ROOSEVELT IN THE BAD LANDS - Hermann Hagedorn (best novels for students .TXT) 📗

him at his own game. He consequently suggested a shooting-match. The Indians agreed. To Roosevelt's astonishment they proved to be very bad shots, and not only Merrifield, but Roosevelt himself, completely outclassed them in the competition. The Indians were noticeably impressed. Merrifield and Roosevelt rode back to their camp conscious that so far as those particular Indians were concerned no anxiety need disturb their slumbers.

"Indians," remarked Merrifield later, "are the best judges of human nature in the world. When an Indian finds out that you are a good shot, he will leave you absolutely alone to go and come as you like. Indians are just like white men. They are not going to start something when they know you can out-shoot them."

For three weeks they traveled through desolation before they came at last to the goal of their journey. At the foot of the first steep rise, on the banks of Crazy Woman Creek, a few miles south of the army post at Buffalo, they left the wagon, and following an old Indian trail started into the mountains, driving their pack-ponies before them.

It was pleasant, after three burning weeks of treeless prairie, to climb into the shadowy greenness of the mountains. All about them was the music of running water, where clear brooks made their way through deep gorges and under interlacing boughs. Groves of great pines rose from grassy meadows and fringed the glades that lay here and there like quiet parks in the midst of the wilderness.

The hunters pitched their camp at last in a green valley beside a boisterous mountain brook. The weather was clear, with thin ice coursing the dark waters of the mountain tarns, and now and again slight snowfalls that made the forest gleam and glisten in the moonlight like fairyland. Through the frosty air they could hear the vibrant, musical notes of the bull elk far off, calling to the cows or challenging one another.

No country could have been better adapted to still hunting than the great, pine-clad mountains, studded with open glades. Roosevelt loved the thrill of the chase, but he loved no less the companionship of the majestic trees and the shy wild creatures which sprang across his path or ran with incredible swiftness along the overhanging boughs. Moving on noiseless moccasins he caught alluring glimpses of the inner life of the mountains.

The days passed very pleasantly in the crystal air and vibrant solitude of their mountain hunting grounds. The fare that old Lebo provided was excellent, and to the three men, who had for weeks been accustomed to make small fires from dried brush or from sagebrush roots laboriously dug out of the ground, it was a treat to sit at night before the roaring pine-logs.

"We've come to a land at last," remarked the quaint old teamster with satisfaction, "where the wood grows on trees."

They shot several elk promptly, but the grizzlies they were after eluded them. At last, after a week Merrifield, riding into camp one dusk, with a shout announced that he had come upon grizzly-bear signs some ten miles away. They shifted camp at once.

That afternoon, on a crag overlooking a wild ravine, Roosevelt shot another great bull elk. To Merrifield it seemed as though the elk might constitute a day's satisfactory achievement. But Roosevelt was indefatigable. "Now," he said with gusto, contemplating the magnificent antlers, "we'll go out to-night and get a bear."

But that night they found nothing. Returning next day with Merrifield for the carcass of the elk however, they found that a grizzly had been feeding on it. They crouched in hiding for the bear's return. Night fell, owls began to hoot dismally from the tops of the tall trees, and a lynx wailed from the depths of the woods, but the bear did not come.

Early next morning they were again at the elk carcass. The bear had evidently eaten his fill during the night. His tracks were clear, and they followed them noiselessly over the yielding carpet of moss and pine-needles, to an elk-trail leading into a tangled thicket of young spruces.

Suddenly Merrifield sank on one knee, turning half round, his face aflame with excitement. Roosevelt strode silently past him, his gun "at the ready."

There, not ten steps off, was the great bear slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces. He had heard the hunters and reared himself on his haunches. Seeing them, he dropped again on all-fours, and the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders bristled as he turned toward them.

Roosevelt aimed fairly between the small, glittering eyes, and fired.

Doubtless my face was pretty white [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" a week later,] but the blue barrel was as steady as a rock as I glanced along it until I could see the top of the bead fairly between his two sinister-looking eyes; as I pulled the trigger I jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if he charged, but it was needless, for the great brute was struggling in his death agony, and as you will see when I bring home his skin, the bullet hole was as exactly between his eyes as if I had measured the distance with a carpenter's rule.

At last, one cool morning, when the branches of the evergreens were laden with the feathery snow that had fallen overnight, the hunters struck camp, and in single file, with the pack-ponies laden with the trophies of the hunt, moved down through the woods and across the canyons to the edge of the great table-land, then slowly down the steep slope to its foot, where they found the canvas-topped wagon. Next day they set out on the three-hundred-mile journey home to the Maltese Cross.

For once I have made a very successful hunting trip [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Fort McKinney.] I have just come out of the mountains and will start at once for the Little Missouri, which I expect to reach in a fortnight, and a week afterwards will be on my way home. Merrifield killed two bears and three elk; he has been an invaluable guide for game, and of course the real credit for the bag rests with him, for he found most of the animals. But I really shot well this time. Merrifield, who is a perfectly fearless and reckless man, has no more regard for a grizzly bear than he has for a jack-rabbit; the last one he killed, he wished to merely break his leg with the first shot "so as to see what he'd do." I had not at all this feeling, and fully realized that we were hunting dangerous game; still I never made steadier shooting than at the grizzlies. I had grand sport with the elk, too, and the woods fairly rang with my shouting when I brought down my first lordly bull, with great branching antlers; but after I had begun bear-killing, other sport seemed tame.

So I have had good sport; and enough excitement and fatigue to prevent overmuch thought; and, moreover, I have at last been able to sleep well at night. But unless I was bear-hunting all the time I am afraid I should soon get as restless with this life as with the life at home.

Chapater XI

 

The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings, The mosquito delights you with buzzing wings; The sand-burrs prevail, and so do the ants, And those who sit down need half-soles on their pants.

Cowboy song

The day that Roosevelt started south on his journey to the mountains, Sewall returned north down the river to rejoin his nephew. Will Dow was watching the cattle on the plateau a few miles south of Elkhorn Bottom, near the mouth of the defile which the cowboys called Shipka Pass.

"You never looked so good to me," he said to Sewall that night, "as you did when I saw your head coming up the Shipka Pass."

They worked together among the cattle for another two or three weeks. They were on the best of terms with Captain Robins by this time, for there was much to like and much to respect in the gruff, dark little seafaring man, who had suffered shipwreck in more ways than one, and was out on the plains because of a marriage that had gone on the rocks. He was an excellent man with the horses, and good company about a camp-fire, for somewhere he had picked up an education and was well-informed. He gave the two tenderfeet a good training in the rudiments of "cattle-punching," sending first one and then the other off to distant round-ups to test their abilities among strangers. Sewall proved unadaptable, for he was rather old to learn new tricks so far removed from the activities that were familiar to him; but Dow became a "cowhand" overnight.

Experience was not greatly mollifying Sewall's opinion of the region in which his lot had been cast.

The sun when it shines clear [he wrote his brother Sam after he had been in the Bad Lands six weeks] strikes the bare sides of the Buttes and comes down on the treeless bottoms hot enough to make a Rattlesnake pant. If you can get in the shade there is most always a breeze. The grand trouble is you can't get in the shade. There's no shade to get into and the great sandy Desert is cool compared with some of the gulches, but as you ride it is not quite so bad. The Ponys when they are up to some trick are lively and smart, all other times they are tired, are very tame and look very meek and gentle. But just let one of them get the start of you in any way and you are left. Am glad to say mine has never really got the start yet. We have had a number of differences and controverseys, but my arguments have always prevailed so far.

About the middle of September, the two backwoodsmen moved down to Elkhorn Bottom, leaving Robins in charge of the cattle. Dow went away on a round-up and Sewall undertook to put in livable shape a dugout that stood on the river-bank some thirty or forty yards from the place which Roosevelt had, on a previous visit, selected as the site for the ranch-house which Sewall and Dow were to build. The shack had belonged to a hunter who had left the country, and was not sumptuous in its fittings.

[Illustration: Roosevelt's brands.

CHIMNEY BUTTE RANCH. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor. FERRIS & MERRIFIELD, Managers.

O. address, Little Missouri, D. T. Range, Little Missouri, 8 miles south of railroad.

[brand drawing] as in cut on left hip and right side, both or either, and down cut dewlap.

Horse brand, [brand drawing] on left hip.

ELKHORN RANCH. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Proprietor. SEAWALL & DOW, Managers.

O. address, Little Missouri, D. T. Range, Little Missouri, twenty-five miles north of railroad.

as in cut, [brand drawing] on left side, on right, [brand drawing] or the reverse.

Horse brand, [brand drawing] on right or left shoulder.]

Dow returned from the round-up with interesting news. The Marquis, it seemed, had by no means resigned his claim to the territory on which Roosevelt had established "squatter's rights." Dow overheard one of the Marquis's men confiding to another that "there'd be some dead men round that Elkhorn shack some day."

Sewall received the news with