Footnote 18: Toronto was the name of Lodge's hunter.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 19: "Whoever wrote that was badly off his base. The simon-pure cowpuncher would not accept a self-cocker as a gift. They laughed at them in fact. Once, on a bet, a cowpuncher shot off all six shots with his single-action Colt .45 while his opponent was getting off three with his self-cocker."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 20: The Dickinson Press burst into verse in describing the exploits of one of the preachers.
"Of a gospel preacher we now will tell
Who started from Glendive to save souls from hell.
At the Little Missouri he struck a new game,
With the unregenerate, 'Honest John' is its name.
"He indulged too much in the flowing bowls,
And forgot all about the saving of souls,
But 'dropped' his three hundred, slept sweetly and well,
And let the Little Missourians wander to ——
that place whose main principles of political economy are
brimstone and caloric."
But the verses tell only half the story. As Sylvane Ferris relates it Bill Williams, conniving with Jess Hogue to fleece the preacher, gave him the impression that he too was losing heavily; and actually shed tears. The preacher was heard to murmur, as he staggered into the night, "I don't mind losing my own money, but I am so sorry for that nice Mr. Williams."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 21: The thieves were tried at Mandan in August, 1886. The German, known as "Dutch Chris," was acquitted, but Finnegan, and Bernstead, known as "the half-breed," were sentenced to twenty-five months in the Bismarck Penitentiary. Finnegan glared at Roosevelt as he passed him in the court room. "If I'd had any show at all," he cried, "you'd have sure had to fight!"
That was no doubt true, but his anger evidently wore off in the cool of the prison, for a little later he wrote Roosevelt a long and friendly epistle, which was intended to explain many things:
In the first place I did not take your boat Mr. Roosevelt because I wanted to steal something, no indeed, when I took that vessel I was labouring under the impression, die dog or eat the hachette.... When I was a couple of miles above your ranch the boat I had sprung a leak and I saw I could not make the Big Missouri in it in the shape that it was in. I thought of asking assistance of you, but I supposed you had lost some saddles and blamed me for taking them. Now there I was with a leaky boat and under the circumstances what was I two do, two ask you for help, the answer I expected two get was two look down the mouth of a Winchester. I saw your boat and made up my mind two get possession of it. I was bound two get out of that country cost what it might, when people talk lynch law and threaten a persons life, I think that it is about time to leave. I did not want to go back up river on the account that I feared a mob.... I have read a good many of your sketches of ranch life in the papers since I have been here, and they interested me deeply. Yours sincerely.
&c.