Part 12

During his civil service commissionership, a period of a number of years, the letters were few and far between, but I have one dated July 28, 1889, in which he writes: “Struggle as I will, my life seems to grow more and more sedentary, and as for my polo, it is one of the things that _has_ been; witness the enclosed check which is for Cranford, and I am trying to sell Diamond too;--how I hate to give it up! We have had lovely days this summer, however, at Sagamore. I took all the children down on the pond once, and made them walk out on a half-sunken log, where they perched like so many sand-snipes. I am leaving for the West soon to have a whack at the bears in the Rockies; I am so out of training that I look forward with acute physical terror to going up the first mountain. [He seems for the moment to have forgotten that his life was growing very “sedentary.”] I have mortally hated being so much away from home this summer, but I am very glad I took the place [civil service commissionership] and I have really enjoyed my work. I feel it incumbent on me to try to amount to something, either in politics or literature because I have deliberately given up the idea of going into a money-making business. Of course, however, my political life is but an interlude--it is quite impossible to continue long to do much between two sets of such kittle-kattle as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.”

The seed of the birth of the Progressive party of 1912 was sown by that feeling of Theodore Roosevelt of the difficulty to do much “between two sets such as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.” The honest effort to play honest politics for honest purposes and practical ideals was the stimulating idea translated into action in that great attempt for better government called the Progressive party; but this letter of the young Civil Service Commissioner was written in 1889, and it was not until twenty-three years later that the seed fructified into a movement which, had it succeeded, would, I verily believe, have changed the fate of the world.

But to return to the Civil Service Commission. He gave faithful effort and all his intelligence to the improvement of that important service, and often had the sensation, which he was doomed to have in so many of his positions, that he was more or less beating his head against the wall. He sent me at that time a copy of a letter to the Civil Service Commissioners from an applicant who had been summoned to an examination and had not appeared. To show the ignorance of some of the applicants, I cannot resist quoting from the letter.

Alabama Mobile October 6, 1890.

_To the Comishers of Sivel Serves_,

My dear brothers: I am very sorry that I could not Meet you on the day you said but gentlemen, i am glad of the cause that kept me away. Let me tell you Mr. Comisher, i hav bin mard five years antel the Other Da me and my wife hav bin the onley mbrs en ow Famly. Well Sir on the Da before youre examnenashun My Wife Had a Kupple ov tuins, gest think of it, Mr. Comischer--and of course i couddnt go off and Leave her and them. i just staid home and we had a sellabration--and i invited all my friends to dinner. i wish you had been thare. i Hope i can be thare next time Mr. Comischer.

Very truly yours.

I remember my brother saying humorously that, after all, that particular gentleman might just as well have stayed away with his “tuins” and “sellabration,” as he really doubted whether he could have passed the “examnenashun” had he appeared!

VI

THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING IT IN YELLOWSTONE PARK

From the cloistered life of American college boys, sheltered from the ruder currents of the world by the ramparts of wealth and gentle nurture, he passed, still very young, to the wild and free existence of the plains and the hills. In the silence of those vast solitudes men grow to full stature, when the original stuff is good. He came back to the East, bringing with him, as Tennyson sang, “The wrestling thews that throw the world.” --From a speech by John Hay.

O lover of the things God made-- Hill, valley, mountain, plain: The lightning from the darkened cloud, The storm-burst with its rain.

--Roosevelt, “Hymn of Molokai.”

My brother has written so much about his own ranch, and has given so vivid a description in his autobiography of the life led there, of the wonderful stretches of the Bad Lands, of the swaying cottonwood-trees, and the big fireplace in the Elkhorn Ranch sitting-room, around which he and his fellow ranchers gathered, exhausted by a long day’s cattle-herding or deer-hunting, that it hardly seems possible that I can add much to the picture already painted by his own facile hand: ranch life, however, viewed from the standpoint of the outsider or from that of the insider has a different quality, and thus no reminiscences of mine would be in any way complete were I not to describe my first delightful visit paid to Medora, Dakota, and the surrounding country, in 1890. Our party consisted of my brother and sister-in-law, my sister Mrs. Cowles, then Anna Roosevelt, our friend Robert Munro Ferguson, my husband and myself, and young George Cabot Lodge. The latter was the sixteen-year-old son of our valued friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and was truly the “gifted son of a gifted father,” for later he was not only to earn fame as a poet, well known to his countrymen, but in his brief life--for alas! he died in the summer of 1909--his talents were recognized in other lands as well.

