I had been prepared by many tales for the charm and freedom and informal ease of life in the Bad Lands, and had often dreamed of going there; but, unlike most dreams, this one came true in an even more enchanting fashion than I had dared hope. Many had been the letters that my brother had written to me from Elkhorn Ranch several years previous to our journey. In June, 1886, he wrote: “I have never once had breakfast as late as four o’clock. Have been in the saddle all day, and have worked like a beaver, and am as rugged and happy as possible. While I do not see any very great future ahead, yet, if things go on as they are now going and have gone for the past three years, I think that each year I will net enough money to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding slowly to my herd all the time. I think I have more than my capital on the ground, and this year I ought to be able to sell between two and three hundred head of steer and dry stock. I wish I could see all of you, but I certainly do enjoy the life. The other day while dining at the de Mores I had some cherries, the only fruit I have had since I left New York. I have lived pretty roughly.”
I quote the above simply to show, what is not always understood, that my brother’s ranching venture was, from his standpoint, a perfectly just business enterprise, and, had not the extraordinarily severe winters intervened, his capital would not have been impaired. Writing that same summer, shortly after hearing of the birth of my baby girl, he says in his loving way:
“My own darling Pussie, my sweetest little sister: How can I tell you the joy I felt when I received Douglas’ first telegram; but I had not the heart to write you until I received the second the good old boy sent me, and knew you were all right. Just to think of there being a second wee, new Pussie in this big world! How I shall love to pet and prize the little thing! It will be very, very dear to Uncle Teddy’s heart, which is quite large enough, however, not to lose an atom of affection for Teddy Douglas, the blessed little scamp. I have thought of you all the time for the last few weeks, and you can hardly imagine how overjoyed and relieved I felt, my own darling sister. I hope the little new Pussie will grow up like her dear mother, and that she will have many many loving ones as fond of her as her irrelevant old cowboy uncle is of Pussie, Senior. Will you be very much offended if I ask whether she now looks like a little sparsely-haired, pink polyp? My own offspring, when in tender youth, closely resembled a trilobite of pulpy consistency and shadowy outline. You dearest Pussie,—you know I am just teasing you, and how proud and fond I am of the little thing even when I have never seen it. I wish I was where I could shake old Douglas by the hand and kiss you again and again.
“Today I went down to Dickerman to make the Fourth of July speech to a great crowd of cowboys and rangers, and after, stayed to see the horse races between the cowboys and Indians.”
In another letter about the same time: “If I was not afraid of being put down as cold-blooded, I should say that I honestly miss greatly and all the time, and think lovingly of all you dear ones, yet I really enjoy this life. I have managed to combine an outdoor life possessing much variety and excitement, and now and then a little adventure, with a literary life also. Three out of four days I spend the morning and evening in the Ranch house writing, and working at various pieces of writing I have now on hand. They may come to nothing, however; but on the other hand they may succeed; at any rate, I am doing some honest work whatever the result is and I am really pretty philosophical about success or failure now. It often amuses me when I indirectly hear that I am supposed to be harboring secret and bitter regret for my political career, when, as a matter of fact, I have hardly ever, when alone, given two thoughts to it since it closed, and have been quite as much wrapped up in hunting, ranching, and book-making as I ever was in Politics. Give my best love to wee Teddy and dear old Douglas; do you know, I have an excessively warm feeling for your respected spouse. I have always admired Truth, Loyalty, and Courage; and though I am really having a lovely life, just the life I care for, please be sure that I am always thinking of my own, darling sister, whom I love so much and so tenderly. Ever your affectionate brother, Thee.”
On August 7 of the same year he wrote again after having paid a brief visit to the East, and returned to Dakota: “Blessed little Pussie; Mother of an increasing and vocal Israel, I did enjoy my two visits to my dear sister, and that dear old piece of peripatetic bric-à-brac, her Caledonian spouse. Everything here is much as usual. The boys were, as always, genuinely glad to see me. I am greatly attached to the Ranch and the life out here, and am really fond of the men. It is in many ways ideal; we are so very rarely able to, actually and in real life, dwell in our ideal ‘hero land.’ The loneliness and freedom, and the half-adventurous nature of existence out here, appeals to me very powerfully.... Merrifield and I are now busily planning our hunt in the mountains.”
Such letters as the above filled the members of his family with a strong desire to participate to some degree, at least, in the life which he loved so dearly; but the births of various small members of the family rendered such participation impossible until the late summer of 1890.
After a brief visit to St. Paul, Minn., we took train for Medora. My brother had heralded the fact that I (then a young woman of twenty-eight) was a mighty rider (I had followed the Essex County hounds in New Jersey)! And the cowboys were quite sure, I think, that I would leap from the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco. Our train drew up, or I should say, approximately drew up, to the little station at Medora at four o’clock in the morning, in one of the most frightful storms that I ever remember. Rain fell in torrents, and we had to get out on an embankment composed of such slippery mud that before we actually plodded to the station, our feet and legs were encased in glutinous slime; but the calls of the cowboys undauntedly rang out in the darkness, and the neighing of horses and prancing of hoofs made us realize that civilization as well as convention was a thing of the past. Will Merrifield, the superintendent of Elkhorn Ranch, and Sylvane Ferris, his able lieutenant, fully expected me to mount the extremely dangerous-looking little animal which they held by a loose rope, and they were inordinately disappointed when I pleaded the fatigue of two nights on the train, and begged that I might drive with the other less-adventurous ladies to the ranch-house, forty miles away. Before starting on this long trip we were entertained by Joe Ferris, the brother of Sylvane, who having once also been one of Theodore’s cowboys, had now decided upon a more sober type of life as storekeeper in the little town of Medora. Joe and his wife were most hospitable, and above his shop in their own rooms we were given a nice warm breakfast and an equally warm welcome. After breakfast, we came down to the shop, where our luggage had already been gathered, and there we began to sort what we would take to the Ranch and what we would leave. This required a certain amount of packing and unpacking, and I was on my knees “madly thrusting,” as “Alice in Wonderland” puts it, “a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe” when Joe came up to me and said: “Mrs. Douglas (they all decided to call me Mrs. Douglas, as more informal than Mrs. Robinson), it ain’t worth while for you to tire yourself like that when the best packer in all Dakota is standin’ in the doorway.” I looked up and sure enough a huge man, who might have just walked out of one of Bret Harte’s novels, was “standin’ in the doorway.” “There he is,” continued Joe; “that’s Hell-Roarin’ Bill, the sheriff of the county; you heard tell of how he caught that lunatic; well, Bill’s the best ladies’ packer that ever was, and you had better leave all your bags to him to arrange.” Fearing that “Bill” might be offended if I did not use him in the capacity of a French maid, and having frequently been told of the rapid results of hurt feelings on the part of “Bill,” I suavely called him to my side, and telling him of the wonderful reputation which I had heard he enjoyed, I immediately put my wardrobe in his care, and to my infinite surprise the huge backwoodsman measured up to his reputation. Very soon the cavalcade was ready, the rain had ceased to fall in such torrents, the half-misty quality in the air lent a softer beauty to the arid landscape, and a sense of adventure was the finishing touch to our expectations as we started for Elkhorn Ranch. My disappointed friends, Merrifield and Sylvane, said that “they did not believe that Mrs. Douglas would like drivin’ with a ‘shotgun team’ much better than ridin’ a buckin’ bronco, but, of course, if she thought she wanted to go that way, she could.” An hour later “Mrs. Douglas” somewhat regretted her choice of progression; true enough, it was a shotgun team attached to that springless wagon in which we sat! The horses had never been hitched up together before, and their methods of motion were entirely at odds. The cowboy driver, however, managed eventually to get them started, and from that moment our progress, though irrelevant, was rapid beyond words.
We forded the “Little Missouri” River twenty-three times on the way to the ranch-house, and as the banks of the river were extremely steep, it was always a question as to whether we could go fast enough down one bank to get sufficient impetus to enable us to go through the river and up the very steep bank on the other side; so that either coming or going we were in imminent danger of a complete somersault. However, we did accomplish that long, exhausting, springless drive, and gradually the buttes rose higher and higher around us, the strange formation of the Bad Lands, curious in color, became more and more marked, the cottonwood-trees more plentiful as the river broadened out, and suddenly we saw buried amidst the trees on the farther side of one of our fordings the substantially built, cosey-looking house called by my brother the Elkhorn Ranch.
In a letter written to my aunt, Mrs. Gracie, from the ranch-house I say: