Part 40

There was a shout from the cowboys. By general consent the joke was declared as not to be on the "four-eyed tenderfoot."

Most of the men sooner or later accepted Roosevelt as an equal, in spite of his toothbrush and his habit of shaving; but there was one man, a surly Texan, who insisted on "picking on" Roosevelt as a dude. Roosevelt laughed. But the man continued, in season and out of season, to make him the butt of his gibes.

It occurred to the object of all this attention that the Texan was evidently under the impression that the "dude" was also a coward. Roosevelt decided that, for the sake of general harmony, that impression had better be corrected at once.

One evening, when the man was being particularly offensive, Roosevelt strode up to him.

"You're talking like an ass!" he said sharply. "Put up or shut up! Fight now, or be friends!"

The Texan stared, his shoulder dropped a little, and he shifted his feet. "I didn't mean no harm," he said. "Make it friends."

They made it friends.

XVII

At a round-up on the Gily, One sweet mornin' long ago, Ten of us was throwed right freely By a hawse from Idaho. And we thought he'd go a-beggin' For a man to break his pride, Till, a-hitchin' up one leggin', Boastful Bill cut loose and cried--

"I'm an on'ry proposition for to hurt; I fulfill my earthly mission with a quirt; I kin ride the highest liver 'Tween the Gulf and Powder River, And I'll break this thing as easy as I'd flirt."

So Bill climbed the Northern Fury, And they mangled up the air, Till a native of Missouri Would have owned his brag was fair. Though the plunges kep' him reelin' And the wind it flapped his shirt, Loud above the hawse's squealin' We could hear our friend assert--

"I'm the one to take such rakin's as a joke. Some one hand me up the makin's of a smoke! If you think my fame needs bright'nin', Why, I'll rope a streak of lightnin', And I'll cinch 'im up and spur 'im till he's broke."

Then one caper of repulsion Broke that hawse's back in two. Cinches snapped in the convulsion; Skyward man and saddle flew. Up he mounted, never laggin', While we watched him through our tears, And his last thin bit of braggin' Came a-droppin' to our ears--

"If you'd ever watched my habits very close, You would know I've broke such rabbits by the gross. I have kep' my talent hidin'; I'm too good for earthly ridin', And I'm off to bust the lightnin'--Adios!"

Badger CLARK

If Roosevelt anticipated that he would have trouble with his untamed broncos, he was not disappointed. "The effort," as he subsequently remarked, "both to ride them, and to look as if I enjoyed doing so, on some cool morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered round 'to see whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off,' doubtless was of benefit to me, but lacked much of being enjoyable."

One morning, when the round-up "outfits" were camped on the Logging Camp Range, south of the Big Ox Bow, Roosevelt had a memorable struggle with one of his four broncos. The camp was directly behind the ranch-house (which the Eaton brothers owned), and close by was a chasm some sixty feet deep, a great gash in the valley which the torrents of successive springs had through the centuries cut there. The horse had to be blindfolded before he would allow a saddle to be put on him.

Lincoln Lang was among the cowboys who stood in an admiring circle, hoping for the worst.

"Mr. Roosevelt mounted, with the blind still on the horse," Lang said, telling the story afterward, "so that the horse stood still, although with a well-defined hump on his back, which, as we all knew very well, meant trouble to come. As soon as Mr. Roosevelt got himself fixed in the saddle, the men who were holding the horse pulled off the blind and turned him loose."

Here Bill Dantz, who was also in the "gallery," takes up the story:

"The horse did not buck. He started off quietly, in fact, until he was within a few feet of the chasm. Then he leapt in the air like a shot deer, and came down with all four feet buckled under him, jumped sideways and went in the air a second time, twisting ends."

Here Lang resumes the narrative:

"Almost any kind of a bucking horse is hard to ride, but the worst of all are the 'sunfishers' who change end for end with each jump, maintaining the turning movement in one direction so that the effect is to get the rider dizzy. This particular horse was of that type, and almost simultaneous with the removal of the blind he was in gyroscopic action.

"I am aware that Mr. Roosevelt did not like to 'pull leather,' as the term goes, but this time at least he had to, but for the matter of that there were not many who would not have done the same thing. As nearly as I can remember, he got the horn of his saddle in one hand and the cantle in the other, then swung his weight well into the inside and hung like a leech. Of course, it took sheer grit to do it, because in thus holding himself tight to the saddle with his hands, he had to take full punishment, which can be avoided only when one has acquired the knack of balancing and riding loosely.

"As it was, his glasses and six-shooter took the count within the first few jumps, but in one way or another he hung to it himself, until some of the boys rode up and got the horse headed into a straightaway by the liberal use of their quirts. Once they got him running, it was all over, of course. If I remember right, Mr. Roosevelt rode the horse on a long circle that morning and brought him in safe, hours later, as good as gold."

"'Very true, very true,' said Roosevelt, 'but I rode him all the way from the tip of his ear to the end of his tail.'"--Rev. D. B. Thompson, Syracuse, N.Y.]

The horse which Roosevelt had called "Ben Butler" was not so easily subdued. It was "Ben Butler's" special antic to fall over backward. He was a sullen, evil-eyed brute, with a curve in his nose and a droop in his nostrils, which gave him a ridiculous resemblance to the presidential candidate of the Anti-Monopoly Party. He was a great man-killing bronco, with a treacherous streak, and Roosevelt had put him in his "string" against the protests of his own men. "That horse is a plumb outlaw," Bill Dantz declared, "an' outlaws is never safe. They kinda git bad and bust out at any time. He will sure kill you, sooner or later, if you try to ride him."

One raw, chilly morning, Roosevelt, who had been ordered to ride "the outside circle," chose "Ben Butler" for his mount, because he knew the horse was tireless and could stand the long, swift ride better than any other pony he had. As Roosevelt mounted him, the horse reared and fell over backward. He had done that before, but this time he fell on his rider. Roosevelt, with a sharp pain in his shoulder, extricated himself and mounted once more. But the horse now refused to go in any direction, backward or forward.