After only a little experience in ranching, he learned to sit in his saddle and ride his horse like a life-long plainsman.
But he never pretended to any special fondness for a bucking bronco; and a story is told of a trick played on him by some friendly persons in Medora.
He was in town, waiting for a train that was to bring a guest from the East. While he was in a store, the jokers placed his saddle on a notoriously vicious beast, which they substituted for his mount.
When he came out, in haste to ride around to the railway station, he did not detect the deception.
Once, he was on the horse’s back, the bronco bucked and whirled to the amusement of the grinning villagers. But to their amazement, the young ranchman succeeded in staying on him and spurring him into a run.
Away they flew to the prairies, and soon back they raced in a cloud of dust and through the town. The friend from the East arrived, and joined the spectators, who waited to see if the young squire of Elkhorn ever would return.
In a little while, he was seen coming along the road at a gentle gait. And when he reached his starting point, he dismounted, with a smile of quiet mastery, from as meek a creature as ever stood on four legs.
He had no use, however, for a horse whose spirit ran altogether to ugliness. When he first went West, he doubted the theory of the natives that any horse was hopelessly bad.
For instance, there was one in the sod-roofed log stable of Elkhorn, who had been labelled The Devil. Roosevelt believed that gentleness would overcome Devil. The boys thought it might, if he should live to be seventy-five.
After much patient wooing, Devil actually let Roosevelt lay his hand on him and pat him. The boys began to think that possibly there was something in this new plan of bronco busting.