A TALE OF THE PLAINS
From "Hunting the Grizzly," with the permission of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York and London, publishers.
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
One of my valued friends in the mountains, and one of the best hunters with whom I ever traveled, was a man who had a peculiarly light-hearted way of looking at conventional social obligations. Though in some ways a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of much shrewdness and of great courage and resolution. Moreover, he possessed what only a few men do possess, the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth unless for very weighty reasons. He was preeminently a philosopher, of a happy, skeptical turn of mind. He had no prejudices.
On one occasion when we were out together we killed a bear, and after skinning it, took a bath in a lake. I noticed he had a scar on the side of his foot, and asked him how he got it, to which he responded, with indifference:—
"Oh, that? Why, a man shoo tin' at me to make me dance, that was all."
I expressed some curiosity in the matter, and he went on:
"Well, the way of it was this: It was when I was keeping a saloon in New Mexico, and there was a man there by the name of Fowler, and there was a reward on him of three thousand dollars—"
"Put on him by the State?"
"No, put on by his wife," said my friend; "and there was this—"