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

he declared that Fisher alone was responsible for having his name placed on the list, and breathed dire threats against the manager of the Marquis's Refrigerator Company.

Fisher was not greatly disturbed by the rumors that reached him of Maunders's determination to kill him at the first opportunity. He even went hunting alone with the outwardly affable "bad man."

Some of the "boys" thought he was taking unnecessary risks, and told him so. "You're taking a big chance in going out alone with Maunders. He's got it in for you."

Fisher smiled. "Perhaps you haven't noticed," he said, "that I always make certain that one or the other of you fellows sees us leave. Maunders would break his neck to see me get back safely."

Unquestionably, Maunders had an almost over-developed bump of caution. He left Fisher unharmed and turned his attention to the two backwoodsmen from Maine who were holding down the most desirable claim north of Medora for an Eastern tenderfoot.

One Sunday morning late in September Sewall was alone in the dugout at the river-bank. Dow was off on a stroll and Sewall was writing his weekly letter home, when he suddenly heard hoof-beats punctuated with shots. He went to the door. Six rough-looking characters on horseback were outside with smoking rifles in their hands. He knew only one of them, but he was evidently the leader. It was Maunders. Sewall took in the situation and invited them all inside.

The men had been drinking, and, suspecting that they would be hungry, Sewall offered them food. Dow was an excellent cook and in the ashes of the hearth was a pot of baked beans, intended for their own midday meal. Sewall, keeping carefully within reach of one or the other of his weapons which hung on the wall, set the pot before the evil-faced gunmen.

Maunders, who was slightly drunk, ate ravenously and directly began to sing the praises of the beans. Sewall filled his plate, and filled it again.

"I thought I would do everything I could to make them comfortable," he remarked, telling about it later, "and then if they cooked up any racket we should have to see what the end would be. I knew that if they were well filled, it would have a tendency to make them good-natured, and besides that it puts a man in rather an awkward position, when he's got well treated, to start a rumpus."

Sewall watched the men unostentatiously, but with an eagle eye. He had made up his mind that if there were to be any dead men thereabouts Maunders was to be the first. "He being the leader I thought I would make sure of him whatever happened to me."

He noted, not without satisfaction, that the men were looking around the cabin, regarding the weapons with attention. He showed Maunders about. The gunman agreed without enthusiasm that they had "got things fixed up in very fine shape," and departed. He treated Sewall most affably thereafter, but the backwoodsmen were made aware in one way and another that the old mischief-maker had not yet given up the idea of driving Theodore Roosevelt and his "outfit" off the claim at Elkhorn Bottom.

Chapater XII

 

It was underneath the stars, the little peeking stars, That we lay and dreamed of Eden in the hills: We were neither sad nor gay, but just wondering, while we lay, What a mighty lot of space creation fills.

Our fire was just a spark; dot of red against the dark, And around the fire an awful lot of night. The purple, changing air was as quiet as a prayer, And the moon came up and froze the mountains white.

Henry Herbert KNIBBS

[Illustration: Fantastic formation at Medicine Buttes.]

[Illustration: Medicine Buttes.]

The "boss" of Elkhorn Ranch, meanwhile, oblivious of the heat which he was generating in the Marquis's Prime Minister, was taking his slow course northeastward across Wyoming to the Bad Lands. It was long and weary traveling across the desolate reaches of burnt prairie. The horses began to droop. At last, in some heavy sand-hills east of the Little Beaver, one of the team pulling the heavily laden wagon played out completely, and they had to put the toughest of the saddle ponies in his place. Night was coming on fast as they crossed the final ridge and came in sight of as singular a bit of country as any of them had ever seen. Scattered over a space not more than three quarters of a mile square were countless isolated buttes of sandstone, varying in height from fifteen to fifty feet. Some of them rose as sharp peaks or ridges or as connected chains, but the greater number by far were topped with diminutive table-lands, some thirty feet across, some seventy, some two hundred. The sides were perpendicular, and were cut and channeled by the weather into most curious caves and columns and battlements and spires. Here and there ledges ran along the faces of the cliffs and eerie protrusions jutted out from the corners. Grave pine-trees rose loftily among the strange creations of water and wind set in a desert of snow-white sand. It was a beautiful and fantastic place and they made their camp there.

The moon was full and the night clear. In an angle of a cliff they built a roaring pine-log fire whose flames, leaping up the gray wall, made wild sport of the bold corners and strange-looking escarpments of the rock. Beyond the circle that the firelight brought luridly to life, the buttes in the moonlight had their own still magic. Against the shining silver of the cliffs the pines showed dark and somber, and when the branches stirred, the bright light danced on the ground making it appear like a sheet of molten metal.

It was like a country seen in a dream.

The next morning all was changed. A wild gale was blowing and rain beat about them in level sheets. A wet fog came and went and gave place at last to a steady rain, as the gale gave place to a hurricane. They spent a miserable day and night shifting from shelter to shelter with the shifting wind; another day and another night. Their provisions were almost gone, the fire refused to burn in the fierce downpour, the horses drifted far off before the storm....

"Fortunately," remarked Roosevelt later, "we had all learned that, no matter how bad things were, grumbling and bad temper can always be depended upon to make them worse, and so bore our ill-fortune, if not with stoical indifference, at least in perfect quiet."

The third day dawned crisp and clear, and once more the wagon lumbered on. They made camp that night some forty miles southwest of Lang's. They were still three days from home, three days of crawling voyaging beside the fagged team. The country was monotonous, moreover, without much game.

"I think I'd like to ride in and wake the boys up for breakfast," remarked Merrifield.

"Good!" exclaimed Roosevelt. "I'll do it with you."

Merrifield argued the matter. Roosevelt had been in the saddle all day and it was eighty miles to the Maltese Cross.

"I'm going with you. I want to wind up this trip myself," said Roosevelt, and there the argument ended.

At nine o'clock they saddled their tough little ponies, and rode off out of the circle of firelight. The October air was cool in their faces as they loped steadily mile after mile over the moonlit prairie.

Roosevelt later described that memorable ride.

The hoof-beats of our horses rang out in steady rhythm through the silence of the night, otherwise unbroken save now and then by the wailing cry of a coyote. The rolling plains stretched out on all sides of us, shimmering in the clear moonlight; and occasionally a band of spectral-looking antelope swept silently away from before our path. Once we went by a drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at the intruders; as we passed they charged down by us, the ground rumbling beneath their tread, while their long horns knocked against each other with a sound like the clattering of a multitude of castanets. We could see clearly enough to keep our general course over the trackless plain, steering by the stars where the prairie was perfectly level and without landmarks; and our ride was timed well, for as we galloped down into the valley of the Little Missouri the sky above the line of the level bluffs in our front was crimson with the glow of the unrisen sun.

Roosevelt rode down to Elkhorn a day or two after his return to the Maltese Cross, and found Sewall and Dow busy cutting the timber for the new house, which was to stand in the shade of a row of cottonwood trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with the stalwart backwoodsmen.

One evening he overheard Captain Robins ask Dow what the day's cut had been. "Well, Bill cut down fifty-three," answered Dow. "I cut forty-nine, and the boss," he added dryly, not realizing that Roosevelt was within hearing--"the boss he beavered down seventeen."

Roosevelt remembered the tree-stumps he had seen gnawed down by beavers, and grinned.

Roosevelt found that the men from Maine were adapting themselves admirably to their strange surroundings. Dow was already an excellent cowhand. Sewalls abilities ran in other directions.

We are hewing away at the stuff for the house [Sewall wrote his brother on October 19th]. It is to be 60 ft. long and 30 wide, the walls 9 ft. high, so you can see it is quite a job to hew it out on three sides, but we have plenty of time. Theodore wants us to ride and explore one day out of each week and we have to go to town after our mail once a week, so we don't work more than half the time. It is a good job and a big one, but we have lots of time between this and spring.

Meanwhile, he stubbornly insisted that the country was not adapted to cattle.

I think I already see a good many drawbacks to this country [he wrote]. The Stock business is a new business in the Bad Lands and I can't find as anybody has made anything at it, yet they all expect to. I think they have all lost as yet. Talked the other day with one of the biggest Stock men here. He is hired by the month to boss. He said nobody knew whether there was anything in it or not, yet. He had been here three years and sometimes thought there was not much in it, said it was very expensive and a great many outs to it and I believe he told the truth. Out about town they blow it up, want to get everybody at it they can. We shall see in time. Can tell better in the spring after we see how they come in with their cattle.

The truth was, Bill knew the ways of cattle, for he had run cattle in the open in Maine under climatic conditions not dissimilar to those of the Dakota country. His experience had taught him that when a cow is