Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 19

Oh, we're up in the morning ere breaking of day, The chuck-wagon's busy, the flapjacks in play; The herd is astir o'er hillside and vale, With the night riders rounding them into the trail.

Oh, come take up your cinches, come shake out your reins; Come, wake your old bronco and break for the plains; Come, roust out your steers from the long chaparral, For the outfit is off to the railroad corral.

_The Railroad Corral_

Roosevelt returned to the Bad Lands on the 16th of November and was greeted with enthusiasm by Merrifield and Sylvane. The next day he started for the new ranch. He had intended to get under way by noon, but Sylvane and Merrifield wanted to drive a small beef herd, which they were s.h.i.+pping to Chicago, to the s.h.i.+pping corrals near the Cantonment, and it was mid-afternoon before he was able to put spurs to his smart little cowpony and start on the long ride to Elkhorn. The day was bitterly cold, with the mercury well down toward zero, and the pony, fresh and impatient, went along at a good rate. Roosevelt had not gone many miles before he became conscious that darkness was falling. The trail followed along the bottom for a half-dozen miles and then turned off into the bad lands, leading up and down through the ravines and over the ridge crests of a rough and broken country.

He crossed a wide plateau where the wind blew savagely, sweeping the powdery snow into his face, then dipped again into the valley where the trail led along the bottoms between the rows of high bluffs, continually crossing and recrossing the river. The ice was too thin to bear the horse, for the cold had come suddenly and had not yet frozen it solid, and again and again, as the pony cautiously advanced, the white surface would suddenly break and let horse and rider down into the chilling water.

Roosevelt had made up his mind that he could under no circ.u.mstances reach the new ranch that night and had determined to spend the night with Robins, the seafaring man, whose hut was three or four miles nearer. But the sun set while he was still several miles from his goal, and the darkness, which had been closing round him where he rode in the narrow valley, crept over the tops of the high bluffs and shut out from his vision everything but a dim track in the snow faintly illuminated by the stars. Roosevelt hurried his pony. Clouds were gathering overhead, and soon, Roosevelt knew, even the light that the stars gave would be withdrawn. The night was very cold and the silence was profound. A light snow rendered even the hoof-beats of his horse m.u.f.fled and indistinct, and the only sound that came out of the black world about him was the long-drawn, melancholy howling of a wolf.

Captain Robins's shack stood in the midst of a large clump of cottonwoods thickly grown up with underbrush. It was hard enough to find in the day-time, but in the darkness of that wintry night it proved tantalizingly elusive. There was no light in it to guide him, which depressed him.

He found the cabin at last, but it was empty and chill. He lit a fire and hunted about among the stores of the old seafaring man for something of which to make supper. The place was stripped bare. He went down to the river with an axe and a pail and brought up some water; in his pocket he had a paper of tea. It was not an altogether satisfying supper for a tired and hungry man.

He was out with his rifle at break of day. Outside the hut the prairie fowl were crowing and calling to one another in the tall trees, evidently attracted by the thick growth of choke-cherries and wild plums. As the dawn deepened, the sharp-tails began to fly down from their roosts to the berry bushes. Up among the bare limbs of the trees, sharply outlined against the sky, they offered as good a target as any hungry man might ask. He shot off the necks of five in succession, and it was not long before two of the birds, plucked and cleaned, were split open and roasting before the fire.

He found that Sewall and Dow had cut all the timber for the house, and were beginning work on the walls. It was a roomy place they were building, a palace as houses went in the Bad Lands. Roosevelt worked with them for two days. Both men were excellent company, Dow a delightful spinner of yarns, witty and imaginative, Sewall full of horse sense and quiet philosophizing. Roosevelt himself was much depressed. His virtual elimination from politics, together with the tragic breaking-up of his home life, had left him for the moment aimless and without ambition. There is a wistful note in a letter he wrote, that week to Lodge. "The statesman (?) of the past has been merged, alas, I fear for good, in the cowboy of the present." He was not in the habit of talking of himself or of asking others to share his negations; but there was something avuncular about Sewall that impelled confidences. He told the backwoodsman that he did not care what became of himself; he had nothing to live for, he said. Sewall "went for him bow-legged," as he himself described it in later years.

"You ought not to allow yourself to feel that way," he insisted. "You have your child to live for."

"Her aunt can take care of her a good deal better than I can,"

Roosevelt responded. "She never would know anything about me, anyway.

She would be just as well off without me."

"You won't always feel that way," said Sewall. "You will get over this after a while. I know how such things are; but time heals them over.

You won't always feel as you do now, and you won't always be willing to stay here and drive cattle, because, when you get to feeling differently, you will want to get back among your friends where you can do more and be more benefit to the world than you can driving cattle. If you can't think of anything else to do, you can go home and start a reform. You would make a good reformer. You always want to make things better instead of worse."

Roosevelt laughed at that, and said no more concerning the uselessness of his existence. An amusing angle of the whole matter was that "starting a reform" was actually in the back of his head at the time.

The reform in question was fundamental. It concerned the creation of an organization, ostensibly, in the absence of const.i.tuted government, for the purpose of making and enforcing certain sorely needed laws for the regulation of the cattle industry; but actually with the higher aim in view of furnis.h.i.+ng a rallying point for the scattered forces of law and order. Montana had such an organization in the Montana Live Stock a.s.sociation and more than one ranchman with large interests in the valley of the Little Missouri had appealed to that body for help.

But the Montana a.s.sociation found that it had no authority in Dakota.

Roosevelt determined, therefore, to form a separate organization.

The need unquestionably was great. To an unusual extent the cattle industry depended upon cooperation. Each ranchman "claimed" a certain range, but no mark showed the boundaries of that range and no fence held the cattle and horses within it. On every "claim" the brands of twenty different herds might have been found. No ranchman by himself, or with the aid only of his own employees, would ever have been able to collect his widely scattered property. It was only by the cooperative effort known as "the round-up" that it was possible once or twice a year for every man to gather his own. The very persistence of the range as a feeding-ground and the vitality and very life of the cattle depended upon the honest cooperation of the stock-owners. If one man over-stocked his range, it was not only his cattle which suffered, but in an equal measure the cattle of every other ranchman along the river.

Regulating this industry, which depended so largely on a self-interest looking beyond the immediate gain, was a body of tradition brought from the cattle ranges of the South, but no code of regulations. There were certain unwritten laws which you were supposed to obey; but if you were personally formidable and your "outfit" was impressive, there was nothing in heaven or earth to force you to obey them. It was comparatively simple, moreover, to conduct a private round-up and s.h.i.+p to Chicago cattle whose brands were not your own. If ever an industry needed "regulation" for the benefit of the honest men engaged in it, it was the cattle industry in Dakota in 1884.

But the need of a law of the range which the stockmen would respect, because it was to their own interests to respect it, was only a phase of a greater need for the presence in that wild and spa.r.s.ely settled country of some sort of authority which men would recognize and accept because it was an outgrowth of the life of which they were a part.

Sheriffs and marshals were imposed from without, and an independent person might have argued that in a territory under a Federal governor, they const.i.tuted government without the consent of the governed. Such a person would look with entirely different eyes on a body created from among the men with whom he was in daily a.s.sociation.

Medora was blest with a deputy United States Marshal, and much good did law and order derive from his presence. He happened to be the same Joe Morrill who had gained notoriety the preceding winter in the Stoneville fight, and who had long been suspected, by law-abiding folk between Medora and the Black Hills, of being "in cahoots" with everything that was sinister in the region. He had for years been stationed at Deadwood for the purpose mainly of running down deserting soldiers, and one of the rumors that followed him to Medora was to the effect that he had made himself the confidant of deserters only to betray them for thirty dollars a head. The figure was unfortunate. It stuck in the memory with its echoes of Judas.

The law-abiding element did not receive any noticeable support from Joe Morrill. He was a "gun-toting" swashbuckler, not of the "bad man"

type at all, but, as Packard pointed out, altogether too noisy in denouncing the wicked when they were not present and too effusive in greeting them when they were. He gravitated naturally toward Maunders and Bill Williams and Jess Hogue, and if law and order derived any benefits from that a.s.sociation, history has neglected to record them.

Thievery went on as before.

Roosevelt, no doubt, realized that the hope of the righteous lay not in Joe Morrill or in any other individual whom the Federal authorities might impose on the Bad Lands, but only in an organization which was the expression of a real desire for cooperation. He set about promptly to form such an organization.

After two days of house-building at Elkhorn, Roosevelt, who was evidently restless, was again under way, riding south through a snowstorm all day to the Maltese Cross, bringing Sewall and Dow with him.

It was late at night when we reached Merrifield's [he wrote "Bamie" on November 23d], and the thermometer was twenty degrees below zero. As you may imagine, my fur coat and buffalo bag have come in very handily.

I am now trying to get up a stockman's a.s.sociation, and in a day or two, unless the weather is too bad, I shall start up the river with Sewall to see about it.

At one ranch after another, Roosevelt, riding south through the biting cold with his philosophic backwoodsman, stopped during the week that followed, to persuade fifteen or twenty stockmen along the valley of the Little Missouri of the benefits of cooperation. It was an arduous journey, taking him well south of Lang's; but it was evidently successful.

Theodore Roosevelt, who used to be a great reformer in the New York Legislature, but who is now a cowboy, pure and simple [remarked the Bismarck _Weekly Tribune_ in an editorial on December 12th], calls a meeting of the stockmen of the West Dakota region to meet at Medora, December 19th, to discuss topics of interest, become better acquainted, and provide for a more efficient organization. Mr. Roosevelt likes the West.

Winter now settled down on the Bad Lands in earnest. There was little snow, but the cold was fierce in its intensity. By day, the plains and b.u.t.tes were dazzling to the eye under the clear weather; by night, the trees cracked and groaned from the strain of the biting frost. Even the stars seemed to snap and glitter. The river lay fixed in its s.h.i.+ning bed of glistening white, "like a huge bent bar of blue steel."

Wolves and lynxes traveled up and down it at night as though it were a highway.

Winter was the ranchman's "slack season"; but Roosevelt found, nevertheless, that there was work to be done even at that time of year to test a man's fiber. Activities, which in the ordinary Eastern winter would have been merely the casual incidents of the day's work, took on some of the character of Arctic exploration in a country where the thermometer had a way of going fifty degrees below zero, and for two weeks on end never rose above a point of ten below. It was not always altogether pleasant to be out of doors; but wood had to be chopped, and coal had to be brought in by the wagon-load. Roosevelt had a mine on his own ranch some three or four miles south of Chimney b.u.t.te. It was a vein of soft lignite laid bare in the side of a clay bluff by the corrosive action of the water, carving, through the centuries, the bed of the Little Missouri. He and his men brought the coal in the ranch-wagon over the frozen bed of the river. The wheels of the wagon creaked and sang in the bitter cold, as they ground through the powdery snow.

The cattle, moreover, had to be carefully watched, for many of them were slow in learning to "rustle for themselves," as the phrase went.

A part of every day at least was spent in the saddle by one or the other or all of the men who const.i.tuted the Chimney b.u.t.te outfit. In spite of their great fur coats and caps and gauntlets, in spite of heavy underclothing and flannel-lined boots, it was not often that one or the other of them, returning from a ride, did not have a touch of the frost somewhere about him. When the wind was at his back, Roosevelt found it was not bad to gallop along through the white weather, but when he had to face it, riding over a plain or a plateau, it was a different matter, for the blast cut through him like a keen knife, and the thickest furs seemed only so much paper. The cattle were obviously unhappy, standing humped up under the bushes, except for an hour or two at midday when they ventured out to feed. A very weak animal they would bring into the cow-shed and feed with hay; but they did this only in cases of the direst necessity, as such an animal had then to be fed for the rest of the winter, and the quant.i.ty of hay was limited. As long as the cattle could be held within the narrow strip of Bad Lands, they were safe enough, for the deep ravines afforded them ample refuge from the icy gales. But if by any accident a herd was caught by a blizzard on the open prairie, it might drift before it a hundred miles.

Soon after Roosevelt's return from the East, he had sent Sylvane Ferris to Spearfish to purchase some horses for the ranch. About the first week in December his genial foreman returned, bringing fifty-two head. They were wild, unbroken "cayuses," and had to be broken then and there. Day after day, in the icy cold, Roosevelt labored with the men in the corral over the refractory animals making up in patience what he lacked in physical address.

Bill Sewall, who with Dow was on hand to drive a number of the ponies north to Elkhorn Ranch, did not feel under the same compulsion as "the boss" to risk his neck in the subjugation of the frantic animals. Will Dow had become an excellent horseman, but Sewall had come to the conclusion that you could not teach an old dog new tricks, and refused to be bulldozed into attempting what he knew he could not accomplish.

There was something impressive in the firmness with which he refused to allow the cowboys to make him look foolish.

The night the horses arrived, Sewall overheard a number of the cowboys remark that they would get the men from Maine "on those wild horses and have some fun with them." "I was forewarned," said Sewall, years after, telling about it, "and so I was forearmed."

One of the men came up to Sewall, and with malice aforethought led the subject to Sewall's partic.i.p.ation in the breaking of the horses.

"I am not going to ride any of those horses," said Sewall.

"You will have to," said the cowboy.

"I don't know so much about that."

"If you don't," remarked the cowboy, "you will have the contempt of everybody."

"That won't affect me very much," Sewall answered quietly. "If I were younger, it might, but it won't now."

"Oh, well," said the other lightly, "you will have to ride them."

"No," remarked Sewall, "I didn't come out here to make a fool of myself trying to do what I know I can't do. I don't want to be pounded on the frozen ground."

The cowboy made a sharp reply, but Sewall, feeling his blood rise to his head, became only more firm in refusing to be bulldozed.

"I suppose you fellows can ride broncos," he said, "but you cannot ride me, and if you get on, your feet will drag."

There the conversation ended. The next morning Sewall heard the cowboy remark, not too pleasantly, "I suppose it is no use to saddle any bad ones for Sewall, for he said he wouldn't ride them."

Sewall paid no attention to the thrust. The whole affair had a comic conclusion, for it happened that, quite by accident, Sewall, in attempting to pick out a gentle horse, picked one who ultimately proved to be one of the worst in the herd. For all the time that Sewall was on his back, he acted like a model of the virtues. It was only when Dow subsequently mounted him that he began to reveal his true character, bucking Dow within an inch of his life. The cowboy, however, made no more efforts at intimidation.

To Roosevelt--to whom difficulty and peril were always a challenge, and pain itself was a visitant to be wrestled with and never released until a blessing had been wrung from the mysterious lips--the hards.h.i.+ps and exertions of those wintry day were a source of boyish delight. It partook of the nature of adventure to rise at five (three hours ahead of the sun) and ride under the starlight to bring in the saddle-band; and it gave a sense of quiet satisfaction to manly pride later to crowd around the fire where the cowboys were stamping and beating their numbed hands together and know that you had borne yourself as well as they. After a day of bronco-busting in the corral, or of riding hour after hour, head on into the driven snow-dust, there was a sense of real achievement when night fell, and a consciousness of strength. The cabin was small, but it was storm-proof and homelike, and the men with whom Roosevelt shared it were brave and true and full of humor and good yarns. They played checkers and chess and "casino" and "Old Sledge" through the long evenings, and read everything in type that came under their hands. Roosevelt was not the only one, it seemed, who enjoyed solid literature.