Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 22

"I was riding Manitou," Roosevelt responded quietly. "Just," exclaimed Joe later, "as though Manitou was a steam engine." He bought a new pair of socks, put them on, and proceeded on his journey.

Fisher saw him shortly after and accused him of being reckless.

"I suppose it might be considered reckless," Roosevelt admitted. "But it was lots of fun."

Roosevelt spent his time alternately at the two ranches, writing somewhat and correcting the proofs of his new book, but spending most of his time in the saddle. The headquarters of his cattle business was at the Maltese Cross where Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield were in command. Elkhorn was, for the time being, merely a refuge and a hunting-lodge where Sewall and Dow "ran" a few hundred cattle under the general direction of the more experienced men of the other "outfit."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elkhorn ranch buildings from the river. Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt.]

At the Maltese Cross there were now a half-dozen hands, Sylvane and "our friend with the beaver-slide," as Merrifield, who was bald, was known; George Myers, warm-hearted and honest as the day; Jack Reuter, known as "Wannigan," with his stupendous memory and his Teutonic appet.i.te; and at intervals "old man" Thompson who was a teamster, and a huge being named Hank Bennett. Roosevelt liked them all immensely. They possessed to an extraordinary degree the qualities of manhood which he deemed fundamental,--courage, integrity, hardiness, self-reliance,--combining with those qualities a warmth, a humor, and a humanness that opened his understanding to many things. He had come in contact before with men whose opportunities in life had been less than his, and who in the eyes of the world belonged to that great ma.s.s of "common people" of whom Lincoln said that "the Lord surely loved them since he made so many of them." But he had never lived with them, day in, day out, slept with them, eaten out of the same dish with them. The men of the cattle country, he found, as daily companions, wore well.

They called him "Mr. Roosevelt," not "Theodore" nor "Teddy." For, though he was comrade and friend to all, he was also the "boss," and they showed him the respect his position and his instinctive leaders.h.i.+p merited. More than once a man who attempted to be unduly familiar with Roosevelt found himself swiftly and effectively squelched. He himself entered with enthusiasm into the work of administration. He regarded the ranch as a most promising business venture, and felt a.s.sured that, with ordinary luck, he should make his livelihood from it. On every side he received support for this a.s.surance. The oldest cattleman as well as the youngest joined in the chorus that there never had been such a country for turning cattle into dollars. In the Territorial Governor's Report for 1885, Packard is quoted, waxing lyric about it:

Bunch and buffalo-gra.s.s cover almost every inch of the ground. The raw sides of b.u.t.tes are the only places where splendid grazing cannot be found. On many of the b.u.t.tes, however, the gra.s.s grows clear to the summit, the slopes being the favorite pasture-lands of the cattle. Generally no hay need be cut, as the gra.s.s cures standing, and keeps the cattle in as good condition all winter as if they were stall-fed. The only reason for putting up hay is to avoid a scarcity of feed in case of heavy snow. This very seldom happens, however, as very little snow falls in the Bad Lands. A curious fact with cattle is that the ones that have been here a year or two, and know how to rustle, will turn away from a stack of hay, paw away the snow from the gra.s.s, and feed on that exclusively. Even in the dead of winter a meadow has a very perceptible tinge of green.

A realist might have remarked that very little snow fell in the Bad Lands mainly because the wind would not let it. The _Cowboy_ editor's exultant optimism has an aspect of terrible irony in the light of the tragedy that was even then building itself out of the over-confidence of a hundred enthusiasts.

Bill Sewall and Will Dow alone remained skeptical.

Perhaps we are wrong [Sewall wrote his brother], but we think it is too cold and barren for a good cattle country.

n.o.body has made anything at it yet. _All expect to._ Guess it's very much like going into the woods in fall. All are happy, _but the drive is not in yet_. When it does get in, am afraid there will be a shortness somewhere. The men that furnish the money are not many of them here themselves and the fellows that run the business and are supposed to know, all look for a very prosperous future, consider the troubles and discouragements, losses, etc., _temporary_. They are like us--_getting good and sure pay_.

Roosevelt recognized the possibility of great losses; but he would have been less than human if in that youthful atmosphere of gorgeous expectation he had not seen the possibilities of failure less vividly than the possibilities of success. Sylvane and Merrifield were confident that they were about to make their everlasting fortunes; George Myers invested every cent of his savings in cattle, "throwing them in," as the phrase went, with the herd of the Maltese Cross. In their first year the Maltese Cross "outfit" had branded well over a hundred calves; the losses, in what had been a severe winter, had been slight. It was a season of bright hopes. Late in April, Roosevelt sent Merrifield to Minnesota with Sewall and Dow and a check for twelve thousand five hundred dollars to purchase as many more head of stock as the money would buy.

Roosevelt, meanwhile, was proving himself as capable as a ranchman as he was courageous as an investor. The men who worked with him noted with satisfaction that he learned quickly and worked hard; that he was naturally progressive; that he cared little for money, and yet was thrifty; that, although conferring in all matters affecting the stock with Sylvane and Merrifield, and deferring to their experience even at times against his own judgment, he was very much the leader. He was never "bossy," they noted, but he was insistent on discipline, on regularity of habits, on prompt obedience, on absolute integrity.

He was riding over the range one day with one of his ablest cowpunchers, when they came upon a "maverick," a two-year-old steer, which had never been branded. They la.s.soed him promptly and built a fire to heat the branding-irons.

It was the rule of the cattlemen that a "maverick" belonged to the ranchman on whose range it was found. This particular steer, therefore, belonged, not to Roosevelt, but to Gregor Lang, who "claimed" the land over which Roosevelt and his cowboy were riding.

The Texan started to apply the red-hot iron.

"It is Lang's brand--a thistle," said Roosevelt.

"That's all right, boss," answered the cowboy. "I know my business."

"Hold on!" Roosevelt exclaimed an instant later, "you are putting on my brand."

"That's all right. I always put on the boss's brand."

"Drop that iron," said Roosevelt quietly, "and go to the ranch and get your time. I don't need you any longer."

The cowpuncher was amazed. "Say, what have I done? Didn't I put on your brand?"

"A man who will steal _for_ me will steal _from_ me. You're fired."

The man rode away. A day or so later the story was all over the Bad Lands.

Roosevelt was scarcely more tolerant of ineffectiveness than he was of dishonesty. When a man was sent to do a piece of work, he was expected to do it promptly and thoroughly. He brooked no slack work and he had no ear for what were known as "hard-luck stories." He gave his orders, knowing why he gave them; and expected results. If, on the other hand, a man "did his turn" without complaint or default, Roosevelt showed himself eager and prompt to reward him.

His companions saw these things, and other things. They saw that "the boss" was quick-tempered and impatient of restraint; but they saw also that in times of stress the hot-headed boy seemed instantly to grow into a cautious and level-headed man, dependable in hards.h.i.+p and cool in the face of danger. He was, as one of them put it, "courageous without recklessness, firm without being stubborn, resolute without being obstinate. There was no element of the spectacular in his make-up, but an honest naturalness that won him friends instantly."

"Roosevelt out in Dakota was full of life and spirit, always pleasant," said Bill Sewall in after years. "He was hot-tempered and quick, but he kept his temper in good control. As a rule, when he had anything to say, he'd spit it out. His temper would show itself in the first flash in some exclamation. In connection with Roosevelt I always think of that verse in the Bible, 'He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.'"

"He struck me like a sort of rough-an'-ready, all-around frontiersman," said "Dutch Wannigan." "Wasn't a bit stuck up--just the same as one of the rest of us."

Joe Ferris, who frankly adored Roosevelt, declared to a crowd at his store one day, "I wouldn't be surprised if Roosevelt would be President."

His hearers scoffed at him. "That fool Joe Ferris," remarked one of them at his own ranch that night, "says that Roosevelt will be President some day."

But Joe held his ground.[12]

[Footnote 12: Joe Ferris was made aware of this scornful reference to his judgment through a cowboy, Carl Hollenberg, who overheard it, and sixteen years later came into Joe's store one September day shouting, "That fool, Joe Ferris, says that Roosevelt will be President some day!" The point was that Roosevelt had that week succeeded McKinley in the White House.]

The neighbors up and down the river were warm-hearted and friendly.

Mrs. Roberts had decided that she wanted a home of her own, and had persuaded her husband to build her a cabin some three miles north of the Maltese Cross, where a long green slope met a huge semi-circle of gray b.u.t.tes. The cabin was primitive, being built of logs stuck, stockade-fas.h.i.+on, in the ground, and the roof was only dirt until Mrs.

Roberts planted sunflowers there and made it a garden; but for Mrs.

Roberts, with her flock of babies, it was "home," and for many a cowboy, pa.s.sing the time of day with the genial Irishwoman, it was the nearest approach to "home" that he knew from one year's end to another.

Shortly after Mrs. Roberts had moved to her new house, Roosevelt and Merrifield paid her a call. Mrs. Roberts, who had the only milch cow in the Bad Lands, had been churning, and offered Roosevelt a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk. He drank it with an appreciation worthy of a rare occasion. But as he rode off again, he turned to Merrifield with his teeth set.

"Heavens, Merrifield!" he exclaimed, "don't you ever do that again!"

Merrifield was amazed. "Do what?"

"Put me in a position where I have to drink b.u.t.termilk. I loathe the stuff!"

"But why did you drink it?"

"She brought it out!" he exclaimed, "And it would have hurt her feelings if I hadn't. But look out! I don't want to have to do it again!"

Mrs. Roberts spared him thenceforward, and there was nothing, therefore, to spoil for Roosevelt the merriment of the Irishwoman's talk and the stimulus of her determination and courage. There were frequent occasions consequently when "the boys from the Maltese Cross"

foregathered in the Roberts cabin, and other occasions, notably Sundays (when Sylvane and Merrifield and George Myers had picked up partners in Medora) when they all called for "Lady Roberts" as chaperon and rode up the valley together. They used to take peculiar delight in descending upon Mrs. c.u.mmins and making her miserable.

It was not difficult to make that poor lady unhappy. She had a fixed notion of what life should be for people who were "nice" and "refined," and her days were a succession of regrets at the shortcomings of her neighbors. She was in many ways an admirable woman, but she seemed incapable of extending the conception of gentility which a little Pennsylvania town had given her, and she never caught a gleam of the real meaning of the life of which she was a part. She wanted everything in the Bad Lands exactly as she had had it at home. "Well," as Mrs. Roberts subsequently remarked, "she had one time of it, I'm telling you, in those old rough days."

Mrs. c.u.mmins was not the only neighbor who furnished amus.e.m.e.nt during those spring days of 1885 to the boys at the Maltese Cross. The Eatons' "dude ranch" had developed in a totally unexpected direction.

From being a headquarters for Easterners who wanted to hunt in a wild country, it had become a kind of refuge to which wealthy and distracted parents sent such of their offspring as were over-addicted to strong drink. Why any parent should send a son to the Bad Lands with the idea of putting him out of reach of temptation is beyond comprehension. The Eatons did their part n.o.bly and withheld intoxicating drinks from their guests, but Bill Williams and the dozen or more other saloon-keepers in Medora were under no compulsion to follow their example. The "dudes" regularly came "back from town" with all they could carry without and within; and the cowboys round about swore solemnly that you couldn't put your hand in the crotch of any tree within a hundred yards of the Eatons' ranch-house without coming upon a bottle concealed by a dude being cured of "the drink."

The neighbors who were most remote from Roosevelt in point of s.p.a.ce continued to be closest in point of intimacy. The Langs were now well established and Roosevelt missed no opportunity to visit with them for an hour or a day, thinking nothing apparently of the eighty-mile ride there and back in comparison with the prospect of an evening in good company. The Langs were, in fact, excellent company. They knew books and they knew also the graces of cultivated society. To visit with them was to live for an hour or two in the quietude of an Old World home, with all the Old World's refinements and the added tang of bizarre surroundings; and even to one who was exuberantly glad to be a cowboy, this had its moments of comfort after weeks of the rough frontier existence. Cultivated Englishmen were constantly appearing at the Langs', sent over by their fathers, for reasons sometimes mysterious, to stay for a week or a year. Some of them proved very bad cowboys, but all of them were delightful conversationalists. Their efforts to enter into the life of the Bad Lands were not always successful, and h.e.l.l-Roaring Bill Jones on one notable occasion, when the son of a Scotch baronet undertook to criticize him for misconduct, expressed his opinion of the scions of British aristocracy that drifted into Medora, in terms that hovered and poised and struck like birds of prey. Lincoln Lang, who was present, described Bill Jones's discourse as "outside the pale of the worst I have ever heard uttered by human mouth," which meant something in that particular place. But Bill Jones was an Irishman, and he was not naturally tolerant of idiosyncrasies of speech and manner. Roosevelt, on the whole, liked the "younger sons," and they in turn regarded him with a kind of awe.

He was of their own cla.s.s, and yet there was something in him which stretched beyond the barriers which confined them, into regions where they were lost and bewildered, but he was completely at home.

They all had delightful evenings together at Yule, with charades and punning contests, and music on the piano which Lincoln Lang had brought out through the gumbo against all the protests of nature. Mrs.

Lang was an admirable cook and a liberal and hospitable hostess, which was an added reason for riding eighty miles.

To the Scotch family, exiled far up the Little Missouri, Roosevelt's visits were notable events. "We enjoyed having him," said Lincoln Lang long afterward, "more than anything else in the world."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. Lang.]