He did not eat them, but he did not let the memory of them die either, to George's deep chagrin.
I have just returned from a three days' trip in the Bad Lands after mountain sheep [Roosevelt wrote to "Bamie" on December 14th], and after tramping over the most awful country that can be imagined, I finally shot one ram with a fine head. I have now killed every kind of plains game.
I have to stay here till after next Friday to attend a meeting of the Little Missouri Stockmen; on Saturday, December 20th, I start home and shall be in New York the evening of December 23d. I have just had fifty-two horses brought in by Ferris, and Sewall and Dow started down the river with their share yesterday. The latter have lost two horses; I am afraid they have been stolen.
The meeting of the stockmen was held in Medora on the day appointed, and it is notable that it was Roosevelt who called it to order and who directed its deliberations. He was one of the youngest of the dozen stockmen present, and in the ways of cattle no doubt one of the least experienced. Most of the men he greeted that day had probably been discussing the problems he was undertaking to solve long before he himself had ever heard of the Bad Lands. It was Roosevelt's distinction that having observed the problems he determined to solve them, and having made this determination he sought a solution in the principles and methods of democratic government. The stockmen had confidence in him. He was direct, he was fearless; he was a good talker, sure of his ground, and, in the language of the Bad Lands, "he didn't take backwater from any one." He was self-reliant and he minded his own business; he was honest and he had no axe to grind. The ranchmen no doubt felt that in view of these qualities you might forget a man's youth and forgive his spectacles. They evidently did both, for, after adopting a resolution that it was the sense of the meeting "that an Association of the Stockmen along the Little Missouri and its tributaries be forthwith formed," they promptly elected Theodore Roosevelt chairman of it.
Lurid tales have been told of what went on at that meeting. There is a dramatic story of Joe Morrill's sudden appearance, backed by a score of ruffians; of defiance and counter-defiance; of revolvers and "blood on the moonlight"; and of a corrupt deputy marshal cowering with ashen face before the awful denunciations of a bespectacled "tenderfoot"; but unhappily, the authenticity of the story is dubious. The meeting, so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle. The Marquis de Mores was present; so also was Gregor Lang, his most merciless critic; but whatever drama was inherent in that situation remained beneath the surface. By-laws were adopted, the Marquis was appointed "as a Committee of One to work with the committee appointed by the Eastern Montana Live Stock Association in the endeavor to procure legislation from the Territorial Legislature of Dakota favorable to the interests of the cattlemen"; and the meeting was over. It was all most amiable and commonplace. There was no oratory and no defiance of anybody. What had been accomplished, however, was that, in the absence of organized government, the conservative elements in the county had formed an offensive and defensive league for mutual protection, as the by-laws ran, "against frauds and swindlers, and to prevent the stealing, taking, and driving away of horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other stock from the rightful owners thereof."
It meant the beginning of the end of lawlessness in the Bad Lands.[Back to Contents]
XIV.
I'll never come North again.
My home is the sunny South,
Where it's never mo' than forty below
An' the beans don't freeze in your mouth;
An' the snow ain't like white smoke,
An' the ground ain't like white iron;
An' the wind don't stray from Baffin's Bay
To join you on retirin'.
From Medora Nights
Roosevelt arrived in New York a day or two before Christmas with the trophies of his hunt about him and his hunting costume in his "grip." He settled down at his sister's house, at 422 Madison Avenue, where his little girl Alice was living, and, with his characteristic energy in utilizing every experience to the full, promptly began work on a series of hunting sketches which should combine the thrill of adventure with the precise observation of scientific natural history. It is worth noting that, in order to provide a frontispiece for his work, he solemnly dressed himself up in the buckskin shirt and the rest of the elaborate costume he had described with such obvious delight to his sister; and had himself photographed. There is something hilariously funny in the visible records of that performance. The imitation grass, not quite concealing the rug beneath, the painted background, the theatrical (slightly patched) rocks against which the cowboy leans gazing dreamily across an imaginary prairie, the pose of the hunter with rifle ready and finger on the trigger, grimly facing dangerous game which is not there—all reveal a boyish delight in play-acting. For once his sense of humor was in abeyance, but posterity is the richer for this glimpse of the solemn boy in the heart of a powerful man.