"Are you going to stay out here and make ranching a business?" asked Eaton.
"No," Roosevelt answered. "For the present I am out here because I cannot get up any enthusiasm for the Republican candidate, and it seems to me that punching cattle is the best way to avoid campaigning."
Eaton asked McGee on the way home how Roosevelt stood in the East. "Roosevelt is a nice fellow," remarked McGee, "but he's a damned fool in politics."
Roosevelt remained with Robins and the men from Maine for three days, varying his life in the saddle with a day on foot after grouse when the larder ran low. It was all joyous sport, which was lifted for a moment into the plane of adventure by a communication from the Marquis de Mores.
That gentleman wrote Roosevelt a letter informing him that he himself claimed the range on which Roosevelt had established himself.
Roosevelt's answer was brief and definite. He had found nothing but dead sheep on the range, he wrote, and he did not think that they would hold it.
There the matter rested.
"You'd better be on the lookout," Roosevelt remarked to Sewall and Dow, as he was making ready to return to the Maltese Cross. "There's just a chance there may be trouble."
"I cal'late we can look out for ourselves," announced Bill with a gleam in his eye.[Back to Contents]