Part 11

The Mexican situation continued to drag along, but we at length entered the European war, and for a while it looked as if my father would be allowed to raise a division and take it over to the other side. The Captain had already the nucleus of his regiment, and the telegrams passed fast and furiously. However, for reasons best known to the authorities in Washington, it all turned out to be to no purpose. The Captain was enraged. He wrote me out to Mesopotamia, where I was serving in the British forces:

I was very much disgusted with Wilson when he turned us down. I had a splendid organization twelve hundred strong, comprising four hundred miners from the Black Hills Mines, four hundred railroad boys from the lines of the Chicago and Northwestern, and the C. B. and Q. in South Dakota, Western Nebraska, and Wyoming, and four hundred boys from the ranges of Western South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. It was the pick of the country. Your troop was especially good; while locally known as the Deadwood troop, most of the members were from the country northwest of Belle Fourche; twenty of your troop were Sioux who had served on the Indian police. Sixty-five per cent of the regiment had military training. Damn the dirty politics that kept us from going. I am busy now locally with the Red Cross and the Exemption Board of this county, being chairman of each. We will show the Democrats that we are thoroughbreds and will do our bit even if we are compelled to remain at home with the Democrats.

After expatiating at some length and with great wealth of detail as to just what he thought of the attitude of the administration, the Captain continued with some characteristic advice:

I am going to caution you now on being careful when you are on the firing line. Don’t try for any Victoria Cross, or lead any forlorn hopes; modern war does not require these sacrifices, nor are battles won that way nowadays. I wouldn’t have you fail in any particular of a brave American soldier, and I know you won’t, but there is a vast difference between bravery and foolhardiness, and a man with folks at home is extremely selfish if unnecessarily foolhardy in the face of danger.

All of it very good, sound advice, and just such as the Captain might have been expected to give, but the last in the world that any one would have looked for him to personally follow.

The letter ended with “I think the war will be over this year. I did want to ride a spotted cayuse into Berlin, but it don’t look now as if I would.”

The next time that I heard from the Captain was some time after I had joined the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In characteristic fashion he addressed the letter merely “Care of General Pershing, France,” and naturally the letter took three or four months before it finally reached me. The Captain had been very ill, but treated the whole matter as a joke.

I have just returned from California, where I was on the sick list since last December, six months in a hospital and sanitarium while the doctors were busy with knives, and nearly took me over the divide. I am recovering slowly, and hope to last till the Crown Prince and his murdering progenitor are hung. I was chairman of the Exemption Board in 1917 and stuck to it until I was taken ill with grippe, which ended in an intestinal trouble which required the services of two surgeons and their willing knives to combat. The folks came to California after the remains, but when they arrived they found the remains sitting up and cussing the Huns.

Now, Kim, take care of yourself; don’t get reckless. Kill all the Huns you can, but don’t let them have the satisfaction of getting you.

My father’s death was a fearful blow to the old Captain. Only those who knew him well realized how hard he was hit. He immediately set to work to arrange some monument to my father’s memory. With the native good taste that ever characterized him, instead of thinking in terms of statues, he decided that the dedication of a mountain would be most fitting, and determined to make the shaft to be placed upon its summit simple in both form and inscription. Father was the one honorary member of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, and it was in conjunction with this society that the Captain arranged that Sheep Mountain, a few miles away from Deadwood, should be renamed Mount Roosevelt.

General Wood made the address. A number of my friends who were there gave me the latest news of the Captain. He wrote me that he expected to come East in September; that he was not feeling very fit, and that he was glad to have been able to go through with the dedication of the mountain. He was never a person to talk about himself, so I have no way of knowing, other than intuition, but I am certain that he felt all along that his days were numbered, and held on mainly in order to accomplish his purpose of raising the memorial.

I waited until the middle of September and then wrote to Deadwood to ask the Captain when he would be coming. I found the reply in the newspapers a few days later. The Captain was dead. The gallant old fellow had crossed the divide that he wrote about, leaving behind him not merely the sorrow of his friends but their pride in his memory. Well may we feel proud of having been numbered among the friends of such a thoroughgoing, upstanding American as Seth Bullock. As long as our country produces men of such caliber, we may face the future with a consciousness of our ability to win through such dark days as may confront us. The changes and shiftings that have ever accompanied our growth never found Seth Bullock at a loss; he was always ready to

“Turn a keen, untroubled face Home to the instant need of things.”

Throughout his well-rounded and picturesque career he coped with the varied problems that confronted him in that unostentatious and unruffled way so peculiarly his own, with which he faced the final and elemental fact of his recall from service.

FOOTNOTES:

Fifteen years later when I was in Medora with Captain Seth Bullock, Muley was still alive and enjoying a life of ease in Joe Ferris’s pastures.

Shenzi really means bushman, but it is applied, generally in a derogatory sense, by the Swahilis to all the wild natives, or “blanket Indians.”

Since writing this we have heard from a friend who is learned in books. He tells us that he believes the letter to be an excellent facsimile pasted in the edition concerned.