Roosevelt brushed elbows in Medora with newly arrived hunters from the plains and mountains, clad in buckskin shirts and fur caps—greasy and unkempt, yet strong and resolute men. Then there were teamsters, in slouch hats and great cowhide boots; stage-drivers with faces like leather; Indians wrapped in blankets; cowboys galloping through the streets. These men had all come to town to obtain relief from the monotony of their occupations or from long periods of peril and hardship, and the only entertainment that awaited them were “flaunting saloons and gawdy hells of all kinds,” to borrow Roosevelt’s own description. Among them moved the “bad men,” professional thieves and man-killers, who owed their lives to their ability to draw their weapons before other men could draw theirs.
Roosevelt was deeply interested in these unusual characters and scenes. Indeed, it was to drink in this frank, self-reliant spirit that he had come West. He met these men on their own ground, fearlessly. They saw that, in spite of his eyeglasses, he was a man after their own kind. Often he found himself in places of danger and saw men killed beside him in drunken brawls, yet there was something about him that made bad men pause before they challenged him.
Among Roosevelt’s cowboys was a Pueblo Indian who was a bad lot, a Sioux who was faithful and a mulatto who was one of his best men. The men would carry the “brand” of their ranch even in their own nicknames. Thus it would be said that “Bar Y” Harry had married the “Seven Open A” girl.
It was when he was thrown into contact day after day with the men of his own ranch that the most severe test of Roosevelt as a “good fellow” came.
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ROOSEVELT IN THE BEAR COUNTRY
He came through his initiation into ranch life the idol of his men, though they never got to the stage where they would neglect a chance to poke sly fun at him. He relates how once, when on a wood-chopping expedition, he overheard someone ask Dow, a ranchman bred in the Maine woods, what the total cut had been. Dow, unconscious that he was within hearing, said:
“Well, Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine and the boss he beavered seventeen.”