, and almost simultaneous with the removal of the blind he was in gyroscopic action.

"I am aware that Mr. Roosevelt did not like to 'pull leather,' as the term goes, but this time at least he had to, but for the matter of that there were not many who would not have done the same thing. As nearly as I can remember, he got the horn of his saddle in one hand and the cantle in the other, then swung his weight well into the inside and hung like a leech. Of course, it took sheer grit to do it, because in thus holding himself tight to the saddle with his hands, he had to take full punishment, which can be avoided only when one has acquired the knack of balancing and riding loosely.

"As it was, his glasses and six-shooter took the count within the first few jumps, but in one way or another he hung to it himself, until some of the boys rode up and got the horse headed into a straightaway by the liberal use of their quirts. Once they got him running, it was all over, of course. If I remember right, Mr. Roosevelt rode the horse on a long circle that morning and brought him in safe, hours later, as good as gold."[17]

[Footnote 17: "During the course of the Barnes-Roosevelt
trial at Syracuse in 1916, Roosevelt was taking dinner
one evening at the house of Mr. Horace S. Wilkinson.
Chancellor Day, of Syracuse University, who was present,
said: 'Mr. Roosevelt, my attention was first directed to
you by an account of a scene when you were with the
cowboys. It told of your trying to get astride a bronco,
and it was a struggle. But you finally conquered him,
and away you went in a cloud of dust.'

"'Very true, very true,' said Roosevelt, 'but I rode him
all the way from the tip of his ear to the end of his
tail.'"--_Rev. D. B. Thompson, Syracuse_, N.Y.]

The horse which Roosevelt had called "Ben Butler" was not so easily subdued. It was "Ben Butler's" special antic to fall over backward. He was a sullen, evil-eyed brute, with a curve in his nose and a droop in his nostrils, which gave him a ridiculous resemblance to the presidential candidate of the Anti-Monopoly Party. He was a great man-killing bronco, with a treacherous streak, and Roosevelt had put him in his "string" against the protests of his own men. "That horse is a plumb outlaw," Bill Dantz declared, "an' outlaws is never safe. They kinda git bad and bust out at any time. He will sure kill you, sooner or later, if you try to ride him."

One raw, chilly morning, Roosevelt, who had been ordered to ride "the outside circle," chose "Ben Butler" for his mount, because he knew the horse was tireless and could stand the long, swift ride better than any other pony he had. As Roosevelt mounted him, the horse reared and fell over backward. He had done that before, but this time he fell on his rider. Roosevelt, with a sharp pain in his shoulder, extricated himself and mounted once more. But the horse now refused to go in any direction, backward or forward.

Sylvane and George Myers threw their lariats about the bronco's neck, and dragged him a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all four feet firmly planted and pawing the ground. When they released the ropes, "Ben Butler" lay down and refused to get up.

The round-up had started; there was no time to waste. Sylvane gave Roosevelt his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked, but never went over backwards, and himself mounted the now re-arisen "Ben Butler." To Roosevelt's discomfiture, the horse that had given him so much trouble started off as meekly as any farm-horse.

"Why," remarked Sylvane, not without a touch of triumph, "there's nothing the matter with this horse. He's a plumb gentle horse."

But shortly after, Roosevelt noticed that Sylvane had fallen behind. Then he heard his voice, in persuasive tones, "That's all right! Come along!" Suddenly a new note came into his entreaties. "Here you! Go on you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out! He's laying on me!"

They dragged Sylvane from under the sprawling steed, whereupon Sylvane promptly danced a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous "Ben." Roosevelt gave up the attempt to take that particular bronco on the round-up that day.

"By gollies," remarked "Dutch Wannigan" in later days, "he rode some bad horses, some that did quite a little bucking around for us. I don't know if he got throwed. If he did, there wouldn't have been nothin' said about it. Some of those Eastern punkin-lilies now, those goody-goody fellows, if they'd ever get throwed off you'd never hear the last of it. He didn't care a bit. By gollies, if he got throwed off, he'd get right on again. He was a dandy fellow."

