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

of the cliffs; some of the ridges, with perfectly perpendicular sides, are so worn away that they stand up like gigantic knife-blades; and gulches, wash-outs, and canyons dig out the sides of each butte, while between them are thrust out long spurs, with sharp, ragged tops.

They hunted through the broken country on foot. Up the slippery, ice-covered buttes they climbed, working their way across the faces of the cliffs or cautiously groping along narrow ledges, peering long and carefully over every crest. But they found no sheep. The cold was intense and they were glad when, at sunset, they reached the cabin, which was to be their headquarters. George Myers had already arrived.

It was a bitter night, and through the chinks of the crazy old hut it invaded their shelter, defying any fire which they could build.

By the time the first streak of dawn had dimmed the brilliancy of the stars, the hunters were under way. Their horses had proved a bother the day before, and they were afoot, striding briskly through the bitter cold to where the great bulk of Middle Butte loomed against the sunrise. They hunted carefully through the outlying foothills and toiled laboriously up the steep sides to the level top. It was a difficult piece of mountaineering, for the edges of the cliffs had become round and slippery with the ice, and it was no easy task to move up and along them, clutching the gun in one hand and grasping each little projection with the other. That day again they found no sheep.

Hour by hour the cold grew more intense. All signs indicated a blizzard.

The air was thick and hazy as Roosevelt and Merrifield early next morning reached the distant hills where they intended that day to make their hunt. Off in the northwest a towering mass of grayish-white clouds hung, threatening trouble. The region was, if anything, even wilder and more difficult than the country they had hunted through on the two previous days. The ice made the footing perilous, and in the cold thin air every quick burst they made up a steep hill caused them to pant for breath. But they were not unrewarded. Crawling cautiously over a sharp ledge they came suddenly upon two mountain rams not a hundred yards away. Roosevelt dropped on his knee, raising his rifle. At the report, the largest of the rams staggered and pitched forward, but recovered himself and disappeared over another ridge. The hunters jumped and slid down into a ravine, clambering up the opposite side as fast as their lungs and the slippery ice would let them. They had not far to go. Two hundred yards beyond the ridge they found their quarry, dead. They took the head for a trophy.

It was still early in the day, and Roosevelt and Merrifield made up their minds to push for home. The lowering sky was already overcast by a mass of leaden-gray clouds; they had no time to lose. They hurried back to the cabin, packed up their bedding and provisions, and started northward. Roosevelt rode ahead with Merrifield, not sparing the horses; but before they had reached the ranch-house the storm had burst, and a furious blizzard was blowing in their teeth as they galloped along the last mile of the river bottom.

George Myers celebrated the successful conclusion of the hunt in his own fashion. In one of his unaccountable culinary lapses, he baked the beans that night in rosin. With the first mouthful Roosevelt dropped his knife and fork and made for the door.

"George," he remarked as he returned to the table with his eye fixed on the offender, "I can eat green biscuits and most of your other infernal concoctions, but I am hanged if I can eat rosined beans."

He did not eat them, but he did not let the memory of them die either, to George's deep chagrin.

I have just returned from a three days' trip in the Bad Lands after mountain sheep [Roosevelt wrote to "Bamie" on December 14th], and after tramping over the most awful country that can be imagined, I finally shot one ram with a fine head. I have now killed every kind of plains game.

I have to stay here till after next Friday to attend a meeting of the Little Missouri Stockmen; on Saturday, December 20th, I start home and shall be in New York the evening of December 23d. I have just had fifty-two horses brought in by Ferris, and Sewall and Dow started down the river with their share yesterday. The latter have lost two horses; I am afraid they have been stolen.

The meeting of the stockmen was held in Medora on the day appointed, and it is notable that it was Roosevelt who called it to order and who directed its deliberations. He was one of the youngest of the dozen stockmen present, and in the ways of cattle no doubt one of the least experienced. Most of the men he greeted that day had probably been discussing the problems he was undertaking to solve long before he himself had ever heard of the Bad Lands. It was Roosevelt's distinction that having observed the problems he determined to solve them, and having made this determination he sought a solution in the principles and methods of democratic government. The stockmen had confidence in him. He was direct, he was fearless; he was a good talker, sure of his ground, and, in the language of the Bad Lands, "he didn't take backwater from any one." He was self-reliant and he minded his own business; he was honest and he had no axe to grind. The ranchmen no doubt felt that in view of these qualities you might forget a man's youth and forgive his spectacles. They evidently did both, for, after adopting a resolution that it was the sense of the meeting "that an Association of the Stockmen along the Little Missouri and its tributaries be forthwith formed," they promptly elected Theodore Roosevelt chairman of it.

Lurid tales have been told of what went on at that meeting. There is a dramatic story of Joe Morrill's sudden appearance, backed by a score of ruffians; of defiance and counter-defiance; of revolvers and "blood on the moonlight"; and of a corrupt deputy marshal cowering with ashen face before the awful denunciations of a bespectacled "tenderfoot"; but unhappily, the authenticity of the story is dubious. The meeting, so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle. The Marquis de Mores was present; so also was Gregor Lang, his most merciless critic; but whatever drama was inherent in that situation remained beneath the surface. By-laws were adopted, the Marquis was appointed "as a Committee of One to work with the committee appointed by the Eastern Montana Live Stock Association in the endeavor to procure legislation from the Territorial Legislature of Dakota favorable to the interests of the cattlemen"; and the meeting was over. It was all most amiable and commonplace. There was no oratory and no defiance of anybody. What had been accomplished, however, was that, in the absence of organized government, the conservative elements in the county had formed an offensive and defensive league for mutual protection, as the by-laws ran, "against frauds and swindlers, and to prevent the stealing, taking, and driving away of horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other stock from the rightful owners thereof."

It meant the beginning of the end of lawlessness in the Bad Lands.

Chapater XIV

 

I'll never come North again. My home is the sunny South, Where it's never mo' than forty below An' the beans don't freeze in your mouth; An' the snow ain't like white smoke, An' the ground ain't like white iron; An' the wind don't stray from Baffin's Bay To join you on retirin'.

From Medora Nights

Roosevelt arrived in New York a day or two before Christmas with the trophies of his hunt about him and his hunting costume in his "grip." He settled down at his sister's house, at 422 Madison Avenue, where his little girl Alice was living, and, with his characteristic energy in utilizing every experience to the full, promptly began work on a series of hunting sketches which should combine the thrill of adventure with the precise observation of scientific natural history. It is worth noting that, in order to provide a frontispiece for his work, he solemnly dressed himself up in the buckskin shirt and the rest of the elaborate costume he had described with such obvious delight to his sister; and had himself photographed. There is something hilariously funny in the visible records of that performance. The imitation grass, not quite concealing the rug beneath, the painted background, the theatrical (slightly patched) rocks against which the cowboy leans gazing dreamily across an imaginary prairie, the pose of the hunter with rifle ready and finger on the trigger, grimly facing dangerous game which is not there--all reveal a boyish delight in play-acting. For once his sense of humor was in abeyance, but posterity is the richer for this glimpse of the solemn boy in the heart of a powerful man.

[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt (1884).]

Winter closed over the Bad Lands, bringing Arctic hardships. Even Bill Sewall, who had been born and bred in the Maine woods, declared that he had never known such cold. There was a theory, fostered by the real estate agents, that you did not feel the cold which the thermometer registered; and the Marquis, who never missed an opportunity to "boom" his new town in the newspapers, insisted stoutly not only that he habitually "walked and rode about comfortably without an overcoat"; but also that he "felt the cold much more severely in New York, and in Washington even." Other landowners maintained the same delusion, and it was considered almost treason to speak of the tragedies of the cold. The fact remained, however, that a snowfall, which elsewhere might scarcely make good sleighing, in the Bad Lands became a foe to human life of inconceivable fury. For with it generally came a wind so fierce that the stoutest wayfarer could make no progress against it. The small, dry flakes, driven vertically before it, cut the flesh like a razor, blinding the vision and stifling the breath and shutting out the world with an impenetrable icy curtain. A half-hour after the storm had broken, the traveler, lost in it, might wonder whether there were one foot of snow or five, and whether the greater part of it were on the ground or whirling about him in the air. With the snow came extreme cold that pierced the thickest garments.

The horses, running free on the range, seemed to feel the cold comparatively little, eating the snow for water, and pawing through it to the stem-cured prairie-grass for food. But the cattle suffered intensely, especially the Southern stock which had not yet learnt that they must eat their way through the snow to the sustenance beneath. They stood huddled together at every wind-break, and in the first biting storm of the new year even sought the shelter of the towns, taking possession of the streets. The cows, curiously enough, seemed to bear the hardship better than the