Part 2

Roosevelt brushed elbows in Medora with newly arrived hunters from the plains and mountains, clad in buckskin shirts and fur caps--greasy and unkempt, yet strong and resolute men. Then there were teamsters, in slouch hats and great cowhide boots; stage-drivers with faces like leather; Indians wrapped in blankets; cowboys galloping through the streets. These men had all come to town to obtain relief from the monotony of their occupations or from long periods of peril and hardship, and the only entertainment that awaited them were “flaunting saloons and gawdy hells of all kinds,” to borrow Roosevelt’s own description. Among them moved the “bad men,” professional thieves and man-killers, who owed their lives to their ability to draw their weapons before other men could draw theirs.

Roosevelt was deeply interested in these unusual characters and scenes. Indeed, it was to drink in this frank, self-reliant spirit that he had come West. He met these men on their own ground, fearlessly. They saw that, in spite of his eyeglasses, he was a man after their own kind. Often he found himself in places of danger and saw men killed beside him in drunken brawls, yet there was something about him that made bad men pause before they challenged him.

Among Roosevelt’s cowboys was a Pueblo Indian who was a bad lot, a Sioux who was faithful and a mulatto who was one of his best men. The men would carry the “brand” of their ranch even in their own nicknames. Thus it would be said that “Bar Y” Harry had married the “Seven Open A” girl.

It was when he was thrown into contact day after day with the men of his own ranch that the most severe test of Roosevelt as a “good fellow” came.

He came through his initiation into ranch life the idol of his men, though they never got to the stage where they would neglect a chance to poke sly fun at him. He relates how once, when on a wood-chopping expedition, he overheard someone ask Dow, a ranchman bred in the Maine woods, what the total cut had been. Dow, unconscious that he was within hearing, said:

“Well, Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine and the boss he beavered seventeen.”

The force of the jest, Roosevelt explains, lies not in the small number of trees his ax felled, but in the comparison of his chopping with the gnawing of the beaver.

At another time Roosevelt, struggling desperately to mount an unwilling horse, heard behind him a cowboy remark to the effect that he would find it hard to qualify for the job of “bronco buster.”

Roosevelt enjoyed these jokes as much as those who made them. The West was a bad place for a coward or a shirker, and the man who permitted himself to be bullied and made a butt was in for an uncomfortable existence. On the other hand, the man who did his work and gave and took jests in the spirit in which they were intended quickly made lasting friends.

One of the stories “Bill” Sewall tells of Roosevelt’s ranch life is this:

“Once on the cattle ranch in North Dakota during a roundup, his horse reared, threw him and then fell on top of him. The spill broke Theodore’s shoulder-blade. But he was afraid the cow-punchers might think he was a quitter. So he stayed out on the roundup for three days, suffering the intensest pain all the while, but never saying a word about it to anyone.”

The men usually carried revolvers, and now and then an ill temper or an excess of drinking led to a shooting affray. Roosevelt was witness to or had first-hand knowledge of several of these. In his book “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail” he tells how a desperado, a man from Arkansas, had a quarrel with two Irish desperadoes who were partners. For several days the three lurked about the streets of the town, each trying to get the drop on the other. Finally one of the Irishmen crept up behind the Arkansan as he was walking into a gambling hall and shot him in the back. Mortally wounded, the man fell; yet, with the dauntless spirit found in so many of this class, he twisted around as he dropped and shot his slayer dead. Knowing that he had but a few minutes more to live and expecting that his other foe would run up on hearing the shooting, he dragged himself on his arms out into the street and waited. The second partner came up at once, to be slain instantly by a bullet from the revolver of the wounded man. The victor of this gruesome combat lived just twenty minutes after his victory.

On another occasion, Welshy, a saloon-keeper, and a man named Hay had been at odds for some time. One day Hay entered Welshy’s saloon out of temper and became very abusive. Suddenly Welshy took out his revolver and fired at Hay. The saloon-keeper almost fainted with surprise when Hay, after staggering slightly, shook himself, stretched out his hand and gave back to his would-be slayer the ball. It had glanced along his breast-bone, gone into the body and come out at the point of the shoulder, then dropped down the sleeve into his hand. Roosevelt thought the story worthy of the pen of a Wister or a Bret Harte, but the editor of “The Bad Lands Cowboy” mentioned the event merely as an “unfortunate occurrence between two of our most esteemed fellow citizens.”

On still another occasion a Scotchman and a Minnesota man, both with “shooting” records, had a furious quarrel, and later the Scotchman mounted his horse, with rifle in hand, and rode to the door of the American’s mud ranch, breathing threats of slaughter. The latter, however, was not caught napping. From behind a corner of his building he instantly shot down his foolish assailant.