The encounter with "Ben Butler" brought a new element into Roosevelt's cowpunching experience, and made what remained of the round-up somewhat of an ordeal. For he discovered that the point of his shoulder was broken. Under other circumstances he would have gone to a doctor, but in the Bad Lands you did not go to doctors, for the simple reason that there was only one physician in the whole region and he might at any given moment be anywhere from fifty to two hundred and fifty miles away. If you were totally incapacitated with a broken leg or a bullet in your lungs, you sent word to Dr. Stickney's office in Dickinson. The doctor might be north in the Killdeer Mountains or south in the Cave Hills or west in Mingusville, for the territory he covered stretched from Mandan a hundred and twenty miles east of Medora, to Glendive, the same distance westward, south to the Black Hills and north beyond the Canadian border, a stretch of country not quite as large as New England, but almost. The doctor covered it on horseback or in a buckboard; in the cab of a wild-cat engine or the caboose of a freight, or, on occasion, on a hand-car. He was as young as everybody else in that young country, utterly fearless, and, it seemed, utterly tireless. He rode out into the night careless alike of blinding sleet and drifting snow. At grilling speed he rode until his horse stood with heaving sides and nose drooping; then, at some ranch, he changed to another and rode on. Over a course of a hundred miles or more he would ride relays at a speed that seemed incredible, and at the end of the journey operate with a calm hand for a gun-shot wound or a cruelly broken bone, sometimes on the box of a mess-wagon turned upside down on the prairie.

Dr. Stickney was from Vermont, a quiet, lean man with a warm smile and friendly eyes, a sense of humor and a zest for life. He had a reputation for never refusing a call whatever the distance or the weather. Sometimes he rode with a guide; more often he rode alone. He knew the landmarks for a hundred miles in any direction. At night, when the trail grew faint, he held his course by the stars; when an unexpected blizzard swept down upon him and the snow hid the trail, he sought a brush-patch in a coulee and tramped back and forth to keep himself from freezing until the storm had spent itself. It was a life of extraordinary devotion. Stickney took it with a laugh, blushing when men spoke well of him; and called it the day's work.

God alone knew where the doctor happened to be on the day that "Ben Butler" rolled over backward with Theodore Roosevelt. It is safe to surmise that Roosevelt did not inquire. You did not send for Dr. Stickney for a break in the point of your shoulder. You let the thing heal by itself and went on with your job. Of course, it was not pleasant; but there were many things that were not pleasant. It was, in fact, Roosevelt found, excruciating. But he said nothing about that.

By the beginning of June, the round-up had worked down to Tepee Bottom, two or three miles south of the Maltese Cross, making its midday camp, one hot and sultry day, in a grove of ancient cottonwoods that stood like unlovely, weather-beaten, gnarled old men, within hailing distance of "Deacon" Cummins's ranch-house. A messenger from Mrs. Cummins arrived at the camp at noon inviting Roosevelt and three or four of his friends to dinner. A "home dinner" was not to be spurned, and they all rode over to the comfortable log cabin. The day was blistering, a storm hung in the humid air, and none of them remembered, not even Roosevelt, that "gentlemen" did not go to dinner parties in their shirt-sleeves, at least not in the world to which Mrs. Cummins liked to believe she belonged. Roosevelt was in his shirt and trousers, cowboy fashion.

As the men prepared to sit down to dinner, Mrs. Cummins was obviously perturbed. She left the room, returning a minute later with a coat over her arm.

"Mr. Roosevelt," she said, "I know you won't like to come to dinner without a coat. I have got one of Mr. Cummins's that will fit you. I am sure you will feel more comfortable."

What Roosevelt's emotions were at being thus singled out and proclaimed a "dude" among the men he wanted, above all things, to consider him their peer, Roosevelt concealed at the moment and later only fitfully revealed. He accepted the coat with as good grace as he could muster, to the suppressed delight of his friends.

But Mrs. Cummins was not yet done with her guest of honor. She had evidently been hurt, poor lady, by his failure to observe the amenities of social intercourse, for during the dinner she said to him, "I don't see why men and women of culture come out here and let the people pull them down. What they should do is to raise the people out here to their level."

What Roosevelt answered is lost to history; but Lincoln Lang, who was with him when he rode back to camp that afternoon, reported that Roosevelt's comments on the dinner party were "blistering." "He told my mother afterwards," said Lang in later times, "that Mrs. Cummins was out of place in the Bad Lands"; which was Mrs. Cummins's tragedy in a nutshell.

They moved the camp that same afternoon a mile or two north to a wide bottom that lay at the base of the peak known as Chimney Butte, north of Garner Creek and west of the Little Missouri. As evening approached, heavy black clouds began to roll up in the west, bringing rain. The rain became a downpour, through which flashes of lightning and rumblings of thunder came with increasing violence. The cattle were very restless and uneasy, running up and down and trying here and there to break out of the herd. The guards were doubled in anticipation of trouble.

At midnight, fearing a stampede, the night-herders, of whom Lincoln Lang happened to be one, sent a call of "all hands out." Roosevelt leaped on the pony he always kept picketed near him. Suddenly there was a terrific peal of thunder. The lightning struck almost into the herd itself, and with heads and tails high the panic-stricken animals plunged off into the darkness.

Will Dow was at Roosevelt's side. The tumult evidently had not affected his imperturbable gayety. "There'll be racing and chasing on Cannobie lea," Roosevelt heard him gayly quote. An instant later the night had swallowed him.

For a minute or two Roosevelt could make out nothing except the dark forms of the beasts, running on every side of him like the black waters of a roaring river. He was conscious that if his horse should stumble there would be no hope for him in the path of those panicky hoofs. The herd split, a part turning to one side, while the other part kept straight ahead. Roosevelt galloped at top speed, hoping to reach the leaders and turn them.

He heard a wild splashing ahead. One instant he was aware that the cattle in front of him and beside him were disappearing; the next, he himself was plunging over a cutbank into the Little Missouri. He bent far back in the saddle. His horse almost fell, recovered himself, plunged forward, and, struggling through water and quicksand, made the other side.

For a second he saw another cowboy beside him. The man disappeared in the darkness and the deluge, and Roosevelt galloped off through a grove of cottonwoods after the diminished herd. The ground was rough and full of pitfalls. Once his horse turned a somersault and threw him. At last the cattle came to a halt, but soon they were again away through the darkness. Thrice again he halted them, and thrice again they stampeded.

"The country was muddy and wet," said Lincoln Lang afterward. "We were having a heavy rain all night. I don't know how we ever got through. All we had was lightning flashes to go by. It was really one of the worst mix-ups I ever saw. That surely was a night."

Day broke at last, and as the light filtered through the clouds Roosevelt could dimly discern where he was. He succeeded at last in turning back what remained of the cattle in the direction of the camp, gathering in stray groups of cattle as he went, and driving them before him. He came upon a cowboy on foot carrying his saddle on his head. It was the man he had seen for a flash during the storm. His horse had run into a tree and been killed. He himself had escaped by a miracle.

The men in the camp were just starting on the "long circle" when Roosevelt returned. One of them saddled a fresh horse for him while he snatched a hasty breakfast; then he was off for the day's work.

As only about half of the night-herd had been brought back, the circle-riding was particularly heavy, and it was ten hours before Roosevelt was back at the wagon camp once more for a hasty meal and a fresh horse. He finished work as the late twilight fell. He had been in the saddle forty hours, changing horses five times. That night he slept like the dead.

The storm had raised the level of the river and filled every wash-out with swirling brown waters. The following day Roosevelt had an adventure which came within an ace of being tragedy and culminated in hilarious farce. He was riding with a young Englishman, the son of Lord Somebody or Other--the name is immaterial--who was living that spring with the Langs. Just north of the Custer Trail Ranch a bridge of loose stringers had been laid across the wash-out, which, except at times of heavy rains or melting snows, was completely dry. On this occasion, however, it was full to the banks, and had even flowed over the rude bridge, jumbling the light logs.

The stringers parted as their horses attempted to make their way gingerly across, and in an instant horses and riders and bridge timbers were floundering indiscriminately in the rushing torrent. Roosevelt's horse worked his way out, but the Englishman, who was a good rider according to his lights, was not altogether used to mishaps of this sort and became excited.

"I'm drowning! I'm drowning!" he called to Roosevelt.

Roosevelt snatched the lasso from his saddle. He was not famous as a roper, but on this occasion his "throw" went true. The rope descended over the shoulders of the British aristocrat, and an instant later Roosevelt had him on solid ground.

"As he was yanked unceremoniously out of that creek," Roosevelt subsequently remarked, "he did not seem to be very thankful."

Sober second thoughts, however, brought gratitude with them. The Britisher never forgot that Roosevelt had saved his life, and Roosevelt never forgot the picture that a son of a lord made, dragged through the water at the end of a lasso.

On June 5th, which must have been the day after the rescue of the Englishman, Roosevelt was writing to Lodge.

A cowboy from "down river" has just come up to the round-up,
and brought me my mail, with your letter in it. I am writing
on the ground; so my naturally good handwriting will not
show to its usual advantage.

I have been three weeks on the round-up and have worked as
hard as any of the cowboys; but I have enjoyed it greatly.
Yesterday I was eighteen hours in the saddle--from 4 A.M. to
10 P.M.--having a half-hour each for dinner and tea. I can
now do cowboy work pretty well.

Toronto[18] must be a dandy; I wish I could pick up one as
good. That is, if he is gentle. You are all off about my
horsemanship; as you would say if you saw me now. Almost all
of our horses on the ranch being young, I had to include in
my string three that were but partially broken; and I have
had some fine circuses with them. One of them had never been
saddled but once before, and he proved vicious, and besides
bucking, kept falling over backwards with me; finally he
caught me, giving me an awful slat, from which my left arm
has by no means recovered. Another bucked me off going down
hill; but I think I have cured him, for I put him through a
desperate course of sprouts when I got on again. The third I
nearly lost in swimming him across a swollen creek, where
the flood had carried down a good deal of drift timber.
However, I got him through all right in the end, after a
regular ducking. Twice one of my old horses turned a
somersault while galloping after cattle; once in a
prairie-dog town, and once while trying to prevent the herd
from stampeding in a storm at night. I tell you, I like
gentle and well-broken horses if I am out for pleasure, and
I do not get on any other, unless, as in this case, from
sheer necessity.

[Footnote 18: Toronto was the name of Lodge's hunter.]

It is too bad that letters cannot be published with stage directions. For surely the words, "I like gentle and well-broken horses," should bear about them somewhere the suggestion of the glint of the eye, the flash of the teeth, the unctuous deliberateness, and the comical break in the voice with which, surely, Roosevelt whispered them to his soul before he wrote them down.

While Roosevelt was enjoying adventures and misadventures of various sorts, Sylvane Ferris was having what he might have described as "a little party" of his own. For Sylvane, most honest and guileless of men, had got into the clutches of the law. It happened this way.

Early in the spring some cowpunchers, driving in cattle which had strayed during the winter over the level country far to the east of the Little Missouri, came upon a cow marked with the maltese cross. They drove her westward with the rest of the "strays," but none of the men belonged to the "Roosevelt outfit" and their interest in this particular cow was therefore purely altruistic. She was not a particularly good cow, moreover, for she had had a calf in the winter and her udder had partially frozen. When, therefore, the necessity arose of paying board at the section-house at Gladstone after a few happy days at that metropolis, the cowboys, who did not have a cent of real money among them, hit upon the brilliant idea of offering the cow in payment.

The section boss accepted the settlement, but evidently not without a sense of the consequences that might follow the discovery in his possession of a cow for which he could not present a bill of sale. He therefore promptly passed the cow on to a Russian cobbler in payment for a pair of shoes. The cobbler, with the European peasant's uncanny ability to make something out of nothing, doctored the cow with a care which he would not have dreamed of bestowing on his wife, and made a profitable milk-provider out of her.

Sylvane discovered her during the round-up, picketed outside the Russian's shack, and promptly proceeded to take possession of her. The Russian protested and told his story. Sylvane, pointing out that he was moved by charity and not by necessity, offered the man six dollars, which had been the price of the shoes. The Russian threw up his hands and demanded no less than forty. Sylvane shrugged his shoulders and annexed the cow.

That evening as Sylvane was sitting around the mess-wagon with a dozen other cowpunchers, a stranger came walking from the direction of Gladstone. The cow was hitched to the wagon, for she had shown a tendency to choose her own master. The stranger started to detach the rope that held her.

"Hold on!" cried Sylvane, "that is our cow."

The stranger took some papers out of his pocket and handed them to Sylvane.

"Here are replevin papers," he said.

"I don't want your papers," remarked Sylvane, who did not know a replevin paper from a dog license.

The stranger threw the papers at Sylvane's feet.

"I've come to take this cow."

"Well," remarked Sylvane, "if that's all the business you have, you can go straight back where you came from."

The stranger strode toward the cow, Sylvane did likewise. They reached the rope at the same moment. There was a shout from the delighted audience of cowpunchers.

The stranger released his hold on the rope. "If you say I can't take her, I can't take her," the man grumbled. "There's too many of you. But I'll bring back men that can."

"Well, turn yourself loose," remarked Sylvane agreeably. "You'll need a lot of them."

There was another shout from the onlookers, and the stranger departed. Sylvane threw the papers into the mess-wagon.

Roosevelt did not happen to be present, and in his absence the sober counsel of "Deacon" Cummins made itself heard. The gist of it was that Sylvane had resisted an officer of the law, which was a criminal offense.

Sylvane, who was afraid of nothing that walked on two legs or on four, had a wholesome respect for that vague and ominous thing known as the Law.

"Say, I don't want to get in bad with any sheriff," he said, really worried. "What had I oughter do?"

The "Deacon," who possibly rejoiced at being for once taken seriously, suggested that Sylvane ride to Gladstone and see if he could not straighten the matter out. The other cowpunchers, whose acquaintance with legal procedure was as vague as Sylvane's, agreed that that plan sounded reasonable. Sylvane went, accompanied by the "Deacon" and another cowboy. If there was a gleam of wicked triumph in the stranger's eye when Sylvane rode up to him, Sylvane failed to notice it. Before a justice of the peace he agreed to appear in court on a certain date, and his two companions furnished a bond.

