CHAPTER 12 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE  WALKS  THROUGH  THE  FIERY  FURNACE

ROOSEVELT had publicly preached national preparedness as early as 1882.  In the preface to the third edition of his Naval War of 1812, speaking of the land operations of that war, he had written:

They teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson, that a miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money, which, after all, comes too late to more than partially offset the evils produced by the original short-sighted parsimony.  .  .  .  It was criminal folly for Jefferson, and his follower, Madison, to neglect to give us a force either of regulars or of well-trained volunteers during the twelve years they had in which to prepare for the struggle that any one might see was inevitable.  .  .  .  Circumstances have altered widely since 1812.  .  .  .  There is now no cause for our keeping up a large army; while, on the contrary, the necessity for an efficient navy is so evident that only our almost incredible short-sightedness prevents our at once preparing one. 

If the need for an efficient navy was great in 1882, it was far more vital in March, 1897, when President McKinley was inaugurated and the Republican party returned to power.  To Roosevelt's keen love of justice and hatred of oppression America's continued indifference to Spanish misrule in Cuba was intolerable.  In 1895, a new revolution had broken out on the island.  General Weyler had been sent by Spain to suppress it, but in spite of his most cruel and oppressive measures, guerrilla warfare continued.  Between the barbarism of the insurgents, on the one hand, and the ruthless severity of the Spaniards, on the other, the Cuban people, and especially the women and children, suffered agonies of privation that roused the whole American people to protest.  Congress, reflecting the nation's indignant sympathy, demanded war, but President Cleveland believed that Spain might yet consent to give the Cubans self-rule, and again and again attempted to persuade the Spanish government to open negotiations with the insurgents.  The answer was invariably the same the honor of Spain forbade treating with rebels.  At last, in 1897, the Liberals in Spain came to power, recalled Weyler, and offered the Cubans a reasonable amount of self-government.  But feeling in the United States was running too high against Spain to be assuaged by the promise of reforms in the devastated island, for such promises had been made before, and broken.  The Cubans, realizing that they had the moral support of the American people, refused Spain's concessions. 

Roosevelt watched the course of events with keen interest.  He believed that it was the duty of the United States to intervene in Cuba; he was convinced that no act short of intervention would give the Cubans freedom from the intolerable yoke of tyranny.  For twenty years Spain had been holding out vague and indefinite promises of reform.  These promises she had never kept.  While the governments of the United States and Spain were exchanging notes, meantime, the people of Cuba were perishing in awful numbers. 

In season and out of season, Roosevelt insisted that in human pity Americans must drive the Spaniards out of Cuba. 

People shrugged their shoulders and called him a.  militarist and a firebrand. 

President McKinley was inaugurated in March, 1897.  Roosevelt was offered a post in the new Administration.  He chose the position that would give him the best opportunity to prepare the tools in that war which he had preached America must in duty wage.  He became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 

He began at once to do what he could to make America's fleet ready for emergencies.  He reorganized the system of rank and promotion among naval officers, he adjusted the differences between the "line" and the "engineers" a quarrel reaching back to the days of sailing-ships; he asked Congress for $800,000 for target' practice, spent it, and to the horror of the peace-at-any-price folk asked for half a million more. 

"The shots that hit are the shots that count!" he pointed out. 

The situation in Cuba, meanwhile, was growing constantly more acute.  There was little actual fighting between the Spanish forces and the Cubans, but in the concentration camps the women and children were dying by the thousands.  Expeditions, financed by private individuals, were sent from the United States to feed the destitute.  This aroused the anger of the Spaniards in Cuba, who turned against the American residents.  General Fitzhugh Lee, American consul-general in Havana, demanded a warship to guard American lives and property. 

The Maine was sent, and on January 25, 1898, anchored in the harbor of Havana. 

On February 15th, without warning, she was blown up at the anchorage the Spanish authorities had assigned to her, with the loss of two officers and two hundred and fifty-eight men. 

