Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 36

"I guess," he said, "we'd better look for some place not quite so convenient for a target."

They adjourned to Fisher's room in Mrs. McGeeney's hotel. After all, noise was preferable to bullets.

"The boys" were full of apologies the next morning, declaring that they had not realized that the place was occupied. Packard, it seemed, had been publis.h.i.+ng certain editorials shortly before dealing with the criminal responsibility of drunkards, and they just thought they would give the _Cowboy_ a "touching up."

Medora's new regime began with a call which Howard Eaton made upon Merrifield.

"Now that we're organized, we'll have some fun with Deacon c.u.mmins,"

said Eaton, with a chuckle.

Eaton had apprehensions that the "Deacon" would ask for improvements, a road to his ranch, for instance, or possibly a bridge or two, so he suggested to Merrifield that they draw up a statement calculated to discourage any such aspirations. This was the statement as they finally submitted it to their fellow citizens:

We the undersigned do hereby solemnly covenant and agree to hang, burn, or drown any man that will ask for public improvements made at the expense of the County.

Eaton and Merrifield signed it, together with a dozen others; then they laid it before Mrs. c.u.mmins's husband for his signature. "The Deacon" took it with extreme seriousness, and signed his name to it; and there was no call for improvements from the solemn couple at Tepee Bottom.

The day after the election, the Little Missouri Stock a.s.sociation held its semi-annual meeting. Roosevelt presided, "preserving," as he wrote to Lodge a day or so later, "the most rigid parliamentary decorum." He was elected a representative of the a.s.sociation at the meeting of the Montana Stock growers' a.s.sociation in Miles City, to be held a day or two later, and, after a hurried trip to Elkhorn Ranch with Merrifield, started west for Miles City, taking Sylvane with him.

Miles City was a feverish little cowtown under ordinary circ.u.mstances, but in April of every year, when the cattlemen of Montana and western Dakota gathered there for the annual meeting of the Montana Stockgrowers' a.s.sociation, it was jubilant and noisy beyond description. For a week before the convention was called to order, stockmen from near and far began to arrive, bringing in their train thirsty and hilarious cowboys who looked upon the occasion mainly as a golden opportunity for a spree. They galloped madly up and down the wide, dusty streets at every hour of the day and night, knowing no sober moment as long as the convention lasted.

Roosevelt and Sylvane arrived on April 18th, taking what quarters they could get in the Macqueen House which was crowded to the doors and was granting n.o.body more than half a bed. The ceremonies began early next morning with a blast from the Fifth Infantry band from Fort Keogh, the army post two miles to the west.

Promptly at 9:30 A.M. [runs the story in the Minneapolis _Tribune_] a procession was formed in front of the Macqueen House, with the Fifth Infantry band at its head, followed by carriages containing the officers of the a.s.sociation and ladies; next a cavalcade of wild cowboys just brought in from the adjacent ranges, followed by about 150 cowmen marching four abreast. The procession was about two and one-half blocks long from end to end, and the line of march was through the princ.i.p.al streets to the skating rink, where the public meetings of the a.s.sociation are held.

As the procession was nearing the rink, the horses of the foremost carriage, containing the president, vice-president, and secretary, took fright and dashed into the band. Both horses took the same side of the tongue and made things unpleasant. At this stage of the game President Bryan and others abandoned the carriage, and Secretary R. B. Harrison, with his large minute book, made a leap for life, and the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. The procession then broke up with a wild charge of cowboys, accompanied with such yells as would strike terror to the heart of the tenderfooted.

The actual meeting of the Stockgrowers' a.s.sociation was, contrary to what might have been expected from its prelude, a thoroughly dignified affair. Roosevelt was, as one of the other stockmen later declared, "rather inclined to listen and take the advice of older men"; but it was significant that he was, nevertheless, elected to the Executive Committee as the successor of the Marquis de Mores as representative for Dakota Territory; and was appointed to one or two other committees of lesser importance.

"Roosevelt was of a restless, nervous, but aggressive disposition,"

said H. H. Hobson, of Great Falls, who was present at that meeting, "and took a keen interest in the proceedings. He was a great admirer of Granville Stuart, and was always on his side of every question."

The absorbing issues before the convention were the Texas fever and the overstocking of the range. Feeling ran high, and "the debates," as Hobson later remarked, "were more than warm. Roosevelt," he added, "was at all times eager and ready to champion his side."

At one of the sessions there was a fierce debate between two prominent cattlemen, which was renewed, after the meeting, at the Miles City Club. Each man had his hot partisans, who began to send messengers out for reinforcements. Most of the men were armed. It was clear that if hostilities once broke out, they would develop instantly into a miniature war.

Roosevelt saw that the situation was critical, and jumped to his feet.

"If you can't settle your own difficulties," he cried to the two men who had started the quarrel, "why don't you fight it out? I'll referee."

The suggestion was received with favor. Roosevelt formed a ring and the two men expended their anger in a furious fist fight. Which man won, history does not record. The important point is that Roosevelt, by his resolute action, had prevented a fight with "six-shooters."

I have just returned from the Stockmen's Convention in Miles City [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Elkhorn on April 22d], which raw, thriving frontier town was for three days thronged with hundreds of rough-looking, broad-hatted men, numbering among them all the great cattle and horse raisers of the Northwest. I took my position very well in the convention, and indeed these Westerners have now pretty well accepted me as one of themselves, and as a representative stockman. I am on the Executive Committee of the a.s.sociation, am President of the Dakota branch, etc.--all of which directly helps me in my business relations here.

There is something almost touching in Roosevelt's efforts to persuade his sisters that his cattle venture was not the piece of wild recklessness which they evidently considered it.

This winter has certainly been a marvelously good one for cattle [he wrote in another letter]. My loss has been so trifling as hardly to be worth taking into account; although there may be a number who have strayed off. I think my own expenses out here this summer will be very light indeed, and then we will be able to start all square with the beginning of the New Year.

In another letter he wrote, "Unless we have a big accident, I shall get through this all right, if only I can get started square with no debt!" And a little later he sent "Bamie" a clipping from a review of his "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," which referred to him as "a man of large and various powers in public matters _as well as shrewd and enterprising in the conduct of business_." "I send the enclosed slip,"

he wrote, "on account of the awful irony of the lines I have underscored; send it to Douglas when you write him."

"Douglas" was Douglas Robinson, the husband of Roosevelt's sister Corinne, and distinctly the business man of the family.

Bill Sewall was apprehensive. "There was always a cloud over me," he said long afterward, "because I never could see where he was going to get his money. I tried to make him see it. He was going to buy land. I urged him not to. I felt sure that what he was putting into those cattle he was going to lose."

Roosevelt admitted that spring that Sewall's conviction, that the cows would not be able in the long run to endure the hard winters, was not without reason. "Bill," he said, after he had made a careful study of the herd, "you're right about those cows. They're not looking well, and I think some of them will die."

But on the whole the herd was in good condition. He had every right to believe that with average luck his investment would emphatically justify itself.

While I do not see any great fortune ahead [he wrote to his sister Corinne], yet, if things go on as they are now going, and have gone for the past three years, I think I will each year net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding to my herd all the time. I think I have more than my original 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.

Sewall as usual, was less sanguine.

As for hard times [he wrote his brother that April] they are howling that here, and lots are leaving the country. Lots more would if they could. We are all right. Roosevelt is the same good fellow he always has been and though I don't think he expects to make much, his upper lip is stiff and he is all right.

Meanwhile, he was hammering ahead on his Life of Benton. He was a slow and rather laborious writer, but his persistence evidently atoned for his lack of speed in composition, for whereas, on April 29th, he wrote his sister that he had written only one chapter and intended to devote "the next three weeks to getting this work fairly under way," by the 7th of June he announced that the book was "nearly finished."

"Some days," Sewall related afterward, "he would write all day long; some days only a part of the day, just as he felt. He said sometimes he would get so he could not write. Sometimes he could not tell when a thing sounded right. Then he would take his gun and saunter off, sometimes alone, sometimes with me or Dow, if he was around."

Occasionally he would "try out" a pa.s.sage on Sewall. "Bill," he exclaimed one morning, "I am going to commit the unpardonable sin and make you sit down and listen to something I've written."

Bill was willing. The pa.s.sage was from the first chapter of the biography of the Tennessee statesman and dealt with the att.i.tude of the frontier toward law and order and the rights of "the other fellow." Bill gave his approval and the pa.s.sage stood.

Day after day Roosevelt pushed forward into his subject, writing with zest, tempered by cool judgment. He did not permit an occasional trip to Medora to interrupt his work. He had a room over Joe Ferris's store, and after Joe and his wife had gone to bed, he would throw open the doors of the kitchen and the dining-room and walk to and fro hammering out his sentences.

"Every once in a while," said Joe later, "everything would be quiet, then after fifteen minutes or so he would walk again as though he was walkin' for wages."

Mrs. Ferris, who had a maternal regard for his welfare, was always careful to see that a pitcher of milk was in his room before the night's labors commenced; for Roosevelt had a way of working into the small hours. "The eight-hour law," he remarked to Lodge, "does not apply to cowboys"; nor, he might have added, to writers endeavoring to raise the wherewithal to pay for a hunting trip to the Coeur d'Alenes in the autumn.

I wonder if your friends.h.i.+p will stand a very serious strain [he wrote Lodge, early in June]. I have pretty nearly finished Benton, mainly evolving him from my inner consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have nothing whatever to go by; and, being by nature both a timid, and, on occasions, by choice a truthful, man, I would prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how slender, on which to build the airy and arabesque superstructure of my fancy--especially as I am writing a history. Now I hesitate to give him a wholly fict.i.tious date of death and to invent all of the work of his later years.

Would it be too infernal a nuisance for you to hire some of your minions on the _Advertiser_ (of course, at my expense) to look up, in a biographical dictionary or elsewhere, his life after he left the Senate in 1850? He was elected once to Congress; who beat him when he ran the second time; what was the issue; who beat him, and why, when he ran for Governor of Missouri; and the date of his death? I hate to trouble you; don't do it if it is any bother; but the Bad Lands have much fewer books than Boston has.

The Executive Committee of the Montana Stockgrowers' a.s.sociation, of which Roosevelt was a member, had, in order to unify the work of the rounding-up of the cattle throughout Montana and western Dakota, issued directions at its meeting in April for the delimitation of the various round-up districts and the opening of the round-ups. The round-up for "District No. 6," which included the valley of the Little Missouri,

commences [so ran the order] at Medora, May 25, 1886; works down the Little Missouri to the mouth of Big Beaver Creek; thence up the Big Beaver to its head; thence across to the Little Beaver at the crossing of the old government road (Keogh trail); thence down Little Beaver to its mouth; thence across to Northern Hash-knife Camp on Little Missouri, and down to Medora. John Goodall, foreman.

Roosevelt apparently could not resist the temptation which the round-up offered, especially as its course would take him back in the direction of Elkhorn, and he deserted his study and entered once more into what was to him the most fascinating activity of the cowboy's life.

There were half a dozen wagons along [he wrote subsequently]. The saddle bands numbered about a hundred each; and the morning we started, sixty men in the saddle splashed across the shallow ford of the river that divided the plain where we had camped from the valley of the long winding creek up which we were first to work.

By the 7th of June he was back at Elkhorn Ranch again on a flying visit.

I will get a chance to send this note to-morrow [he wrote his sister "Bamie"] by an old teamster who is going to town.

I have been on the round-up for a fortnight, and really enjoy the work greatly; in fact I am having a most pleasant summer, though I miss all of you very, very much. We breakfast at three and work from sixteen to eighteen hours a day counting night-guard; so I get pretty sleepy; but I feel as strong as a bear. I took along Tolstoy's "La Guerre et La Paix" which Madame de Mores had lent me; but I have had little chance to read it as yet. I am very fond of Tolstoy.

In "The Wilderness Hunter" Roosevelt, two or three years later, told of that "very pleasant summer" of 1886.

I was much at the ranch, where I had a good deal of writing to do; but every week or two I left, to ride among the line camps, or spend a few days on any round-up which happened to be in the neighborhood.

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were themselves full of pleasure. At dawn we were in the saddle, the morning air cool in our faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across the gra.s.sy reaches of prairie land, or climbing in single file among the rugged b.u.t.tes. All forenoon we spent riding the long circle with the cowpunchers of the round-up; in the afternoon we worked the herd, cutting the cattle, with much breakneck galloping and dextrous halting and wheeling. Then came the excitement and hard labor of roping, throwing, and branding the wild and vigorous range calves; in a corral, if one was handy, otherwise in a ring of hors.e.m.e.n. Soon after nightfall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp; under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon.