Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 21

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 a.s.signed 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 G.o.d 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 rea.s.suring. "Yes, d.a.m.n you, it'll go off! I'll learn you! Who in h.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds.

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 b.u.t.te-tops between dawn and dusk, then the rus.h.i.+ng 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 c.o.c.ks 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 c.o.c.ks 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, acc.u.mulating 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 gla.s.ses. 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?"