War now became inevitable.  Roosevelt began to assemble the American fleet, recalling war-ships from foreign ports and gathering the men-of-war of the Atlantic squadron, scattered up and down the coast.  Several months previous he had succeeded in securing the appointment of Dewey as commander of the Asiatic squadron, against the advice of certain officers in Washington who thought that Dewey was a "dude. " He now succeeded, again in opposition to the powers that be, in revoking the order to recall Dewey's flagship to the United States. 

On February 25, 1898, he sent this cable:

DEWEY, HONG-KONG:
Order the squadron, except the Monocracy, to Hong-Kong.  Keep full of coal.  In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands.  Keep Olympia until further orders. 
ROOSEVELT. 

On April 21st Spain withdrew her minister at Washington and gave the American minister at Madrid his passports. 

Spain and the United States were at war. 

President McKinley called for volunteers.  Roosevelt had already made up his mind that, if war came, he would take an active part in it.  With his friend Leonard Wood, a surgeon in the army and a veteran of several Indian campaigns, he had already discussed the possibility of raising a regiment of mounted riflemen from among the skilled horsemen of the plains.  When Congress, therefore, authorized three regiments of cavalry, he immediately offered to raise one of them.  General Alger, the Secretary of War, accepted the offer, and, in turn, offered Roosevelt the colonelcy of the regiment. 

Roosevelt refused it, not feeling that he was yet competent to handle the regiment.  Leonard Wood was made colonel, and Roosevelt accepted the lieutenant-colonelcy. 

Roosevelt resigned from the Navy Department amid a storm of protests.  The President, the Secretary of the Navy, and the newspapers urged him to stay where he was; his family and his friends implored him not to risk his life in battle when there was important work for him to do at home, and, when he would not listen to that argument, begged him not to wreck a promising political career.  Even Bill Sewall, that valiant fighter, counseled discretion. 

I thank you for your advice, old man [Roosevelt wrote him on April 23d, the day war was declared], but it seems to me that if I can go I better had.  My work here has been the work of preparing the tools.  They are prepared, and now the work must lie with those who use them.  The work of preparation is done; the work of using the tools has begun.  If possible I would like to be one of those who use the tools. 

He went.  At San Antonio, Texas, he assembled his "Rough Riders. "

I couldn't stay [he wrote his sister, Mrs.  Douglas Robinson, in May].  That was the sum and substance of it although I realize well. . .  what a change for the worse it means in my after life. 

For a month the First Volunteer Cavalry, or the Rough Riders, as they were nicknamed, trained at San Antonio, while Wood and Roosevelt scoured the country for supplies, determined that no lack of equipment should prevent the regiment from being the first on the firing-line.  The regiment was a motley crew, if ever there was one.  There were cowboys there, and "swells" from Fifth Avenue; Western "bad men" and Eastern college boys; West-Pointers, and Indians, and mining-prospectors, and gun-fighters, and bronco-busters, and town marshals everything that could shoot and ride and had an alert mind and a valiant spirit; a thousand of them chosen from thousands who swarmed to offer themselves.  They were "children of the dragon's blood," hardy and strong, with resolute, weather-beaten faces and clear, unflinching eyes. 

On May 29th the regiment entrained for Tampa.  There everything was chaos and confusion, and it was only by the exercise of ingenuity and "nerve" that Roosevelt and Wood were able to fling their troops aboard the transport assigned to them, when the orders came to embark A week or more later they were at anchor off Daiquiri on the southern shore of Cuba.  Again, as at Tampa, confusion reigned.  The orders were to land the horses and men.  The details were cheerfully left to Providence. 

"We disembarked," wrote Roosevelt, many years later, "higgledy-piggledy, just as we had embarked. "

The horses and mules were thrown overboard, and those which could swim swam ashore; those which could not were drowned.  It was very simple.  The men were treated with only a little more care.  They were crowded into the ship's boats of the transports and the men-of-war.  Those that were landed at the dock at Daiquiri were forced to clamber over slippery girders; those that were landed through the surf were generally flung into it and forced to make their way ashore as best they could. 

Fortunately, the Spaniards made no attempt to contest the landing.  Five hundred resolute men might have held the American army at bay. 

That night the Rough Riders camped on a dusty, brush-covered flat, between low hills a quarter of a mile inshore, with jungle on one side, and on the other a shallow, fetid pool fringed with palm-trees.  In the high grass the troopers pitched their dog-tents or built green bowers, thatched with palm leaves.  It was all very romantic, except for the huge land-crabs which scuttled noisily hither and thither and the lizards and evil-looking snakes which wriggled silently in and out of the underbrush. 

Roosevelt's baggage was "somewhere in Cuba. " His sole camp equipment was a mackintosh and a toothbrush.  He slept that night under a clear heaven of stars.  Cuba was at her best, enticing and irresistible in her tropic beauty.  Except for the land-crabs, the Rough Riders decided that war was certainly one grand lark. 

At noon the next day came orders from Gen.  Joseph Wheeler, who was in command in the absence of General Shafter, that the Rough Riders were to be ready to break camp at a moment's notice.  An hour later they were under way under the tropic sun, marching swiftly west through jungle country toward Siboney.  General Young, who commanded the brigade of which the Rough Riders were a part, expected to come in contact with the enemy next morning, and Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt were determined that their regiment was to be in the front rank when the firing began. 

At dawn next morning came the order to advance.  The enemy had been located four or five miles north of Siboney, and General Wheeler had ordered General Young to drive him from his position.  Two trails led through the jungle.  General Young, with a squadron each from the First and the Tenth Regular Cavalry, was to take the right-hand path through the valley; Colonel Wood with the Rough Riders was to take the left-hand trail along a wooded ridge.  They were to meet where the trails met and merged into a wagon-road to Santiago, at Las Guasimas. 

Neither Colonel Wood nor Lieutenant - Colonel Roosevelt had slept.  "Wood looked worn and haggard," wrote Edward Marshall, one of the New York correspondents, "and his voice was cracked and hoarse.  Roosevelt was as lively as a chipmunk, and seemed to be in half a dozen places at once. "

The Rough Riders climbed the difficult ascent to the ridge and proceeded swiftly north along a narrow trail bordered by thickets of tropic growth.  The forest under the deep blue sky was wonderfully beautiful and brilliant with color.  Now and again they heard bird-notes. 

They left the forest behind them.  To the right and left of them now were deserted plantations, overgrown in the space of a few years into a jungle that arched the road twenty feet above their heads.  The trail was like a tunnel with green walls.  The heat was oppressive and made the men gasp. 

Suddenly the column halted. 

Down the line came the order, "Silence in the ranks!"

The men had thrown themselves on the grass, chatting and chewing the grass-heads.  Roosevelt heard two of them discussing in low murmurs the conduct of a certain cow-puncher in quitting work on a ranch and starting a saloon in some New Mexican town. 

"How would you like a glass of cold beer?" he heard another call in a low voice. 

The men resented this and tossed bits of stick and stone at him.  One man blew a putty-ball in his direction. 

The Rough Riders had been told that they would meet the Spaniards before the day was done, but they did not really believe it.  They had never seen a Spaniard with a gun in his hand.  They strongly suspected that there was no such animal. 

The war was just a lark. 

Roosevelt, standing near a barbed-wire fence, uttered a sudden exclamation.  "My God!" he exclaimed, holding a severed strand in his hand, "this wire has been cut today. "

Marshall, the war correspondent, was at his side.  "What makes you think so?" he asked. 

"The end is bright.  And there has been enough dew, even since sunrise, to put a light rust on it. "

A surgeon lumbered up the line on a mule to the accompaniment of remarks from both the mule and the surgeon that did not contribute at all to the efforts Colonel Wood was trying to make to preserve silence.  Roosevelt jumped after them, urging them to keep quiet, and made more noise doing it than the original transgressors. 

The troopers thought it all extremely funny. 

On the trail ahead a shot rang out. 

Six men of L Troop, who had been sent out in advance of the regiment, had come into touch with the enemy. 

There was another shot, then a volley, and then "everything opened up. "

"Load chamber and magazine!"

Colonel Wood sent the order down the line.  He was utterly calm, showing no signs of undue excitement.  Roosevelt, on the other hand, was not calm at all.  He was literally jumping up and down.  He had been in perilous places before, often enough; but he had never been under fire.  He looked as though half of him wanted to run and half of him wanted to "lick the enemy" single-handed.  There was about him something of the bouncing fury of those savage battles with Parker at Police Head-quarters. 

Wood ordered him to deploy Troops A, G, and K into the tangle at the right.  Roosevelt repeated the order.  A dozen of his men climbed over the barbed-wire fence. 

Then he, too, crossed into the thicket.  And suddenly he was no longer excitable, but calm and cool, a heroic soldier, an inspiring leader of men. 

The country was confusing, for it was mountainous and covered with thick jungle.  The first troop which Roosevelt deployed into the thicket disappeared immediately as though the earth had swallowed it.  He kept the others in columns, determined to deploy them when he reached the firing-line.  Meanwhile, he had no idea where the firing-line was.  There was firing to the right and firing to the left.  But the Spaniards used smokeless powder, and, though the bullets rent'the air with the sound of ripping silk, he could not discover whence they came.  He decided that he could not go far wrong if he went forward, and plunged ahead with his men. 

Suddenly, one of the troopers crumpled up and lay still.  Then another, and then a third.  In less than three minutes nine men lay helpless. 

The Rough Riders had discovered that there were Spaniards in Cuba, after all. 

They advanced in quick, desperate rushes, rising out of the high grass, racing forward, then burrowing deep into the grass again and firing as they caught a glimpse of a comical hat in the underbrush ahead.  The heat was fierce in its intensity.  The sun blazed down in the men's eyes like a lime-light.  To right and left their comrades fell, shot down by an invisible enemy.  The men panted for breath, beating their way with their carbines through the tangle of vines and creepers. 

Roosevelt moved among them, here, there, and everywhere, exposing himself, not recklessly, but with a cool disregard of danger that quieted and steadied his men as no words could possibly have steadied them.  Once, while he was leaning against a palm-tree, a bullet passed through the trunk, filling his left ear and eye with dust and splinters. 

Firing and rushing forward, sometimes only the distance that a man can slide to a base, Roosevelt and his men advanced a mile and a half.  They came at last to the brink of a deep, jungle-filled valley. 

On the farther side, to the right, a troop of American regulars appeared.  On the left was lively shooting.  Roosevelt was puzzled to know what to do.  If he pushed ahead he might leave a gap for the Spaniards in case they should venture a counter-attack. 

He left his men where they were and started out to find Colonel Wood.  Major Brodie, in command of the left wing of the regiment, had been wounded, and Wood sent Roosevelt to command Brodie's battalion in addition to his own.  From his new position he was able not only to see all his men, but the Spaniards also.  They were shooting, he found, from a group of red-tiled ranch buildings on the crest of a low hill, a good distance ahead.  He charged forward with his men in stubborn, short rushes.  The Spaniards, after a short resistance, fled.  He took possession of the buildings. 

"They tried to catch us with their hands," protested a Spaniard, later. 

Firing had now ceased everywhere along the line.  The Spaniards were in full retreat on the main road north in the direction of El Caney.  Roosevelt found Colonel Wood near by in consultation with Generals Wheeler, Chaffee, and Lawton, and had difficulty in refraining from a grin of relief when they solemnly congratulated him on the way he had handled his troops.  He had not been at all sure that he might not have committed some awful sin for which he could be court-martialed. 

His superiors did not court-martial him.  On the contrary, when, a few days after the Las Guasimas fight, General Young was taken ill with fever and Colonel Wood was given command of the brigade, they made Theodore Roosevelt colonel of the Rough Riders. 

As for his men those of the right wing had had their baptism of fire under him, those of the left wing had charged with him to victory.  All of them were ready now to follow him to the end of the world. 