Soon afterward there was a cowboy ball held in the place. Whether or not this was in celebration of the victory is not stated, but a historic fact in connection with the ball is that Roosevelt was selected to open the dancing with the wife of the victor of the shooting affair. The husband himself danced opposite, instructing Roosevelt in the steps of the lanciers.

Sometimes Roosevelt found himself involved in situations that required both a cool head and a sense of humor. When he entered a strange place it always took him a day or two to live down the fact that he wore spectacles, and he found it a justifiable policy to ignore remarks about “four-eyes” until it became apparent to him that his keeping still was being mistaken for cowardice, on which occasion he went at the aggressor hammer and tongs.

An amusing happening in which he was a central figure occurred when he was out on a search for a lost horse. He stopped for the night at a little cow town, but was informed by the owner of the only hotel that the only accommodation left was a room containing two double beds, and that three men were already occupying these beds. Roosevelt accepted the offer of the vacant half bed and turned in.

Two hours later a lantern flashed in his face and he awoke to find himself staring into the muzzle of a revolver. Two men bent over him. “It ain’t him!” said one, and the next moment his bedfellow was covered by their guns, and one of them said, persuasively: “Now, Bill, don’t make a fuss, but come along quiet.”

“I’m not thinking of making a fuss,” said Bill.

“That’s right,” was the answer, “we don’t want to hurt you; we just want you to come along. You know why.”

Bill dressed himself and went with them. “I wonder why they took Bill?” Roosevelt asked naively.

“Well,” drawled one of his neighbors, “I guess they wanted him.”

Roosevelt heard later that Bill had held up a Northern Pacific train and by shooting at the conductor’s feet, made him dance. Bill was more a joker than a train robber, but the holding up of the train had delayed the mails, and the United States Marshal had sent for him.

ROOSEVELT MEETS BAD INDIANS

A peril Roosevelt faced arose from his proximity to bad Indians. In roaming through the uninhabited country surrounding his ranch there was constant danger of meeting bands of young bucks. These redskins were generally insolent and reckless, and if they met a white man when the chances of their detection and punishment were slight they would take away his horse and rifle, if not his life.

One morning Roosevelt had set out on a solitary trip to the country beyond his ranch. He was near the middle of a plateau when a small band of Indians suddenly rode over the edge in front of him. The minute they saw him, out came their guns. Full tilt they dashed at him, whooping and brandishing their weapons in typical Indian style. Roosevelt reined up and dismounted. His horse, Manitou, stood steady as a rock. When the Indians were a hundred yards off, Roosevelt threw his rifle over Manitou’s back and drew a bead on the foremost redskin. Instantly the party scattered, doubled back on their tracks and bent over alongside their horses to shield themselves from Roosevelt’s gun. Out of rifle range, they held a consultation, and then one came forward alone, dropping his rifle and waving a blanket over his head. When he was within fifty yards he yelled out: “How! Me good Indian.” Roosevelt returned the “How,” and assured him that he was delighted to know that he was a good Indian, but that he would not be permitted to come closer. The other Indians came closer, but Roosevelt’s rifle covered them. After an outburst of profanity, they galloped away in an opposite direction from Roosevelt’s route. Later in the day Roosevelt met two trappers, who told him that his assailants were young Sioux bucks, who had robbed them of two horses.

In his account of this episode, Roosevelt takes care to point out that there is another side to the Indian character, as indeed all America has found out since the gallantry of our Indian brothers in the world war. He illustrates this by telling how, while spending the night in a small cow ranch on the Beaver, he lay in his bunk listening to the conversation of two cowboys. They were speaking of Indians, and mentioned a jury that had acquitted a horse-thief of the charge of stealing stock from a neighboring tribe, though the thief himself had openly admitted its truth. One of these cowboys suddenly remarked that he had once met an Indian who was a pretty good fellow, and he proceeded to tell the story.

A small party of Indians had passed the winter near the ranch at which he was employed. The chief had two particularly fine horses. These so excited the cowboy’s cupidity that one night he drove them off and hid them in a safe place. The chief looked for them high and low, but without success. Soon afterward one of the cowboy’s own horses strayed. When spring came the Indians went away, but three days afterward the chief returned, bringing with him the strayed horse, which he had happened to run across. “I couldn’t stand that,” said the narrator, “so I just told him I reckoned I knew where his own lost horses were, and I saddled up my bronco and piloted him to them.”

Still another story is cited by Roosevelt in denial of the saying, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Once, on visiting a neighboring ranch, he found waiting there three well-behaved and self-respecting Sioux. The woman on the ranch told him that a white man had come along and tried to run off with their horses. Running out, they had caught him, retaken their horses, deprived him of his guns and released him.

“I don’t see why they let him go,” exclaimed Roosevelt’s hostess. “I don’t believe in stealing Indians’ horses any more than white folks’ so I told them they could go along and hang him--I’d never cheep.”

