Part 13

During our stay, my original failure to leap, on my arrival, “from the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco” had more or less been effaced from the memory of the cowboys by subsequent adventures, and the last day that we spent under the cottonwood-trees, by the banks of the Little Missouri, was made significant by the “surprise” gotten up by Merrifield and Sylvane for the special edification of my brother and husband. The surprise took the form of the “wrastling” of a calf by no less a person than myself! Merrifield had taught me to rope an animal, Sylvane had shown me with praiseworthy regularity the method of throwing a calf, and the great occasion was heralded amongst the other members of the party by an invitation to sit on the fence of the corral at three o’clock, the last afternoon of our visit to Elkhorn, and thus witness the struggle between a young woman of the East and a bovine denizen of the Western prairies. The corral, a plot of very muddy ground (having been watered by a severe rain the night before), was walled in by a fence, and generally used when we wished to keep the ponies from straying. On this occasion, however, it was emptied of all _but_ the calf, which was to be the object of my efforts and prowess. I was then introduced by Merrifield, very much as the circus rider used to be introduced in the early Barnum and Bailey days; then followed a most gruelling pantomime; the calf, which was of an unusually unpleasant size, galloped around the corral and I, knee-deep in mud, galloped after it, and finally succeeded in achieving the first necessity, which was to rope it around the neck. After that, the method of procedure was as follows: The “wrastler”--on this occasion my unfortunate self--was supposed to get close enough to the animal in question to throw himself or herself across the back of the galloping calf, with the purpose of catching the left leg of the animal, the leg, in fact, farthest away from one’s right arm. If this deed could be accomplished and the leg forcibly bent under the calf, both calf and rider would go down in an inextricable heap, and the “wrastling” of the calf would be complete.

I can feel now the mud in my boots as I floundered with agonized effort after that energetic animal. I can still sense the strain in every nerve of my body as I finally flung myself across its back, and still, also, as if it were only yesterday, do I remember the jellied sensation within me, as for some torturing minutes I lay across the heifer’s spine, before, by a final Herculean effort, I caught that left leg with my right arm. The cries of “stay with him!” from the fence, the loud hand-clapping of the enthusiastic cowboys, the shrieks of laughter of my brother and my husband, all still ring in my ears, and when the deed was finally accomplished, when the calf, with one terrible lurch, actually “wrastled,” so to speak, fell over on its head in the mud, all sensation left me and I only remember being lifted up, bruised and encased in an armor of oozing dirt, and being carried triumphantly on the shoulders of the cowboys into the ranch-house, having redeemed, in their opinion, at least, the reputation which my brother had given me before I visited the Bad Lands.

Years later, when the young owner of Elkhorn Ranch had reached the higher estate of President of the United States, I, as the sister of the President, was receiving with my sister-in-law at the breakfast in the White House, at his Inaugural in 1905, and was attired in my best black velvet gown and “presidential sister” white plumes; I was surrounded by senators and ambassadors, when suddenly, coming toward me, I recognized the lithe figure of my brother’s quondam cowboy, Will Merrifield. He, too, had climbed the rungs of the ladder of fame, and now, as marshal of Montana, he had been intrusted by the State of Montana with the greetings of that state for the newly inaugurated President. Coming toward me with a gay smile of recognition, he shook me warmly by the hand and said: “Well, now, Mrs. Douglas, it’s a sight for sore eyes to see you again; why, almost the last time I laid eyes on you, you were standing on your head in that muddy corral with your legs waving in the air.” Senators and ambassadors seemed somewhat surprised, but Will Merrifield and the President’s sister shook hands gaily together, and reminisced over one of the latter’s most thrilling life victories. But to return to our farewell to Elkhorn Ranch in 1890.