I had been prepared by many tales for the charm and freedom and informal ease of life in the Bad Lands, and had often dreamed of going there; but, unlike most dreams, this one came true in an even more enchanting fashion than I had dared hope. Many had been the letters that my brother had written to me from Elkhorn Ranch several years previous to our journey. In June, 1886, he wrote: “I have never once had breakfast as late as four o’clock. Have been in the saddle all day, and have worked like a beaver, and am as rugged and happy as possible. While I do not see any very great future ahead, yet, if things go on as they are now going and have gone for the past three years, I think that each year I will net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding slowly to my herd all the time. I think I have more than my capital on the ground, and this year I ought to be able to sell between two and three hundred head of steer and dry stock. I wish I could see all of you, but I certainly do enjoy the life. The other day while dining at the de Mores I had some cherries, the only fruit I have had since I left New York. I have lived pretty roughly.”

I quote the above simply to show, what is not always understood, that my brother’s ranching venture was, from his standpoint, a perfectly just business enterprise, and, had not the extraordinarily severe winters intervened, his capital would not have been impaired. Writing that same summer, shortly after hearing of the birth of my baby girl, he says in his loving way:

“My own darling Pussie, my sweetest little sister: How can I tell you the joy I felt when I received Douglas’ first telegram; but I had not the heart to write you until I received the second the good old boy sent me, and knew you were all right. Just to think of there being a second wee, new Pussie in this big world! How I shall love to pet and prize the little thing! It will be very, very dear to Uncle Teddy’s heart, which is quite large enough, however, not to lose an atom of affection for Teddy Douglas, the blessed little scamp. I have thought of you all the time for the last few weeks, and you can hardly imagine how overjoyed and relieved I felt, my own darling sister. I hope the little new Pussie will grow up like her dear mother, and that she will have many many loving ones as fond of her as her irrelevant old cowboy uncle is of Pussie, Senior. Will you be very much offended if I ask whether she now looks like a little sparsely-haired, pink polyp? My own offspring, when in tender youth, closely resembled a trilobite of pulpy consistency and shadowy outline. You dearest Pussie,--you know I am just teasing you, and how proud and fond I am of the little thing even when I have never seen it. I wish I was where I could shake old Douglas by the hand and kiss you again and again.

“Today I went down to Dickerman to make the Fourth of July speech to a great crowd of cowboys and rangers, and after, stayed to see the horse races between the cowboys and Indians.”

In another letter about the same time: “If I was not afraid of being put down as cold-blooded, I should say that I honestly miss greatly and all the time, and think lovingly of all you dear ones, yet I really enjoy this life. I have managed to combine an outdoor life possessing much variety and excitement, and now and then a little adventure, with a literary life also. Three out of four days I spend the morning and evening in the Ranch house writing, and working at various pieces of writing I have now on hand. They may come to nothing, however; but on the other hand they may succeed; at any rate, I am doing some honest work whatever the result is and I am really pretty philosophical about success or failure now. It often amuses me when I indirectly hear that I am supposed to be harboring secret and bitter regret for my political career, when, as a matter of fact, I have hardly ever, when alone, given two thoughts to it since it closed, and have been quite as much wrapped up in hunting, ranching, and book-making as I ever was in Politics. Give my best love to wee Teddy and dear old Douglas; do you know, I have an excessively warm feeling for your respected spouse. I have always admired Truth, Loyalty, and Courage; and though I am really having a lovely life, just the life I care for, please be sure that I am always thinking of my own, darling sister, whom I love so much and so tenderly. Ever your affectionate brother, Thee.”

On August 7 of the same year he wrote again after having paid a brief visit to the East, and returned to Dakota: “Blessed little Pussie; Mother of an increasing and vocal Israel, I did enjoy my two visits to my dear sister, and that dear old piece of peripatetic bric-à-brac, her Caledonian spouse. Everything here is much as usual. The boys were, as always, genuinely glad to see me. I am greatly attached to the Ranch and the life out here, and am really fond of the men. It is in many ways ideal; we are so very rarely able to, actually and in real life, dwell in our ideal ‘hero land.’ The loneliness and freedom, and the half-adventurous nature of existence out here, appeals to me very powerfully.... Merrifield and I are now busily planning our hunt in the mountains.”

Such letters as the above filled the members of his family with a strong desire to participate to some degree, at least, in the life which he loved so dearly; but the births of various small members of the family rendered such participation impossible until the late summer of 1890.

After a brief visit to St. Paul, Minn., we took train for Medora. My brother had heralded the fact that I (then a young woman of twenty-eight) was a mighty rider (I had followed the Essex County hounds in New Jersey)! And the cowboys were quite sure, I think, that I would leap from the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco. Our train drew up, or I should say, approximately drew up, to the little station at Medora at four o’clock in the morning, in one of the most frightful storms that I ever remember. Rain fell in torrents, and we had to get out on an embankment composed of such slippery mud that before we actually plodded to the station, our feet and legs were encased in glutinous slime; but the calls of the cowboys undauntedly rang out in the darkness, and the neighing of horses and prancing of hoofs made us realize that civilization as well as convention was a thing of the past. Will Merrifield, the superintendent of Elkhorn Ranch, and Sylvane Ferris, his able lieutenant, fully expected me to mount the extremely dangerous-looking little animal which they held by a loose rope, and they were inordinately disappointed when I pleaded the fatigue of two nights on the train, and begged that I might drive with the other less-adventurous ladies to the ranch-house, forty miles away. Before starting on this long trip we were entertained by Joe Ferris, the brother of Sylvane, who having once also been one of Theodore’s cowboys, had now decided upon a more sober type of life as storekeeper in the little town of Medora. Joe and his wife were most hospitable, and above his shop in their own rooms we were given a nice warm breakfast and an equally warm welcome. After breakfast, we came down to the shop, where our luggage had already been gathered, and there we began to sort what we would take to the Ranch and what we would leave. This required a certain amount of packing and unpacking, and I was on my knees “madly thrusting,” as “Alice in Wonderland” puts it, “a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe” when Joe came up to me and said: “Mrs. Douglas (they all decided to call me Mrs. Douglas, as more informal than Mrs. Robinson), it ain’t worth while for you to tire yourself like that when the best packer in all Dakota is standin’ in the doorway.” I looked up and sure enough a huge man, who might have just walked out of one of Bret Harte’s novels, _was_ “standin’ in the doorway.” “There he is,” continued Joe; “that’s Hell-Roarin’ Bill, the sheriff of the county; you heard tell of how he caught that lunatic; well, Bill’s the best ladies’ packer that ever was, and you had better leave all your bags to him to arrange.” Fearing that “Bill” might be offended if I did not use him in the capacity of a French maid, and having frequently been told of the rapid results of hurt feelings on the part of “Bill,” I suavely called him to my side, and telling him of the wonderful reputation which I had heard he enjoyed, I immediately put my wardrobe in his care, and to my infinite surprise the huge backwoodsman measured up to his reputation. Very soon the cavalcade was ready, the rain had ceased to fall in such torrents, the half-misty quality in the air lent a softer beauty to the arid landscape, and a sense of adventure was the finishing touch to our expectations as we started for Elkhorn Ranch. My disappointed friends, Merrifield and Sylvane, said that “they did not believe that Mrs. Douglas would like drivin’ with a ‘shotgun team’ much better than ridin’ a buckin’ bronco, but, of course, if she _thought_ she wanted to go that way, she could.” An hour later “Mrs. Douglas” somewhat regretted her choice of progression; true enough, it _was_ a shotgun team attached to that springless wagon in which we sat! The horses had never been hitched up together before, and their methods of motion were entirely at odds. The cowboy driver, however, managed eventually to get them started, and from that moment our progress, though irrelevant, was rapid beyond words.

We forded the “Little Missouri” River twenty-three times on the way to the ranch-house, and as the banks of the river were extremely steep, it was always a question as to whether we could go fast enough down one bank to get sufficient impetus to enable us to go through the river and up the very steep bank on the other side; so that either coming or going we were in imminent danger of a complete somersault. However, we did accomplish that long, exhausting, springless drive, and gradually the buttes rose higher and higher around us, the strange formation of the Bad Lands, curious in color, became more and more marked, the cottonwood-trees more plentiful as the river broadened out, and suddenly we saw buried amidst the trees on the farther side of one of our fordings the substantially built, cosey-looking house called by my brother the Elkhorn Ranch.

In a letter written to my aunt, Mrs. Gracie, from the ranch-house I say:

“We are having the most delightful time at the Ranch. The little house is most cosey and comfortable, and Mrs. Merrifield had everything so neat and sweet for us, and as she has a girl to help her, we really do not have to rough it at all. We all make our beds and do up our rooms religiously, but even that they would willingly do for us if we would let them. We have had three cloudless days, the first of which was occupied in driving the forty miles down here, and a beautiful picturesque drive it is, winding in and out through these strange, bold Buttes, crossing the ‘Little Missouri’ twenty-three times! We ladies drove, but the men all rode, and very picturesque they looked filing across the river. We arrived at the Ranch house at twelve o’clock and ate a splendid dinner of Mrs. Merrifield’s preparing, immediately after which we climbed up a Butte and walked to Prairie Dog town and saw the little prairie dogs. We then mounted horses and took a lovely ride, so you may imagine that we slept well.

“The next day we were all on horseback soon after breakfast, Ferris and Merrifield with us, and off we rode; this time with the intention of seeing Merrifield lasso a steer. When we came to a great bunch of cattle, the practised eyes of the two men at once discovered an unbranded heifer, which they immediately decided to lasso and brand. It was very exciting. Merrifield threw the rope, cleverly catching its legs, and then threw the heifer, which was almost the size of a cow, and then Ferris tied another rope around its neck. The ends of the ropes were slipped over the pommels of two ponies who, in the most sensible way, held the heifer while the two men built a little fire and heated the cinch ring with which they branded the creature. It was all intensely picturesque. In the afternoon, we again rode out to be with the men while they drove the deer on the bottom, and Merrifield shot one; so you see, we have had very typical experiences, especially at the round-up yesterday.”

Happy days, indeed, they were, full of varied excitements. Merrifield’s little boy, Frank, only eleven years old, was the chief factor in finding the herd of ponies in the morning, for it was the custom to let them loose after twilight. Many and many a time I would hear him unslip the halter of the one small pony (“Little Moke” by name) which was still tied to the ranch-house steps and on which he would leap in the early dawn to go to round up the ponies for the day’s work. I would jump up and look out of the ranch window, and see the independent little fellow fording the river, starting on his quest, and an hour or so later the splashing of many feet in the water heralded the approach of “Little Moke,” his young rider, and the whole bunch of four-legged friends.

The relationship between my brother and his men was one of honest comradeship but of absolute respect, each for the other, and on the part of the cowboys there was, as well, toward their “Boss,” a certain reverential attitude in spite of the “man to man” equality. How I loved that first night that we sat around the fire, when the men, in their effort to give my brother all the news of the vicinity during his absence, told the type of tale which has had its equivalent only in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” “There is a sky-pilot a good many miles from here, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Sylvane, “who’s bringin’ a suit against you.” Sylvane announced this unpleasant fact with careless gaiety, stretching his long legs toward the fire. No one was ever so typically the ideal cowboy of one’s wildest fancy as was Sylvane Ferris. Tall and slender, with strong fair hair and blue eyes of an almost unnatural clearness, and a splendid broad brow and aquiline nose, Sylvane looked the part. His leather chaps, his broad sombrero hat, his red handkerchief knotted carelessly around his strong, young, sunburned throat, all made him such a picture that one’s eye invariably followed him as he rode a vicious pony, “wrastled” a calf, roped a steer, or branded a heifer; but now sitting lazily by the fire, such activities seemed a thing of the past, and Sylvane was ready for an hour’s gossip.

“A sky-pilot? Why should a sky-pilot bring suit against me?” said my brother laughingly. [In telling this story he sometimes referred to this man as a professor.]

“Well,” said Sylvane, “it was this way, Mr. Roosevelt. You see, we was all outside the ranch door when up drives the sky-pilot in a buggy. He was one of them wanderin’ ones that thought he could preach as he wandered, and just about as he drove up in front of our ranch his horse went dead lame on him and his old buggy just fell to pieces. He was in a bad fix, and he said he knew you never would let him be held up like that, because he had heard you was a good man too, and wouldn’t we lend him a horse, or send him with the team to the next place he was going to, some forty miles away. We felt we had to be hospitable-like, with you so far away and the sky-pilot in such a fix, so we said ‘Yes,’ we would send him to where he wanted to go, and there he is now, lyin’ in a hut with one leg broken and one arm nearly wrenched off his body, and he’s bringin’ suit against you, which ain’t really fair, we think.”

“What do you mean, Sylvane; what have I got to do with his broken leg and arm?” said my brother, beginning to feel a trifle nervous.

“Well, you see, it is this way,” said Sylvane; “he says we sent him to where he is with a runaway team and he was thrown out and broken up in pieces-like; but we says how could that team we sent him with _be_ a runaway team--how _could_ a team be called a runaway team when one of the horses ain’t never been hitched up before, and the other ain’t run away not more’n two or three times; but I guess sky-pilots are always unreasonable!”

This conclusion seemed to satisfy Sylvane entirely; the unfortunate condition of the much-battered sky-pilot aroused no sympathy in his adamantine heart, nor did he feel that the sky-pilot had the slightest cause for his suit, which later was settled in a satisfactory manner, but the conversation was typical of that evening’s ranch news by the big wood-fire.

Our day at the round-up was one of the most fascinating days of my life, and I was proud to see that my city-bred brother was as agile and as active in the duties of rounding up the great steers of the plains as were the men brought up from their babyhood to such activities. We lunched at midday with the roundup wagon; rough life, indeed, but wonderfully invigorating, and as we returned in the evening, galloping over the grassy plateaus of the high buttes, I realized fully that the bridle-path would never again have for me the charm it once had had. Nothing in the way of riding has ever been so enchanting, and the curious formation of the Bad Lands, picturesque, indeed, almost grotesque in line, in conjunction with the wonderful climate of that period of the year and the mingling of tints in the sunset sky, resulted in a quality of color and atmosphere the like of which I only remember in Egypt, and made as lasting an impression upon my memory as did the land of the Nile.