Owing to a variety of causes, the preparations for the trip had been inadequate. He had only five men to help him; Sewall and Dow and Rowe and two others. Of these, only one was a cowpuncher of experience. Roosevelt placed him in charge. It was not long, however, before he discovered that this man, who was a first-rate cowhand, was wholly incapable of acting as head. Cattle and cowpunchers, chuck-wagon and saddle-band, in some fashion which nobody could explain became so snarled up with each other that, after disentangling the situation, he was forced to relegate his expert to the ranks and take command himself.
His course lay, for the most part, through the Bad Lands, which enormously increased the difficulty of driving the cattle. A herd always travels strung out in lines, and a thousand head thus going almost in single file had a way of stretching out an appreciable distance, with the strong, speedy animals in the van and the weak and sluggish ones inevitably in the rear. Roosevelt put two of his men at the head of the column, two more at the back, and himself with another man rode constantly up and down the flanks. In the tangled mass of rugged hills and winding defiles through which the trail led, it was no easy task for six men to keep the cattle from breaking off in different directions or prevent the strong beasts that formed the vanguard from entirely outstripping the laggards. The spare saddle-ponies also made trouble, for several of them were practically unbroken.
Slowly and with infinite difficulty they drove the herd northward. To add to their troubles, the weather went through "a gamut of changes," as Roosevelt wrote subsequently, "with that extraordinary and inconsequential rapidity which characterizes atmospheric variations on the plains." The second day out, there was a light snow falling all day, with a wind blowing so furiously that early in the afternoon they were obliged to drive the cattle down into a sheltered valley to keep them overnight. The cold was so intense that even in the sun the water froze at noon. Forty-eight hours afterwards it was the heat that was causing them to suffer.
The inland trail which they were following had its disadvantages, for water for the stock was scarce there, and the third day, after watering the cattle at noon, Roosevelt and his men drove them along the very backbone of the divide through barren and forbidding country. Night came on while they were still many miles from the string of deep pools which held the nearest water. The cattle were thirsty and restless, and in the first watch, which Roosevelt shared with one of his cowboys, when the long northern spring dusk had given way at last to complete darkness, the thirsty animals of one accord rose to their feet and made a break for liberty. Roosevelt knew that the only hope of saving his herd from hopeless dispersion over a hundred hills lay in keeping the cattle close together at the very start. He rode along at their side as they charged, as he had never ridden in his life before. In the darkness he could see only dimly the shadowy outline of the herd, as with whip and spur he ran his pony along its edge, turning back the beasts at one point barely in time to wheel and keep them in at another. The ground was cut up by numerous gullies, and more than once Roosevelt's horse turned a complete somersault with his rider. Why he was not killed a half-dozen times over is a mystery. He was dripping with sweat, and his pony was quivering like a quaking aspen when, after more than an hour of the most violent exertion, he and his companion finally succeeded in quieting the herd.
I have had hard work and a good deal of fun since I came out [Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on the fifteenth of May]. To-morrow I start for the round-up; and I have just come in from taking a thousand head of cattle up on the trail. The weather was very bad and I had my hands full, working night and day, and being able to take off my clothes but once during the week I was out.
The river has been very high recently, and I have had on two or three occasions to swim my horse across it; a new experience to me. Otherwise I have done little that is exciting in the way of horsemanship; as you know I am no horseman, and I cannot ride an unbroken horse with any comfort. The other day I lunched with the Marquis de Mores, a French cavalry officer; he has hunted all through France, but he told me he never saw in Europe such stiff jumping as we have on the Meadowbrook hunt.
Whether he was or was not a horseman is a question on which there is authority which clashes with Roosevelt's. A year's experience with broncos had taught him much, and though Sylvane remained indisputably the crack rider of the Maltese Cross outfit, Roosevelt more than held his own. "He was not a purty rider," as one of his cowpunching friends expressed it, "but a hell of a good rider."
Roosevelt was a firm believer in "gentling" rather than "breaking" horses. He had no sentimental illusions concerning the character of the animals with which he was dealing, but he never ceased his efforts to make a friend instead of a suspicious servant of a horse. Most of Roosevelt's horses became reasonably domesticated, but there was one that resisted all Roosevelt's friendly advances. He was generally regarded as a fiend incarnate. "The Devil" was his name.
"The trouble with training the Devil," said Packard, who was present at the Maltese Cross one day when Roosevelt was undertaking to ride him, "was that he was a wild four-year-old when first ridden and this first contest was a victory for the horse. If the rider had won, Devil might have become a good saddle horse. But when the horse wins the first contest, one can look for a fight every time he is saddled. The chances favor his becoming a spoiled horse. I happened to arrive at the Chimney Butte Ranch one day just as the horse-herd was being driven into the corral. Devil knew he was due for a riding-lesson. It was positively uncanny to see him dodge the rope. On several occasions he stopped dead in his tracks and threw his head down between his front legs; the loop sliding harmlessly off his front quarters, where not even an ear projected. But Devil couldn't watch two ropes at once, and Roosevelt 'snared' him from the corral fence while Merrifield was whirling his rope for the throw. Instantly Devil stopped and meekly followed Roosevelt to the snubbing-post, where he was tied up for a period of 'gentling.' The ordinary procedure was to throw such a horse and have one man sit on his head while another bound a handkerchief over his eyes. He was then allowed to get on his feet and often made little resistance while the saddle and bridle were being adjusted. The rider then mounted and the fireworks began as soon as he jerked the handkerchief from the horse's eyes.
"Devil had gone through this procedure so often that he knew it by heart. He had, however, not become accustomed to being 'gentled' instead of 'busted.' As Roosevelt walked toward him, the horse's fear of man overcame his dread of the rope, and he surged back until the noose was strangling him.