“We are having the most delightful time at the Ranch. The little house is most cosey and comfortable, and Mrs. Merrifield had everything so neat and sweet for us, and as she has a girl to help her, we really do not have to rough it at all. We all make our beds and do up our rooms religiously, but even that they would willingly do for us if we would let them. We have had three cloudless days, the first of which was occupied in driving the forty miles down here, and a beautiful picturesque drive it is, winding in and out through these strange, bold Buttes, crossing the ‘Little Missouri’ twenty-three times! We ladies drove, but the men all rode, and very picturesque they looked filing across the river. We arrived at the Ranch house at twelve o’clock and ate a splendid dinner of Mrs. Merrifield’s preparing, immediately after which we climbed up a Butte and walked to Prairie Dog town and saw the little prairie dogs. We then mounted horses and took a lovely ride, so you may imagine that we slept well.
“The next day we were all on horseback soon after breakfast, Ferris and Merrifield with us, and off we rode; this time with the intention of seeing Merrifield lasso a steer. When we came to a great bunch of cattle, the practised eyes of the two men at once discovered an unbranded heifer, which they immediately decided to lasso and brand. It was very exciting. Merrifield threw the rope, cleverly catching its legs, and then threw the heifer, which was almost the size of a cow, and then Ferris tied another rope around its neck. The ends of the ropes were slipped over the pommels of two ponies who, in the most sensible way, held the heifer while the two men built a little fire and heated the cinch ring with which they branded the creature. It was all intensely picturesque. In the afternoon, we again rode out to be with the men while they drove the deer on the bottom, and Merrifield shot one; so you see, we have had very typical experiences, especially at the round-up yesterday.”
Happy days, indeed, they were, full of varied excitements. Merrifield’s little boy, Frank, only eleven years old, was the chief factor in finding the herd of ponies in the morning, for it was the custom to let them loose after twilight. Many and many a time I would hear him unslip the halter of the one small pony (“Little Moke” by name) which was still tied to the ranch-house steps and on which he would leap in the early dawn to go to round up the ponies for the day’s work. I would jump up and look out of the ranch window, and see the independent little fellow fording the river, starting on his quest, and an hour or so later the splashing of many feet in the water heralded the approach of “Little Moke,” his young rider, and the whole bunch of four-legged friends.
The relationship between my brother and his men was one of honest comradeship but of absolute respect, each for the other, and on the part of the cowboys there was, as well, toward their “Boss,” a certain reverential attitude in spite of the “man to man” equality. How I loved that first night that we sat around the fire, when the men, in their effort to give my brother all the news of the vicinity during his absence, told the type of tale which has had its equivalent only in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” “There is a sky-pilot a good many miles from here, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Sylvane, “who’s bringin’ a suit against you.” Sylvane announced this unpleasant fact with careless gaiety, stretching his long legs toward the fire. No one was ever so typically the ideal cowboy of one’s wildest fancy as was Sylvane Ferris. Tall and slender, with strong fair hair and blue eyes of an almost unnatural clearness, and a splendid broad brow and aquiline nose, Sylvane looked the part. His leather chaps, his broad sombrero hat, his red handkerchief knotted carelessly around his strong, young, sunburned throat, all made him such a picture that one’s eye invariably followed him as he rode a vicious pony, “wrastled” a calf, roped a steer, or branded a heifer; but now sitting lazily by the fire, such activities seemed a thing of the past, and Sylvane was ready for an hour’s gossip.
“A sky-pilot? Why should a sky-pilot bring suit against me?” said my brother laughingly. [In telling this story he sometimes referred to this man as a professor.]
“Well,” said Sylvane, “it was this way, Mr. Roosevelt. You see, we was all outside the ranch door when up drives the sky-pilot in a buggy. He was one of them wanderin’ ones that thought he could preach as he wandered, and just about as he drove up in front of our ranch his horse went dead lame on him and his old buggy just fell to pieces. He was in a bad fix, and he said he knew you never would let him be held up like that, because he had heard you was a good man too, and wouldn’t we lend him a horse, or send him with the team to the next place he was going to, some forty miles away. We felt we had to be hospitable-like, with you so far away and the sky-pilot in such a fix, so we said ‘Yes,’ we would send him to where he wanted to go, and there he is now, lyin’ in a hut with one leg broken and one arm nearly wrenched off his body, and he’s bringin’ suit against you, which ain’t really fair, we think.”
“What do you mean, Sylvane; what have I got to do with his broken leg and arm?” said my brother, beginning to feel a trifle nervous.
“Well, you see, it is this way,” said Sylvane; “he says we sent him to where he is with a runaway team and he was thrown out and broken up in pieces-like; but we says how could that team we sent him with be a runaway team—how could a team be called a runaway team when one of the horses ain’t never been hitched up before, and the other ain’t run away not more’n two or three times; but I guess sky-pilots are always unreasonable!”
This conclusion seemed to satisfy Sylvane entirely; the unfortunate condition of the much-battered sky-pilot aroused no sympathy in his adamantine heart, nor did he feel that the sky-pilot had the slightest cause for his suit, which later was settled in a satisfactory manner, but the conversation was typical of that evening’s ranch news by the big wood-fire.
Our day at the round-up was one of the most fascinating days of my life, and I was proud to see that my city-bred brother was as agile and as active in the duties of rounding up the great steers of the plains as were the men brought up from their babyhood to such activities. We lunched at midday with the roundup wagon; rough life, indeed, but wonderfully invigorating, and as we returned in the evening, galloping over the grassy plateaus of the high buttes, I realized fully that the bridle-path would never again have for me the charm it once had had. Nothing in the way of riding has ever been so enchanting, and the curious formation of the Bad Lands, picturesque, indeed, almost grotesque in line, in conjunction with the wonderful climate of that period of the year and the mingling of tints in the sunset sky, resulted in a quality of color and atmosphere the like of which I only remember in Egypt, and made as lasting an impression upon my memory as did the land of the Nile.