* * * * *

The three weeks’ visit to the ranch-house had passed on fleet wings, and it was a very sad little party that turned its face toward Medora again, in preparation for the specially planned trip to Yellowstone Park. Theodore Roosevelt, as one may well imagine, was making a very real concession to family affection by arranging this trip for us and accompanying us upon it. What he loved was roughing it; near-roughing it was not his “métier,” nor, frankly, was it his “métier” to arrange a _comfortable_ trip of any kind. He loved wild places and wild companions, hard tramps and thrilling adventure, and to be a part of the type of trip which women who were not accustomed to actual hunting could take, was really an act of unselfishness on his part. We paid huge sums for no comforts, and although supposed to go--as we were riding--where the ordinary travellers in stage-coach could not go in Yellowstone Park, yet there _were_ times when we seemed to be constantly camping in the vicinity of tomato cans!

I write again to my aunt two weeks after we start our Yellowstone experiences:

“We have had a most delightful two weeks’ camping and have enjoyed every moment. The weather has been cloudless, and though the nights were cold, we were only really uncomfortable one night. We were all in the best of health and the best of spirits, and ate without a murmur the strange meals of ham, tomatoes, greasy cakes and coffee prepared by our irresistible Chinese cook. Breakfast and dinner were always the same, and lunch was generally bread and cheese carried in our pockets and eaten by the wayside. We have really had great comfort, however, and have enjoyed the pretense of roughing it and the delicious, free, open-air life hugely,--and such scenery! Nothing in my estimation can equal in unique beauty the Yellowstone canyon, the wonderful shapes of the rocks, some like peaks and turrets, others broken in strange fantastic jags, and then the marvellous colors of them all. Pale greens and yellows, vivid reds and orange, salmon pinks and every shade of brown are strewn with a lavish hand over the whole Canyon,--and the beautiful Falls are so foamy and white, and leap with such exultation from their rocky ledge 360 feet down.

“We had one really exciting ride. We had undertaken too long an expedition, namely, the ascent of Mt. Washburn, and then to Towers’ Falls in one day, during which, to add to the complications, Edith had been thrown and quite badly bruised. We found ourselves at Towers’ Falls at six o’clock in the evening instead of at lunch time, and realized we were still sixteen miles from Camp, and a narrow trail only to lead us back, a trail of which our guide was not perfectly sure. We galloped as long as there was light, but the sun soon set over the wonderful mountains, and although there was a little crescent moon, still, it soon grew very dark and we had to keep close behind each other, single file, and go very carefully as the trail lay along the mountainside. Often we had to traverse dark woods and trust entirely to the horses, who behaved beautifully and stepped carefully over the fallen logs. Twice, Dodge, our guide, lost the trail, and it gave one a very eerie feeling, but he found it again and on we went. Once at about 11 P. M., Theodore suggested stopping and making a great fire, and waiting until daylight to go on, for he was afraid that we would be tired out, but we all preferred to continue, and about 11:30, to our great joy, we heard the roar of the Falls and suddenly came out on the deep Canyon, looking very wonderful and mysterious in the dim starlight. We reached our Camp after twelve o’clock, having been fifteen hours away from it, thirteen and a half of which we had been in the saddle. It was really an experience.”

It was a hazardous ride and I did not terrify my aunt by some of the incidents such as the severe discomfort suffered by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt when she was thrown and narrowly escaped a broken back, and when a few hours later my own horse sank in a quicksand and barely recovered himself in time to struggle to terra firma again, not to mention the dangers of the utter darkness when the small, dim crescent moon faded from the horizon. My brother was the real leader of the cavalcade, for the guide, Ira Dodge, proved singularly incompetent. Theodore kept up our flagging spirits, exhausted as we were by the long rough day in the saddle, and although furious with Dodge because of his ignorance of the trail through which he was supposed to guide us, he still gave us the sense of confidence, which is one’s only hope on such an adventure. Looking back over that camping trip in the Yellowstone, the prominent figure of the whole holiday was, of course, my brother. He was a boy in his tricks and teasing, crawling under the tent flaps at night, pretending to be the unexpected bear which we always dreaded. He was a real inspiration in his knowledge of the fauna and birds of the vicinity and his willingness to give us the benefit of that knowledge.

I find in my diary of that excursion a catalogue of the birds and other animals which he himself had pointed out to me, making me marvel again at the rapid observation which he had made part of his physical equipment. I note: “During the first four days we have been in the Park, we have seen chipmunk, red squirrel, little black bear, elk watering with the horses, muskrat in the streams, golden eagle, Peregrine falcon and other varieties, red-tailed hawk and pigeon hawk, Clark’s crow, Canada jay, raven, bittern, Canada goose, mallard and teal ducks, chicadee, nuthatch, dwarf-thrush, robin, water oozel, sunbird, longspur, grass finch, yellow-crowned warbler, Rocky Mountain white-throated sparrow, song-sparrow, and wren.”

Each one of the above I saw with the eyes of Theodore Roosevelt, and can still hear the tones of his voice as he described to me their habits of life and the differences between them and others of their kind. To him this trip must, of necessity, have been somewhat dull, based as it was upon the companionship of three women who were not hunters; but never once during those weeks did he seem anything but happy, and as far as we were concerned, to see the beauties of nature through those ardent eyes, to hear the bird-notes through those ears, attuned to each song, and to listen constantly to his stories of wood and plain, his interpretation of the lives of those mighty pioneer men of the West--all of this comes back to me, as a rare experience which I have gladly stored away in what Emerson calls “the amber of memory.” How we laughed over the strange rules and regulations of the park! Fierce bears were trapped, but could not be killed without the kind permission of one of the secretaries in Washington, the correspondence on the subject affording my brother infinite amusement. _His_ methods under like circumstances would have been so very different!

The experiences at Elkhorn Ranch and again in the Yellowstone Park were of special benefit to me from the standpoint of the comprehension which they gave me of the absolute sympathy which my brother felt both with the nature and the human nature of the great West. No period of the life of Theodore Roosevelt seems to me quite as important, in the influence which it was to bear upon his future usefulness to his country, as was that period in which, as man to man, he shared the vigorous work and pastimes of the men of that part of our country. Had he not actually lived the life not only of the hunter and cattleman, but had he not taken actual part as sheriff in the methods of government of that part of our country, he would never have been able to interpret the spirit of the West as he did. He would never have been recognized _as_ such an interpreter, and when the time came that America could no longer look from an uninterested distance at the Spanish iniquities in Cuba, the fact that Theodore Roosevelt had become so prominent a figure in the West proved the essential factor in the flocking to his standard of that mass of virile manhood which, under his leadership, and that of the then army doctor, Leonard Wood, became the picturesque, well-known “Rough Rider” Volunteer Cavalry of the Spanish-American War.

At Elkhorn Ranch, also, the long silences and stretches of solitude had much to do with the mental growth of the young man. There he read and wrote and thought deeply. His old guide Bill Sewall was asked not long since about his opinion of my brother as a religious man. His answer was as follows: “I think he read the Bible a great deal. I never saw him in formal prayer, but as prayer is the desire of the heart, I think he prayed without ceasing, for the desire of his heart was always to do right.” Thus, sharing the hardships and the joys of their primitive life with his comrades of the West, the young rancher became an integral part of that country, which never failed to rouse in him the spirit of high adventure and romance.

Theodore Roosevelt, himself, in a letter to John Hay, written long after our visit to his ranch and our gay excursion to the Yellowstone, describes the men of that part of the world. He was taking an extended trip, as President, in 1903, on the first part of which journey Mr. Hay had accompanied him, and at Oyster Bay, on his return, he writes to his secretary of state in order to give him further details of the trip:

“From Washington, I turned southward, and when I struck northern Montana, again came to my old stamping grounds and among my old friends. I met all kinds of queer characters with whom I had hunted and worked and slept and sometimes fought. From Helena, I went southward to Butte, reaching that city in the afternoon of May 27th. By this time, Seth Bullock had joined us, together with an old hunting friend, John Willis, a Donatello of the Rocky Mountains,--wholly lacking, however, in that morbid self-consciousness which made Hawthorne’s ‘faun’ go out of his head because he had killed a man. Willis and I had been in Butte some seventeen years before, at the end of a hunting trip in which we got dead broke, so that when we struck Butte, we slept in an outhouse and breakfasted heartily in a two-bit Chinese restaurant. Since then I had gone through Butte in the campaign of 1900, the major part of the inhabitants receiving me with frank hostility, and enthusiastic cheers for Bryan.

“However, Butte is mercurial, and its feelings had changed. The wicked, wealthy, hospitable, full-blooded, little city, welcomed me with wild enthusiasm of a disorderly kind. The mayor, Pat Mullins, was a huge, good-humored creature, wearing, for the first time in his life, a top hat and a frock coat, the better to do honor to the President.

“National party lines counted very little in Butte where the fight was Heinze and anti-Heinze, Ex-Senator Carter and Senator Clark being in the opposition. Neither side was willing to let the other have anything to do with the celebration, and they drove me wild with their appeals, until I settled that the afternoon parade and speech was to be managed by the Heinze group of people, and the evening speech by the anti-Heinze people; and that the dinner should contain fifty of each faction and should be presided over in his official capacity by the mayor. The ordinary procession, in barouches, was rather more exhilarating than usual, and reduced the faithful secret service men very nearly to the condition of Bedlamites. The crowd was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of whiskey, and in their desire to be sociable, broke the lines and jammed right up to the carriage.... Seth Bullock, riding close beside the rear wheel of my carriage, for there were hosts of so-called ‘rednecks’ or ‘dynamiters’ in the crowd, was such a splendid looking fellow with his size and supple strength, his strangely marked aquiline face, with its big moustache, and the broad brim of his soft dark hat drawn down over his dark eyes. However, no one made a motion to attack me....

“My address was felt to be honor enough for one hotel, so the dinner was given in the other. When the dinner was announced, the Mayor led me in!--to speak more accurately, tucked me under one arm and lifted me partially off the ground so that I felt as if I looked like one of those limp dolls with dangling legs, carried around by small children, like Mary Jane in the ‘Gollywogs,’ for instance. As soon as we got in the banquet hall and sat at the end of the table, the Mayor hammered lustily with the handle of his knife and announced, ‘Waiter, bring on the feed.’ Then, in a spirit of pure kindliness, ‘Waiter, pull up the curtains and let the people see the President eat’;--but to this, I objected. The dinner was soon in full swing, and it was interesting in many respects. Besides my own party, including Seth Bullock and Willis, there were fifty men from each of the Butte factions.

“In Butte, every prominent man is a millionaire, a gambler, or a labor leader, and generally he has been all three. Of the hundred men who were my hosts, I suppose at least half had killed their man in private war or had striven to compass the assassination of an enemy. They had fought one another with reckless ferocity. They had been allies and enemies in every kind of business scheme, and companions in brutal revelry. As they drank great goblets of wine, the sweat glistened on their hard, strong, crafty faces. They looked as if they had come out of the pictures in Aubrey Beardsley’s Yellow Book. The millionaires had been laboring men once, the labor leaders intended to be millionaires in their turn, or else to pull down all who were. They had made money in mines, had spent it on the races, in other mines or in gambling and every form of vicious luxury, but they were strong men for all that. They had worked, and striven, and pushed, and trampled, and had always been ready, and were ready now, to fight to the death in many different kinds of conflicts. They had built up their part of the West, they were men with whom one had to reckon if thrown in contact with them.... But though most of them hated each other, they were accustomed to take their pleasure when they could get it, and they took it fast and hard with the meats and wines.”

