CHAPTER 6 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE  GOES   ON  HIS  FIRST  REAL  HUNT

IT was in the late summer of 1883.  Theodore the younger had had a recurrence of his asthma, complicated by an attack of that other enemy of his boyhood, cholera morbus.  On a postal card addressed to his "motherling" he speaks of the "nightmare" of that period of illness.  Oyster Bay could give him no relief, and he fled westward, hoping that the dry air and vigorous outdoor life of Dakota would restore him to strength before the opening of another season of political struggle.  He had no particular destination.  He wanted to hunt buffalo while there were still buffalo to hunt that was all.  He wanted to taste the, life of the "wild West" before that life vanished like mist before the wind.  The West had begun to call him before he was out of his teens.  His brother Elliott, two years younger than he, had shot buffalo in Texas while Theodore the younger was tamely acquiring an education in Massachusetts, and had returned with thrilling stories of hairbreadth escapes from wild beasts and wilder men.  More than once he had been charged by a wounded buffalo; he had been caught in a stampede, escaping with his life by a miracle; his camp had been raided by Comanches and his horses stolen; he had gone for two days without water or food; now and then, at a ranch or at one of the border towns where he and his companions stopped for the night, he had become involved in what his journal briefly recorded as "big fights. " And he was just seventeen. 

Theodore ached to find the country where adventures like that grew.  But for the moment they were not for him.  It was five years before he saw the West on a brief and uneventful hunting-trip beyond the Red River in Dakota; it was six before he first saw the Little Missouri winding through those "Bad Lands" which, for all their sinister desolation, were, ever after, to be the best beloved of lands for him. 

Theodore Roosevelt, bound westward, left New York one evening in late summer, still weak and miserable from the effects of his illness.  But the mere prospect of a touch of wild life seemed to be a restorative.  Before he reached Chicago he had written his mother that he felt "like a fighting-cock"; before he arrived at his destination in Dakota he was ready for any hardships or adventures Dakota had to offer. 

Dakota, it seems, was ready for him with a complete assortment of both. 

It was three o'clock of a cool September morning when he dropped off the train at a station on the Northern Pacific, called Little Missouri.  • It was no metropolis.  It consisted of the "depot," a half dozen saloons, and a rather ramshackle building known as the Pyramid Park Hotel, and a population of more or less desperate characters which had given it the reputation of being the worst "town" of its size between the Canadian border and the Gulf of Mexico. 

Roosevelt dragged his duffle-bag through the blackness toward the hotel, and hammered on the door.  The frowsy proprietor, after a long while, admitted him, muttering oaths, and gave him lodging for what remained of the night.  But he knew of no guide who would take an Easterner with spectacles hunting bison. 

It happened, however, that a young man named Joe Ferris, who was employed near by as a teamster, was willing to take a chance with the anaemic-looking "dude. " He was running a ranch "on the side" with his brother and a friend, some six or seven miles up the Little Missouri River, and suggested that Roosevelt go there with him.  Roosevelt agreed. 

Chimney Butte Ranch turned out to be a log structure with a dirt roof, a chicken-house attached, and a corral for the horses near by.  There was only one room inside, with a table, three or four chairs, a cooking-stove, and bunks for Ferris, his brother Sylvane, and their partner, Bill Merrifield.  The three men were "ranchmen" that is, they were cowboys with a small herd of their own.  Roosevelt liked them, and after they had reconciled themselves to his glasses always looked upon with suspicion by plainsmen in those days "as a sign of a defective moral character" they decided that they liked him.  Joe Ferris volunteered to be the one to help Roosevelt to the buffalo he wanted.  Buffalo had been plentiful roundabout for several winters, but some six months previous the last of the great herds had been either destroyed or driven out, and only a few stragglers remained far up the river.  The hunters proceeded to the cow-camp of a Scotchman named Gregor Lang, forty miles south of the Chimney Butte, and from there began their hunt. 

The weather was abominable, but Roosevelt ignored his guide's plaintive suggestions that they wait for the rain to cease, and morning after morning started forth with his rifle over his saddle-bow.  He returned each night unsuccessful; but if Joe Ferris had expected that his "tenderfoot" would not be able to "stand the racket," he was doomed to disappointment.  It was Joe who each night wrapped himself exhausted in his buffalo robe immediately after supper; but Roosevelt sat up and launched into conversation.  He had found congenial spirits in Lang and his son Lincoln, a boy of sixteen; and they talked cattle together, and politics and again cattle, until midnight came and the hands of the clock crept up among the small hours.  It was a "new" region, only recently won from the Indians, and adventurous spirits from all over the world were coming to make their fortunes there.  Roosevelt began to dream dreams. 