When, many years later, Roosevelt became President, his knowledge of the condition of the Indians led him to become their stanch champion. There was then an enormous amount of fraud practised by white men in obtaining possession of Indian lands. Roosevelt used his executive power to protect Indian rights and appointed as Indian Commissioner Francis E. Leupp, one of the best friends the Indians ever had.

POLICE WORK ON THE PLAINS

There was much horse-stealing and cattle-killing in this part of the country while Roosevelt was a resident of it. Under the direction of the big cattle-owners, vigilantes were organized to rid the territory of the “rustlers”--the cowboys’ name for horse and cattle-thieves.

Roosevelt admitted the need of these stringent methods, but his own way of fighting lawlessness was to accept the office of deputy sheriff for his locality.

It was while filling this office that Roosevelt first made the acquaintance of Seth Bullock, who later became one of his warmest friends and greatest admirers, and who served as marshal of South Dakota under Roosevelt when the latter became President.

Roosevelt first met Seth when the latter was sheriff in the Black Hills district. A horse-thief Seth wanted escaped into Roosevelt’s territory and was captured by him, a matter that led Seth to give some attention to the young cub of a deputy two or three hundred miles north of him.

Later, Bill Jones, Ferris and Roosevelt went down to Deadwood on business. At the little town of Spearfish they met Seth. The trip had been a hard one, and the three travelers were dusty and unkempt. Seth’s reception of them at first was decidedly stand-offish, but when their identity became known he unbent. “You see,” he explained to the future President, “by your looks I thought you were some kind of a tin-horn gambling outfit, and that I might have to keep an eye on you!”

Roosevelt’s reputation as an upholder of the law was further enhanced by his arrest of the three desperadoes from whom his neighborhood had suffered. The vigilantes had almost cleared the country of scoundrels, but there remained three men who had long been suspected of cattle-killing and horse-stealing. One was a half-breed, another was an old German of the shiftless type, while the leader was a strapping fellow named Finnigan, with a crop of red hair reaching to his shoulders. These men, finding the neighborhood becoming too hot for them, were anxious to quit that section of the country. Roosevelt possessed a clinker-built boat that had been used to ferry his men across the river.

One day one of the men brought back to the house news that the boat had been stolen. The end of the rope had been cut off with a sharp knife. Near the stream lay a red woolen mitten with a leather palm. These three desperadoes were at once suspected. Undoubtedly they knew that to travel on horseback in the direction they wanted to go was almost impossible and that the river offered them the best avenue of escape. They must also have reasoned that by taking Roosevelt’s boat they would possess the only one on the river and that, therefore, they could not be pursued.

They reckoned without Roosevelt’s fighting spirit, however. With the aid of two of his cowboys, Sewall and Dow, who, coming from Maine woods, were therefore skilled in woodcraft and in the use of the ax, paddle and rifle, they turned out in two or three days a first-class flat-bottomed scow. This was loaded with supplies, and early one morning Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow started down the river in chase of the thieves. On the third day of their pursuit, as they came around a bend, they saw the lost boat moored against a bank. Some yards from the shore a campfire smoke arose. The pursuers shoved their scow into the bank and approached the camp. They found the German sitting by the campfire with his weapons on the ground. His two companions were off hunting. When the two thieves returned they walked into three cocked rifles. Roosevelt shouted to them to hold up their hands. The half-breed obeyed at once. Finnigan hesitated, but as Roosevelt walked a few paces toward him, covering his chest with his rifle, the man, with an oath, let his own rifle drop and threw his hands high above his head.

Then came the hardest and most irksome part of the task--getting the prisoners safely to jail. After many monotonous days and nights, in which it was necessary to keep a close guard on the prisoners and at the same time navigate the river, they came to a cow camp. There Roosevelt learned that at a ranch fifteen miles off he could hire a large prairie schooner and two tough broncos for the transportation of his prisoners to Dickinson, the nearest town. This was done. Sewall and Dow went back to the boats. Roosevelt put the prisoners in the wagon along with an old settler, who drove the horses while he walked behind, ankle-deep in mud, with his Winchester over his shoulder. After thirty-six hours of sleeplessness the wagon jolted into the main street of Dickinson, where Roosevelt delivered his prisoners into the hands of the sheriff, and received, under the laws of Dakota, his fees as a deputy sheriff, amounting to some fifty dollars.

III

Broncos and Bears

Hunting lost broncos was one of the commonest and most irksome of Roosevelt’s ranch duties. On one occasion, when three horses under his charge had been running loose for a couple of months and had become as wild as deer through their stolen liberty, he had to follow at full speed for fifteen miles, until by exhausting them, he was able to get them under control and headed toward a corral.

At other times he and his men were not so lucky. Two horses had been missing from the ranch for nearly eighteen months. They were seen by his men and pursued but the horses of the pursuers became exhausted and broken before they caught up with the runaways.

On another occasion a horse that had been on the Roosevelt ranch nine months developed a case of homesickness, went off one night and traveled two hundred miles back to its former roaming grounds, swimming the Yellowstone to achieve its goal.

When Roosevelt was attending one of the recent national political conventions, up came George Meyer, one of his former ranchmen, with this tale of Roosevelt’s roundup days on the Little Missouri:

“When the Colonel gets into a mix-up like he is in at this convention the picture comes to me of the time when he and I started to get two calves across the river. I singled out the meekest looking, grabbed it up in my arms, held it while I managed to get on my horse, and started to cross the river. Half way across I turned to see how ‘the boss’ was getting along.

“He had roped his calf and was dragging it toward the river. The calf, bleating and bouncing, swung round under the horse’s tail. This set the bronco on a rampage. The river bank was high, but over it he bucked. I saw ‘the boss’ clutching the reins with one hand and the calf rope with the other. The sudden tautness of the rope as the horse plunged into the water hurled the calf into the air, landing him beside ‘the boss.’ Through the water the horse plunged, and back of bronco and rider floundered the calf. It arrived on the other shore half strangled and half drowned, but it was still bleating and bouncing as ‘the boss’ hauled it to the pen.”

THE BRONCO BUSTER

One of the most interesting tasks of the day was the breaking in of a new horse. The professional bronco-buster who did this was always an object of admiration to the strenuous Roosevelt. Roosevelt expressed his respect for these men in unreserved terms. He described their calling as a most dangerous trade, at which no man can hope to grow old. His work was infinitely harder than that of the horse-breaker in the East, because he had to break many horses in a limited time. Horses were cheap on the plains. Each outfit had a great many, and the pay for breaking the animals was only $5 or $10.

Giving a keener edge to the work of dealing with broncos is the peril that confronts the ranchmen from vicious horses. One of Roosevelt’s horses would at times rush at a man open-mouthed like a wolf, ready to bury his teeth in the ranchman’s flesh if he was not quick enough to fight him.

Once in a while a wild stallion was caught. This sort of animal fears no beast except the grizzly; yet, Roosevelt stated, he has one master among animals. That creature is the jackass. A battle between jack and stallions came under Roosevelt’s observation. Among the animals of a certain ranch were two great stallions and a jackass. The latter was scarcely half the size of the stallions. The animals were kept in separate pens, but one day the horses came together, and a fight between them ensued. They rolled against the pen of the jackass, breaking it down. Instantly the jackass with ears laid back and mouth wide open, sprang at the two horses. The gray horse reared on his hind legs and struck at his antagonist with his fore feet, but in a second the jack had grasped the gray by the throat.

The stallion made frantic endeavors to drive him off, but the jack kept his hold. The black stallion now plunged into the scrimmage, attacking both the gray and the jack alternately, using hoofs and teeth in his efforts to kill one or the other. The jack responded to the new attack with increased ferocity, and would doubtless have killed at least one of the stallions had not the ranchmen, by desperate efforts, separated the maddened brutes.

Roosevelt, on his first roundup, had enough experiences with wild broncos to satisfy the most hardened rough rider. It was impossible to bridle or saddle single-handed one of his horses. Another was one of the worst buckers on the ranch. Once it bucked Roosevelt off, resulting in a fall that broke a rib. Another would balk and then throw himself over backward. Roosevelt was once caught under him, and suffered as a result a broken shoulder.

Roosevelt welcomed roundup work as a relief to the monotony of the daily tasks on the ranch. The spring roundup was the big event of the season. The bulk of calves were to be branded then. Out-of-the-way parts of the country where cattle were supposed to have wandered had to be searched, so that the roundup usually extended for six or seven weeks, with no rest for the herders.

First the captain of the roundup was chosen. His qualifications were an ability to command and control the wild rough riders who served under him. The rendezvous was set, and from each ranch a cowboy rode out to meet at this common starting place. A four-horse wagon carried the bedding and food. The teamster acted as cook and was first-rate at both jobs. A dozen cow-punchers accompanied the wagon. Then, to take charge of the horses, there were two horse-rangers.

When the meeting place was reached, several days elapsed in making arrangements for the roundup. The time was passed in racing, breaking rough horses or in skylarking. Horse-racing was a mania with the cow-punchers, both whites and Indians. The horses were ridden bareback. Intense excitement preceded the race, and where the horses participating were well enough known to have partisans there generally arose quarrels between the two sides.

The races were short-distance dashes. Down between two thick rows of spectators, some on foot and some on horseback, the riders passed. Some of the lookers-on yelled and shouted encouragement at the top of their lungs. Some fired off their revolvers. All waved their hats and cloaks in encouragement. Naturally, the excitement made both horses and riders frantically eager to win, and when the goal was reached they were exhausted with nervous excitement.