Chapter 10
(The start for the Big Horns — Roosevelt writes home — A letter to Lodge — Indians — Camp in the mountains — Roosevelt gets his bear.)

The pine spoke, but the word he said was "Silence";
The aspen sang, but silence was her theme.
The wind was silence, restless; and the voices
Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence
Made vocal in the topsy-turvy of dream.

Paradise Found

Roosevelt started for the Big Horn Mountains on August 18th, but Sewall, after all, did not go with him.   Almost with tears, he begged off.   "I'd always dreamed of hunting through that Big Horn country," he said long afterward.   "I had picked that out as a happy hunting ground for years and years, and I never wanted to go anywhere so much as I wanted to go along with Theodore on that trip." But the memory of the lonely look in Will Dow's face overcame the soft-hearted backwoodsman at the last minute.   He pointed out to Roosevelt that one man could not well handle the logs for the new ranch-house and suggested that he be allowed to rejoin Will Dow.

Early on the morning of the 18th, Roosevelt set his caravan in motion for the long journey.   For a hunting companion he had Merrifield and for teamster and cook he had a French Canadian named Norman Lebo, who, as Roosevelt subsequently remarked, to Lebo's indignation (for he prided himself on his scholarship), "possessed a most extraordinary stock of miscellaneous mis-information upon every conceivable subject." He was a short, stocky, bearded man, a born wanderer, who had left his family once for a week's hunting trip and remained away three years, returning at last only to depart again, after a week, for further Odyssean wanderings.   "If I had the money," he had a way of saying, "no two nights would ever see me in the same bed." It was rumored that before Mrs. Lebo had permitted her errant spouse to go out of her sight, she had secured pledges from Roosevelt guaranteeing her three years' subsistence, in case the wanderlust should once more seize upon her protector and provider.

Roosevelt rode ahead of the caravan, spending the first night with the Langs, who were always friendly and hospitable and full of good talk, and rejoining Merrifield and "the outfit" on the Keogh trail a few miles westward next morning.   Slowly and laboriously the "prairie schooner" lumbered along the uneven route.   The weather was sultry, and as they crossed the high divide which separated the Little Missouri basin from the valley of the Little Beaver they saw ahead of them the towering portents of storm.   The northwest was already black, and in a space of time that seemed incredibly brief the masses of cloud boiled up and over the sky.   The storm rolled toward them at furious speed, extending its wings, as it came, as though to gather in its victims.

Against the dark background of the mass (Roosevelt wrote, describing it later) could be seen pillars and clouds of gray mist, whirled hither and thither by the wind, and sheets of level rain driven before it.   The edges of the wings tossed to and fro, and the wind shrieked and moaned as it swept over the prairie.   It was a storm of unusual intensity; the prairie fowl rose in flocks from before it, scudding with spread wings toward the thickest cover, and the herds of antelope ran across the plain like race-horses to gather in the hollows and behind the low ridges.

We spurred hard to get out of the open, riding with loose reins for the creek.   The center of the storm swept by behind us, fairly across our track, and we only got a wipe from the tail of it.   Yet this itself we could not have faced in the open.   The first gust caught us a few hundred yards from the creek, almost taking us from the saddle, and driving the rain and hail in stinging level sheets against us.   We galloped to the edge of a deep wash-out, scrambled into it at the risk of our necks, and huddled up with our horses underneath the windward bank.   Here we remained pretty well sheltered until the storm was over.   Although it was August, the air became very cold.   The wagon was fairly caught, and would have been blown over if the top had been on; the driver and horses escaped without injury, pressing under the leeward side, the storm coming so level that they did not need a roof to protect them from the hail.   Where the center of the whirlwind struck, it did great damage, sheets of hailstones as large as pigeons' eggs striking the earth with the velocity of bullets; next day the hailstones could have been gathered up by the bushel from the heaps that lay in the bottom of the gullies and ravines.

They made camp that night at the edge of the creek whose banks had given them what little shelter there was on the plateau where the storm had struck them.   All night the rain continued in a drizzle punctuated at intervals by sharp showers.   Next morning the weather was no better, and after a morning's struggle with the wagon along the slippery trail of gumbo mud, they made what would under other circumstances have been a "dry camp." They caught the rain in their slickers and made their coffee of it, and spent another more or less uncomfortable night coiling themselves over and around a cracker-barrel which seemed to take up the whole interior of the wagon.

