The "boss" of Elkhorn Ranch, meanwhile, oblivious of the heat which he was generating in the Marquis's Prime Minister, was taking his slow course northeastward across Wyoming to the Bad Lands. It was long and weary traveling across the desolate reaches of burnt prairie. The horses began to droop. At last, in some heavy sand-hills east of the Little Beaver, one of the team pulling the heavily laden wagon played out completely, and they had to put the toughest of the saddle ponies in his place. Night was coming on fast as they crossed the final ridge and came in sight of as singular a bit of country as any of them had ever seen. Scattered over a space not more than three quarters of a mile square were countless isolated buttes of sandstone, varying in height from fifteen to fifty feet. Some of them rose as sharp peaks or ridges or as connected chains, but the greater number by far were topped with diminutive table-lands, some thirty feet across, some seventy, some two hundred. The sides were perpendicular, and were cut and channeled by the weather into most curious caves and columns and battlements and spires. Here and there ledges ran along the faces of the cliffs and eerie protrusions jutted out from the corners. Grave pine-trees rose loftily among the strange creations of water and wind set in a desert of snow-white sand. It was a beautiful and fantastic place and they made their camp there.
The moon was full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall, made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to life, the buttes in the moonlight had their own still magic. Against the shining silver of the cliffs the pines showed dark and somber, and when the branches stirred, the bright light danced on the ground making it appear like a sheet of molten metal.
It was like a country seen in a dream.
The next morning all was changed. A wild gale was blowing and rain beat about them in level sheets. A wet fog came and went and gave place at last to a steady rain, as the gale gave place to a hurricane. They spent a miserable day and night shifting from shelter to shelter with the shifting wind; another day and another night. Their provisions were almost gone, the fire refused to burn in the fierce downpour, the horses drifted far off before the storm....
"Fortunately," remarked Roosevelt later, "we had all learned that, no matter how bad things were, grumbling and bad temper can always be depended upon to make them worse, and so bore our ill-fortune, if not with stoical indifference, at least in perfect quiet."
The third day dawned crisp and clear, and once more the wagon lumbered on. They made camp that night some forty miles southwest of Lang's. They were still three days from home, three days of crawling voyaging beside the fagged team. The country was monotonous, moreover, without much game.
"I think I'd like to ride in and wake the boys up for breakfast," remarked Merrifield.
"Good!" exclaimed Roosevelt. "I'll do it with you."
Merrifield argued the matter. Roosevelt had been in the saddle all day and it was eighty miles to the Maltese Cross.
"I'm going with you. I want to wind up this trip myself," said Roosevelt, and there the argument ended.