"They had no business to write to you," he exclaimed. "They should have written to me."

"I guess," remarked Sewall quietly, "they knew you wouldn't write about how you were getting on. You'd just say you were all right."

Roosevelt fumed and said no more about it. But the crisp air of the Bad Lands gradually put all questions of his health out of mind. All day long he lived in the open. He was not an enthusiast over the hammer or the axe, and, while Sewall and Dow were completing the house and building the corrals and the stables a hundred yards or more westward, he renewed his acquaintance with the bizarre but fascinating country. The horses which the men from Maine had missed the previous autumn, and which Roosevelt had feared had been stolen, had been reported "running wild" forty or fifty miles to the west. Sewall and Dow had made one or two trips after them without success, for the animals had come to enjoy their liberty and proved elusive. Roosevelt determined to find them and bring them back. He went on three solitary expeditions, but they proved barren of result. Incidentally, however, they furnished him experiences which were worth many horses.

On one of these expeditions night overtook him not far from Mingusville. That hot little community, under the inspiration of a Frenchman named Pierre Wibaux, was rapidly becoming an important cattle center. As a shipping point it had, by the close of 1884, already attained notable proportions on the freight records of the Northern Pacific. Medora, in all its glory, could not compete with it, for the cattle trails through the Bad Lands were difficult, and space was lacking on the small bottoms near the railroad to hold herds of any size preparatory to shipping. About Mingusville all creation stretched undulating to the hazy horizon. The great southern cattle companies which had recently established themselves on the northern range, Simpson's "Hash-Knife" brand, Towers and Gudgell's O. X. Ranch, and the Berry, Boyce Company's "Three-Seven outfit," all drove their cattle along the Beaver to Mingusville, and even Merrifield and Sylvane preferred shipping their stock from there to driving it to the more accessible, but also more congested, yards at Medora.

Civilization had not kept pace with commerce in the development of the prairie "town." It was a lurid little place. Medora, in comparison to it, might have appeared almost sober and New-Englandish. It had no "steady" residents save a half-dozen railroad employees, the landlord of the terrible hotel south of the tracks, where Roosevelt had had his encounter with the drunken bully, and a certain Mrs. Nolan and her daughters, who kept an eminently respectable boarding-house on the opposite side of the railroad; but its "floating population" was large. Every herd driven into the shipping-yards from one of the great ranches in the upper Little Missouri country brought with it a dozen or more parched cowboys hungering and thirsting for excitement as no saint ever hungered and thirsted for righteousness; and celebrations had a way of lasting for days. The men were Texans, most of them, extraordinary riders, born to the saddle, but reckless, given to heavy drinking, and utterly wild and irresponsible when drunk. It was their particular delight to make life hideous for the station agent and the telegraph operator. For some weeks Mingusville, it was said, had a new telegraph operator every night. About ten o'clock the cowboys, celebrating at the "hotel," would drift over to the board shack which was the railroad station, and "shoot it full of holes." They had no particular reason for doing this; they had no grudge against either the railroad or the particular operator who happened to be in charge. They were children, and it was fun to hear the bullets pop, and excruciating fun to see the operator run out of the shack with a yell and go scampering off into the darkness. One operator entered into negotiations with the enemy. Recognizing their perfect right to shoot up the station if they wanted to, he merely stipulated that they allow him to send off the night's dispatches before they began. This request seemed to the cowboys altogether reasonable. They waited until the operator said that his work was done. Then, as he faded away in the darkness, the night's bombardment began.

Into this tempestuous little "town," Roosevelt rode one day as night was falling. No doubt because Mrs. Nolan's beds were filled, he was forced to take a room at the nefarious hotel where he had chastised the bully a year previous. Possibly to prevent the recurrence of that experience, he retired early to the small room with one bed which had been assigned him and sat until late reading the book he had brought along in his saddle-pocket.

The house was quiet and every one was asleep, when a cowboy arrived from God knows whence, yelling and shooting as he came galloping through the darkness. He was evidently very drunk. He thumped loudly on the door, and after some delay the host opened it. The stranger showed no appreciation; on the contrary, he seized the hotel-keeper, half in play, it seemed, and half in enmity, jammed the mouth of his six-shooter against his stomach and began to dance about the room with him.

In the room above, Roosevelt heard the host's agonized appeals. "Jim, don't! Don't, Jim! It'll go off! Jim, it'll go off!"

Jim's response was not reassuring. "Yes, damn you, it'll go off! I'll learn you! Who in hell cares if it does go off! Oh, I'll learn you!"

But the gun, after all, did not go off. The cowboy subsided, then burst into vociferous demands for a bed. A minute later Roosevelt heard steps in the hall, followed by a knock at his door. Roosevelt opened it.

"I'm sorry," said the host, "but there's a man I'll have to put in with you for the night."

"You're not as sorry as I am," Roosevelt answered coolly, "and I'm not going to have him come in here."

