Chapter 24 
(A troop of Rough Riders — Premonitions of trouble — The hold-up — The Cœur d'Alênes — Hunting white goats — John Willis — Elkhorn breaks up — Facing east.)

The road is wide and the stars are out, and the breath of night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet,
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,
And leave the splendor of out-of-doors for a human dwelling-place.

Joyce Kilmer

A few days after the celebration in Dickinson.   Roosevelt went East.   The political sirens were calling.   He was restless for something to do that would bring into service the giant's strength of which he was becoming increasingly conscious, and, incidentally, would give him an opportunity to win distinction.   He had been half inclined to accept an offer from Mayor Grace of New York to head the Board of Health, but Lodge, as Roosevelt wrote to his sister Corinne, thought it "infra dig," and he reluctantly rejected it.   There were rumors in the air that he might have the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York if he wanted it.   He went East, possibly for the purpose of investigating them, returning to Elkhorn early in August.

Roosevelt was unquestionably restless.   He loved the wild country, but he had tasted all the various joys and hardships it had to offer, and, although he said again and again that if he had no ties of affection and of business to bind him to the East, he would make Dakota his permanent residence, down in his heart he was hungering for a wider field of action.   The frontier had been a challenge to his manhood; now that he had stood every test it had presented to him, its glamour faded and he looked about for a sharper challenge and more exacting labors.

For a few weeks that August he half hoped that he might find them on the field of battle.   Several American citizens, among them a man named Cutting, had been arrested in Mexico, apparently illegally, and Bayard, who was President Cleveland's Secretary of State, had been forced more than once to make vigorous protests.   Relations became strained.   The anti-Mexican feeling on the border spread over the whole of Texas, regiments were organized, and the whole unsettled region between the Missouri and the Rockies, which was inclined to look upon Mexico as the natural next morsel in the fulfillment of the nation's "manifest destiny," began to dream of war.

Roosevelt, seeing how matters were tending, set about to organize a troop of cavalry in the Bad Lands.   He notified the Secretary of War that it stood at the service of the Government.

I have written to Secretary Endicott (Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on August 10th), offering to try to raise some companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of trouble with Mexico.   Won't you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand that I might not hear of things for a week.   I have not the least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow continually smaller, I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up.   The cowboys were all eager for war, not caring much with whom.   They were fond of adventure and to tell the truth (as Roosevelt wrote later), they were by no means averse to the prospect of plunder.   News from the outside world came to us very irregularly, and often in distorted form, so that we began to think we might get involved in a conflict not only with Mexico, but with England also.   One evening at my ranch the men began talking over English soldiers, so I got down "Napier" and read them several extracts from his descriptions of the fighting in the Spanish peninsula, also recounting as well as I could the great deeds of the British cavalry from Waterloo to Balaklava, and finishing up by describing from memory the fine appearance, the magnificent equipment, and the superb horses of the Household Cavalry and of a regiment of hussars I had once seen.

All of this produced much the same effect on my listeners that the sight of Marmion's cavalcade produced in the minds of the Scotch moss-troopers on the eve of Flodden; and at the end, one of them, who had been looking into the fire and rubbing his hands together, said, with regretful emphasis, "Oh, how I would like to kill one of them!"

Roosevelt went to Bismarck and found the Territorial Governor friendly to his project.

Hon.   Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, the famous statesman, ranchman, and hunter (runs the story in the Bismarck Tribune), has been making inquiries since the announcement of the Mexican difficulties as to the available volunteer troops in the Northwest, and in the event of action being required, it is confidently believed Mr. Roosevelt would tender to the Government the services of an entire regiment of cowboys, under his command.   At a recent visit here he was assured of two companies of Dakota cowboys to accompany him.   Mr. Roosevelt has been the captain of a company of militia in New York, and no better man could be found to lead the daring cowboys to a seat of war and no commander would have more effective troops.

