Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 26

The men in the camp were just starting on the "long circle" when Roosevelt returned. One of them saddled a fresh horse for him while he s.n.a.t.c.hed a hasty breakfast; then he was off for the day's work.

As only about half of the night-herd had been brought back, the circle-riding was particularly heavy, and it was ten hours before Roosevelt was back at the wagon camp once more for a hasty meal and a fresh horse. He finished work as the late twilight fell. He had been in the saddle forty hours, changing horses five times. That night he slept like the dead.

The storm had raised the level of the river and filled every wash-out with swirling brown waters. The following day Roosevelt had an adventure which came within an ace of being tragedy and culminated in hilarious farce. He was riding with a young Englishman, the son of Lord Somebody or Other--the name is immaterial--who was living that spring with the Langs. Just north of the Custer Trail Ranch a bridge of loose stringers had been laid across the wash-out, which, except at times of heavy rains or melting snows, was completely dry. On this occasion, however, it was full to the banks, and had even flowed over the rude bridge, jumbling the light logs.

The stringers parted as their horses attempted to make their way gingerly across, and in an instant horses and riders and bridge timbers were floundering indiscriminately in the rushing torrent.

Roosevelt's horse worked his way out, but the Englishman, who was a good rider according to his lights, was not altogether used to mishaps of this sort and became excited.

"I'm drowning! I'm drowning!" he called to Roosevelt.

Roosevelt s.n.a.t.c.hed the la.s.so from his saddle. He was not famous as a roper, but on this occasion his "throw" went true. The rope descended over the shoulders of the British aristocrat, and an instant later Roosevelt had him on solid ground.

"As he was yanked unceremoniously out of that creek," Roosevelt subsequently remarked, "he did not seem to be very thankful."

Sober second thoughts, however, brought grat.i.tude with them. The Britisher never forgot that Roosevelt had saved his life, and Roosevelt never forgot the picture that a son of a lord made, dragged through the water at the end of a la.s.so.

On June 5th, which must have been the day after the rescue of the Englishman, Roosevelt was writing to Lodge.

A cowboy from "down river" has just come up to the round-up, and brought me my mail, with your letter in it. I am writing on the ground; so my naturally good handwriting will not show to its usual advantage.

I have been three weeks on the round-up and have worked as hard as any of the cowboys; but I have enjoyed it greatly.

Yesterday I was eighteen hours in the saddle--from 4 A.M. to 10 P.M.--having a half-hour each for dinner and tea. I can now do cowboy work pretty well.

Toronto[18] must be a dandy; I wish I could pick up one as good. That is, if he is gentle. You are all off about my horsemanship; as you would say if you saw me now. Almost all of our horses on the ranch being young, I had to include in my string three that were but partially broken; and I have had some fine circuses with them. One of them had never been saddled but once before, and he proved vicious, and besides bucking, kept falling over backwards with me; finally he caught me, giving me an awful slat, from which my left arm has by no means recovered. Another bucked me off going down hill; but I think I have cured him, for I put him through a desperate course of sprouts when I got on again. The third I nearly lost in swimming him across a swollen creek, where the flood had carried down a good deal of drift timber.

However, I got him through all right in the end, after a regular ducking. Twice one of my old horses turned a somersault while galloping after cattle; once in a prairie-dog town, and once while trying to prevent the herd from stampeding in a storm at night. I tell you, I like gentle and well-broken horses if I am out for pleasure, and I do not get on any other, unless, as in this case, from sheer necessity.

[Footnote 18: Toronto was the name of Lodge's hunter.]

It is too bad that letters cannot be published with stage directions.

For surely the words, "I like gentle and well-broken horses," should bear about them somewhere the suggestion of the glint of the eye, the flash of the teeth, the unctuous deliberateness, and the comical break in the voice with which, surely, Roosevelt whispered them to his soul before he wrote them down.

While Roosevelt was enjoying adventures and misadventures of various sorts, Sylvane Ferris was having what he might have described as "a little party" of his own. For Sylvane, most honest and guileless of men, had got into the clutches of the law. It happened this way.

Early in the spring some cowpunchers, driving in cattle which had strayed during the winter over the level country far to the east of the Little Missouri, came upon a cow marked with the maltese cross.

They drove her westward with the rest of the "strays," but none of the men belonged to the "Roosevelt outfit" and their interest in this particular cow was therefore purely altruistic. She was not a particularly good cow, moreover, for she had had a calf in the winter and her udder had partially frozen. When, therefore, the necessity arose of paying board at the section-house at Gladstone after a few happy days at that metropolis, the cowboys, who did not have a cent of real money among them, hit upon the brilliant idea of offering the cow in payment.

The section boss accepted the settlement, but evidently not without a sense of the consequences that might follow the discovery in his possession of a cow for which he could not present a bill of sale. He therefore promptly pa.s.sed the cow on to a Russian cobbler in payment for a pair of shoes. The cobbler, with the European peasant's uncanny ability to make something out of nothing, doctored the cow with a care which he would not have dreamed of bestowing on his wife, and made a profitable milk-provider out of her.

Sylvane discovered her during the round-up, picketed outside the Russian's shack, and promptly proceeded to take possession of her. The Russian protested and told his story. Sylvane, pointing out that he was moved by charity and not by necessity, offered the man six dollars, which had been the price of the shoes. The Russian threw up his hands and demanded no less than forty. Sylvane shrugged his shoulders and annexed the cow.

That evening as Sylvane was sitting around the mess-wagon with a dozen other cowpunchers, a stranger came walking from the direction of Gladstone. The cow was. .h.i.tched to the wagon, for she had shown a tendency to choose her own master. The stranger started to detach the rope that held her.

"Hold on!" cried Sylvane, "that is our cow."

The stranger took some papers out of his pocket and handed them to Sylvane.

"Here are replevin papers," he said.

"I don't want your papers," remarked Sylvane, who did not know a replevin paper from a dog license.

The stranger threw the papers at Sylvane's feet.

"I've come to take this cow."

"Well," remarked Sylvane, "if that's all the business you have, you can go straight back where you came from."

The stranger strode toward the cow, Sylvane did likewise. They reached the rope at the same moment. There was a shout from the delighted audience of cowpunchers.

The stranger released his hold on the rope. "If you say I can't take her, I can't take her," the man grumbled. "There's too many of you.

But I'll bring back men that can."

"Well, turn yourself loose," remarked Sylvane agreeably. "You'll need a lot of them."

There was another shout from the onlookers, and the stranger departed.

Sylvane threw the papers into the mess-wagon.

Roosevelt did not happen to be present, and in his absence the sober counsel of "Deacon" c.u.mmins made itself heard. The gist of it was that Sylvane had resisted an officer of the law, which was a criminal offense.

Sylvane, who was afraid of nothing that walked on two legs or on four, had a wholesome respect for that vague and ominous thing known as the Law.

"Say, I don't want to get in bad with any sheriff," he said, really worried. "What had I oughter do?"

The "Deacon," who possibly rejoiced at being for once taken seriously, suggested that Sylvane ride to Gladstone and see if he could not straighten the matter out. The other cowpunchers, whose acquaintance with legal procedure was as vague as Sylvane's, agreed that that plan sounded reasonable. Sylvane went, accompanied by the "Deacon" and another cowboy. If there was a gleam of wicked triumph in the stranger's eye when Sylvane rode up to him, Sylvane failed to notice it. Before a justice of the peace he agreed to appear in court on a certain date, and his two companions furnished a bond.

Next day, while they were in camp on the Heart River, an acquaintance of Sylvane's, a lawyer who rejoiced in the harmonious name of Western Starr, rode in from d.i.c.kinson to have dinner with "the boys." Sylvane showed him the papers the stranger had deposited at his feet.

The lawyer glanced over them. "What are these?" he asked.

"I don't know," answered Sylvane lightly. "That's what I handed them to you for, to find out."

"Why," exclaimed Starr, "these aren't anything. They haven't been signed by anybody."

Sylvane's jaw dropped. "Say, how about my bond?"

"Oh, that's valid, even if these are not. You've got to appear in court."

Sylvane's feelings concerning the "Deacon" and his precious advice were deep and earnest. The situation was serious. He knew well enough the chance that the "outfit" of a wealthy Easterner like Roosevelt would stand with a Gladstone jury, when it was a question of depriving a poor man of his cow.

Western Starr suggested that he arrange for a change of venue.

Sylvane approved. The change of venue cost ten dollars, but was granted. The date of the trial was set. Sylvane traveled to d.i.c.kinson and waited all day with his attorney for the trial to be called. No one appeared, not even the judge.

Starr's fee was twenty dollars. Sylvane's railroad fare was five more.

The total bill was thirty-five.

Roosevelt paid the bill. If he remarked that, taking lost time into consideration, it would have been cheaper, in the first place, to pay the Russian the forty dollars he demanded, there is no record of it.

But the remark would not have been characteristic. The chances are that he thought Sylvane's encounter with the law worth every cent that it cost.