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Theodore Roosevelt
Chapter IV: "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail"
by Pearson, Edmund Lester
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At the end of Mr. Roosevelt's membership in the New York Assembly,
he began his life on a ranch in North Dakota. In this way he not
only learned much about the Western people, but came to know the
ranchman's life, and to have his first chance to shoot big game.
He had married Miss Lee in 1880, the autumn of the year he left
college. Less than four years afterwards his wife died, following
the birth of a daughter. His mother died on the next day, and
Roosevelt under the sorrow of these two losses, left New York, and
spent almost all his time on his ranch, the Elkhorn, at Medora.
The people in Dakota looked on this Eastern tenderfoot with a
little amusement, and, at first, probably with some contempt. He
was, to their minds, a "college dude" from the East, and moreover
he wore eyeglasses. To some of the people whom he met, this fact,
he says, was enough to cause distrust. Eyeglasses were under
suspicion.
But, with two men who had been his guides in Maine, Bill Sewall
and Wilmot Dow, he began his life as a ranchman and a cow-puncher,
and went through all the hard work and all the fun. He took long
rides after cattle, rounded them up and helped in the branding. He
followed the herd when it stampeded in a thunderstorm. He hunted
all the game that there was in the county, and also acted as
Deputy Sheriff and helped clear the place of horse-thieves and
"bad men."
In one of his adventures Roosevelt showed that he had taken to
heart the celebrated advice which, in Hamlet, Polonius gives to
his son:
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Mulvaney, in one of Kipling's stories, proved that he knew
something about Shakespeare, for he put this advice into his own
language so as to express the meaning perfectly:
"Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if
you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint."
Roosevelt tried to keep out of the fight,--but this is the way it
happened. He was out after lost horses, and had to put up at a
little hotel where there were no rooms downstairs, but a bar, a
dining-room and a kitchen. It was late at night, and there was
trouble on, for he heard one or two shots in the bar as he came
up. He disliked the idea of going in, but it was cold outside and
there was nowhere else to go. Inside the bar, a cheap "bad man"
was walking up and down with a cocked revolver in each hand. He
had been shooting at the clock, and making every one unhappy and
uncomfortable.
When Roosevelt came in, he called him "Four eyes," because he wore
spectacles, and announced "Four eyes is going to set up the
drinks." Roosevelt tried to pass it off by laughing, and sat down
behind the stove to escape notice, and keep away from trouble. But
the "bad man" came and stood over him, a gun in each hand, using
foul language, and insisting that "Four eyes" should get up and
treat.
"Well," Roosevelt reluctantly remarked, "if I've got to, I've got
to!" As he said this, he rose quickly, and hit the gun-man with
his right fist on the point of the jaw, then with his left, and
again with his right. The guns went off in the air, as the "bad
man" went over like a nine-pin, striking his head on the corner of
the bar as he fell. Roosevelt was ready to drop on him if he
moved, for he still clutched the revolvers. But he was senseless.
The other people in the bar recovered their nerve, once the man
was down. They hustled him out into the shed, and there was no
more trouble from him.
Roosevelt hunted geese and ducks, deer, mountain sheep, elk and
grizzly bear during his stay in the West. It was still possible to
find buffalo, although most of the great herds had vanished. The
prairie was covered with relics of the dead buffalo, so that one
might ride for hundreds of miles, seeing their bones everywhere,
but never getting a glimpse of a live one. Yet he managed, after a
hard hunt of several days, to shoot a great bull buffalo.
An encounter with a grizzly bear is much more exciting, and he was
nearly killed by one bear. In later years Roosevelt killed almost
every kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the
earth,--lions, elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros.
The Indian tiger is perhaps the only one of the large savage
animals which he never encountered. Yet after meeting all these
and having some close shaves, especially with a wounded elephant
in Africa, he said that his narrowest escape was with this grizzly
bear.
It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in
Idaho. He had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they
parted company, and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a
valley, from a rocky ridge, he saw a dark object, which he
discovered was a large grizzly bear. He fired, and the bear giving
a loud grunt, as the bullet struck, rushed forward at a gallop
into a laurel thicket. Roosevelt paused at the edge of the thicket
and peered within, trying to see the bear, but knowing too much
about them to go into the brush where he was.
When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left
it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me
on the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly
towards me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes
burned like embers in the gloom.
I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered
the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick.
Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and
challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw
the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me,
crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was
hard to aim. I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him
as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went
through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor
flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him.
He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I
fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open
mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to
one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging
smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side
blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck
he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his
muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or
three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of
cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of
which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his
muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he
rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three
bullets had inflicted a mortal wound. [Footnote: "The Wilderness
Hunter," pp. 305-6.]
There were, once, near Mr. Roosevelt's ranch, three men who had
been suspected of cattle-killing and horse-stealing. The leader
was a tall fellow named Finnegan, who had long red hair reaching
to his shoulders, and always wore a broad hat and a fringed
buckskin shirt. He had been in a number of shooting scrapes. The
others were a half-breed, and a German, who was weak and shiftless
rather than actively bad. They had a bad reputation, and were
trying to get out of the country before the Vigilance Committee
got them.
About the only way to travel--it was early in March and the rivers
were swollen--was by boat down the river. So when the cowboys on
Mr. Roosevelt's ranch found that his boat was stolen, they were
sure who had taken it. As it is every man's duty in a half-settled
country to bring law-breakers to justice, and as Roosevelt was,
moreover, Deputy Sheriff, he decided to go after the three
thieves. Two of his cowboys, Sewall and Dow from Maine, in about
three days built another boat. In this, with their rifles, food
enough for two weeks, warm bedding and thick clothes, Roosevelt,
Sewall and Dow set out down the Little Missouri River.
There had been a blizzard, the weather was still bitterly cold,
and the river full of drifting ice. They shot prairie fowl and
lived on them, with bacon, bread and tea. It was cold work poling
and paddling down the river, with the current, but against a head
wind. The ice froze on the pole handles. At night where they
camped the thermometer went down to zero. Next day they shot two
deer, for they needed meat, as they were doing such hard work in
the cold.
On the third day they sighted smoke,--the campfire of the three
thieves. Two boats, one of them the stolen one, were tied up to
the bank. It was an exciting moment, for they expected a fight. As
it turned out, however, it was a tough job, but not a fighting
one. The German was alone in camp, and they captured him without
trouble. The other two were out hunting. When they came back an
hour or two later, they were surprised by the order to hold up
their hands. The half-breed obeyed at once, Finnigan hesitated
until Roosevelt walked in close, covering him with a rifle, and
repeated the command. Then he gave up.
But this was only the beginning of a long, hard task. It was often
the way to shoot such men at once, but Sheriff Roosevelt did not
like that. He was going to bring them back to jail. At night the
thieves could not be tied up, as they would freeze to death. So
Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow had to take turns in watching them at
night. After they started down river again, they found the river
blocked by ice, and had to camp out for eight days in freezing
weather. The food all but gave out, and at last there was nothing
left but flour. Bread made out of flour and muddy water and
nothing else, is not, says Mr. Roosevelt, good eating for a steady
diet. Besides they had to be careful of meeting a band of Sioux
Indians, who were known to be in the region.
At last they worked back to a ranch, borrowed a pony, on which
Roosevelt rode up into the mountains to a place where there was a
wagon. He hired this, with two broncos and a driver. Sewall and
Dow took the boats down the river, while Roosevelt set out on a
journey which took two days and a night, walking behind the wagon,
and guarding the three men. The driver of the wagon was a
stranger.
At night they put up at a frontier hut, and the Deputy Sheriff had
to sit up all night to be sure the three prisoners did not escape.
When he reached the little town of Dickinson, and handed the men
over to the Sheriff, he had traveled over three hundred miles. He
had brought three outlaws to justice, and done something for the
cause of better government in the country where he lived.
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