The host was full of apologies. "He's drunk and he's on the shoot," he said unhappily, "and he's got to come in."

This appeal was not of a character to weaken Roosevelt's resolution. "I'm going to lock my door," he remarked firmly, "and put out my light. And I'll shoot anybody who tries to break in."

The host departed. Roosevelt never knew where the unwelcome guest was lodged that night; but he himself was left undisturbed.

On another occasion that spring, when Roosevelt was out on the prairie hunting the lost horses, he was overtaken by darkness. Mingusville was the only place within thirty miles or more that offered a chance of a night's lodging, and he again rode there, knocking at the door of Mrs. Nolan's boarding-house late in the evening. Mrs. Nolan, who greeted him, was a tough, wiry Irishwoman of the type of Mrs. Maddox, with a fighting jaw and a look in her eye that had been known to be as potent as a "six-shooter" in clearing a room of undesirable occupants. She disciplined her husband (who evidently needed it) and brought up her daughters with a calm good sense that won them and her the respect of the roughest of the cowpunchers who came under her roof.

Roosevelt, having stabled his horse in an empty out-building, asked for a bed. Mrs. Nolan answered that he could have the last one that was left, since there was only one other man in it.

He accepted the dubious privilege and was shown to a room containing two double beds. One contained two men fast asleep, the other only one man, also asleep. He recognized his bedfellow. It was "Three-Seven" Bill Jones, an excellent cowman belonging to the "Three-Seven outfit" who had recently acquired fame by playfully holding up the Overland Express in order to make the conductor dance. He put his trousers, boots, shaps, and gun down beside the bed, and turned in.

He was awakened an hour or two later by a crash as the door was rudely flung open. A lantern was flashed in his face, and, as he came to full consciousness, he found himself, in the light of a dingy lantern, staring into the mouth of a "six-shooter."

Another man said to the lantern-bearer, "It ain't him." The next moment his bedfellow was "covered" with two "guns." "Now, Bill," said a gruff voice, "don't make a fuss, but come along quiet."

"All right, don't sweat yourself," responded Bill. "I'm not thinking of making a fuss."

"That's right," was the answer, "we're your friends. We don't want to hurt you; we just want you to come along. You know why."

Bill pulled on his trousers and boots and walked out with them.

All the while there had been no sound from the other bed. Now a match was scratched and a candle was lit, and one of the men looked round the room.

"I wonder why they took Bill," Roosevelt remarked.

There was no answer, and Roosevelt, not knowing that there was what he later termed an "alkali etiquette in such matters," repeated the question. "I wonder why they took Bill."

"Well," said the man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted him," and blew out the candle. That night there was no more conversation; but Roosevelt's education had again been extended.



XV

When did we long for the sheltered gloom Of the older game with its cautious odds? Gloried we always in sun and room, Spending our strength like the younger gods. By the wild, sweet ardor that ran in us, By the pain that tested the man in us, By the shadowy springs and the glaring sand, You were our true-love, young, young land.

Badger CLARK

Spring came to the Bad Lands in fits and numerous false starts, first the "chinook," uncovering the butte-tops between dawn and dusk, then the rushing of many waters, the flooding of low bottom-lands, the agony of a world of gumbo, and, after a dozen boreal setbacks, the awakening of green things and the return of a temperature fit for human beings to live in. Snow buntings came in March, flocking familiarly round the cow-shed at the Maltese Cross, now chittering on the ridge-pole, now hovering in the air with quivering wings, warbling their loud, merry song. Before the snow was off the ground, the grouse cocks could be heard uttering their hollow booming. At the break of morning, their deep, resonant calls came from far and near through the clear air like the vibrant sound of some wind instrument. Now and again, at dawn or in the early evening, Roosevelt would stop and listen for many minutes to the weird, strange music, or steal upon the cocks where they were gathered holding their dancing rings, and watch them posturing and strutting about as they paced through their minuet.

The opening of the ground—and it was occasionally not unlike the opening of a trap-door—brought work in plenty to Roosevelt and his friends at the Maltese Cross. The glades about the water-holes where the cattle congregated became bogs that seemed to have no bottom. Cattle sank in them and perished unless a saving rope was thrown in time about their horns and a gasping pony pulled them clear. The ponies themselves became mired and had to be rescued. It was a period of wallowing for everything on four feet or on two. The mud stuck like plaster.[11]

[Footnote 11: "I never was bothered by gumbo in the Bad Lands. There wasn't a sufficient proportion of clay in the soil. But out on the prairie, oh, my martyred Aunt Jane's black and white striped cat!"—A. T. Packard.]

Travel of every sort was hazardous during early spring, for no one ever knew when the ground would open and engulf him. Ten thousand wash-outs, a dozen feet deep or thirty, ran "bank-high" with swirling, merciless waters, and the Little Missouri, which was a shallow trickle in August, was a torrent in April. There were no bridges. If you wanted to get to the other side, you swam your horse across, hoping for the best.

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."

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.