The weather cleared at last, and they pushed on southwestward, between Box Elder Creek and Powder River.   It was dreary country through which Lebo and his prairie schooner made their slow and creaking way, and Roosevelt and Merrifield, to whom the pace was torture, varied the monotony with hunting expeditions on one-side or the other of the parallel ruts that were the Keogh trail.   It was on one of these trips that Roosevelt learned a lesson which he remembered.

They had seen a flock of prairie chickens and Roosevelt had started off with his shot-gun to bring in a meal of them.   Suddenly Merrifield called to him.   Roosevelt took no heed.

"Don't you shoot!" cried Merrifield.

Roosevelt, with his eyes on the chickens, proceeded on his way undeterred.   Suddenly, a little beyond where he had seen the prairie fowl go to covert, a mountain lion sprang out of the brush and bounded away.   Roosevelt ran for his rifle, but he was too late.   The lion was gone.

Merrifield's eyes were blazing and his remarks were not dissimilar.   "Now, whenever I hold up my hand," he concluded, "you stop still where you are.   Understand?"

Roosevelt, who would have knocked his ranch-partner down with earnestness and conviction if he had thought Merrifield was in the wrong, meekly bore the hunter's wrath, knowing that Merrifield was in the right; and thereafter on the expedition obeyed orders with a completeness that occasionally had its comic aspects.   But Merrifield had no more complaints to make.

They plodded on, day after day, seeing no human being.   When at last they did come upon a lonely rider, Roosevelt instantly pressed him into service as a mail carrier, and wrote two letters.

The first was to his sister Anna.

I am writing this on an upturned water-keg, by our canvas-covered wagon, while the men are making tea, and the solemn old ponies are grazing round about me.   I am going to trust it to the tender mercies of a stray cowboy whom we have just met, and who may or may not post it when he gets to "Powderville," a delectable log hamlet some seventy miles north of us.

We left the Little Missouri a week ago, and have been traveling steadily some twenty or thirty miles a day ever since, through a desolate, barren-looking and yet picturesque country, part of the time rolling prairie and part of the time broken, jagged Bad Lands.   We have fared sumptuously, as I have shot a number of prairie chickens, sage hens and ducks, and a couple of fine bucks—besides missing several of the latter that I ought to have killed.

Every morning we get up at dawn, and start off by six o'clock or thereabouts, Merrifield and I riding off among the hills or ravines after game, while the battered "prairie schooner," with the two spare ponies led behind, is driven slowly along by old Lebo, who is a perfect character.   He is a weazened, wiry old fellow, very garrulous, brought up on the frontier, and a man who is never put out or disconcerted by any possible combination of accidents.   Of course we have had the usual incidents of prairie travel happen to us.   One day we rode through a driving rainstorm, at one time developing into a regular hurricane of hail and wind, which nearly upset the wagon, drove the ponies almost frantic, and forced us to huddle into a gully for protection.   The rain lasted all night and we all slept in the wagon, pretty wet and not very comfortable.   Another time a sharp gale of wind or rain struck us in the middle of the night, as we were lying out in the open (we have no tent), and we shivered under our wet blankets till morning.   We go into camp a little before sunset, tethering two or three of the horses, and letting the others range.   One night we camped in a most beautiful natural park; it was a large, grassy hill, studded thickly with small, pine-crowned chalk buttes, with very steep sides, worn into the most outlandish and fantastic shapes.   All that night the wolves kept up a weird concert around our camp—they are most harmless beasts.

The second letter was to his friend Lodge, who was in the midst of a stiff fight to hold his seat in Congress.

You must pardon the paper and general appearance of this letter, as I am writing out in camp, a hundred miles or so from any house; and indeed, whether this letter is, or is not, ever delivered depends partly on Providence, and partly on the good-will of an equally inscrutable personage, either a cowboy or a horse-thief, whom we have just met, and who has volunteered to post it—my men are watching him with anything but friendly eyes, as they think he is going to try to steal our ponies.   (To guard against this possibility he is to sleep between my foreman and myself—delectable bedfellow he'll prove, doubtless.)

