Part 23

Two shots rang out from the bar-room.

He hesitated. He had made it a point to avoid centers of disturbance such as this, but the night was chilly and there was no place else to go. He entered, with misgivings.

Inside the room were several men, beside the bartender, all, with one exception, "wearing the kind of smile," as Roosevelt said, in telling of the occasion, "worn by men who are making-believe to like what they don't like." The exception was a shabby-looking individual in a broad-brimmed hat who was walking up and down the floor talking and swearing. He had a cocked gun in each hand. A clock on the wall had two holes in its face, which accounted for the shots Roosevelt had heard.

It occurred to Roosevelt that the man was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous, man-killer type; but a would-be "bad man," a bully who for the moment was having things all his own way.

"Four-eyes!" he shouted as he spied the newcomer.

There was a nervous laugh from the other men who were evidently sheepherders. Roosevelt joined in the laugh.

"Four-eyes is going to treat!" shouted the man with the guns.

There was another laugh. Under cover of it Roosevelt walked quickly to a chair behind the stove and sat down, hoping to escape further notice.

But the bully was not inclined to lose what looked like an opportunity to make capital as a "bad man" at the expense of a harmless "dude" in a fringed buckskin suit. He followed Roosevelt across the room.

"Four-eyes is going to treat," he repeated.

Roosevelt passed the comment off as a joke. But the bully leaned over Roosevelt, swinging his guns, and ordered him, in language suited to the surroundings, "to set up the drinks for the crowd."

For a moment Roosevelt sat silent, letting the filthy storm rage round him. It occurred to him in a flash that he was face to face with a crisis vastly more significant to his future than the mere question whether or not he should let a drunken bully have his way. If he backed down, he said to himself, he would, when the news of it spread abroad, have more explaining to do than he would care to undertake. It was altogether a case of "Make good now, or quit!"

The bully roared, "Set up the drinks!"

It struck Roosevelt that the man was foolish to stand so near, with his heels together. "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," he said and rose to his feet, looking past his tormentor.

As he rose he struck quick and hard with his right just to one side of the point of the jaw, hitting with his left as he straightened out, and then again with his right.

The bully fired both guns, but the bullets went wide as he fell like a tree, striking the corner of the bar with his head. It occurred to Roosevelt that it was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and he watched, ready to drop with his knees on the man's ribs at the first indication of activity. But the bully was senseless. The sheepherders, now loud in their denunciations, hustled the would-be desperado into a shed.

Roosevelt had his dinner in a corner of the dining-room away from the windows, and he went to bed without a light. But the man in the shed made no move to recover his shattered prestige. When he came to, he went to the station, departing on a freight, and was seen no more.

The news of Roosevelt's encounter in the "rum-hole" in Mingusville spread as only news can spread in a country of few happenings and much conversation. It was the kind of story that the Bad Lands liked to hear, and the spectacles and the fringed buckskin suit gave it an added attraction. "Four-eyes" became, overnight, "Old Four Eyes," which was another matter.

"Roosevelt was regarded by the cowboys as a good deal of a joke until after the saloon incident," said Frank Greene, a local official of the Northern Pacific, many years later. "After that it was different."

Roosevelt departed for the East on July 1st. On the 4th, the Mandan Pioneer published an editorial about him which expressed, in exuberant Dakota fashion, ideas which may well have been stirring in Roosevelt's own mind.

Our friends west of us, at Little Missouri, are now being made happy by the presence among them of that rare bird, a political reformer. By his enemies he is called a dude, an aristocrat, a theorist, an upstart, and the rest, but it would seem, after all, that Mr. Roosevelt has something in him, or he would never have succeeded in stirring up the politicians of the Empire State. Mr. Roosevelt finds, doubtless, the work of a reformer to be a somewhat onerous one, and it is necessary, for his mental and physical health, that he should once and again leave the scene of his political labors and refresh himself with a little ozone, such as is to be found pure and unadulterated in the Bad Lands. Mr. Roosevelt is not one of the fossilized kind of politicians who believes in staying around the musty halls of the Albany capitol all the time. He thinks, perhaps, that the man who lives in those halls, alternating between them and the Delavan House, is likely to be troubled with physical dyspepsia and mental carbuncles. Who knows but that John Kelly might to-day be an honored member of society--might be known outside of New York as a noble Democratic leader--if he had been accustomed to spend some of his time in the great and glorious West? Tammany Hall, instead of being to-day the synonym for all that is brutal and vulgar in politics, might be to-day another name for all that is fresh, and true, ozonic and inspiring in the political arena. If the New York politicians only knew it, they might find it a great advantage to come once or twice a year to West Dakota, to blow the cobwebs from their eyes, and get new ambitions, new aspirations, and new ideas. Mr. Roosevelt, although young, can teach wisdom to the sophisticated machine politicians, who know not the value to an Easterner of a blow among the fresh, fair hills of this fair territory.

One wonders whether the editor is not, in part, quoting Roosevelt's own words. No doubt, Roosevelt was beginning already to realize what he was gaining in the Bad Lands.

Roosevelt spent three weeks or more in the East; at New York where the politicians were after him, at Oyster Bay where he was building a new house, and at Chestnut Hill near Boston, which was closely connected with the memories of his brief married life. Everywhere the reporters tried to extract from him some expression on the political campaign, but on that subject he was reticent. He issued a statement in Boston, declaring his intention to vote the Republican ticket, but further than that he refused to commit himself. But he talked of the Bad Lands to any one who would listen.

I like the West and I like ranching life [he said to a reporter of the New York Tribune who interviewed him at his sister's house a day or two before his return to Dakota]. On my last trip I was just three weeks at the ranch and just twenty-one days, of sixteen hours each, in the saddle, either after cattle, taking part in the "round-up," or hunting. It would electrify some of my friends who have accused me of representing the kid-gloved element in politics if they could see me galloping over the plains, day in and day out, clad in a buckskin shirt and leather chaparajos, with a big sombrero on my head. For good, healthy exercise I would strongly recommend some of our gilded youth to go West and try a short course of riding bucking ponies, and assist at the branding of a lot of Texas steers.

There is something charmingly boyish in his enthusiasm over his own manly valor and his confidence in its "electrifying" effect.

Roosevelt wrote to Sewall immediately after his arrival in the East, telling him that he would take him West with him. Toward the end of July, Sewall appeared in New York with his stalwart nephew in tow. The contract they entered into with Roosevelt was merely verbal. There was to be a three-year partnership. If business were prosperous, they were to have a share in it. If it were not, they were to have wages, whatever happened.

"What do you think of that, Bill?" asked Roosevelt.

"Why," answered Bill in his slow, Maine way, "I think that's a one-sided trade. But if you can stand it, I guess we can."