Theodore Roosevelt
(1884).
Winter closed over the Bad Lands, bringing Arctic hardships. Even Bill Sewall, who had been born and bred in the Maine woods, declared that he had never known such cold. There was a theory, fostered by the real estate agents, that you did not feel the cold which the thermometer registered; and the Marquis, who never missed an opportunity to "boom" his new town in the newspapers, insisted stoutly not only that he habitually "walked and rode about comfortably without an overcoat"; but also that he "felt the cold much more severely in New York, and in Washington even." Other landowners maintained the same delusion, and it was considered almost treason to speak of the tragedies of the cold. The fact remained, however, that a snowfall, which elsewhere might scarcely make good sleighing, in the Bad Lands became a foe to human life of inconceivable fury. For with it generally came a wind so fierce that the stoutest wayfarer could make no progress against it. The small, dry flakes, driven vertically before it, cut the flesh like a razor, blinding the vision and stifling the breath and shutting out the world with an impenetrable icy curtain. A half-hour after the storm had broken, the traveler, lost in it, might wonder whether there were one foot of snow or five, and whether the greater part of it were on the ground or whirling about him in the air. With the snow came extreme cold that pierced the thickest garments.
The horses, running free on the range, seemed to feel the cold comparatively little, eating the snow for water, and pawing through it to the stem-cured prairie-grass for food. But the cattle suffered intensely, especially the Southern stock which had not yet learnt that they must eat their way through the snow to the sustenance beneath. They stood huddled together at every wind-break, and in the first biting storm of the new year even sought the shelter of the towns, taking possession of the streets. The cows, curiously enough, seemed to bear the hardship better than the bulls. The male, left to his own resources, had a tendency to "give up" and creep into the brush and die, while the females, reduced to skin and bones, struggled on, gnawing at the frozen stumps of sagebrush, battling to the last.
Western newspapers, "booming" the cattle business, insisted that every blizzard was followed by a warm wind known as a "chinook" which brought a prompt return of comfort and sleekness to the most unhappy steer; but wise men knew better. For the cattle, seeking a livelihood on the snowy, wind-swept wastes, the winter was one long-protracted misery.
It was in fact not an unalloyed delight for human beings, especially for those whose business it was to guard the cattle. The hardest and the bitterest work was what was called "line riding." The ranchmen cared little if their cattle grazed westward toward the Yellowstone; it was a different matter, however, if they drifted east and southeast to the granger country and the Sioux Reservation, where there were flat, bare plains which offered neither food nor shelter, and where thieves were many and difficult to apprehend. Along the line where the broken ground of the Bad Lands met the prairie east of the Little Missouri, the ranchmen, therefore, established a series of camps, from each of which two cowboys, starting in opposite directions, patrolled the invisible line halfway to the adjoining camps.
Bill Sewall gazed out over the bleak country with a homesick and apprehensive heart.
As for our coming back [he wrote his brother in January], you need not worry about that. As soon as I serve out my time and my sentence expires I shall return. Am having a good time and enjoy myself, should anywhere if I knew I could not do any better and was obliged to, but this is just about like being transported to Siberia, just about as cold, barren and desolate and most as far out of the way. It was hotter here last summer than it ever was at home and it has been colder here this winter than it ever was at home, 50 and 65 below all one week. Don't see how the cattle live at all and there is lots of them dieing. You can find them all around where they lay nights in the bushes. The poor ones will all go, I guess. They say they will die worse in the spring. The fat strong ones will get through, I guess. Don't know that any of our hundred have died yet, but I don't believe this is a good country to raise cattle in.
Am afraid Theodore will not make so much as he has been led to think he would. There are lots of bleeders here, but we mean to fend them off from him as well as we can.