Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Part 27

XVIII

Somewhere on some faded page I read about a Golden Age, But G.o.ds and Caledonian hunts Were nothing to what I knew once.

Here on these hills was hunting! Here Antelope sprang and wary deer.

Here there were heroes! On these plains Were drops afire from dragons' veins!

Here there was challenge, here defying, Here was true living, here great dying!

Stormy winds and stormy souls, Earthly wills with starry goals, Battle--thunder--hoofs in flight-- Centaurs charging down the night!

Here there were feasts of song and story And words of love and dreams of glory!

Here there were friends! Ah, night will fall And clouds or the stars will cover all, But I, when I go as a ghost again To the gaunt, grim b.u.t.tes, to the friendly plain I know that for all that time can do To scatter the faithful, estrange the true-- Quietly, in the lavender sage, Will be waiting the friends of my golden age.

From _Medora Nights_

The wild riding, the mishaps, the feverish activity, the smell of the cattle, the dust, the tumult, the physical weariness, the comradeship, the closeness to life and death--to Roosevelt it was all magical and enticing. He loved the crisp morning air, the fantastic landscape, the limitless s.p.a.ces, half blue and half gold. His spirit was sensitive to beauty, especially the beauty that lay open for all in the warm light of dawn and dusk under the wide vault of heaven; and the experiences that were merely the day's work to his companions to him were edged with the shimmer of spiritual adventure.

"We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst," Roosevelt wrote thirty years later, "and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living."

"It was a wonderful thing for Roosevelt," said Dr. Stickney. "He himself realized what a splendid thing it was for him to have been here at that time and to have had sufficient strength in his character to absorb it. He started out to get the fundamental truths as they were in this country and he never lost sight of that purpose all the time he was here."

To the joy of strenuous living was added, for Roosevelt, the satisfaction of knowing that the speculation in which he had risked so large a part of his fortune was apparently prospering. The cattle were looking well. Even pessimistic Bill Sewall admitted that, though he would not admit that he had changed his opinion of the region as a place for raising cattle.

I don't think we shall lose many of our cattle this winter [he wrote his brother]. I think they have got past the worst now. Next year is the one that will try them. It is the cows that perish mostly and we had but few that had calves last spring, but this spring thare will be quite a lot of them.

The calves suck them down and they don't get any chance to gain up before they have another calf and then if the weather is very cold they are pretty sure to die. It is too cold here to raise cattle that way. Don't believe there is any money in she cattle here and am afraid thare is not much in any, unless it is the largest heards, and they are crowding in cattle all the time and I think they will eat us out in a few years.

Sewall, being a strong individualist, was more than dubious concerning the practicality of the cooperative round-up. The cowmen were pa.s.sionately devoted to the idea of the open range; to believe in fences was treason; but it was in fences that Bill Sewall believed.

I don't like so free a country [he wrote]. Whare one man has as good a right as another n.o.body really has any right, so when feed gets scarce in one place they drive their cattle whare it is good without regard to whose range they eat out.

I am satisfied that by the time we are ready to leave gra.s.s will be pretty scarce here.

I think the Cattle business has seen its best days and I gave my opinion to Mr. R. last fall. I hope he may not lose but I think he stands a chance. Shall do all we can to prevent it, but it is such a mixed business. One or two can't do much. It is the most like driving on the Lake when you are mixed with everybody. I don't like it and never did.

I want to controle and manage my own affairs and have a right to what I have, but here as on the Lake it is all common. One has as much right as another.

Roosevelt remained with the round-up until it disbanded not far from Elkhorn Bottom. Then, on June 21st, he went East, accompanied by Wilmot Dow, who was going home to get married and bring Sewall's wife back with him when he brought back his own.

Two reporters intercepted Roosevelt as he pa.s.sed through St. Paul the day after his departure from Medora, and have left an attractive picture of the politician-turned-cowboy.

Rugged, bronzed, and in the prime of health [wrote the representative of the _Pioneer Press_], Theodore Roosevelt pa.s.sed through St. Paul yesterday, returning from his Dakota ranch to New York and civilization. There was very little of the whilom dude in his rough and easy costume, with a large handkerchief tied loosely about his neck; but the eyegla.s.ses and the flashing eyes behind them, the pleasant smile and the hearty grasp of hand remained. There was the same eagerness to hear from the world of politics, and the same frank willingness to answer all questions propounded. The slow, exasperating drawl and the unique accent that the New Yorker feels he must use when visiting a less blessed portion of civilization have disappeared, and in their place is a nervous, energetic manner of talking with the flat accent of the West. Roosevelt is changed from the New York club man to the thorough Westerner, but the change is only in surface indications, and he is the same thoroughly good fellow he has always been.

The reporter of the _Dispatch_ caught him in the lobby of the Merchant's Hotel.

"I'm just in from my ranch," he said [runs the interview].

"Haven't had my dinner yet, but I think a short talk with a newspaper fellow will give me a whetted appet.i.te. Yes, I am a regular cowboy, dress and all--" and his garb went far to prove his a.s.sertion, woolen shirt, big neck handkerchief tied loosely around his neck, etc. "I am as much of a cowboy as any of them and can hold my own with the best of them. I can shoot, ride, and drive in the round-up with the best of them. Oh, they are a jolly set of fellows, those cowboys; tiptop good fellows, too, when you know them, but they don't want any plug hat or pointed shoes foolishness around them.

I get along the best way with them.

"We have just finished the spring round-up. You know what that means. The round-up covered about two hundred miles of gra.s.s territory along the river, and thousands of cattle were brought in. It is rare sport, but hard work after all.

Do I like ranch life? Honestly I would not go back to New York if I had no interests there. Yes, I enjoy ranch life far more than city life. I like the hunt, the drive of cattle, and everything that is comprehended in frontier life. Make no mistake; on the frontier you find the n.o.blest of fellows. How many cattle have I? Let's see, well, not less than 3500 at present. I will have more another year."

The man from the _Dispatch_ wanted to talk politics, but beyond a few general remarks Roosevelt refused to satisfy him.

"Don't ask me to talk politics," he said. "I am out of politics. I know that this is often said by men in public life, but in this case it is true. I really am. There is more excitement in the round-up than in politics. And," he remarked with zest, "it is far more respectable.

I prefer my ranch and the excitement it brings, to New York life," he repeated; then, lest he should seem to suggest the faintest hint of discontent, he hastened to add, "though I always make it a point to enjoy myself wherever I am."

Roosevelt spent two months in the East. On August 23d he was again in St. Paul on his way, as he told a reporter of the _Dispatch_, to Helena, Montana, and thence back to Medora. Once more the interviewer sought his views on political questions. Roosevelt made a few non-committal statements, refusing to prophesy. "My political life,"

he remarked, "has not altogether killed my desire to tell the truth."

And with that happily flippant declaration he was off into the wilderness again.

The "womenfolks" from Maine were at Elkhorn when Roosevelt arrived.

They were backwoodswomen, self-reliant, fearless, high-hearted; true mates to their stalwart men. Mrs. Sewall had brought her three-year-old daughter with her. Before Roosevelt knew what was happening, they had turned the new house into a new home.

And now for them all began a season of deep and quiet contentment that was to remain in the memories of all of them as a kind of idyl. It was a life of elemental toil, hardship, and danger, and of strong, elemental pleasures--rest after labor, food after hunger, warmth and shelter after bitter cold. In that life there was no room for distinctions of social position or wealth. They respected one another and cared for one another because and only because each knew that the others were brave and loyal and steadfast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elkhorn ranch-house. Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Site of Elkhorn, 1919.]

Life on the ranch proved a more joyous thing than ever after the women had taken charge. They demanded certain necessities at once. They demanded chickens, which Roosevelt supplied, to the delight of the bobcats, who promptly started to feast on them; they demanded at least one cow. No one had thought of a cow. No one in the length and breadth of that cattle country, except Mrs. Roberts, seemed to think it worth while to keep a cow for the milk that was in her, and all the cows were wild as antelope. Roosevelt and Sewall and Dow among them roped one on the range and threw her, and sat on her, and milked her upside down, which was not altogether satisfactory, but was, for the time being, the best thing they could do.

Meals became an altogether different matter from what they had been at the Maltese Cross where men were kings of the kitchen. "Eating was a sort of happy-go-lucky business at the Maltese Cross," remarked Bill Sewall subsequently. "You were happy if you got something, an' you were lucky too." There was now a new charm in shooting game, with women at home to cook it. And Mrs. Sewall baked bread that was not at all like the bread Bill baked. Soon she was even baking cake, which was an unheard-of luxury in the Bad Lands. Then, after a while, the buffalo berries and wild plums began to disappear from the bushes roundabout and appear on the table as jam.

"However big you build the house, it won't be big enough for two women," pessimists had remarked. But their forebodings were not realized. At Elkhorn no cross word was heard. They were, taken altogether, a very happy family. Roosevelt was "the boss" in the sense that, since he footed the bills, power of final decision was his; but only in that sense. He saddled his own horse; now and then he washed his own clothes; he fed the pigs; and once, on a rainy day, he blacked the Sunday boots of every man, woman, and child in the place. He was not encouraged to repeat that performance. The folks from Maine made it quite clear that if the boots needed blacking at all, which was doubtful, they thought some one else ought to do the blacking--not at all because it seemed to them improper that Roosevelt should black anybody's boots, but because he did it so badly. The paste came off on everything it touched. The women "mothered" him, setting his belongings to rights at stated intervals, for he was not conspicuous for orderliness. He, in turn, treated the women with the friendliness and respect he showed to the women of his own family. And the little Sewall girl was never short of toys.

Elkhorn Ranch was a joyous place those days. Cowboys, hearing of it, came from a distance for a touch of home life and the luxury of hearing a woman's voice.

Roosevelt's days were full of diverse activities, and the men who worked with him at Elkhorn were the pleasantest sort of companions.

Bill Sewall, who, as Sylvane described him, was "like a track-hound on the deer-trail," had long ago given up the idea of making a cowboy of himself, const.i.tuting himself general superintendent of the house and its environs and guardian of the womenfolks. Not that the women needed protection. There was doubtless no safer place for women in the United States at that moment than the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri; and Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Dow could have been counted on to handle firearms as fearlessly if not as accurately as Bill himself.

But Bill tended the famished, unhappy-looking potato-patch for them, and with characteristic cheerfulness did the other ch.o.r.es, being quite content to leave to Roosevelt and Dow and another young cowpuncher named Rowe the riding of "sunfishers" and such things. He had a level head and an equable temper, and the cowpunchers all liked him. When a drunken cowboy, who had been a colonel in the Confederate army, accosted him one day in Joe Ferris's store with the object apparently of starting a fight, it was Sewall's quiet good nature that made his efforts abortive.

"You're a d.a.m.ned pleasant-looking man," exclaimed the Southerner.

Sewall smiled at him. "I am," he said. "You can't find a pleasanter man anywhere round." Which was the essential truth about Bill Sewall.

Of all Roosevelt's friends up and down the river, Sewall's nephew, Will Dow, was possibly the one who had the rarest qualities of intellect and spirit. He had a poise and a winsome lovableness that was not often found in that wild bit of country combined with such ruggedness of character. He had a droll and altogether original sense of humor, and an imagination which struck Roosevelt as extraordinary in its scope and power and which disported itself in the building of delightful yarns.

"He was always a companion that was sought wherever he went," said Bill Sewall. "There are men who have the faculty of pleasing and creating mirth and he was one of that kind."

Rowe was a different sort, of coa.r.s.er fiber, but himself not without charm. He was a natural horseman, fearless to recklessness, an excellent worker, and a fighting man with a curious streak of gentleness in him that revolted against the cruelty of the branding-iron. Most men accepted the custom of branding cattle and horses as a matter of course. There was, in fact, nothing to do save accept it, for there was no other method of indicating the ownership of animals which could be reasonably relied on to defy the ingenuity of the thieves. Attempts to create opinion against it were regarded as sentimental and pernicious and were suppressed with vigor.

But Rowe had plenty of courage. "Branding cattle is rotten," he insisted, in season and out of season; adding on one occasion to a group of cowpunchers standing about a fire with branding-irons in their hands, "and you who do the branding are all going to h.e.l.l."

"Aw," exclaimed a cowboy, "there ain't no h.e.l.l!"

"You watch," Rowe retorted. "You'll get there and burn just as that there cow."

In comparison to the lower reaches of the Little Missouri where Elkhorn Ranch was situated, the country about the Maltese Cross was densely populated. Howard Eaton, eight or ten miles away on Beaver Creek, was Elkhorn's closest neighbor to the north; "Farmer" Young, the only man in the Bad Lands who had as yet attacked the problem of agriculture in that region, was the nearest neighbor to the south. Six or eight miles beyond Farmer Young lived some people named Wadsworth.

Wadsworth was an unsocial being whom no one greatly liked. He had been the first man to bring cattle into the Bad Lands, and it was some of his cattle, held by Ferris and Merrifield on shares, which Roosevelt had bought in the autumn of 1883.