Part 58

Bill was willing. The passage was from the first chapter of the biography of the Tennessee statesman and dealt with the attitude of the frontier toward law and order and the rights of "the other fellow." Bill gave his approval and the passage stood.

Day after day Roosevelt pushed forward into his subject, writing with zest, tempered by cool judgment. He did not permit an occasional trip to Medora to interrupt his work. He had a room over Joe Ferris's store, and after Joe and his wife had gone to bed, he would throw open the doors of the kitchen and the dining-room and walk to and fro hammering out his sentences.

"Every once in a while," said Joe later, "everything would be quiet, then after fifteen minutes or so he would walk again as though he was walkin' for wages."

Mrs. Ferris, who had a maternal regard for his welfare, was always careful to see that a pitcher of milk was in his room before the night's labors commenced; for Roosevelt had a way of working into the small hours. "The eight-hour law," he remarked to Lodge, "does not apply to cowboys"; nor, he might have added, to writers endeavoring to raise the wherewithal to pay for a hunting trip to the Coeur d'Alenes in the autumn.

I wonder if your friendship will stand a very serious strain [he wrote Lodge, early in June]. I have pretty nearly finished Benton, mainly evolving him from my inner consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have nothing whatever to go by; and, being by nature both a timid, and, on occasions, by choice a truthful, man, I would prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how slender, on which to build the airy and arabesque superstructure of my fancy--especially as I am writing a history. Now I hesitate to give him a wholly fictitious date of death and to invent all of the work of his later years. Would it be too infernal a nuisance for you to hire some of your minions on the Advertiser (of course, at my expense) to look up, in a biographical dictionary or elsewhere, his life after he left the Senate in 1850? He was elected once to Congress; who beat him when he ran the second time; what was the issue; who beat him, and why, when he ran for Governor of Missouri; and the date of his death? I hate to trouble you; don't do it if it is any bother; but the Bad Lands have much fewer books than Boston has.

The Executive Committee of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association, of which Roosevelt was a member, had, in order to unify the work of the rounding-up of the cattle throughout Montana and western Dakota, issued directions at its meeting in April for the delimitation of the various round-up districts and the opening of the round-ups. The round-up for "District No. 6," which included the valley of the Little Missouri,

commences [so ran the order] at Medora, May 25, 1886; works down the Little Missouri to the mouth of Big Beaver Creek; thence up the Big Beaver to its head; thence across to the Little Beaver at the crossing of the old government road (Keogh trail); thence down Little Beaver to its mouth; thence across to Northern Hash-knife Camp on Little Missouri, and down to Medora. John Goodall, foreman.

Roosevelt apparently could not resist the temptation which the round-up offered, especially as its course would take him back in the direction of Elkhorn, and he deserted his study and entered once more into what was to him the most fascinating activity of the cowboy's life.

There were half a dozen wagons along [he wrote subsequently]. The saddle bands numbered about a hundred each; and the morning we started, sixty men in the saddle splashed across the shallow ford of the river that divided the plain where we had camped from the valley of the long winding creek up which we were first to work.

By the 7th of June he was back at Elkhorn Ranch again on a flying visit.

I will get a chance to send this note to-morrow [he wrote his sister "Bamie"] by an old teamster who is going to town. I have been on the round-up for a fortnight, and really enjoy the work greatly; in fact I am having a most pleasant summer, though I miss all of you very, very much. We breakfast at three and work from sixteen to eighteen hours a day counting night-guard; so I get pretty sleepy; but I feel as strong as a bear. I took along Tolstoy's "La Guerre et La Paix" which Madame de Mores had lent me; but I have had little chance to read it as yet. I am very fond of Tolstoy.

In "The Wilderness Hunter" Roosevelt, two or three years later, told of that "very pleasant summer" of 1886.

I was much at the ranch, where I had a good deal of writing to do; but every week or two I left, to ride among the line camps, or spend a few days on any round-up which happened to be in the neighborhood.

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were themselves full of pleasure. At dawn we were in the saddle, the morning air cool in our faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across the grassy reaches of prairie land, or climbing in single file among the rugged buttes. All forenoon we spent riding the long circle with the cowpunchers of the round-up; in the afternoon we worked the herd, cutting the cattle, with much breakneck galloping and dextrous halting and wheeling. Then came the excitement and hard labor of roping, throwing, and branding the wild and vigorous range calves; in a corral, if one was handy, otherwise in a ring of horsemen. Soon after nightfall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp; under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon.

After ten days or so of such work, in which every man had to do his full share,--for laggards and idlers, no matter who, get no mercy in the real and healthy democracy of the round-up,--I would go back to the ranch to turn to my books with added zest for a fortnight. Yet even during these weeks at the ranch there was some outdoor work; for I was breaking two or three colts. I took my time, breaking them gradually and gently, not, after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, by sheer main strength and rough riding, with the attendant danger to the limbs of the man and very probable ruin to the manners of the horse. We rose early; each morning I stood on the low-roofed veranda, looking out under the line of murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the shallow river, to see the sun flame above the line of bluffs opposite.

Almost every day he was off among the buttes or across the prairie with a rifle in his hand, shooting now a whitetail buck within a few hundred yards of the ranch-house; now a blacktail, in the hills behind. Occasionally, rising before dawn, he would hunt in the rolling prairie country ten or fifteen miles away, coming home at dusk with a prong-buck across his saddle-bow. Now and then he would take the ranch-wagon and one of the men, driving to some good hunting ground, and spending a night or two, returning usually with two or three antelope; and not infrequently he would ride away by himself on horseback for a couple of days, lying at night, as he wrote, "under the shining and brilliant multitude of stars," and rising again in the chill dawn to crawl upon some wary goat of the high hills.

After writing his sister on the 7th of June, he evidently stayed at the ranch for ten days to work on his Life of Benton. Then he was away with the round-up again. His diary succinctly records his progress:

June 18. Rode to Medora on Sorrel Joe.

June 19. Out on round-up with Maltese Cross wagon.

June 20. Worked down to South Heart.

June 21. Worked up Rocky Ridge.

June 22. Worked to Davis Creek.

Early next morning Roosevelt was in Medora.

The round-up is swinging over from the East to the West Divide [he wrote to Lodge]. I rode in to get my mail and must leave at once. We are working pretty hard. Yesterday I was in the saddle at 2 A.M., and except for two very hearty meals, after each of which I took a fresh horse, did not stop working till 8.15 P.M.; and was up at half-past three this morning.

They worked next day down to Andrews Creek.

While the round-up was camped at Andrews Creek an incident occurred which revealed Roosevelt's influence over the cowpunchers, not alone of his own "outfit." Andrews Creek was not more than a mile from Medora, and after the day's work was done, the cowboys naturally adjourned with much enthusiasm to that oasis for the thirsty. As the evening wore on, the men, as "Dutch Wannigan" remarked long afterward, "were getting kinda noisy." Roosevelt, who had also ridden to town, possibly to keep an eye on "the boys," heard the commotion, and, contrary to his usual habit, which was to keep out of such centers of trouble, entered the saloon where the revelry was in progress.

"I don't know if he took a drink or not," said "Dutch Wannigan" afterward. "I never saw him take one. But he came in and he paid for the drinks for the crowd. 'One more drink, boys,' he says. Then, as soon as they had their drinks, he says, 'Come on,' and away they went. He just took the lead and they followed him home. By gollies, I never seen anything like it!"

The round-up now worked southward. Roosevelt's diary gives its course from day to day.