On still another occasion Roosevelt was out on the plains when a regular blizzard came. The cattle began to drift before the storm. They were frightened and maddened by the quick, sharp flashes of lightning and the stinging rain. The men darted to and fro before them and beside them, heedless of danger, checking them at each point where they threatened to break through. The thunder was terrific. Peal followed peal. Each flash of lightning showed a dense array of tossing horns and staring eyes. At last, however, when the storm was raging in fury, and when it seemed impossible to hold the herd together any longer, the corrals were reached, and by desperate efforts Roosevelt and his companions managed to turn the herds into the barns. It was such work as this that brought Roosevelt self-reliance and hardihood and made him in later life a firm advocate of horsemanship.
Though Roosevelt’s ranch life yielded him big assets in health and experience, financially it proved a failure. It is estimated that he lost $100,000 on the venture. “Bill” Sewall testifies that Roosevelt shared all gains with Dow and him, who were practically his partners, but that when the cattle died Roosevelt assumed all losses without a word of complaint to his comrades.
THE GRIZZLY’S TRAIL
We now enter upon the most adventurous part of Roosevelt’s Western experiences. Of dash, adventure and excitement he had plenty in his life as a ranchman, and yet through it all a still greater adventure called him. About him lay the wilderness. In that wilderness lurked big game. Roosevelt became a hunter. Something of the perils and hardships of the wild life he was about to enter upon can best be illustrated by the story he tells in his book “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail” of the experiences of two starving trappers.
These two men had entered a valley in the heart of the mountains where game was so abundant that they decided to pass the winter there. As winter came on they worked hard at putting up a log cabin, killing just enough meat for immediate use. Winter set in with tremendous snowstorms. Game left the valley, abandoning it for their winter haunts. Starvation stared the trappers in the face. One man had his dog with him. The other insisted that the dog should be killed for food. The dog’s owner, who was deeply attached to the animal, refused. One night the other trapper tried to kill the dog with his knife, but failed. The scanty supply of flour the partners possessed was now almost exhausted. Hunger was beginning to intensify their bad feelings. Neither dared to sleep for fear that the other would kill him.
Finally the man who owned the dog proposed that, to give each a chance for life, they should separate. He himself agreed to take one-half of the handful of flour that was left and to start off in an attempt to get home. The other was to stay. If one tried to interfere with the other after the separation it meant a fight to the death. For two days the man and his dog plunged through snowdrifts. On the second evening, looking back over a high ridge, he saw his companion following him. He followed his own trail back, lay in ambush and shot down the man following him as if he had been a wild beast. The next evening he baked his last cake and divided it with the dog. Only a short stretch of time stood between them and death. Just then, however, the dog crossed the tracks of a wolf and followed its trail. The man staggered after and came at last to where the wolf stood over the body of a deer it had killed. The meat of the deer replenished the strength of the trapper and dog, and they continued their journey. A week later they reached a miner’s cabin.
While Roosevelt in his hunting experiences never had an adventure so harrowing as this, he nevertheless managed to crowd into his life as many big moments as most professional hunters and trappers find in a lifetime. At fifteen, an age when most boys are only dreaming of becoming huntsmen, Roosevelt killed his first deer.
His brother, his cousin and himself were camping out for the first time in their lives. Their camp was located on Lake St. Regis. The other two boys went fishing. Roosevelt was not overly fond of this sport, so he went off on a deer hunt. With him went the two guides, Hank Martin and Mose Sawyer. The first day of the hunt he not only did not kill a deer—he failed to see one that stood within range; and, on the way home, shot in mistake for one a large owl that was perched on a log.
The next day, goaded by the teasing of his camp mates, he started out again. This time he had better luck. As his canoe swung out from between forest-lined banks into a little bay, he saw, knee-deep among the water lilies that fringed the shore, a yearling buck. His first shot killed him.
The youthful adventure helped to stimulate Roosevelt’s ardor for hunting. One of the reasons why he went West was that he hoped to find big game, and when he found himself upon the track of the grizzly he was in his element indeed.