It was a week before the army came once more into contact with the enemy.  It had meanwhile moved northwestward to a village called El Poso, and it was from there that on the first day of July the advance on Santiago was made
 
The intervening days had been trying, for a deluge of rain came regularly every afternoon or evening; food was scarce; tobacco was lacking altogether; sleep was made difficult by rain and tarantulas; fever began to lay low one man after another; and what joy remained in life was spoiled by Spanish sharpshooters who from their distant eyries in the tops of the trees picked off men as they exposed themselves by day or as the lightning flashes by night shattered the security of the darkness. 

The Rough Riders had respected and admired Theodore Roosevelt from the San Antonio days, but it was only after the Las Guasimas fight that they began to love him.  During the fight he had shared every peril with his men; after the fight, he shared every privation.  If his men had no shelter, he had none; if his men had no food, he went without food likewise.  The occasional delicacies, sent up from the transports to the officers' mess, he sent on to the wounded and the sick.  He knew every man in the regiment by his first name.  He was the equal and friend of all, making no distinction of race or color or creed or politics or social standing.  It was like the old ranch days.  He was human, and so the men loved him; he was capable and brave, and so they respected him; he bore a great responsibility with coolness and reserve, and so they were glad to recognize him as "the boss. "

On the afternoon of June 3oth the Rough Riders received the order to advance toward Santiago, and at eight o'clock that night, with Colonel Roosevelt at their head, reached El Poso hill and bivouacked on its slopes.  General Wood, now in command of the brigade, was already there.  That night the two friends slept side by side under a starry sky. 

They were up and about before dawn, talking little, but making ready for the fight they knew was ahead.  The troopers were quiet with suppressed excitement.  They had learned that war was no lark at all; and they polished up their rifles, wondering who would be missing when night fell. 

At nine o'clock came the order to advance.  General Lawton's division had been ordered to take El Caney, General Sumner's division, including the Rough Riders, had been directed to move toward the San Juan hills, connect with General Lawton's division after the capture of El Caney, and the following morning capture the trenches on the San Juan ridge.  The road along which the Rough Riders advanced was scarcely more than a muddy trail, overcrowded now with thousands of men stepping on one another's heels.  Within an hour they came within the enemy's zone of fire. 

The Spaniards knew that road.  Their guns had the range of every inch of it, and with merciless accuracy they poured their fire into the advancing lines.  Men began to fall, right and left.  At a ford of the San Juan River, over the heads of the huddled troops, the commanding general sent up an observation balloon.  It made a perfect target for the enemy.  Shells began to break about it, scattering death among the soldiers below.  Volley on volley from the Spanish trenches raked the tall grass behind.  

Roosevelt, mounted on his pony, Texas, moved his men swiftly to the right along the farther side of the creek, out of the worst of the murderous fire.  The Rough Riders were a part of the Second Brigade.  The First Brigade had been directed to move to the right; then face the front.  The Second Brigade had been ordered to pass in the rear until clear of the First Brigade, and then likewise face the front.  The original plan had been that these two brigades should wait at the ford, and on receipt of definite orders proceed along the river and connect with General Lawton's forces after the capture of El Caney. 

Under the lee of the river-bank Roosevelt halted his men while the First Brigade disentangled itself sufficiently to spread out to the right according to the original plan.  His men stood waist-deep in water or crouched in the burning jungle grass.  The heat was intense.  They lay with rolling eyes, gasping for breath.  Round about the shells still broke and the whistling Mauser bullets found their marks.  Sharpshooters in the tops of trees picked off the troopers like sparrows from a fence. 

Overhead, the fatal gas-bag still hung, drawing the Spanish fire.  And under it, in that chute of death, seven thousand American soldiers, jammed into a narrow opening, waited where they had been told to wait for orders that did not come. 

The First Brigade formed at last in its new position and the Second Brigade, with General Wood in command, proceeded to the right to a patch of woods.  There Roosevelt sheltered his men as well as he could, but the Mauser bullets drove in sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, and on every side men crumpled up and lay still.  He walked or rode among his men, a clear target; but he was not hit, though again and again men fell beside him; and once, as he was sitting on a low bank, a trooper whom he was sending down the line for orders pitched suddenly forward, dead, across his knees.  A fragment of a shell had struck his wrist that morning at El Poso, raising a bump the size of a hickory-nut.  But beyond that he received no wound. 

Another division, under General Kent, which was to have been held in reserve, now appeared, completely blocking the trail.  Retreat was consequently out of the question.  To remain in that death-trap, on the other hand, or to follow out the original plan, marching under the very guns of San Juan blockhouse, meant annihilation. 

"There was no escape," said Richard Harding Davis, afterward, "except by taking the enemy by the throat and driving him out and beating him down. "

Roosevelt sent one messenger after another to find General Wood or General Sumner, who, in turn, it later appeared, were sending couriers madly down the line to where, three miles in the rear, General Shafter was nursing a gouty foot.  One of Roosevelt's messengers was killed, another was wounded, a third became hopelessly entangled in the mass of men blocking the muddy road; none of them returned with the anxiously awaited orders to advance.  

Roosevelt decided that, in the absence of orders, the safest move in the face of that slaughtering fire was to "march toward the guns. "

Suddenly word came from General Sumner that the Rough Riders were to support the Regulars in the assault on the hills, and that the immediate objective of the Rough Riders was a red-tiled ranch-house situated on an elevation which was later to be known as Kettle Hill. 

Roosevelt leaped to the advance.  He had not enjoyed the Las Guasimas fight at all, for he had at no time known definitely what he was supposed to do.  But this was different.  Here in the woods lay his regiment; there, across an open basin, was a red-tiled house on a hill, with a trench running along the front of it.  The problem was perfectly simple. 

He turned to his men.  "We'll have to take that hill," he shouted. 

"We'll have to take that hill," they shouted back; and down the line the exultant message ran, "We'll have to take that hill!"

Roosevelt leaped on his horse.  His face was streaked with dirt and streaming with perspiration.  His shirt was soaked with sweat, his trousers and boots and cavalry leggings were caked with Cuban mud.  From the back of his soiled campaign hat a blue bandana handkerchief with white dots hung to shield his neck from the sun.  That day it was the battle-flag of the Rough Riders. 

Roosevelt's orders were to "support the Regulars," but when, at the head of his regiment, he came up with the Ninth Regular Cavalry, a colored regiment, he found them still firing across the valley at the distant intrenchments. 

"Why don't you charge?" he demanded of one of the officers, who happened to be his inferior in rank. 

"We have no orders," was the reply. 

"Then I give you the order!" cried Roosevelt. 

The elderly officer in command hesitated. 

"Then let my men through, sir!" Roosevelt commanded. 

The lines of the Ninth Cavalry parted as Roosevelt, swinging his hat, charged through; and closed again as the colored troops with a cheer rose and swung into the charge. 

Through the tall grass of the basin Roosevelt led his men, wheeling his horse now to this flank and now to that as he kept true the wide line of scattered men.  He waved his sword, urging them on, the most conspicuous figure on the battle-field, the inspiration not only of his own men but of the Regulars now breaking cover on all sides. 

Forty yards from the top of the hill was a wire fence that for a minute held up the charge.  Roosevelt flung himself off his horse and over the fence and plunged forward on foot. 

It was a glorious spin [wrote his former ranch partner, Bob Ferguson, now a Rough Rider, to Mrs.  Roosevelt] over trenches and barbed wires instead of oaken panels one never expects to see the like again his courage was so simple and so true to him. 

Another minute and the crest was swarming with the Rough Riders and the colored troopers of the Ninth.  The Spaniards had fled from their trenches to the second line of defense and now opened fire with rifles and one or two pieces of artillery.  The shells broke directly overhead. 

I moved about in the midst of shrapnel explosions [Ferguson wrote], like Shadrach, Meshach & Co.  in the midst of the fiery furnace unharmed by the fire.  Every part of the air was strung by the vicious Mauser bullets or by the buzzing exploding bullets of the Irregulars save just under the lee of the crest where the thin line lay (and even there bullets from a crossfire kept drop-dropping and cutting men down as they lay).  Theodore preferred to stand up or walk about, snuffing the fragrant air of combat.  I really believe firmly now that they can't kill him. 

Frankly [Roosevelt himself wrote home], it did not enter my head that I could get through without being hit, but I judged that, even if hit, the chances would be about three to one against my being killed. 

He had now accomplished the task he had been ordered to accomplish.  He had captured the red-tiled ranch-house.  But the battle was by no means over.  To the left, General Kent's division was storming the San Juan blockhouse, and he ordered the troops on the crest to turn their fire on the troops defending it.  At last the Spaniards leaped from the trenches.  The blockhouse was in the hands of the Americans.  Roosevelt turned to General Sumner for permission to charge on to the next line of hills, where the troops who had held Kettle Hill were now intrenched. 

"Go ahead!" said Sumner. 

There was a barbed-wire fence along the crest.  Roosevelt jumped it, shouting to his men to follow, and started forward on the double-quick.  He had gone a hundred yards before he was aware that only five men were with him.  One of these fell, then another.  He shouted to the remaining three to stay where they were, and ran back to where the rest of the regiment was waiting in the high grass.  He taunted them bitterly. 

The Rough Riders looked grieved.  "We didn't hear you, we didn't see you go, Colonel," one of them protested.  "Lead on now.  We'll sure follow you. "

And they did.  The other regiments on the crest leaped forward with them, and they charged across the wide valley while the Spanish bullets ripped the grass round about.  At full speed they plunged up the farther hill.  The Spaniards began to break cover and run.  Two of them, leaping from the trenches, fired point-blank at Roosevelt and his orderly.  Roosevelt killed one with his revolver at less than ten paces. 

The Rough Riders plunged on, over this crest, to another line of hills, overlooking Santiago.  There they were ordered to halt.  The Spanish fire was severe, and shelter was scant, but for Roosevelt and his men there was no retreating.  Late in the afternoon they beat off a counter-attack, with cheers.  By the next day the battle had settled down into a siege. 

"Theodore has sure made his mark on the Spaniard," wrote Ferguson. 

He had also made his mark on his own country-men.  A day after the battle Edward F.  Bourke, late  of the New York police force and for the moment gun captain on the U.  S.  S.  Hist, off Guantanamo, saw a man in khaki passing in a launch, and called out: "How's Colonel Roosevelt getting on?"

"Colonel Roosevelt?" cried the man in khaki.  "He bears what you call a charmed life.  Wherever the bullets are flying thickest you'll find him.  He's the greatest thing you ever heard of!"
The news of Roosevelt's charge over crest on crest of the San Juan hills was the kind of news Americans like to hear.  From one end of the country to the other the splendid story was told.  Overnight, Roosevelt became a popular hero. 

Meanwhile, though the active fighting was over for the time being, there was little rest for the colonel of the Rough Riders, for the malarial fever was striking his troopers down right and left, and here and there a more sinister foe than Spain was touching his men with deathly fingers. 

There was no fighting malaria and yellow fever in that pestilential place, so Roosevelt did what he could to give the sick some measure of care and comfort there where doctors and nurses were few; and endeavored, in company with General Shafter and other division and brigade commanders, to persuade the War Department to send the army north for a brief period of bracing air in preparation for the campaign against Havana in the fall.  Santiago had surrendered.  Cervera's fleet was destroyed.  To keep the army in Cuba would be needlessly to sacrifice American lives General Shafter asked Roosevelt, as the only brigade commander who intended to return to civil life and therefore had no reason to fear offending the War Department, to write a letter stating conditions in Cuba.  Roosevelt wrote the letter and joined in writing another letter, a so-called "round-robin" signed by all the division and brigade commanders.  General Shafter gave both documents to the Associated Press correspondent. 

In the storm that ensued Roosevelt was praised for his courage and bitterly censured for what was called his insubordination.  But neither the praise nor the blame mattered very much to him.  The important point was that the army was ordered north. 

Meanwhile, his fame had set the politicians of New York State to thinking.  The Republican party there had fallen on evil days.  There was a. Governor to be elected in November.  Roosevelt heard rumors in Cuba that his brief career as a soldier might, after all, not mean so serious "a change for the worse" in his after-life as he had believed.  He did not take these rumors very seriously. 

As for the political effect of my actions [he wrote to his brother-in-law], in the first place, I never can get on in politics, and in the second, I would rather have led that charge and earned my colonelcy than served three terms in the United States Senate.  It makes me feel as though I could now leave something to my children which will serve as an apology for my having existed. 

The political rumors persisted.  Platt, Republican "Boss" of New York State, did not love Theodore Roosevelt.  He had, in the police days, endeavored more than once to side-track him.  But he was in a corner.  The people of the state had, under the eyes of a Republican Governor, been robbed of millions of dollars in the building of canals and other public works.  A Democratic victory was certain unless the Republicans nominated a man whom the people could really trust. 

Theodore Roosevelt, passing through New York City on his way to the camp of the Rough Riders at Montauk Point, was greeted with the wildest enthusiasm. 

"There," said the politicians, "is the only man alive who can carry the Republican party to victory in November. "

Platt made a wry face.  But sentiment in favor of Roosevelt's nomination began to grow up-state.  A group of representative citizens distrustful of both parties traveled down to Montauk Point to offer Roosevelt an Independent nomination.  But Roosevelt, who had no sympathy with the crooked ways of political organizations, knew that, rightly directed, they were forces far more powerful for good government than any loose group of Independents could ever be.  When Lemuel Quigg, one of the Republican leaders, came to his tent, therefore, asking him what his attitude would be toward the organization in case the organization nominated him, his reply was direct and unmistakable:

"If I am nominated and elected I shall certainly confer with the organization men as with everybody else who seems to me to have knowledge of and interest in public affairs.  I shall try to get on well with the organization.  But the organization must, on the other hand, with equal sincerity, strive to do what I regard as essential for the public good.  In every case, after full consideration of whatever any one has to say who may possess real knowledge of the matter under consideration, I shall have to act finally as my own judgment and conscience dictate. "

"That is exactly what I supposed you would say," answered Quigg.  "It is all that anybody can expect. "

Two weeks after the Rough Riders were disbanded at Montauk Point Theodore Roosevelt was nominated by the Republicans for Governor of New York. 

The campaign began coldly.  The Independents had been shocked that Roosevelt should have "put his neck in Platt's collar," and now did what they could to throw a damper on his candidacy. 

Roosevelt saw defeat ahead.  But there was still a month before election.  He made up his mind that he would not go down without a struggle. 

Odell was managing the campaign.  Roosevelt went to him and said he would like to make a campaign tour through the state.  Odell did not like the idea.  Candidates who made too many speeches had a way of saying things that some people were bound to object to.  But appeals from the rural counties showed him clearly that apathy was general and that the campaign was lost unless Roosevelt could personally turn defeat into victory. 

Roosevelt "stumped" the state.  He "stumped" it up and down and zigzag and across, making speeches at every railroad station.  The campaign began to show signs of life.  Roosevelt, as usual, carried the war into the enemy's territory, disregarding the Democratic nominee, who was insignificant, and concentrating his fire on the Democratic boss, Richard Croker.  Croker was not a man to crawl into a corner under fire.  He answered with hot shot.  Roosevelt immediately grasped the opportunity to make clear to the voters that the issue lay not between himself and the Democratic nominee, but between himself and Tammany's notorious and unscrupulous chief. 

His sincerity and fire kindled his audiences; and the gay ardor of the Rough Riders who accompanied him took their fancy.  The campaign which began in gloom ended in enthusiasm. 

The election was close.  At ten o'clock in the evening, Roosevelt, who had received the returns at Sagamore Hill, went to bed, believing himself defeated.  At two o'clock he was routed by a band of happy enthusiasts, and, in a suit of scarlet pajamas, received the announcement of his election as Governor of New York.