The above description by the pen of my brother is the most vivid that could be given of a certain type of man of the West. The types were many.... The Sylvane Ferrises and the Will Merrifields were as bold and resourceful as these inhabitants of the city of Butte and its vicinity, but for the former, life was an adventure in which the spirit of beauty and kindness had its share in happy contrast to the aims and objects of the men described by my brother in this extraordinary pen-picture. The picture is so forcibly painted that it brings before one’s mind, almost as though it were an actual stage-setting, this type of American, who would appear to be a belated brother of the men of the barbaric period of the Middle Ages in the Old World, in their case, however, rendered even more formidable by a New World enterprise and acumen, strangely unlike what has ever been produced before.

It was because of his knowledge of just such men, and of the fact that they knew, although his aims were so different and his ideals so alien to theirs, that the courage of his mental and physical equipment could meet them on their own ground, that Theodore Roosevelt was respected and admired, although sometimes hated, by this type of humanity so opposed to the goals, actual and spiritual, for which he worked so faithfully during his whole valiant existence. They knew him for what he was, and feared him for the qualities which he possessed in common with them, and even more for the traits that they did not understand, and which, to them, made him inevitably and forever “The Mysterious Stranger.”

VII

TWO RECREANT NEW YORK POLICEMEN

Who serves her truly, sometimes saves the state.

--Arthur Hugh Clough.

There is sprung up a light for the righteous; and joyful gladness for such as are true-hearted.--97th Psalm.

The years between 1890 and 1896 were busy years, with devoted service as Civil Service Commissioner, winters at Washington and happy summers at Oyster Bay, when Theodore Roosevelt gave himself up to family joy and the activities of the growing children. In 1893 he writes most lovingly of my children and his--his never-failing sympathy in all the minor illnesses of my little family, expressed in the most affectionate terms, and the common sorrow which we both suffered in the loss of our devoted aunt, Mrs. James Gracie, fills many pages during those years. We met frequently during the summer-time, and when we met he shared with me his many Washington experiences, but the letters are largely to show me his loving interest in the many details of my family life.

In August, however, he goes a little more fully into some matters of public interest, and writes: “For the last fortnight, I have virtually been living with Cabot, for I take all my meals at his house, though I sleep at my own. [Mrs. Roosevelt and the children were at Oyster Bay.] After breakfast, an hour spent by Cabot and myself in gloomy discussion over the folly of the Mug-wumps and the wickedness of the Democrats, I go to the office and work until four or five o’clock, most of my work taking the light but not always agreeable shape of a succession of interviews of varying asperity with Congressmen; then I go to gruff old Olney’s and play tennis with him and any other stray statesman, diplomat or military personage whom he has captured for an hour or two. Sometimes, Cabot and I dine alone; more often, we have in one or two of our cronies such as Tom Reed or Senator Davis of Minnesota.... I think the tariff deadlock will break in a day or two, when I shall be left alone here with so much work on hand, however, that I fear I shall not get away until the end of the month, when I shall go back to Sagamore and Edith and the blessed bunnies.”

The intimacy with Senator Lodge, the charm of his library, where tradition and intellect always held sway, were amongst the most delightful associations that Washington gave to my brother during the many years spent there, both before the days of the White House and later under its roof.

Late in August of that year my brother Elliott died. My brother Theodore came to me at once and we did together the things always so hard to do connected with the death of those we love, and he writes me afterward: “The sadness has been tempered by something very sweet when I think of the way I was with you, my own darling sister.” The quality of sharing, which, as I always say, was one of his most marked attributes, never showed more unselfishly than in times of sorrow. Almost immediately after the above letter, he encloses to me a clipping from the newspaper of Abingdon, Va., about my brother Elliott, who had lived there for some time in connection with the property of my husband in the Virginia mountains. No one, not even my brother Theodore himself, was ever more loved by those with whom he came in contact than was the “Ellie” of the early days in 20th Street, and later wherever he went he found rare and devoted friendship. _The Virginian_ (the name of the Abingdon paper) says: