He promptly sought Joe Morrill, finding him at the "depot." In his capacity as chairman of the Little Missouri River Stockmen's Association, he was in a position to speak as Morrill's employer, and he spoke with his customary directness. Gregor Lang, who happened to be present, told Lincoln afterward that he had "never heard a man get such a scathing" as Roosevelt gave the shifty stock inspector.
"Roosevelt was taking a lot of chances," said Lincoln Lang later, "because Morrill was cornered. He was known to be a gunman and a risky man to mix with."
Roosevelt ordered Morrill to resign his inspectorship at once. Morrill refused.
The annual meeting of the Montana Stock-grower's Association was to be held in Miles City the middle of the month. Roosevelt knew that the Association would not consent to sit in judgment on the case as between Myers and Morrill. He determined, therefore, to demand that the inspectorship at Medora be abolished on the ground that the inspector was worse than useless.
Roosevelt presented his charges before the Board of Stock Commissioners on April 18th. The Board was evidently reluctant to act, and, at the suggestion of certain members of it, Roosevelt, on the following day, presented the matter before the Executive Committee of the Association. He asked that the Committee request the Board of Stock Commissioners to do away with the inspectorship at Medora, but the Committee, too, was wary of giving offense. He asked twice that the Committee hear the charges. The Committee refused, referring him back to the Board of Stock Commissioners.
That Board, meanwhile, was hearing from other cattlemen in the Bad Lands. Boyce, of the great "Three-Seven outfit," supported Roosevelt's charges, and Towers, of the Towers and Gudgell Ranch near the Big Ox Bow, supported Boyce. Morrill was sent for and made a poor showing. It was evidently with hesitant spirits that the Board finally acted. Morrill was dismissed, but the Board hastened to explain that it was because its finances were too low to allow it to continue the inspectorship at Medora and passed a vote of thanks for Morrill's "efficiency and faithful performance of duty."
What Roosevelt said about the vote of thanks is lost to history. He was, no doubt, satisfied with the general result and was ready to let Morrill derive what comfort he could out of the words with which it was adorned.
Through the records of that meeting of the cattlemen, Roosevelt looms with singular impressiveness. At the meeting of the previous year he had been an initiate, an effective follower of men he regarded as better informed than himself; this year he was himself a leader. During the three years that had elapsed since he had last taken a vigorous part in the work of an important deliberative body, he had grown to an extraordinary extent. In the Legislature in Albany, and in the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1884, he had been nervous, vociferous, hot-headed, impulsive; in Miles City, in 1887, there was the same vigor, the same drive but with them a poise which the younger man had utterly lacked. On the first day of the meeting he made a speech asking for the elimination, from a report which had been submitted, of a passage condemning the Interstate Commerce Law. The house was against him almost to a man, for the cattlemen considered the law an abominable infringement of their rights.
In the midst of the discussion, a stockman named Pat Kelly, who was incidentally the Democratic boss of Michigan, rose in his seat. "Can any gentleman inform me," he inquired, "why the business of this meeting should be held up by the talk of a broken-down New York State politician?"
There was a moment's silence. The stockmen expected a storm. There was none. Roosevelt took up the debate as though nothing had interrupted it. The man from Michigan visibly "flattened out." Meanwhile, Roosevelt won his point.