Next day, while they were in camp on the Heart River, an acquaintance of Sylvane's, a lawyer who rejoiced in the harmonious name of Western Starr, rode in from Dickinson to have dinner with "the boys." Sylvane showed him the papers the stranger had deposited at his feet.

The lawyer glanced over them. "What are these?" he asked.

"I don't know," answered Sylvane lightly. "That's what I handed them to you for, to find out."

"Why," exclaimed Starr, "these aren't anything. They haven't been signed by anybody."

Sylvane's jaw dropped. "Say, how about my bond?"

"Oh, that's valid, even if these are not. You've got to appear in court."

Sylvane's feelings concerning the "Deacon" and his precious advice were deep and earnest. The situation was serious. He knew well enough the chance that the "outfit" of a wealthy Easterner like Roosevelt would stand with a Gladstone jury, when it was a question of depriving a poor man of his cow.

Western Starr suggested that he arrange for a change of venue.

Sylvane approved. The change of venue cost ten dollars, but was granted. The date of the trial was set. Sylvane traveled to Dickinson and waited all day with his attorney for the trial to be called. No one appeared, not even the judge.

Starr's fee was twenty dollars. Sylvane's railroad fare was five more. The total bill was thirty-five.

Roosevelt paid the bill. If he remarked that, taking lost time into consideration, it would have been cheaper, in the first place, to pay the Russian the forty dollars he demanded, there is no record of it. But the remark would not have been characteristic. The chances are that he thought Sylvane's encounter with the law worth every cent that it cost.

XVIII

Somewhere on some faded page
I read about a Golden Age,
But gods and Caledonian hunts
Were nothing to what I knew once.
Here on these hills was hunting! Here
Antelope sprang and wary deer.
Here there were heroes! On these plains
Were drops afire from dragons' veins!
Here there was challenge, here defying,
Here was true living, here great dying!
Stormy winds and stormy souls,
Earthly wills with starry goals,
Battle--thunder--hoofs in flight--
Centaurs charging down the night!

Here there were feasts of song and story
And words of love and dreams of glory!
Here there were friends! Ah, night will fall
And clouds or the stars will cover all,
But I, when I go as a ghost again
To the gaunt, grim buttes, to the friendly plain
I know that for all that time can do
To scatter the faithful, estrange the true--
Quietly, in the lavender sage,
Will be waiting the friends of my golden age.

From _Medora Nights_

The wild riding, the mishaps, the feverish activity, the smell of the cattle, the dust, the tumult, the physical weariness, the comradeship, the closeness to life and death--to Roosevelt it was all magical and enticing. He loved the crisp morning air, the fantastic landscape, the limitless spaces, half blue and half gold. His spirit was sensitive to beauty, especially the beauty that lay open for all in the warm light of dawn and dusk under the wide vault of heaven; and the experiences that were merely the day's work to his companions to him were edged with the shimmer of spiritual adventure.

"We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst," Roosevelt wrote thirty years later, "and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living."

"It was a wonderful thing for Roosevelt," said Dr. Stickney. "He himself realized what a splendid thing it was for him to have been here at that time and to have had sufficient strength in his character to absorb it. He started out to get the fundamental truths as they were in this country and he never lost sight of that purpose all the time he was here."

To the joy of strenuous living was added, for Roosevelt, the satisfaction of knowing that the speculation in which he had risked so large a part of his fortune was apparently prospering. The cattle were looking well. Even pessimistic Bill Sewall admitted that, though he would not admit that he had changed his opinion of the region as a place for raising cattle.

I don't think we shall lose many of our cattle this winter
[he wrote his brother]. I think they have got past the worst
now. Next year is the one that will try them. It is the cows
that perish mostly and we had but few that had calves last
spring, but this spring thare will be quite a lot of them.
The calves suck them down and they don't get any chance to
gain up before they have another calf and then if the
weather is very cold they are pretty sure to die. It is too
cold here to raise cattle that way. Don't believe there is
any money in she cattle here and am afraid thare is not much
in any, unless it is the largest heards, and they are
crowding in cattle all the time and I think they will eat us
out in a few years.

Sewall, being a strong individualist, was more than dubious concerning the practicality of the coöperative round-up. The cowmen were passionately devoted to the idea of the open range; to believe in fences was treason; but it was in fences that Bill Sewall believed.

I don't like so free a country [he wrote]. Whare one man has
as good a right as another nobody really has any right, so
when feed gets scarce in one place they drive their cattle
whare it is good without regard to whose range they eat out.
I am satisfied that by the time we are ready to leave grass
will be pretty scarce here.

I think the Cattle business has seen its best days and I
gave my opinion to Mr. R. last fall. I hope he may not lose
but I think he stands a chance. Shall do all we can to
prevent it, but it is such a mixed business. One or two
can't do much. It is the most like driving on the Lake when
you are mixed with everybody. I don't like it and never did.
I want to controle and manage my own affairs and have a
right to what I have, but here as on the Lake it is all
common. One has as much right as another.

Roosevelt remained with the round-up until it disbanded not far from Elkhorn Bottom. Then, on June 21st, he went East, accompanied by Wilmot Dow, who was going home to get married and bring Sewall's wife back with him when he brought back his own.

Two reporters intercepted Roosevelt as he passed through St. Paul the day after his departure from Medora, and have left an attractive picture of the politician-turned-cowboy.

Rugged, bronzed, and in the prime of health [wrote the
representative of the _Pioneer Press_], Theodore Roosevelt
passed through St. Paul yesterday, returning from his Dakota
ranch to New York and civilization. There was very little of
the whilom dude in his rough and easy costume, with a large
handkerchief tied loosely about his neck; but the eyeglasses
and the flashing eyes behind them, the pleasant smile and
the hearty grasp of hand remained. There was the same
eagerness to hear from the world of politics, and the same
frank willingness to answer all questions propounded. The
slow, exasperating drawl and the unique accent that the New
Yorker feels he must use when visiting a less blessed
portion of civilization have disappeared, and in their place
is a nervous, energetic manner of talking with the flat
accent of the West. Roosevelt is changed from the New York
club man to the thorough Westerner, but the change is only
in surface indications, and he is the same thoroughly good
fellow he has always been.

The reporter of the _Dispatch_ caught him in the lobby of the Merchant's Hotel.

"I'm just in from my ranch," he said [runs the interview].
"Haven't had my dinner yet, but I think a short talk with a
newspaper fellow will give me a whetted appetite. Yes, I am
a regular cowboy, dress and all--" and his garb went far to
prove his assertion, woolen shirt, big neck handkerchief
tied loosely around his neck, etc. "I am as much of a cowboy
as any of them and can hold my own with the best of them. I
can shoot, ride, and drive in the round-up with the best of
them. Oh, they are a jolly set of fellows, those cowboys;
tiptop good fellows, too, when you know them, but they don't
want any plug hat or pointed shoes foolishness around them.
I get along the best way with them.

"We have just finished the spring round-up. You know what
that means. The round-up covered about two hundred miles of
grass territory along the river, and thousands of cattle
were brought in. It is rare sport, but hard work after all.
Do I like ranch life? Honestly I would not go back to New
York if I had no interests there. Yes, I enjoy ranch life
far more than city life. I like the hunt, the drive of
cattle, and everything that is comprehended in frontier
life. Make no mistake; on the frontier you find the noblest
of fellows. How many cattle have I? Let's see, well, not
less than 3500 at present. I will have more another year."

The man from the _Dispatch_ wanted to talk politics, but beyond a few general remarks Roosevelt refused to satisfy him.

"Don't ask me to talk politics," he said. "I am out of politics. I know that this is often said by men in public life, but in this case it is true. I really am. There is more excitement in the round-up than in politics. And," he remarked with zest, "it is far more respectable. I prefer my ranch and the excitement it brings, to New York life," he repeated; then, lest he should seem to suggest the faintest hint of discontent, he hastened to add, "though I always make it a point to enjoy myself wherever I am."

Roosevelt spent two months in the East. On August 23d he was again in St. Paul on his way, as he told a reporter of the _Dispatch_, to Helena, Montana, and thence back to Medora. Once more the interviewer sought his views on political questions. Roosevelt made a few non-committal statements, refusing to prophesy. "My political life," he remarked, "has not altogether killed my desire to tell the truth." And with that happily flippant declaration he was off into the wilderness again.

The "womenfolks" from Maine were at Elkhorn when Roosevelt arrived. They were backwoodswomen, self-reliant, fearless, high-hearted; true mates to their stalwart men. Mrs. Sewall had brought her three-year-old daughter with her. Before Roosevelt knew what was happening, they had turned the new house into a new home.

And now for them all began a season of deep and quiet contentment that was to remain in the memories of all of them as a kind of idyl. It was a life of elemental toil, hardship, and danger, and of strong, elemental pleasures--rest after labor, food after hunger, warmth and shelter after bitter cold. In that life there was no room for distinctions of social position or wealth. They respected one another and cared for one another because and only because each knew that the others were brave and loyal and steadfast.

Life on the ranch proved a more joyous thing than ever after the women had taken charge. They demanded certain necessities at once. They demanded chickens, which Roosevelt supplied, to the delight of the bobcats, who promptly started to feast on them; they demanded at least one cow. No one had thought of a cow. No one in the length and breadth of that cattle country, except Mrs. Roberts, seemed to think it worth while to keep a cow for the milk that was in her, and all the cows were wild as antelope. Roosevelt and Sewall and Dow among them roped one on the range and threw her, and sat on her, and milked her upside down, which was not altogether satisfactory, but was, for the time being, the best thing they could do.

Meals became an altogether different matter from what they had been at the Maltese Cross where men were kings of the kitchen. "Eating was a sort of happy-go-lucky business at the Maltese Cross," remarked Bill Sewall subsequently. "You were happy if you got something, an' you were lucky too." There was now a new charm in shooting game, with women at home to cook it. And Mrs. Sewall baked bread that was not at all like the bread Bill baked. Soon she was even baking cake, which was an unheard-of luxury in the Bad Lands. Then, after a while, the buffalo berries and wild plums began to disappear from the bushes roundabout and appear on the table as jam.

"However big you build the house, it won't be big enough for two women," pessimists had remarked. But their forebodings were not realized. At Elkhorn no cross word was heard. They were, taken altogether, a very happy family. Roosevelt was "the boss" in the sense that, since he footed the bills, power of final decision was his; but only in that sense. He saddled his own horse; now and then he washed his own clothes; he fed the pigs; and once, on a rainy day, he blacked the Sunday boots of every man, woman, and child in the place. He was not encouraged to repeat that performance. The folks from Maine made it quite clear that if the boots needed blacking at all, which was doubtful, they thought some one else ought to do the blacking--not at all because it seemed to them improper that Roosevelt should black anybody's boots, but because he did it so badly. The paste came off on everything it touched. The women "mothered" him, setting his belongings to rights at stated intervals, for he was not conspicuous for orderliness. He, in turn, treated the women with the friendliness and respect he showed to the women of his own family. And the little Sewall girl was never short of toys.

Elkhorn Ranch was a joyous place those days. Cowboys, hearing of it, came from a distance for a touch of home life and the luxury of hearing a woman's voice.

Roosevelt's days were full of diverse activities, and the men who worked with him at Elkhorn were the pleasantest sort of companions. Bill Sewall, who, as Sylvane described him, was "like a track-hound on the deer-trail," had long ago given up the idea of making a cowboy of himself, constituting himself general superintendent of the house and its environs and guardian of the womenfolks. Not that the women needed protection. There was doubtless no safer place for women in the United States at that moment than the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri; and Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Dow could have been counted on to handle firearms as fearlessly if not as accurately as Bill himself. But Bill tended the famished, unhappy-looking potato-patch for them, and with characteristic cheerfulness did the other chores, being quite content to leave to Roosevelt and Dow and another young cowpuncher named Rowe the riding of "sunfishers" and such things. He had a level head and an equable temper, and the cowpunchers all liked him. When a drunken cowboy, who had been a colonel in the Confederate army, accosted him one day in Joe Ferris's store with the object apparently of starting a fight, it was Sewall's quiet good nature that made his efforts abortive.

"You're a damned pleasant-looking man," exclaimed the Southerner.

Sewall smiled at him. "I am," he said. "You can't find a pleasanter man anywhere round." Which was the essential truth about Bill Sewall.

Of all Roosevelt's friends up and down the river, Sewall's nephew, Will Dow, was possibly the one who had the rarest qualities of intellect and spirit. He had a poise and a winsome lovableness that was not often found in that wild bit of country combined with such ruggedness of character. He had a droll and altogether original sense of humor, and an imagination which struck Roosevelt as extraordinary in its scope and power and which disported itself in the building of delightful yarns.

"He was always a companion that was sought wherever he went," said Bill Sewall. "There are men who have the faculty of pleasing and creating mirth and he was one of that kind."

Rowe was a different sort, of coarser fiber, but himself not without charm. He was a natural horseman, fearless to recklessness, an excellent worker, and a fighting man with a curious streak of gentleness in him that revolted against the cruelty of the branding-iron. Most men accepted the custom of branding cattle and horses as a matter of course. There was, in fact, nothing to do save accept it, for there was no other method of indicating the ownership of animals which could be reasonably relied on to defy the ingenuity of the thieves. Attempts to create opinion against it were regarded as sentimental and pernicious and were suppressed with vigor.

But Rowe had plenty of courage. "Branding cattle is rotten," he insisted, in season and out of season; adding on one occasion to a group of cowpunchers standing about a fire with branding-irons in their hands, "and you who do the branding are all going to hell."

"Aw," exclaimed a cowboy, "there ain't no hell!"

"You watch," Rowe retorted. "You'll get there and burn just as that there cow."

In comparison to the lower reaches of the Little Missouri where Elkhorn Ranch was situated, the country about the Maltese Cross was densely populated. Howard Eaton, eight or ten miles away on Beaver Creek, was Elkhorn's closest neighbor to the north; "Farmer" Young, the only man in the Bad Lands who had as yet attacked the problem of agriculture in that region, was the nearest neighbor to the south. Six or eight miles beyond Farmer Young lived some people named Wadsworth.

Wadsworth was an unsocial being whom no one greatly liked. He had been the first man to bring cattle into the Bad Lands, and it was some of his cattle, held by Ferris and Merrifield on shares, which Roosevelt had bought in the autumn of 1883.

Roosevelt's first call on Mrs. Wadsworth had its serio-comic aspects. The Wadsworths had a great wolf-hound whom Roosevelt himself described as "a most ill-favored hybrid, whose mother was a Newfoundland and whose father was a large wolf," and which looked, it seemed, more like a hyena than like either of its parents. The dog both barked and howled, but it had a disconcerting habit of doing neither when it was on business bent. The first intimation Roosevelt had of its existence one day, as he was knocking at the door of the Wadsworth cabin, was a rush that the animal made for his trousers.

Pete Pellessier, a round-faced, genial cowpuncher from Texas, subsequently told about it. "It was one of those dogs that come sneaking around, never a growl or anything else--just grab a hunk of your leg to let you know they're around. That's the kind of a dog this was. Roosevelt just started to make a bow to Mrs. Wadsworth, 'way over, real nice. Well, that dog flew and grabbed him in the seat of the pants--he had on corduroy pants.

"'Get out of here, you son-of-a-gun!' he says; 'get out of here, I tell you!'

"Then he turns to Mrs. Wadsworth. 'I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wadsworth,' he says politely, 'that dog was grabbing me an'--'

"Just then the dog reached for another helping. 'Get out of here!' Roosevelt shouts to the dog, and then turns back, 'How do you do?' he says to Mrs. Wadsworth. But the dog came back a third time, and that time Roosevelt gave that wolf-hound a kick that landed him about ten rods off. An' Roosevelt went on with his visiting."

It was a free and joyous life that Roosevelt lived with his warm-hearted companions at Elkhorn those late summer days of 1885. Now and then, when work was done, he would sit on the porch for an hour or two at a time, watching the cattle on the sand-bars, "while," as he wrote subsequently, "the vultures wheeled overhead, their black shadows gliding across the glaring white of the dry river-bed." Often he would sink into his rocking-chair, grimy and hot after the day's work, and read Keats and Swinburne for the contrast their sensuous music offered to the vigorous realities about him; or, forgetting books, he would just rock back and forth, looking sleepily out across the river while the scarlet crests of the buttes softened to rose and then to lavender, and lavender gave place to shadowy gray, and gray gave place to the luminous purple of night. The leaves of the cottonwood trees before the house were never still, and often the cooing of mourning doves would come down to him from some high bough. He heard the thrush in the thicket near by, and in the distance the clanging cries of the water-fowl. He knew the note of every bird, and they were like friends calling to him.

XIX

We're the children of the open and we hate the haunts o' men,
But we had to come to town to get the mail.
And we're ridin' home at daybreak--'cause the air is cooler then--
All 'cept one of us that stopped behind in jail.
Shorty's nose won't bear paradin', Bill's off eye is darkly fadin',
All our toilets show a touch of disarray;
For we found that City life is a constant round of strife,
And we ain't the breed for shyin' from a fray.

Chant your war-whoops, pardners dear, while the east turns pale with fear,
And the chaparral is tremblin' all aroun';
For we're wicked to the marrer; we're a midnight dream of terror,
When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from town!

Badger CLARK

Meanwhile, as the months passed by, Medora was growing, and stretching itself. Even the Mandan _Pioneer_, a hundred and fifty miles to the east, thought it worth its while to brag about it.

Medora is distinctively a cattle town [runs the comment],
and is ambitious to be the cattle market of the Northwest.
In two years it has grown from absolutely nothing to be a
town which possesses a number of fine buildings, and
represents a great many dollars of capital. The Black Hills
freight depot is a well-built, substantial building. A
number of brick houses have been built during the last year,
including a very neat and attractive Catholic church, and a
large hotel.