The war cloud blew over.   Roosevelt evidently received a letter from Lodge explaining that the Mexican incident was of a trivial nature, for, on the 20th of August, he wrote him rather apologetically:

I wrote as regards Mexico qua cowboy, not qua statesman; I know little of the question, but conclude Bayard is wrong, for otherwise it would be phenomenal; he ought to be idolized by the mugwumps.   If a war had come off, I would surely have had behind me as utterly reckless a set of desperadoes as ever sat in the saddle.

It is no use saying that I would like a chance at something I thought I could really do; at present I see nothing whatever ahead.   However, there is the hunting in the fall, at any rate.

The season which began with Finnegan and Company was richer in varied experiences than it was in financial returns.   Roosevelt recognized that there were already too many cattlemen in the business to make large profits possible.

In certain sections of the West (he told a reporter of the Mandan Pioneer in July) the losses this year are enormous, owing to the drought and overstocking.   Each steer needs from fifteen to twenty-five acres, but they are crowded on very much thicker, and the cattlemen this season have paid the penalty.   Between the drought, the grasshoppers, and the late frosts, ice forming as late as June 10th, there is not a green thing in all the region I have been over.   A stranger would think a donkey could not live there.   The drought has been very bad throughout the region, and there is not a garden in all of it.

Sewall was aware of that fact to his sorrow, for the garden he himself had planted and tended with infinite care had died between dawn and dusk on that memorable Fourth of July on which Roosevelt addressed the citizens of Dickinson.

They say dry years are best for cattle (he wrote his brother).   If so, this must be a nice one and they do seem to be doing well so far, but if we have much snow next winter it looks to me as if they would have short picking.

The prospect was not engaging.   But, though Roosevelt was not getting much financial return on his rather generous investment, he was getting other things, for him at this time of far greater value.   He who had been weak in body and subject to racking illnesses had in these three years developed a constitution as tough and robust as an Indian's.   He had achieved something beside this.   Living, talking, working, facing danger, and suffering hardships with the Sewalls and the Dows, the Ferrises and the Langs, and Merrifield and Packard and Bill Dantz and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones, and countless other stalwart citizens of the Bad Lands, he had come very close to the heart of the "plain American." He loved the companions of his joys and labors, and they in turn regarded him with an admiration and devotion which was all the deeper because of the amazing fact that he had come from the ranks of the "dudes."

They admired him for his courage and his feats of endurance, but, being tender-hearted themselves, they loved him for his tenderness, which had a way that they approved, of expressing itself, not in words, but in deeds.   Bill Sewall had a little girl of three, "a forlorn little mite," as Roosevelt described her to "Bamie," and it was Roosevelt who sent the word East which transported the child, that had neither playmates nor toys, into a heaven of delight with picture blocks and letter blocks, a little horse and a rag doll.

His warm human sympathy found expression in a dramatic manner a day or two before his departure late that August for the Cœur d'Alênes.   He was rounding up some cattle with his men near Sentinel Butte, twenty miles west of Medora, when word came that a cowpuncher named George Frazier had been struck by lightning and killed, and that his body had been taken to Medora.   Frazier belonged to the "outfit" of the Marquis de Mores, but he had worked for Roosevelt two years previous, digging post-holes with George Myers in June, 1884.   Roosevelt knew that the man had no relatives in that part of the world, to see that a fitting disposition of the body was made, and instantly expressed his determination to take charge of the arrangements for the funeral.

"We will flag the next train and go to Medora," he said.

The next train, they knew, was "No.   2," the finest train running over the road.   It did not, on the surface, look probable that it would stop at a desolate spot in the prairie to permit a handful of cowboys to get on.   "They won't stop here for nuthin'," one of the men insisted.   "By Godfrey, they'll have to stop!" Roosevelt retorted, and sent a man down to the track to flag the train.

The engineer saw the warning signal and slowed down, but did not stop.   The cowboys dashed alongside the engine, firing shots in the air.   The engineer, believing that he was being held up by bandits and that the next shot might be aimed at himself, brought the train to a standstill.   There was a wild scramble among the passengers; even the train crew expected the worst.   Valuables were hurriedly secreted.   "I don't believe," remarked George Myers afterward, "some of the passengers ever did find all the things that was hid away."

Leaving their horses in charge of one of the cowboys, Roosevelt, followed by Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Myers, and Johnny Goodall, boarded the train.   The conductor was resigned by this time to a hold-up; but when he discovered the actual nature of their mission, he flew into a rage and threatened to put them all off.

"You be good," cried Roosevelt, "or you'll be the one to get off!" His vigorous advice was supplemented by impressive injunctions from other members of the party.   When they finally did get off, it was at Medora.

A salvo of profanity from the train crew followed them.   "You'll hear from this!" thundered the conductor.   They did not hear from it.   It would not have greatly disturbed Roosevelt if they had.   He opened a subscription to cover the expenses of the funeral.   Everybody "chipped in," and the unfortunate received the burial that a God-fearing cowpuncher deserved.

Roosevelt went with Merrifield west to the Cœur d'Alênes, in northern Idaho, almost immediately after Frazier's funeral.   He was to meet a hunter named John Willis, who was to take him and Merrifield out after white goat.   He had never met Willis, but his correspondence with him had suggested possibilities of interest beside the chase.   Roosevelt had written Willis in July that he had heard of his success in pursuit of the game of the high peaks.   "If I come out," he concluded, "do you think it will be possible for me to get a goat?"

The answer he received was written on the back of his own letter and was quite to the point.   "If you can't shoot any better than you can write, I don't think it will be."

Roosevelt's reply came by wire.   "Consider yourself engaged."

It would have been strange if, after this epistolary exchange, the two men should not have been rather curious about each other's personalities.   Roosevelt, descending from the train at a way-station in the mountains, found a huge, broad-shouldered man his own age, waiting for him, The man was not over-cordial.   He did not, he later admitted, regard Roosevelt's corduroy knee-pants with favor.

Roosevelt, knowing how to catch a hunter, showed Willis his guns.   "Will you go on a trip with me?" he asked.

"I am going to start out day after to-morrow for a three or four weeks' hunt," Willis answered.   "If you want to go along as my guest, you are welcome to.   But I want to tell you before we go, I won't take any booze."

"Why do you say that?" asked Roosevelt, thoroughly interested in this strange creature.

"Why, I've an idea you are some brewer's son who's made a lot of money.   You look as if you'd been raised on beer."

Roosevelt roared with delight.   "I want to make a contract with you," he said.   "I will give you twenty-five dollars for everything that you show me in the way of game."

"I don't want it," said Willis gruffly.

"Then I will buy the grub."

"All the grub I'll take along won't amount to more than three or four dollars—a hundred pounds of flour, twenty-five pounds of bacon, dried apples, and black tea.   That's all you'll get."

"By George," cried Roosevelt, "that's fine!"

"You can't stand a trip like this," Willis remarked with deadly frankness.

"You take me on the trip and I'll show you.   I can train myself to walk as far as you can."

Willis doubted it and said so.

They camped far up in the mountains, hunting day after day through the deep woods just below the timber-line.   Roosevelt and Merrifield were accustomed to life in the saddle, and although they had varied it with an occasional long walk after deer or sheep, they were quite unable to cope with Willis when it came to mountaineering.   The climbing was hard, the footing was treacherous, and the sharp rocks tore their moccasins into ribbons.   There was endless underbrush, thickets of prickly balsam or laurel—but there were no goats.

At last, one mid-afternoon, as he was supporting himself against a tree, halfway across a long landslide, Roosevelt suddenly discovered one of the beasts he was after, a short distance away, making his way down a hill, looking for all the world like a handsome tame billy.   He was in a bad position for a shot, and as he twisted himself about he dislodged some pebbles.   The goat, instantly alert, fled.   Roosevelt fired, but the shot went low, only breaking a fore-leg.

The three men raced and scrambled after the fleeing animal.   It leaped along the hillside for nearly a mile, then turned straight up the mountain.   They followed the bloody trail where it went up the sharpest and steepest places, skirting the cliffs and precipices.

Roosevelt, intent on the quarry, was not what Bill Sewall would have called "over-cautious" in the pursuit.

He was running along a shelving ledge when a piece of loose slate with which the ledge was covered slipped under his foot.   He clutched at the rock wall, he tried to fling himself back, but he could not recover himself.

He went head first over the precipice.

Roosevelt's luck was with him that day.   He fell forty or fifty feet into a tall pine, bounced through it, and landed finally, not uncomfortably, in a thick balsam, somewhat shaken and scratched, but with no bones broken and with his rifle still clutched in his hand.

From above came the hoarse voice of John Willis.   "Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No," answered Roosevelt, a trifle breathless.

"Then come on!"

Roosevelt "came on," scrambling back up the steep height he had so swiftly descended, and raced after the guide.   He came upon the goat at last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot too high, cutting the skin above the spine.   The goat plunged downhill and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal until darkness covered the trail.

"Now," said Willis, "I expect you are getting tired."

"By George," said Roosevelt, "how far have we gone?"

"About fifteen or twenty miles up and down the mountains."

"If we get that goat to-morrow, I will give you a hundred dollars."

"I don't want a hundred dollars.   But we'll get the goat."

Roosevelt brought him down the next day at noon.

Roosevelt spent two weeks with Willis in the mountains.   It was a rich experience for the Easterner, but for the tall Missourian it proved to be even more.   Willis was a child of the frontier, who had knocked about between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border ever since his boyhood, doing a hundred different things upon which the law and civilized men were supposed to look with disapproval.   [Footnote 22: Willis was a great teller of tales.   See Hunting the Grizzly, by Theodore Roosevelt (The Sagamore Series, G.   P.   Putnam's Sons, page 216 ff.), for the most lurid of his yarns.   End Footnote]

To this odd child of nature, bred in the wilderness, Roosevelt opened the door to a world which John Willis did not know existed.

"He was a revelation to me," said Willis long afterward.   "He was so well posted on everything.   He was the first man that I had ever met that really knew anything.   I had just been with a lot of roughnecks, cowpunchers, horse-thieves, and that sort.   Roosevelt would explain things to me.   He told me a lot of things."

Among other things, Roosevelt told Willis some of his experiences in the New York Assembly.   Huge sums had been offered him to divert him from this course or that which certain interests regarded as dangerous to their freedom of action.   To Willis it was amazing that Roosevelt should not have accepted what was offered to him, and he began to be aware of certain standards of virtue and honor.

To Roosevelt the trip was a splendid adventure; to Willis it proved a turning-point in his life.   [Footnote 23: When Roosevelt came to Helena in 1911, John Willis was one of the crowd that greeted him.   Willis clapped Roosevelt on the back familiarly.   "I made a man out of you," he cried.   Quick as a flash, came Roosevelt's retort: "Yes.   John made a man out of me, but I made a Christian out of John.   End Footnote]

Roosevelt returned to Elkhorn the middle of September, to find that Sewall and Dow had come to a momentous decision.   Dow had, during his absence, taken a train-load of cattle to Chicago, and had found that the best price he was able to secure for the hundreds of cattle he had taken to the market there was less by ten dollars a head than the sum it had cost to raise and transport them.   Sewall and Dow had "figured things over," and had come to the conclusion that the sooner they terminated their contract with Roosevelt the less money he would lose.   They recognized that they themselves were safe enough, for by the "one-sided trade," as Sewall called it, which Roosevelt had made with them, they were to share in whatever profits there were, and in case there were no profits were to receive wages.   But neither of them enjoyed the part he was playing in what seemed to both of them a piece of hopeless business.

Roosevelt himself had been wondering whether it was wise to allow the two backwoodsmen to continue in an enterprise in which the future was so clouded and full of the possibilities of disaster.   He himself might win through, and he might not.   The thing was a gamble, in any event.   He could afford to take the risk.   Sewall and Dow could not.

He had written "Bamie," earlier in the summer, that he was "curious to see how the fall sales would come out." Dow's report completely satisfied his curiosity.

He called the two men into his room.   He told them that he too had been "figuring up things." He would stand by his agreement, he said, if, facing an uncertain outcome, they wished to remain.   But, if they were willing, he thought they had "better quit the business and go back."

Sewall and Dow did not hesitate.   They said they would go back.

"I never wanted to fool away anybody else's money," Sewall added.   "Never had any of my own to fool away."

"How soon can you go?" asked Roosevelt.

Sewall turned and went into the kitchen "to ask the womenfolks." It happened that three or four weeks previous the population of Elkhorn had been increased by two.   Baby sons had arrived in the same week in the families of both Sewall and Dow.   The ministrations of Dr.   Stickney had not been available, and the two mothers had survived because they had the constitutions of frontierswomen rather than because they had the benefit of the nursing of the termagant who was Jerry Tompkins's wife.   The babies—known to their families, and to the endless succession of cowboys who came from near and far to inspect them, as "the Bad Lands babies"—were just six weeks old.

"The womenfolks say they can go in three weeks," Sewall reported.

"Three weeks from to-day," answered Roosevelt, "we go."

And so the folks from Maine, who had made a rough and simple house in the wilderness into a home, began to gather together their belongings and pack up.   Wise old Bill Sewall had been right.

"You'll come to feel different," he had said, two years before, when Roosevelt had been lonely and despondent.   "And then you won't want to stay here."

Life, which for a while had seemed to Roosevelt so gray and dismal, had, in fact, slowly taken on new color.   At times he had imagined that Dakota might satisfy him for a permanent residence, but that fancy, born of grief and disappointment, had vanished in the radiance of a new happiness.   He had become engaged to Edith Carow, and he knew that the world for him and for her was that busy world where his friends were, and hers, and where he and she had been boy and girl together.

The lure of politics, moreover, was calling him.   And yet, during those last weeks at Elkhorn, he was not at all sure that he wished to reënter the turmoil.   He rode out into the prairie one day for a last "session" with Bill Sewall shortly before the three weeks were up.   He told Sewall he had an idea he ought to go into law.

"You'd be a good lawyer," said Bill, "but I think you ought to go into politics.   Good men like you ought to go into politics.   If you do, and if you live, I think you'll be President."

Roosevelt laughed.   "That's looking a long way ahead."

"It may look a long way ahead to you," Sewall declared stoutly, "but it isn't as far ahead as it's been for some of the men who got there."

"I'm going home now," said Roosevelt, "to see about a job my friends want me to take.   I don't think I want it.   It will get me into a row.   And I want to write."

An Easterner, whose name has slipped from the record, hearing possibly that Roosevelt was making changes in the management of his herds, offered to buy all of Roosevelt's cattle.   Roosevelt refused.   The man offered to buy Merrifield's share, then Sylvane's.   Both rejected the offer.   The herd had increased greatly in value since they had established it.   The coming spring, they said, they would begin to get great returns....

"September 25, 1886," runs an item in Bill Sewall's account-book, "squared accounts with Theodore Roosevelt." On the same day Roosevelt made a contract with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris by which he agreed, as the contract runs, "to place all his cattle branded with the Maltese cross and all his she-stock and bulls branded with the elkhorn and triangle, some twenty-odd hundred head in all, valued at sixty thousand dollars," in charge of Ferris and Merrifield on shares for the term of four years; the men of the Maltese Cross agreeing on their part to take charge of the Elkhorn steer brand which was Roosevelt's exclusive property.

Then, knowing that his cattle were in good hands, Roosevelt once more turned his face to the East, conscious in his heart, no doubt, that, however soon he might return, or however often, the Dakota idyl was ended.