All of it very good, sound advice, and just such as the Captain might have been expected to give, but the last in the world that any one would have looked for him to personally follow.
The letter ended with “I think the war will be over this year. I did want to ride a spotted cayuse into Berlin, but it don’t look now as if I would.”
The next time that I heard from the Captain was some time after I had joined the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In characteristic fashion he addressed the letter merely “Care of General Pershing, France,” and naturally the letter took three or four months before it finally reached me. The Captain had been very ill, but treated the whole matter as a joke.
I have just returned from California, where I was on the sick list since last December, six months in a hospital and sanitarium while the doctors were busy with knives, and nearly took me over the divide. I am recovering slowly, and hope to last till the Crown Prince and his murdering progenitor are hung. I was chairman of the Exemption Board in 1917 and stuck to it until I was taken ill with grippe, which ended in an intestinal trouble which required the services of two surgeons and their willing knives to combat. The folks came to California after the remains, but when they arrived they found the remains sitting up and cussing the Huns.
Now, Kim, take care of yourself; don’t get reckless. Kill all the Huns you can, but don’t let them have the satisfaction of getting you.
My father’s death was a fearful blow to the old Captain. Only those who knew him well realized how hard he was hit. He immediately set to work to arrange some monument to my father’s memory. With the native good taste that ever characterized him, instead of thinking in terms of statues, he decided that the dedication of a mountain would be most fitting, and determined to make the shaft to be placed upon its summit simple in both form and inscription. Father was the one honorary member of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, and it was in conjunction with this society that the Captain arranged that Sheep Mountain, a few miles away from Deadwood, should be renamed Mount Roosevelt.
General Wood made the address. A number of my friends who were there gave me the latest news of the Captain. He wrote me that he expected to come East in September; that he was not feeling very fit, and that he was glad to have been able to go through with the dedication of the mountain. He was never a person to talk about himself, so I have no way of knowing, other than intuition, but I am certain that he felt all along that his days were numbered, and held on mainly in order to accomplish his purpose of raising the memorial.
I waited until the middle of September and then wrote to Deadwood to ask the Captain when he would be coming. I found the reply in the newspapers a few days later. The Captain was dead. The gallant old fellow had crossed the divide that he wrote about, leaving behind him not merely the sorrow of his friends but their pride in his memory. Well may we feel proud of having been numbered among the friends of such a thoroughgoing, upstanding American as Seth Bullock. As long as our country produces men of such caliber, we may face the future with a consciousness of our ability to win through such dark days as may confront us. The changes and shiftings that have ever accompanied our growth never found Seth Bullock at a loss; he was always ready to
“Turn a keen, untroubled face
Home to the instant need of things.”