The rain ceased at last, but the luck of the hunters did not change with it.  They came on the fresh track of a buffalo, lost it, found it again, and finally came upon their prey so suddenly that the great bull bison had plunged over a steep bank and disappeared before they had time to shoot.  They hunted all day in vain over brown, barren land in a steaming heat.  Then, at last, late in the afternoon, in the middle of a large plain, they saw three black specks. 

On hands and knees they crept forward, but the buffalo eluded them.  They mounted once more, loping their jaded horses along at a brisk pace.  Finally, when the sun had just set, they noticed that all three buffalo had come to a stand in a gentle hollow.  There was no cover anywhere.  They concluded to run them on their worn-out ponies. 

The bison faced them for an instant, then turned and made off.  Daylight was swiftly falling and Roosevelt spurred his pony to a last desperate spurt, closing in on the animal he had wounded just as the rim of the full moon rose above the horizon.  Ferris, better mounted, forged ahead.  The bull, seeing him coming, swerved.  Roosevelt cut across and came almost up to him.  The ground over which they were madly dashing was broken into holes and ditches.  It was impossible in the dull light to guide the horses, which floundered and pitched forward at every stride, utterly fagged and scarcely able to keep their feet. 

Roosevelt fired at the wounded bull at twenty feet, but the darkness blurred his vision and the violent motion of the pony threw out his aim.  He dashed in closer. 

The bull's tail went up and he wheeled suddenly and charged the pony, panic-stricken, spun round and tossed up his head, striking the rifle which Roosevelt was holding in both hands and knocking it violently against his forehead, cutting a deep gash.  The blood poured into Roosevelt's eyes. 

The buffalo passed him, charging Ferris, who dashed off over the broken ground as fast as the stumbling horse would go, with the buffalo snorting almost at his pony's tail.  Ferris, swerving suddenly and dismounting, fired at the buffalo, missed in the dim moonlight, fired again, and again missed. 

The wounded bull lumbered and labored off.  Roosevelt made after him on foot in hopeless and helpless wrath, until the great hulk disappeared in the darkness. 

They did not mount the exhausted horses, but led them, trembling, foaming, sweating, in the hope of somewhere finding water near by.  The horses as well as the men had drunk nothing for twelve hours and were parched with thirst.  At last in a reedy hollow they found a muddy pool, but the water was like thin jelly, slimy and nauseating.  They could drink a mouthful and no more. 

They unsaddled the horses, making their supper of a dry biscuit.  There were no trees or bushes about they could make no fire; and when they lay down to sleep they had to lariat their horses to the saddles on which their heads rested. 

They did not go quickly to sleep.  The horses were nervous, restless, alert, in spite of their fatigue, snorting and standing with ears forward, peering into the night.  Roosevelt remembered certain half-breed Crees they had encountered the day before.  It was quite possible that the Indians might come for their horses, and perhaps their scalps.  They dozed fitfully, feeling danger in the air.  At last they fell asleep. 

They were rudely wakened by having their pillows whipped from under their heads.  They leaped to their feet.  In the bright moonlight they saw the horses madly galloping off, with the saddles bounding and trailing behind them.  It occurred to them that the ponies had been stampeded by horse-thieves, and they threw themselves on the ground, crouching in the grass, with rifles ready. 

There was no stir.  At last in the hollow they made out a shadowy four-footed shape.  It was a wolf which strode noiselessly to the low crest and disappeared. 

They rose and went after the horses, taking the broad trail made by the saddles through the dewy grass. 

Once Ferris stopped.  "I've never done anything to deserve this!" he exclaimed, plaintively.  Then, turning straight to Roosevelt, evidently suspecting that the man with the "four eyes" must be a Jonah, he cried, wrathfully, "Have you ever done anything to deserve this?"

Roosevelt grinned. 

They found the horses sooner than they expected and led them back to camp.  Utterly weary, they wrapped themselves in their blankets once more, and went to sleep.  But rest was not for them that night.  A thin rain began to fall at three in the morning.  Until dawn they cowered and shivered under the blankets.  Then they rose and made their breakfast of the same sort of dry biscuit of which they had made their supper, mounted their horses, and started away through a drizzling mist. 

Traveling by compass over the foggy, shapeless plain, drenched to the skin by an occasional deluge of rain, they rode for several hours.  At last the fog lifted for a few minutes, and suddenly they saw ahead of them some black objects crossing a piece of rolling country.  They were buffalo. 

They picketed their horses and began stealthily to stalk the quarry, creeping forward on hands and knees.  A cold rain blew in their faces, blurring their vision and making their teeth chatter.  They came within a hundred yards of the nearest buffalo, looming black and distinct against the white wall of fog. 

Roosevelt fired and missed.  The buffalo band plunged into a hollow and were off, beyond pursuit, before his stiffened fingers could get another shot. 

They spent the night at Lang's.  Next morning the weather had improved, but not their luck.  Ferris's horse almost trod on a rattlesnake and narrowly escaped being bitten.  Shortly after, while they were riding along the face of a steep bluff, the sandy soil suddenly broke away under the ponies' hoofs.  They slid and rolled to the bottom, coming to a stop at last in a huddled heap of horses and men.  The hunters mounted the frightened animals again, but shortly after, while galloping through a brush-covered bottom, Roosevelt's pony put both forefeet in a hole made by the uprooting of a tree and turned a complete somersault, pitching his rider a good ten feet beyond his head. 

It's dogged as does it, runs a famous maxim. 

Roosevelt helped his horse to his feet and again mounted.  And a little later, in the bed of a dry creek which had all the appearance of solid ground, the earth suddenly gave way like a trap-door under his horse and let him down to his withers in soft, sticky mud.  Roosevelt flung himself out of the saddle and floundered to the bank, loosening the lariat from the saddle-bow.  Pulling and hauling, with Ferris's pony to aid, they drew the trembling and mud-plastered horse to safety. 

They returned to Lang's.  More than once Joe had wondered whether the Easterner would not confess that he had had enough; but he was forced to admit to the Scotchman and his son that this was a new variety of tenderfoot, "handy as a pocket in a shirt" and altogether a "plumb good sort. " Roosevelt, on his part, took a great fancy to his wilderness companions.  He liked the country, too.  It was bare and wild and desolate, a land of endless prairie, brown from the scorching heat of summer and varied only by abrupt and savage hills, known to the cowboys as buttes.  In the river-bottoms were waving cottonwood-trees; in the scarred uplands, cut by canons, here and there bleak and twisted cedars.  There was no soft loveliness in this country, but there was about it a stark beauty that made it a fit background for the men who lived and worked and suffered hardship in it. 

People called it the Bad Lands, not without reason, for winter and summer did their worst there.  It was a land of enormous distances, with no farms and no fences, only at wide intervals ranch-houses, where the men lived whose herds grazed over the prairie through the summers, and congregated in huddled, shivering, unhappy herds in the shelter of the canons through the winters.  The wild life mightily allured him.  He decided that, above all things, he wanted to be a part of it. 

Abruptly that evening he asked Lang to start a cattle-ranch for him and be his foreman.  Lang, it appeared, was already "tied up"; but he advised Roosevelt to talk the matter over with Merrifield and Joe's brother, Sylvane.  Roosevelt agreed and promptly sent the boy Lincoln to the Chimney Butte Ranch. 

Two days later the two attractive young argonauts arrived.  The conference was brief but satisfactory.  Roosevelt gave them a check for fourteen thousand dollars then and there, with instructions to secure him as large a herd as the money would buy.  He had been in the country only ten days, or less; he had seen the men only once before.  A cautious man would have hesitated; but, as Bill Sewall had a way of saying, Roosevelt was "not over-cautious. "

Roosevelt secured his buffalo next morning.  Near the upper waters of the Little Cannonball Creek his pony suddenly threw up his head and snuffed the air.  Roosevelt crept on foot up a narrow coulee, where the hoofprints of a buffalo were plainly visible, and came on his quarry at last grazing in the bunch-grass.  It was a great bull bison and he threw back his head and cocked his tail in the air. 

Roosevelt fired, hitting him behind the shoulder.  The buffalo bounded up the farther side of the ravine, heedless of two more shots that struck him in the flank, and disappeared over the ridge. 

They found him in the next gully, stark dead.  The following day Roosevelt went north to look at his new ranch.  Ten days later, in St.  Paul, he signed a contract with Sylvane Ferris and A.  W.  Merrifield, and, for better or worse, became a ranchman in the Bad Lands. 

He returned East, strengthened in body and spirit. 

He was re-elected to the Legislature in November and plunged into his work with new vigor and a more solid self-reliance.  He ardently supported civil-service reform; he was chairman of a committee which investigated certain phases of New York City official life, and carried through the Legislature a bill taking from the Board of Aldermen the power to confirm the Mayor's appointments.  He was chairman and practically the only active member of another committee to investigate living conditions in the tenements of New York, and, as spokesman of the worn and sad-looking foreigners who constituted the Cigar-Makers' Union, argued before Governor Cleveland for the passage of a bill to prohibit the manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses. 

The bill was passed.  The Governor signed it.  But it never became operative.  The Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional, declaring it an assault on "the hallowed associations of home"!

 Many of those homes consisted of a single room, where two families, sometimes with a boarder or two, lived and ate and worked!

Theodore Roosevelt raged at the injustice, at the absurdity of the decision, and began to wonder whether in such matters the people rather than the judges should not speak the final word. 

For two years Roosevelt had now worked in the Legislature, learning much of politics and of life and growing day by day in character and vision and spirit.  He saw, he could not help seeing, that he was making a striking success in politics.  He realized that there was u possibility that he might have ahead of him a great career.  With a little care in the choice of associates, with a little circumspection in his actions, he said to himself, perhaps .  .  . 

He began to adapt everything he said and did to the requirements of political nursing.  "How will this affect my career?" he began to say to himself.  ''How will that further or hinder my career?'

He nursed along his career for one month and for one month only.  Then, in utter disgust with himself, he decided one day that if such careful timeserving were the price of a "career," he would not have a "career" for all the glory in the world. 

It was vastly more useful, he decided, to do his day's work as it came along, and very much more fun. 

Life was running, on the whole, very smoothly for Theodore Roosevelt when in January, 1884, he entered upon his third term in the Legislature.  He was only twenty-five years old and he was one of the leading political figures in his state, with promotion to Congress in sight, if he wanted it.  He was happily married, he was finding a place for himself socially among congenial friends, he had wealth, he had a notable book on the War of 1812 to his credit. 

Then, suddenly, without warning, he was smitten. 

On February 12th, at ten o'clock in the morning, his wife gave birth to a daughter.  At four o'clock the following morning his mother died.  Six hours later his wife died. 

He was stunned and dazed. 

"But he stood right up under it," said Joe Murray, a long time after. 

"It was a grim and an evil fate," Roosevelt wrote to Bill Sewall in March, "but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working. "

He did not cease.  He took up his labors in the Legislature and threw himself so completely into the reform legislation of Governor Cleveland that, two months after that tragic day in February, Harper's Weekly paid tribute to his efforts in one of Nast's memorable cartoons. 

In June he was a delegate to the Republican national convention at Chicago to nominate a Presidential candidate.  Blaine was the favorite, but Blaine stood for all that seemed to Roosevelt least progressive in the Republican party.  Roscoe Conkling, who led the fight for Blaine, spoke scornfully of "that dentificial young man with more teeth than brains"; but George William Curtis, who was also a delegate, prophesied a great future for him. 

 Roosevelt fought in the convention for Edmunds.  His candidate was defeated.  Blaine secured the nomination. 

Many of his associates, among them some of the greatest men in the Republican party, "bolted the ticket,'' refusing to support Blaine.  They called upon Roosevelt to follow them. 

He refused.  He had disapproved of Blaine; he had, as he wrote to a critic in October, "worked practically to prevent it," and he considered his nomination a grave mistake.  But he was a member of the Republican party, he believed in its principles, and, as a citizen of a democracy, he considered it his duty to stand by the result of a fair vote even when it went against him. 

Friends and foes taunted him.  Where now, they cried, was his fine enthusiasm for reform, for civil service? '' Roosevelt wants to climb in politics,'' they cried, "and he isn't going to antagonize the machine. "

He let them talk and stood by his guns and, when the convention was over, fled, lonely and sick at heart, into the wilderness.