I have no particular excuse for writing, beyond the fact that I would give a good deal to have a talk with you over political matters, just now.   I heartily enjoy this life, with its perfect freedom, for I am very fond of hunting, and there are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over these rolling, limitless prairies, rifle in hand, or winding my way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque deserts of the so-called Bad Lands; and yet I cannot help wishing I could be battling along with you, and I cannot regret enough the unfortunate turn in political affairs that has practically debarred me from taking any part in the fray.   I have received fifty different requests to speak in various places—among others, to open the campaign in Vermont and Minnesota.   I am glad I am not at home; I get so angry with the "mugwumps," and get to have such scorn and contempt for them, that I know I would soon be betrayed into taking some step against them, much more decided than I really ought to take.

The hunting trips which Roosevelt and Merrifield made on this side or the other of the trail had their charm, and their perils also.   There was one excursion, while the wagon was crawling up the Clear Fork of the Powder River, which for several reasons remained memorable.

The party was out of food, for the country they had been traversing was not favorable for game, and Roosevelt and Merrifield started forth one afternoon, with hope goaded by necessity, to replenish the larder.

Where the hilly country joined the river bottom, it broke off into steep bluffs, presenting an ascent before which even a bronco, it seemed, had his hesitations.   Roosevelt and his companion rode into a wash-out, and then, dismounting, led their ponies along a clay ledge from which they turned off and went straight up an almost perpendicular sandy bluff.   As Merrifield, who was in the lead, turned off the ledge, his horse, plunging in his attempt to clamber up the steep bluff, overbalanced himself, and for a second stood erect on his hind legs trying to recover his equilibrium.   As Roosevelt, who was directly beneath him, made a frantic leap with his horse to one side, Merrifield's pony rolled over backwards, turned two complete somersaults and landed with a crash at the bottom of the wash-out, feet uppermost.   They did not dare to hope that the horse would not be "done for," but he proved on investigation to be very much alive.   Without aid he struggled to his feet, looking about in a rather shame-faced fashion, apparently none the worse for his fall.   With vigorous pulling, they drew Roosevelt's pony to the top, and by the same method, augmented with coaxing and abuse, they brought his fellow to his side at last, and proceeded on their excursion.

Late in the afternoon they came on three blacktail deer.   Roosevelt took a running shot at two hundred yards and missed, took another and missed again, though this time he managed to turn the animals in their flight.   They disappeared round the shoulder of a bluff, and Roosevelt, suspecting that they would reappear when they had recovered from their terror, elevated his sights to four hundred yards and waited.   It was not long before one of the three stepped out.   Roosevelt raised his rifle.   The shot, at that distance, was almost impossible, but there was zest in the trying.   Suddenly another buck stepped out and walked slowly toward the first.   Roosevelt waited until the heads were in line and fired.   Over went both bucks.   Roosevelt paced off the distance.   It was just four hundred and thirty-one long paces.

It was while they were ascending the Clear Fork of the Powder that they discovered a band of Indians camped a short distance from the place where they themselves had halted for the night.

"I'm going over to see those Indians," remarked Merrifield after dinner that evening.

"What do you want to go over there for?" asked Roosevelt.

"Out in this country," responded the hunter dryly, "you always want to know who your neighbors are."

They rode over together.   The Indians were Cheyennes.   Experience had taught Merrifield that nothing was so conducive to peaceful relations with a red neighbor as to prove to him that you could beat him at his own game.   He consequently suggested a shooting-match.   The Indians agreed.   To Roosevelt's astonishment they proved to be very bad shots, and not only Merrifield, but Roosevelt himself, completely outclassed them in the competition.   The Indians were noticeably impressed.   Merrifield and Roosevelt rode back to their camp conscious that so far as those particular Indians were concerned no anxiety need disturb their slumbers.

"Indians," remarked Merrifield later, "are the best judges of human nature in the world.   When an Indian finds out that you are a good shot, he will leave you absolutely alone to go and come as you like.   Indians are just like white men.   They are not going to start something when they know you can out-shoot them."

For three weeks they traveled through desolation before they came at last to the goal of their journey.   At the foot of the first steep rise, on the banks of Crazy Woman Creek, a few miles south of the army post at Buffalo, they left the wagon, and following an old Indian trail started into the mountains, driving their pack-ponies before them.

It was pleasant, after three burning weeks of treeless prairie, to climb into the shadowy greenness of the mountains.   All about them was the music of running water, where clear brooks made their way through deep gorges and under interlacing boughs.   Groves of great pines rose from grassy meadows and fringed the glades that lay here and there like quiet parks in the midst of the wilderness.

The hunters pitched their camp at last in a green valley beside a boisterous mountain brook.   The weather was clear, with thin ice coursing the dark waters of the mountain tarns, and now and again slight snowfalls that made the forest gleam and glisten in the moonlight like fairyland.   Through the frosty air they could hear the vibrant, musical notes of the bull elk far off, calling to the cows or challenging one another.

No country could have been better adapted to still hunting than the great, pine-clad mountains, studded with open glades.   Roosevelt loved the thrill of the chase, but he loved no less the companionship of the majestic trees and the shy wild creatures which sprang across his path or ran with incredible swiftness along the overhanging boughs.   Moving on noiseless moccasins he caught alluring glimpses of the inner life of the mountains.

The days passed very pleasantly in the crystal air and vibrant solitude of their mountain hunting grounds.   The fare that old Lebo provided was excellent, and to the three men, who had for weeks been accustomed to make small fires from dried brush or from sagebrush roots laboriously dug out of the ground, it was a treat to sit at night before the roaring pine-logs.

"We've come to a land at last," remarked the quaint old teamster with satisfaction, "where the wood grows on trees."

They shot several elk promptly, but the grizzlies they were after eluded them.   At last, after a week Merrifield, riding into camp one dusk, with a shout announced that he had come upon grizzly-bear signs some ten miles away.   They shifted camp at once.

That afternoon, on a crag overlooking a wild ravine, Roosevelt shot another great bull elk.   To Merrifield it seemed as though the elk might constitute a day's satisfactory achievement.   But Roosevelt was indefatigable.   "Now," he said with gusto, contemplating the magnificent antlers, "we'll go out to-night and get a bear."

But that night they found nothing.   Returning next day with Merrifield for the carcass of the elk however, they found that a grizzly had been feeding on it.   They crouched in hiding for the bear's return.   Night fell, owls began to hoot dismally from the tops of the tall trees, and a lynx wailed from the depths of the woods, but the bear did not come.

Early next morning they were again at the elk carcass.   The bear had evidently eaten his fill during the night.   His tracks were clear, and they followed them noiselessly over the yielding carpet of moss and pine-needles, to an elk-trail leading into a tangled thicket of young spruces.

Suddenly Merrifield sank on one knee, turning half round, his face aflame with excitement.   Roosevelt strode silently past him, his gun "at the ready."

There, not ten steps off, was the great bear slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces.   He had heard the hunters and reared himself on his haunches.   Seeing them, he dropped again on all-fours, and the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders bristled as he turned toward them.

Roosevelt aimed fairly between the small, glittering eyes, and fired.

Doubtless my face was pretty white (Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" a week later, ) but the blue barrel was as steady as a rock as I glanced along it until I could see the top of the bead fairly between his two sinister-looking eyes; as I pulled the trigger I jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if he charged, but it was needless, for the great brute was struggling in his death agony, and as you will see when I bring home his skin, the bullet hole was as exactly between his eyes as if I had measured the distance with a carpenter's rule.

At last, one cool morning, when the branches of the evergreens were laden with the feathery snow that had fallen overnight, the hunters struck camp, and in single file, with the pack-ponies laden with the trophies of the hunt, moved down through the woods and across the canyons to the edge of the great table-land, then slowly down the steep slope to its foot, where they found the canvas-topped wagon.   Next day they set out on the three-hundred-mile journey home to the Maltese Cross.

For once I have made a very successful hunting trip (Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Fort McKinney).    I have just come out of the mountains and will start at once for the Little Missouri, which I expect to reach in a fortnight, and a week afterwards will be on my way home.   Merrifield killed two bears and three elk; he has been an invaluable guide for game, and of course the real credit for the bag rests with him, for he found most of the animals.   But I really shot well this time.   Merrifield, who is a perfectly fearless and reckless man, has no more regard for a grizzly bear than he has for a jack-rabbit; the last one he killed, he wished to merely break his leg with the first shot "so as to see what he'd do." I had not at all this feeling, and fully realized that we were hunting dangerous game; still I never made steadier shooting than at the grizzlies.   I had grand sport with the elk, too, and the woods fairly rang with my shouting when I brought down my first lordly bull, with great branching antlers; but after I had begun bear-killing, other sport seemed tame.

So I have had good sport; and enough excitement and fatigue to prevent overmuch thought; and, moreover, I have at last been able to sleep well at night.   But unless I was bear-hunting all the time I am afraid I should soon get as restless with this life as with the life at home.