Roosevelt in the Bad Lands

by Hermann Hagedorn

"Why, treat the thieves considerate," said Bolan. "Don't get 'em sore on you. When one of them comes up and wants the loan of a horse, why, let him have it."

Fisher turned to the foreman of one of the largest "outfits" for advice and received a similar answer. The reputable stockmen were very much in the minority, it seemed, and wise men treated the thieves with "consideration" and called it insurance.

There were ranchmen, however, who were too high-spirited to tolerate the payment of such tribute in their behalf, and too interested in the future of the region as a part of the American commonwealth to be willing to temporize with outlaws. Roosevelt was one of them, in the valley of the Little Missouri. Another, across the Montana border in the valley of the Yellowstone, was Granville Stuart.

Stuart was a "forty-niner," who had crossed the continent in a prairie-schooner as a boy and had drifted into Virginia City in the days of its hot youth. He was a man of iron nerve, and when the time came for a law-abiding minority to rise against a horde of thieves and desperadoes, he naturally became one of the leaders. He played an important part in the extermination of the famous Plummer band of outlaws in the early sixties, and was generally regarded as one of the most notable figures in Montana Territory.

At the meeting of the Montana Stockgrowers' Association, at Miles City in April, there had been much discussion of the depredations of the horse and cattle thieves, which were actually threatening to destroy the cattle industry. The officers of the law had been helpless, or worse, in dealing with the situation, and the majority of the cattlemen at the convention were in favor of raising a small army of cowboys and "raiding the country."

Stuart, who was president of the Association, fought the project almost single-handed. He pointed out that the "rustlers" were well organized and strongly fortified, each cabin, in fact, constituting a miniature fortress. There was not one of them who was not a dead shot and all were armed with the latest model firearms and had an abundance of ammunition. No "general clean-up" on a large scale could, Stuart contended, be successfully carried through. The first news of such a project would put the thieves on their guard, many lives would unnecessarily be sacrificed, and the law, in the last analysis, would be on the side of the "rustlers."

The older stockmen growled and the younger stockmen protested, intimating that Stuart was a coward; but his counsel prevailed. A number of them, who "stood in" with the thieves in the hope of thus buying immunity, carried the report of the meeting to the outlaws. The "rustlers" were jubilant and settled down to what promised to be a year of undisturbed "operations."

Stuart himself, however, had long been convinced that drastic action against the thieves must be taken; and had quietly formulated his plan. When the spring round-up was over, late in June, he called a half-dozen representative ranchmen from both sides of the Dakota-Montana border together at his ranch, and presented his project. It was promptly accepted, and Stuart himself was put in charge of its execution.

Less than ten men in the whole Northwest knew of the movement that was gradually taking form under the direction of the patriarchal fighting man from Fergus County; but the Marquis de Mores was one of those men. He told Roosevelt. Stuart's plan, it seems, was to organize the most solid and reputable ranchmen in western Montana into a company of vigilantes similar to the company which had wiped out the Plummer band twenty years previous. Groups of indignant citizens who called themselves vigilantes had from time to time attempted to conduct what were popularly known as "necktie parties," but they had failed in almost every case to catch their man, for the reason that the publicity attending the organization had given the outlaws ample warning of their peril. It was Stuart's plan to organize in absolute secrecy, and fall on the horse-thieves like a bolt from the blue.

The raid was planned for late in July. It was probably during the last days of June that Roosevelt heard of it. With him, when the Marquis unfolded the project to him, was a young Englishman named Jameson (brother of another Jameson who was many years later to stir the world with a raid of another sort). Roosevelt and young Jameson, who shared a hearty dislike of seeing lawbreakers triumphant, and were neither of them averse to a little danger in confounding the public enemy, announced with one accord that they intended to join Stuart's vigilantes. The Marquis had already made up his mind that in so lurid an adventure he would not be left out. The three of them took a west-bound train and met Granville Stuart at Glendive.