“Disorder, hell!” said a bystander. “Bill Jones just stood there with one hand on his gun and with the other pointing over toward the new jail whenever any man who didn’t have the right to vote came near the polls. The only one of them who tried to vote Bill knocked down! Lord! the way that man fell!”
“Well!” Bill ejaculated, “if he hadn’t fell I’d have walked around behind him to see what was propping him up!”
It was with men like these, in surroundings like these, that young Roosevelt had elected to learn to the full extent the lesson of democracy.
Before his Western trip Roosevelt had already had his manhood and his spirit of brotherhood tested in the hard-waged battles of New York political life. Now was to come a test infinitely greater. The former member of the New York Assembly, the man who had occupied a high place in New York social life, who in his earlier days was noted for his well-tailored figure and his eyeglasses, had turned his back on all this. He told his folks that he was going West to “rough it” and to mix with mankind, and both of these he did to the utmost.
LIFE ON THE RANCH
The place he chose for his home ranch was one of the worst of the undeveloped sections of the country. The ranch lay on both sides of the Little Missouri River. In front of the ranch house itself was a long veranda, and in front of that a line of cottonwood trees that shaded it. The bluffs rose from the river valley; stables, sheds and other buildings were near. A circular horse corral lay not far from the house. In winter wolves and lynxes traveled up the river on the ice, directly in front of the ranch house.
Life at the ranch house was of the most primitive nature. Though they had a couple of cows and some chickens, which supplied them with milk and eggs, they lived for the most part on canned fare.
At the roundups and during his long rides over the range, and on many hunting trips, Roosevelt had his favorite horse as companion—Manitou. This horse was so fond of him that it used to come up of its own accord to the ranch house and put its head into the door to beg for bread and sugar.
When it was not a question of roundup or herding cattle, or driving them to new grazing lands, the men at the ranch house broke in horses, mended their saddles and practised with the rope. Hunting trips broke into regular ranch life. The primitive little sitting-room of the Elkhorn Ranch was adorned with buffalo robes and bearskins of Roosevelt’s own killing; and in winter there was always to be found good reading and a cheery fire.