ROOSEVELT IN THE BAD LANDS, Hermann Hagedorn [ebook reader with highlight function .TXT] 📗

breadth of the Bad Lands. He sent Sylvane with another man south to Spearfish in the Black Hills to buy a "string" of horses. The other man was Jack Reuter, otherwise known as "Dutch Wannigan." For "Wannigan," like his fellow "desperado," Frank O'Donald, had returned long since to the valley of the Little Missouri and taken up again the activities which the Marquis had rudely interrupted. But, being a simple-hearted creature, he had sold no crop of hay to the Marquis "in stubble" for a thousand dollars, like his craftier associate. He had merely "gone to work." The fact that it happened to be Roosevelt for whom he went to work had something to do, no doubt, with the subsequent relations between Roosevelt and the Marquis.

Various forces for which the Marquis himself could claim no responsibility had, meanwhile, been conspiring with him to "boom" his new town. The glowing and distinctly exaggerated accounts of farming conditions in the Northwest, sent broadcast by the railroad companies, had started a wave of immigration westward which the laments of the disappointed seemed to have no power to check. "City-boomers," with their tales of amazing fortunes made overnight, lured men to a score of different "towns" along the Northern Pacific that were nothing but two ruts and a section-house. From the south rolled a tide of another sort. The grazing-lands of Texas were becoming over-stocked, and up the broad cattle-trail came swearing cowboys in broad sombreros, driving herds of long-horned cattle into the new grazing-country. Altogether, it was an active season for the saloon-keepers of Medora.

The Marquis was having endless trouble with the plans for his stage-line and was keeping Packard on tenterhooks. Packard twiddled his thumbs, and the Marquis, plagued by the citizens of the Black Hills whom he had promised the stage- and freight-line months previous, made threats one day and rosy promises the next. It was the middle of August before Packard received directions to go ahead.

Roosevelt did not see much of the genial editor of the Cowboy during those August days while he was waiting for Sylvane and "Dutch Wannigan" to return from Spearfish with the ponies, for Packard, knowing that every hour was precious, was rushing frantically to and fro, buying lumber and feed, pegging out the sites of his stage-stations, his eating-houses, his barns and his corrals, and superintending the constructing crews at the dozen or more stops along the route.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, was obviously restless and seemed to find peace of mind only in almost continuous action. After two or three days at the Maltese Cross, he was back at Elkhorn again, forty miles away, and the next day he was once more on his travels, riding south. Sewall went with him, for he wanted the backwoodsman to accompany him on the trip to the Big Horn Mountains. Dow remained with the seafaring man, looking crestfallen and unhappy.

During the days that he was waiting for Sylvane to return, Roosevelt touched Medora and its feverish life no more than absolute necessity demanded, greeting his acquaintances in friendly fashion, but tending strictly to business. It seems, however, that he had already made a deep impression on his neighbors up and down the river. The territory was shortly to be admitted to statehood and there were voices demanding that Theodore Roosevelt be Dakota's first representative in Congress.

In commenting upon the rumor that Theodore Roosevelt had come to Dakota for the purpose of going to Congress [said the Bismarck Weekly Tribune in an editorial on August 8th], the Mandan Pioneer takes occasion to remark that young Roosevelt's record as a public man is above reproach and that he is "a vigorous young Republican of the new school." Such favorable comment from a Mandan paper tends to substantiate the rumor that the young political Hercules has already got the West Missouri section solid.

"If he concludes to run," remarked the Pioneer, "he will give our politicians a complete turning over."

What sirens were singing to Roosevelt of political honors in the new Western country, and to what extent he listened to them, are questions to which neither his correspondence nor the newspapers of the time provide an answer. It is not unreasonable to believe that the possibility of becoming a political power in the Northwest allured him. His political position in the East was, at the moment, hopeless. Before the convention, he had antagonized the "regular" Republicans by his leadership of the Independents in New York, which had resulted in the complete defeat of the "organization" in the struggle over the "Big Four" at Utica; after the convention, he had antagonized the Independents by refusing to "bolt the ticket." He consequently had no political standing, either within the party, or without. The Independents wept tears over him, denouncing him as a traitor; and the "regulars," even while they were calling for his assistance in the campaign, were whetting their knives to dirk him in the back.

If the temptation ever came to him to cut what remained of his political ties in the East and start afresh in Dakota, no evidence of it has yet appeared. A convention of the Republicans of Billings County was held in the hall over Bill Williams's new saloon in Medora on August 16th. Roosevelt did not attend it. Sylvane and "Wannigan" had returned from Spearfish and Roosevelt was trying out one of the new ponies at a round-up in the Big Ox Bow thirty miles to the south.

We have been delayed nearly a week by being forced to get some extra ponies [he wrote his sister Anna on the 17th]. However, I was rather glad of it, as I wished to look thoroughly through the cattle before going. To-morrow morning early we start out. Merrifield and I go on horseback, each taking a spare pony; which will be led behind the wagon, a light "prairie schooner" drawn by two stout horses, and driven by an old French Canadian. I wear a sombrero, silk neckerchief, fringed buckskin shirt, sealskin chaparajos or riding-trousers; alligator-hide boots; and with my pearl-hilted revolver and beautifully finished Winchester rifle, I shall feel able to face anything.

There is no question that Roosevelt's costume fascinated him. It was, in fact, gorgeous beyond description.

How long I will be gone I cannot say; we will go in all nearly a thousand miles. If game is plenty and my success is good, I may return in six weeks; more probably I shall be out a couple of months, and if game is so scarce that we have to travel very far to get it, or if our horses give out or run away, or we get caught by the snow, we may be out very much longer--till toward Christmas; though I will try to be back to vote.

Yesterday I rode seventy-two miles between dawn and darkness; I have a superb roan pony, or rather horse; he looks well with his beautifully carved saddle, plaited bridle, and silver inlaid bit, and seems to be absolutely tireless.

I grow very fond of this place, and it certainly has a desolate, grim beauty of its own, that has a curious fascination for me. The grassy, scantily wooded bottoms through which the winding river flows are bounded by bare, jagged buttes; their fantastic shapes and sharp, steep edges throw the most curious shadows, under the cloudless, glaring sky; and at evening I love to sit out in front of the hut and see their hard, gray outlines gradually grow soft and purple as the flaming sunset by degrees softens and dies away; while my days I spend generally alone, riding through the lonely rolling prairie and broken lands.

If, on those solitary rides, Roosevelt gave much thought to politics, it was doubtless not on any immediate benefit for himself on which his mind dwelt. Sewall said, long afterward, that "Roosevelt was always thinkin' of makin' the world better, instead of worse," and Merrifield remembered that even in those early days the "Eastern tenderfoot" was dreaming of the Presidency. It was a wholesome region to dream in. Narrow notions could not live in the gusty air of the prairies, and the Bad Lands were not conducive to sentimentalism.

Chapater X

 

The pine spoke, but the word he said was "Silence"; The aspen sang, but silence was her theme. The wind was silence, restless; and the voices Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence Made vocal in the topsy-turvy of dream.

Paradise Found

Roosevelt started for the Big Horn Mountains on August 18th, but Sewall, after all, did not go with him. Almost with tears, he begged off. "I'd always dreamed of hunting through that Big Horn country," he said long afterward. "I had picked that out as a happy hunting ground for years and years, and I never wanted to go anywhere so much as I wanted to go along with Theodore on that trip." But the memory of the lonely look in Will Dow's face overcame the soft-hearted backwoodsman at the last minute. He pointed out to Roosevelt that one man could not well handle the logs for the new ranch-house and suggested that he be allowed to rejoin Will Dow.

Early on the morning of the 18th, Roosevelt set his caravan in motion for the long journey. For a hunting companion he had Merrifield and for teamster and cook he had a French Canadian named Norman Lebo, who, as Roosevelt subsequently remarked, to Lebo's indignation (for he prided himself on his scholarship), "possessed a most extraordinary stock of miscellaneous mis-information upon every conceivable subject." He was a short, stocky, bearded man, a born wanderer, who had left his family once for a week's hunting trip and remained away three years, returning at last only to depart again, after a week, for further Odyssean wanderings. "If I had the money," he had a way of saying, "no two nights would ever see me in the same bed." It was rumored that before Mrs. Lebo had permitted her errant spouse to go out of her sight, she had secured pledges from Roosevelt guaranteeing her three years' subsistence, in case the wanderlust should once more seize upon her protector and provider.

Roosevelt rode ahead of the caravan, spending the first night with the Langs, who were always friendly and hospitable and full of good talk, and rejoining Merrifield and "the outfit" on the Keogh trail a few miles westward next morning. Slowly and laboriously the "prairie schooner" lumbered along the uneven route. The weather was sultry, and as they crossed the high divide which separated the Little Missouri basin from the valley of the Little Beaver they saw ahead of them the towering portents of storm. The northwest was already black, and in a space of time that seemed incredibly brief the masses of cloud boiled up and over the sky. The storm rolled toward them at furious speed, extending its wings, as it came, as though to gather in its victims.

[Illustration: Group of Bad Lands citizens. "Old man" Lebo is the second from the left, seated; to right of him is A. C. Huidekoper, whose H. T. horse-ranch was famous; beside him is Hell-Roaring Bill Jones; James Harmon is behind Huidekoper; at the right of the group (standing) is Schuyler Lebo; at the left, standing beside the Indian is