Chapter 4 Part 1 of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE ROSEVELT Though I had previously made a trip into the then territory of Dakota, beyond the Red River, it was not until 1883 that I went to the Little Missouri, and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the Chimney Butte, and the Elkhorn. It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, the West of Owen Wister's stories, and Frederick Remington's drawings, the West of the Indian in the Buffalo Hunter, the Soldier in the Cowpuncher, that land of the West has gone now, gone, gone, with lost Atlantis, gone to the Isle of Ghosts, and of strange, dead memories. It was a land of vast silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where the wild game stared at the passing horsemen. It was a land of scattered ranches, of herds of longhorn cattle, and of reckless riders who, unmoved, looked into the eyes of life, or of death. In that land we led a free and hearty life, with horse and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the heat, and we knew the freezing misery of riding nightguard round the cattle in the late fall roundup. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our eyes each night before we fell asleep, and in the winter we rode through blinding blizzards, when the driver snow dust burned our face. There were monotonous days, as we guided the trail-cradle, or the beef herds hour after hour at the slowest of walks, and minutes or hours teeming with excitement, as we stopped stampedes, or swam the herds across rivers, treacherous with quicksands, or brimmed with running ice. We knew toil and hardship, and hunger and thirst, and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another. But we felt the beat of hearty life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living. It was right and necessary that this life should pass, for the safety of our country lies in being made the country of the small homemaker. The great, unfenced ranches and the days of free grass necessarily represented a temporary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners, were the first enemies of the cattlemen, and owing to the way they ate out the grass and destroyed all other vegetation, these roving sheep-bands represented little of permanent good to the country. But the homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these represented from the national standpoint the most desirable of all possible users of and dwellers on the soil. Their advent meant the breaking up of the big ranches, and the change was a national gain, although to some of us an individual loss. I first reached the Little Missouri on a northern Pacific train about three in the morning on a cool September day in 1883. Aside from the station, the only building was a ramshackle structure called the Pyramid Park Hotel. I dragged my duffel bag fither and hammered at the door until the drowsy proprietor appeared muttering oats. He ushered me upstairs where I was given one of the fourteen beds in the room which by itself constituted the entire upper floor. Next day I walked over to the abandoned army post, and after some hours among the grayed log shacks, a ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte Ranch, where he was living with his brother and their partner. The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for the horses nearby, and a chicken house jabbed against the rear of the ranch house. Inside there was only one room with a table, three or four chairs, a cooking stove, and three bunks. The owners were Sylvain and Joe Ferris and William J. Merrifield. Later all three of them held my commissions while I was president. Merrifield was Marshal of Montana, and as presidential elector cast the vote of that state for me in 1904. Sylvain Ferris was the land officer in North Dakota, and Joe Ferris postmaster at Midora. There was a fourth man, Joe Meyer, who also worked for me later. That evening we all played old sledge round the table, and at one period the game was interrupted by a frightful squawking outside which told us that a bobcat had made a raid on the chicken house. After a buffalo hunt with my original friend Joe Ferris, I entered into partnership with Merrifield and Sylvain Ferris, and we started a cow ranch with the Maltese Cross brand, always known as Malt-T-Cross. By the way, as the general impression along the Little Missouri was that Maltese must be a plural. 29 years later my four friends of that night were delegates to the first progressive national convention at Chicago. They were among my most constant companions for the few years, next, succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the game of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them, and many others like them, on the roundup. And I brought out from Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn Ranch lower down the river, my two backwoods friends, Sewell and Dowell. My brands for the lower ranch were the Elkhorn and the Triangle. I do not believe there was any more life attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too. It taught a man self-reliance, hardy-hood, and the value of instant decision. In short, the virtues that ought to come from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After the first year, I built on the Elkhorn Ranch a long, low ranch house of hewn logs with a veranda and with, in addition to the other rooms, a bedroom for myself and a sitting room with a big fireplace. I got out a rocking chair. I am very fond of rocking chairs and enough books to fill two or three shelves and a rubber bathtub so I could get a bath. And then I do not see how anyone could have lived more comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bear skins of our own killing. We always kept the house clean, using the word in a rather large sense. There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the bitterest weather, and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer, sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days, buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most ranch men at that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with 10,000 head of cattle, and there was not a cow that could be milked. We made up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we started to domesticate some of the cows. Our first efforts were not successful, chiefly because we could not devote the needed time and patience to the matter. And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on horseback, then roper, thrower, and turn her upside down to milk her, while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of results. Gradually, we accumulated tame cows, and after we had thinned out the bobcats and coyotes, more chickens. The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad shallow bed of the little Missouri, through which at most seasons there ran only a trickle of water. While at times afresh it, it was filled brimful with the boiling foamy muddy torrent. There was no neighbor for 10 or 15 miles on either side of me. The river twisted down at long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer cliff walls. For the badlands, a chaos of peaks, plateaus, and ridges rose abruptly from the edges of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows. In front of the ranch house veranda was a row of cottonwood trees, with gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of air. From these trees came the faraway melancholy cooing of morning doves, and little owls perched in them and called tremulously at night. In the long summer afternoons, we would sometimes sit on the piazza when there was no work to be done, and for an hour or two at a time, watching the cattle on the sandbars, and the sharply channeled and strangely carved amphitheater of cliffs across the bottom opposite. While the vultures wheeled overhead, there were black shadows gliding across the glaring white of the dry riverbed. Sometimes from the ranch we saw deer, and once when we needed meat, I shot one across the river as I stood on the piazza. In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a bar of bent steel. And then, at night, wolves and lynxes traveled up and down it as if it had been in highway passing in front of the ranch house. Often, in the late fall or early winter, after our hard days hunting, or when returning from one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the ranch until hours after sunset. And after the first weary tramping in the cold, it was a keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the firelit windows across the snowy wastes. The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewell and Dowl, who, like most men from the main woods, were mighty with the axe. I could chop fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third of the work they could. One day, when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees to begin our building operations, I heard someone ask Dowl what the total cut had been. And Dowl, not realizing that I was within hearing, answered, well, Bill, cut down 53, I cut down 49, and the boss, he beavered down 17. Those who have seen the stump of a tree which has been gnawed down by a beaver will understand the exact force of the comparison. In those days, on a cow ranch, the men were apt to be away on the various roundups at least half the time. It was interesting and exciting work, and except for the lack of sleep on the spring and summer roundups, it was not exhausting work. Compared to lumbering or mining or blacksmithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor. The ponies were, of course, grass-fed and unshod. Each man had his own string of nine or ten. One pony would be used for the morning work, one for the afternoon, and neither would be used for the next three days. A separate pony was kept for night-writing. The spring and early summer roundups were especially for the branding of calves. There was much hard work and some risk on the roundup, but also much fun. The meeting place was appointed weeks beforehand, and all the ranchmen of the territory to be covered by the roundup sent their representatives. There were no fences in the west that I knew, and their place was taken by the cowboy and the branding iron. The cattle wandered free. Each calf was branded with the brand of the cow it was following. Sometimes in winter, there was what we call line-writing. That is, camps were established, and the line-writers traveled a definite beat across the desolate wastes of snow, to and fro from one camp to another, to prevent the cattle from drifting. But as a rule, nothing was done to keep the cattle in any one place. In the spring, there was a general roundup in each locality. Each outfit took part in its own roundup, and all the outfits of a given region combined to send representatives to the two or three roundups that covered the neighborhoods nearby into which the cattle might drift. For example, our little Missouri roundup generally worked down the river for a distance some 50 or 60 miles above my ranch toward the Kildere Mountains, about the same distance below. In addition, we would usually send representatives to the Yellowstone Roundup, and to the roundup along the upper Little Missouri, and moreover, if we heard that cattle had drifted, perhaps towards the Indian Reservation southeast of us. We would send a wagon and rider after them. In the meeting point, which might be in the valley of a half-dry stream, or in some broad pattern of the river itself, or per chance by a couple of ponds under which some clearly shaped ute was the landmark for the region round bout, we would all gather on the appointed day. The chuck wagons containing the bedding and food, each drawn by four horses and driven by the teamster cook, would come jolting and rattling over the uneven suede. Accompanying each wagon was eight or ten riders. The cow punchers, while their horses, a band of a hundred or so, were driven by the two herders, one of whom was known as the day wrangler and the other as the night wrangler. The men were lean, sinewy fellows, accustomed to riding half-broken horses at any speed over any country, by day or by night. They wore flannel shirts with loose handkerchiefs knotted round their necks, broad hats, high-heeled boots with jingling spurs, and sometimes leather shafts, although often they merely had their trousers tucked into the tops of their high boots. There was a great deal of rough horseplay, and as with any gathering of men or boys of high animal spirits, the horseplay sometimes became very rough indeed, and as men usually carried revolvers, and as there were occasionally one or two noted gunfighters among them, there were now and then a shooting affray. A man who was a coward, or who shook his work, had a bad time, of course. A man could not afford to let himself be bullied, or treated as a butt. And on the other hand, if he was looking for a fight, he was certain to find it. But my own experience was that if a man did not talk until his associates knew him well and liked him, and if he did his work, he never had any difficulty in getting on. In my own round-up district, I speedily grew to be friends with most of the men. When I went among strangers, I always had to spend 24 hours in living down the fact that I wore spectacles, remaining as long as I could, judiciously deaf to any side remarks about four eyes, until it became evident that my being quiet was misconstrued, and that it was better to bring matters to a head at once. If, for instance, I was sent off to represent the little Missouri brands on some neighboring round-up, such as the Yellowstone, I usually showed that kind of diplomacy which consists in not uttering one word that can be avoided. I would probably have a couple of days solitary ride, mounted on one horse, and driving eight or ten others before me, one of them carrying my bedding. Loose horses drive best at a trot, or canter, and if a man is traveling alone in this fashion, it is a good thing to have them reach the campground sufficiently late to make them desire to feed and sleep where they are until morning. In consequence, I never spent more than two days on the journey, from whatever point it was which I left the little Missouri, sleeping the one night for as limited a number of hours as possible. As soon as I reached the meeting place, I would find out the wagon to which I was assigned. Riding to it, I turned my horses into the saddle-band and reported to the wagon-boss, or in his absence to the cook, always a privileged character who was allowed and expected to order men around. He would usually grumble savagely and profanely about my having been put with his wagon, but this was merely conventional on his part, and if I sat down and said nothing, he would probably soon ask me if I wanted anything to eat, to which the correct answer was, I was not hungry and I would wait until mealtime. The bedding rolls of the riders would be strewn round the grass, and I would put mine down a little outside the ring, where I would not be in anyone's way, with my six or eight branding irons beside it. The men would write in, laughing and talking with one another, and perhaps nodding to me. One of their number, usually the wagon foreman, might put some questions to me as to which brands I represented, but no other word would be addressed to me, nor would I be expected to volunteer any conversation. Supper would consist of bacon, Dutch oven bread, and possibly beef. Once I won the good graces of my companions at the outset by appearing with two antelope which I had shot. After supper, I would roll up my bedding as soon as possible, and the others would follow suit at their pleasure. At three in the morning or thereabouts, at a yell from the cook, all hands would turn hurriedly out. Dressing was a simple affair. Then each man rolled and corded his bedding. If he did not, the cook would leave it behind, and he would go without any for the rest of the trip. Then came to the fire, where he picked out a tin cup, tin plate, and knife and fork, and helped himself to coffee and whatever food there was, and ate it standing, or squatted as best suited him. Don was probably breaking at this time, and the tramping of unshot hooves showed that the night wrangler was bringing in the pony herd. Two of the men would then run ropes from the wagon and write angles to one another, and into this, as a corral, the horses would be driven. Each man might rope one of his own horses, or more often pointed out to the most skillful roper of the outfit, who would rope it for him. For if the man was an unskillful roper, and roped the wrong horse, or roped the horse in the wrong place, there was a whole chance of the whole herd stampeding. Each man then saddled and bridled his horse. This was usually followed by some resolute bucking on the part of two or three of the horses, especially in the early days of the roundup. The bucking was always a source of amusement to all the men whose horses did not buck, and these fortunate ones would gather round once giving ironical advice, and especially adjuring the rider not to go to leather, that is, not to steady himself in the saddle by catching hold of the saddle horn. As soon as the men had mounted, the whole outfit started on the long circle, the morning circle. Usually the ranch foreman, who bossed a given wagon, was put in charge of the men of one group by the roundup foreman. He might keep his men together until they had gone some ten or fifteen miles from camp, and then dropped them in couples at different points. Each couple made its way towards the wagon, gathering all the cattle it could find. The morning's ride might last six or eight hours, and it was still longer before some men got in. Singly, and in twos and threes, they appeared from every quarter on their horizon, the dust rising from the hooves of the steers and bulls, the cows and calves they collected. Two or three of the men were left to take care of the herd, while the others changed horses, ate a hasty dinner, and then came out to the afternoon work. This consisted of each man in secession being sent into the herd, usually with a companion, to cut out the cows of his brand or brand's, which were followed by unbranded calves, and also to cut out any mavericks or unbranded yearlings. We worked each animal gently out to the edge of the herd, and then with a sudden dash took it off at a run. It was always desperately anxious to break back and rejoin the herd. There was much breakneck galloping and twisting and turning before its desire was thwarted, and it was driven out to join the rest of the cut. That is, the other animals, which had been cut out, and were being held by one or two of the other men. Cattle hate being alone, and it was no easy matter to hold the first one or two that were cut out, but soon they got a little herd of their own, and then they were contented. When the cutting out had been all done, the calves were branded, and all misadventures of the calf wrestlers, the men who seized through and held each calf when roped by the mounted roper, were hailed with yelling laughter. Then the animals, which for one reason or another it was desired to drive along with the roundup, were put into one herd and left in charge of a couple of nightguards, and the rest of us would loaf back to the wagons for supper and bed. By this time, I would have been accepted as one of the rest of the outfit, and all strangeness would have passed off, and the attitude of my fellow count-punchers being one of friendly forgiveness even towards my spectacles. Nightguards for the cattle herd were then assigned by the captain of the wagon, or perhaps by the roundup foreman, according to the needs of the case, the guard standing for two hours at a time from eight in the evening till four in the morning. The first and last of the watches were preferable, because sleep was not broken, as in both of the other two. If things went well, the cattle would soon bed down, and nothing further would occur till morning, when there was the repetition of the work, the wagon moving each day eight or ten miles to some appointed camping place. Each man would picket his night horse near the wagon, usually choosing the quietest animal in his string for that purpose, because to saddle and mount a mean horse at night is not pleasant. When utterly tired, it was hard to have to get up for one's trick at the night herd. Nevertheless, on ordinary nights the two hours ran the cattle in still darkness were pleasant. The loneliness under the vast empty sky and the silence, in which the breathing of the cattle sounded loudly, and the alert readiness to meet any emergency might suddenly arise out of the formless night, all combined to give one a sense of subdued interest. Then one soon got to know the cattle of marked individuality, the ones that led the others into mischief, and one who also grew to recognize the traits they all possessed in common, and the impulses which, for instance, made a whole herd get up towards midnight, each beast turning round, then lying down again. By the end of the watch each rider had studied the cattle until it grew monotonous, and hardly welcomed his relief guard. A newcomer, of course, had any amount to learn, and sometimes the simplest things were those which brought him to grief. One night, early in my career, I failed satisfactorily to identify the direction in which I was to go in order to reach the night herd. It was a pitch dark night. I managed to get started wrong, and I never found either the herd or the wagon again until sunrise, when I was greeted with withering scorn by the injured cow puncher, who had been obliged to stand double guard because I failed to relieve him. There were other misadventures that I met with where the excuse was greater. The punchers on nightguard usually rode toward the cattle in reverse directions, calling and singing to them if the beasts seemed restless to keep them quiet. On rare occasions something happened that made the cattle stampede, and then the duty of the riders was to keep them as long as possible and try gradually to get control of them. End of Chapter 4 Part 1 Chapter 4 Part 2 of Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt. Chapter 4. In Cowboy Land. Part 2 One night there was a heavy storm, and all of us who were at the wagons were obliged to turn out hastily to help the night herders. After a while there was a terrific peel of thunder. The lightning struck right by the herd, and away all the beasts went. Heads and horns and tails in the air. For a minute or two I could make out nothing except the dark forms of the beasts running on every side of me, and I should have been very sorry if my horse had stumbled, for those behind would have trodden me down. Then the herd split, part going to one side while the other part seemingly kept straight ahead, and I galloped as hard as ever beside them. I was trying to reach the point, the leading animals, in order to turn them, when suddenly there was a tremendous splashing in front. I could dimly make out that the cattle immediately ahead and to one side of me were disappearing, and the next moment the horse and I went off a cut bank into the little Missouri. I bent away back in the saddle, and though the horse almost went down he just recovered himself, and plunging and struggling through water and quicksand we made the other side. Here I discovered that there was another cowboy with the same part of the herd that I was with, but almost immediately we separated. I galloped hard through a bottom covered with big cottonwood trees and stopped the part of the herd that I was with, but very soon they broke on me again and repeated this twice. Finally toward the morning the few I had left came to a halt. It had been raining hard for some time. I got off my horse and leaned against the tree, but before long the infernal cattle started on again and I had to ride after them. Don came soon after this, and I was able to make out where I was and head the cattle back, collecting other little bunches as I went. After a while I came on a cowboy on foot, carrying his saddle on his head. He was my companion of the previous night. His horse had gone full speed into a tree and killed itself, the man however not being hurt. I could not help him as I had all I could do to handle the cattle. When I got them to the wagon most of the other men had already come in, and the riders were just starting on the long circle. One of the men changed my horse for me while I ate a hasty breakfast and then we were off at the day's work. As only about half of the night herd had been brought back, the circle riding was particularly heavy and it was ten hours before we were back at the wagon. We then changed horses again and worked the whole herd until after sunset, finishing just as it grew too dark to do anything more. By this time I had been nearly forty hours in the saddle, changing horses five times, and my clothes had thoroughly dried on me, and I fell asleep as soon as I touched the bedding. Fortunately some men who had gotten in late in the morning had had their sleep during the daytime, so the rest of us escaped nightguard and were not called until four next morning. Nobody ever gets enough sleep on a round trip. The above was the longest number of consecutive hours I ever had to be in the saddle, but as I have said I changed horses five times and it is a great lightning of labor for a rider to have a fresh horse. Once with Sylvain Ferris I spent about sixteen hours on one horse, riding seventy or eighty miles. The roundup had reached a place called the Oxbow of the Little Missouri and we had to ride there, do some work around the cattle and ride back. Another time I was twenty four hours on horseback in the company with Merrifield without changing horses. On this occasion we did not travel fast. We had been coming back with the wagon from a hunting trip in the Big Horn Mountains. The team was fagged out and we were tired of walking at a snail's pace beside it. When we reached country that the driver thoroughly knew we thought it safe to leave him, and we loped in one night across a distance which it took the wagon the three following days to cover. It was a beautiful moonlit night and the ride was delightful. All day long we had plotted at a walk, weary and hot. At supper time we had rested two or three hours and the tough little riding horses seemed as fresh as ever. It was in September. As we rode out of the circle of the firelight the air was cool in our faces. Under the bright moonlight and then under the starlight we loped and cantered mile after mile over the high prairie. We passed bands of antelope and herds of long horned Texas cattle. And at last just as the first red beams of the sun flamed over the bluffs in front of us we rode down into the valley of the Little Missouri where our ranch house stood. I never became a good roper nor more than an average rider according to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many bad horses and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents and of these I had my share. At one time cracking a rib and on another occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a doctor and each time as I was on the roundup I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could until the injury healed of itself. When I had the opportunity I broke my own horses doing it gently and gradually and spending much time over it and choosing the horses that seemed gentle to begin with. With these horses I never had any difficulty but frequently there was neither time nor opportunity to handle our mounts so elaborately. We might get a band of horses each having been bridled and saddled two or three times but none of them having been broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and saddling. Then each of us in succession would choose a horse for his string. I, as the owner of the ranch, being given the first choice on each round so to speak. The first time I was ever on a roundup, Sylvain Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and I each chose his string in this fashion. Three or four of the animals I got were not easy to ride. The effort, both to ride them and to look as if I were enjoying doing so, on some cool morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered round to see whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off. Doubtless was a benefit to me but lacked much of being enjoyable. The time I smashed my rib I was bucked off on a stone. The time I hurt the point of my shoulder I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler which went over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to go anywhere. So, while I sat it, Sylvain Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground when they released the ropes that lay down and wouldn't get up. The roundup had started so Sylvain gave me his horse, Baldi, which sometimes bucked out but never went backwards, and he got on the now-rearizen Ben Butler. To my discomforture, Ben started quietly beside us while Sylvain remarked, Well, there's nothing to matter with this horse, he's a plum-gentle horse.  Sure enough he was, and when we dragged Sylvain from under him the first thing the rescued Sylvain did was to execute a war dance, spurs and all on the iniquitous Ben. We could do nothing with him that day, subsequently we got him so that we could ride him, but he never became a nice saddle horse. As with all other forms of work, so on the roundup a man of ordinary power who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome soon earns his place. They were crack riders and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush and refuse to come out, or when it was getting late we would pass some badlands that would probably not contain cattle but might, or a steer would turn fighting mad or a calf grow tired and want to lie down. If in such a case the man steadily persists in doing the unattractive thing, and after two hours of exasperation and harassment, does finally get the cow out and keep her out of the bulberry bushes and drives her to the wagon, or find some animals that have passed by in the fourth or fifth patch of badlands he hunts through, or gets the calf up on a saddle and takes it in anyhow, the foreman soon grows to treat him, as having his uses and as being an asset of worth in the roundup, even though neither a fancy rope nor a fancy rider. When at the progressive convention last August I met George Meyer for the first time in many years, and he recalled to me an incident on one roundup where we happened to be thrown together while driving some cows and calves to camp. When the camp was only just across the river, two of the calves positively refused to go any further. He took one of them in his arms, and after some hazardous maneuvering managed to get on his horse, in spite of the objections of the latter, and rode into the river. My calf was too big for such treatment, so in despair I roped it, intending to drag it over. However, as soon as I roped it, the calf started bouncing and bleeding and owing to some lack of dexterity on my part, suddenly swung round the rear of the horse, bringing the rope under his tail. Down went the tail tight, and the horse went into figures, as the cow-puncher phrase of the day was. There was a cut bank about four feet high on the hither side of the river, and over this the horse bucked. We went into the water with a splash. With pluck the calf followed, described a parabola in the air, and landed beside us. Fortunately this took the rope out from under the horse's tail, but left him thoroughly frightened. You could not do much bucking in the stream, for there was one or two places where we had to swim, and the shallows were either sandy or muddy, but across we went at speed, and the calf made awake, like Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geography books of my youth, prairie fires were always portrayed as taking place in long grass, and all living things ran before them. On the northern cattle plains the grass was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or beast. The fires were nothing like the forest fires in the northern woods, but they destroyed large quantities of feed, and we had to stop them where possible. The process we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it into two lengthwise, and have two riders drag each half steer, the rope of one running from his saddle horn to the front leg, and that of the other to the hind leg. One of the men would spur his horse over or through the line of fire, and two would then ride forward, dragging the steer, bloody side downward, along the line of flame, men following on foot with slickers or wet horse blankets to beat out any flickering blaze that was still left. It was exciting work for the fire and the twitching and the plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened the fierce little horses, so that it was necessary to do some riding in order to keep them to their work. After a while, it also became very exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great as with parched lips and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task. In those years, the Stockman's Association of Montana was a powerful body. I was the delegate to it from the Little Missouri. The meetings that I attended were held in Miles City, at that time a typical cow town. Stockmen of all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the stock business. Men like old Conrad Kors, who was and is the finest type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain Country, and Granville Stewart, who was afterwards appointed minister by Cleveland, I think, to the Argentine, and Hashknife Simpson, a Texan who had brought his cattle, the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and I grew to be great friends. I can see him now the first time we met, grinning to me as none too comfortable. I sat a half broken horse at the edge of a cattle herd we were working. His son, Sloan Simpson, went to Harvard and was one of the first class men in my regiment, and afterwards held my commission as postmaster at Dallas. At the Stockman's meeting in Miles City's, in addition to the big Stockman, there are always hundreds of cowboys galloping up and down the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a picturesque sight during the three days the meeting lasted. There was always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were a few dress suits, but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances most of the men knew the figure as far better than I did. With such a crowd in town, sleeping accommodations of any sort were at a premium, and in the hotel there were two men in every bed. On one occasion I had a roommate whom I never saw, because he always went to bed much later than I did, and I always got up much earlier than he did. On the last day, however, he rose at the same time, and I saw that he was a man I knew named Carter, nicknamed Modesty Carter. He was a stalwart, good-looking fellow, and I was sorry when later I heard that he had been killed in a shooting row. When I went west, the last great Indian wars had just come to an end, but there were still sporadic outbreaks here and there, and occasionally bands and marauding young braves were a menaced outlying and lonely settlements. Many of the white men were themselves lawless and brutal, and prone to commit outrages on the Indians. Unfortunately, each race tended to hold all the members of the other race responsible for the misdeeds of a few, so that the crime of the miscreant, red or white, who committed the original outrage, too often invited retaliation upon entirely innocent people, and this action would in its turn arouse bitter feeling which found vent in still more indiscriminate retaliation. The first year I was on the Little Missouri, some Sue Bucks ran off all the horses of a buffalo hunter's outfit. One of the buffalo hunters tried to get even by stealing the horses of a Cheyenne hunting party, and went pursued, made for a cow camp, with, as a result, a long-range skirmish between the cowboys and the Cheyennes. One of the latter was wounded, but this particular wounded man seemed to have had more sense than the other participants in the chain of wrongdoing, and discriminated among the whites. He came into our camp and had his wound dressed. A year later I was at a desolate little mud road ranch on the Deadwood Trail. It was kept by a very capable and very forceful woman, with sound ideas of justice and abundantly well able to hold her own.  Under the stimulus of the whiskey, he picked a quarrel with his wife and attempted to beat her.  When I visited her, she had a man named Crow Joe working for her, a slab-sided, shifty-eyed person who later, as I heard my foreman explain, skipped the country with a bunch of horses. The mistress of the ranch made first-class buckskin shirts of great durability. The one she made for me, in which I used for years, was used by one of my sons in Arizona a couple of winners ago. I had ridden down into the country, after some lost horses, and visited the ranch to get her to make me the buckskin shirt in question. There were at the moment three Indians there, Sue, well-behaved and self-respecting, and she explained to me that they had been resting there waiting for dinner, and that a white man had come along and tried to run off their horses. The Indians were on the lookout, however, and, running out, they caught the man. But, after retaking their horses and depriving him of his gun, they let him go. I don't see why they let him go, exclaimed my hostess. I don't believe in stealing Indians' horses any more than white folks, so I told them they can go along and hang them. I'd never cheap. Anyway, I won't charge them anything for their dinner, concluded my hostess. She was in advance of the usual morality of the time and place, which drew a sharp line between stealing citizens' horses and stealing horses from the government or the Indians. A fairly decent citizen, Jap Hunt, who long ago met a violent death, exemplified this attitude towards Indians in some remarks I once heard him make. He had started a horse ranch and had quite honestly purchased a number of broken down horses of different brands with the view of doctoring them and selling them again. About this time there had been much horse stealing and cattle killing in our territory and in Montana, and under the direction of some of the big cattle growers, a committee of vigilantes had been organized to take action against the wrestlers, as the horse thieves and cattle thieves were called. The vigilantes, or stranglers as they were locally known, did their work thoroughly, but as always happens with bodies of the kind toward the end they grew reckless in their actions, paid off private grudges and hung men on slight provocation. Writing in to Jap Hunt's ranch they nearly hung him because he had so many horses of different brands.  He was much upset by the incident and explained again and again the idea of saying that I was a horse thief, why I never stole a horse in my life, least ways from a white man, I don't count Indians or the government of course. Jap had been reared among men still in the stages of tribal morality, and while they recognized their obligations to one another, both the government and the Indians seemed alien bodies, in regard to which the laws of morality did not apply. On the other hand, parties of savage young bucks would treat lonely settlers just as badly and in addition sometimes murder them. Such a party was generally composed of young fellows burning to distinguish themselves. Some one of their number would have obtained a pass from the Indian agent allowing him to travel off the reservation, which pass would be flourished whenever their action was questioned by bodies of whites of equal strength. I once had a trifling encounter with such a band. I was making my way along the edge of the Badlands, northward from my lower ranch, and was just crossing the plateau when five Indians rode up over the further rim. The instant they saw me, they whipped out their guns and raced full speed at me, yelling and flogging their horses. I was on a favorite horse, Manitou, who was a wise old fellow, with nerves not to be shaken by anything. I at once leapt off him and stood with my rifle ready. It was possible that the Indians were merely making a bluff and attended no mischief, but I did not like their actions, and I thought it likely that if I allowed them to get a hold of me they would at least take my horse and rifle and possibly kill me.  Indians, and for the matter of that white man, do not like to ride in on a man who is cool and mean shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards, having altered their course as quickly as so many teal-ducks. After this one of them made the peace sign with his blanket first, and then as he rode towards me with his open hand. I halted him at a fair distance and asked him what I wanted. He exclaimed, How! Me good engine!  I told him with sincerity that I was glad that he was a good engine, but he must not come any closer. He then asked for sugar and tobacco. I told him I had none. Another Indian began drifting slowly toward me in spite of my calling out to keep back. So I once more aimed with my rifle, whereupon both Indians slipped to the other side of their horses and galloped off, with oaths that did not credit at least one side of their acquaintance with English. I now mounted and pushed over the plateau to the open prairie. In those days an Indian, although not as good a shot as a white man, was infinitely better at crawling under and taking advantage of cover.  The Indians accompanied me for a couple of miles. Then I reached the open prairie and resumed my northward ride, not being further molested. In the old days, in the ranch country, we depended upon game for fresh meat. Nobody liked to kill a beef, and although now and then a maverick earling might be killed on the roundup, most of us looked to scance at the deed, because if the practice of beef killing were ever allowed to start, the rustlers, the horse thieves, and cattle thieves would be sure to seize on it as an excuse for general slaughter. Getting meat for the ranch usually devolved upon me. I almost always carried a rifle when I rode, either in a scabbard under my thigh or across the pommel. Often I would pick up a deer or antelope while about my regular work when visiting a line camp or riding after the cattle. At other times I would make a day's trip after them. In the fall we sometimes took a wagon and made a week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer caucuses, perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had the most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter, it was that of perseverance. It is dogged that does it, in hunting as in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases when we were very hungry I never killed anything but bucks. Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and among the Rocky Mountains with my ranch foreman Merrifield or in later years with Tezwell Woody, John Willis or John Goff. We hunted bears, both the black and the grizzly, cougars and wolves and moose, wapiti and white goat.  It was a rather rough trip. Each of us carried only his slicker behind him on the saddle with some flour and bacon done up in it. We met with all kinds of misadventures. Finally one night when we were sleeping by a slimy little prairie pool where there was not a stick of wood we had to tie the horses to the horns of our saddles and then we went to sleep with our heads on the saddles. In the middle of the night something stampeded the horses and away they went with the saddles after them. As we jumped to our feet Joe eyed me with an evident suspicion that I was the Jonah of the party and said, Oh Lord, I've never done anything to deserve this. Did you ever do anything to deserve this? Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt Chapter 4 In Cowboy Land Part 3 In addition to my private duties I sometimes served as deputy sheriff for the northern end of our county. The sheriff and I criss-crossed on our public and private relations. He often worked for me as a hired hand at the same time that I was his deputy. His name, or at least the name he went by was Bill Jones and as there were in the neighborhood several Bill Joneses three, seven Bill Joneses Texas Bill Jones and the like the sheriff was known as hell-roaring Bill Jones. He was a thorough frontiersman excellent in all kinds of emergencies and a very game man I became much attached to him he was a thoroughly good citizen when sober but he got a little wild when drunk unfortunately towards the end of his life he got to drinking very heavily when in 1905 John Burroughs and I visited the Yellowstone Park poor Bill Jones very much down in the world was driving a team in Gardner outside the park I had looked forward to seeing him and he was equally anxious to see me he kept telling his cronies of our intimacy and of what we were going to do together and then got drinking and the result was by the time I reached Gardner he had to be carried out and left in the sage-bush when I came out of the park I found him in advance to tell them to be sure to keep him sober and they did so but it was a rather sad interview the old fellow had gone to pieces and soon after I left he got lost in a blizzard and was dead when they found him Bill Jones was a gunfighter and also a good man with his fists on one occasion there was an election in town there had been many threats that the party of disorder would in part section hands from the neighboring railroad stations to down our side I did not reach Medora in little cattle town which was our county seat until the election was well underway I then asked one of my friends if there had been any disorder Bill Jones was standing by Disorder? Hell! said my friend Bill Jones just stood there with one hand on his gun and the other pointing over towards the new jail whenever any man who didn't have a right to vote came near the polls there was only one of them who tried to vote and Bill knocked him down Lord said my friend meditatively the way that man fell well struck in Bill Jones if he hadn't fell I'd have walked around behind him to see what was propping him up in the days when I lived on the ranch I usually spent most of the winter in the east and when I returned in the early spring I was always interested in finding out what had happened since my departure on one occasion I was met by Bill Jones in Sylvain Ferris and in the course of our conversation this led to a question on my part and Sylvain Ferris began the story well you see he was on a train and he shot the news boy at first they weren't going to do anything to him for they thought that he just had it in for the news boy but then somebody said why he's plum crazy and he's liable to shoot any of us and then they threw him off the train it was here at Medora and they asked if anyone would take care of him and Bill Jones said he would because he was a sheriff and the jail had two rooms and he was living in one and would put the lunatic in the other here Bill Jones interrupted yes and more fool me I wouldn't take charge of another lunatic if the whole county asked me why? with the air of a man announcing an astonishing discovery that lunatic didn't have his right senses he wouldn't eat till me and Snyder got him down on the shavings and made him eat Snyder was a huge happy-go-lucky hearted pennsylvania dutchman and was Bill Jones chief deputy Bill continued you know Snyder's soft hearted he is and he'd been thinking that the lunatic looked peaked and he'd take him out for an airing then the boys would get joshing him as to how much start he had given him over the prairie and catch him again apparently the amount of the start given the lunatic depended on the amount of the bet to which the joshing led up I asked Bill what he would have done if Snyder hadn't have caught the lunatic this was evidently a new idea and he responded that Snyder always did catch him well but suppose he hadn't caught him well said Bill Jones if Snyder hadn't caught the lunatic I'd have wailed hell out of Snyder under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and always did catch the patient it must not be gathered from this that the lunatic was badly treated he was well treated he was attached to both Bill Jones and Snyder and he objected strongly when after the frontier theory of treatment of the insane had reached a full trial he was finally set off to the territorial capital it was merely that all the relations of life in that place and day were so managed as to give ample opportunity for the expressions of individuality whether in sheriff or ranchman the local practical joker once attempted to had some fun at the expense of the lunatic Bill Jones described the result you know Bixby don't you well with deep disapproval Bixby thinks he is funny he does he'd come up and he'd wake up that lunatic at night and I'd have to get up and soothe him I fixed Bixby alright though I fastened a rope on the latch and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic out on him he bit off most Bixby's nose and I learned Bixby Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of sheriff he had once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the police force of Bismarck but he had left because he beat the mayor over the head with his gun one day he added the mayor he didn't mind it but the superintendent of the police said he guessed I'd better resign his feeling obviously was that the superintendent of police was a marionette unfit to take the large views of life it was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth Bullock Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district and a man he had wanted a horse thief I finally got I was being at the time deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north the man came by a nickname which I will call Crazy Steve a year or two afterwards I received a letter asking about him from his uncle a thoroughly respectable man in a western state and later this uncle and I met at Washington when I was president and he was the United States senator it was some time after Steve's capture that I went down to Deadwood on business Sylvain Ferris and I on horseback while Bill Jones drove the wagon at a little town spearfish I think after crossing the last 80 or 90 miles of Gumbo prairies we met Seth Bullock we had had rather a rough trip and had laying out for a fortnight so I suppose we looked somewhat unkempt Seth received us with rather distant courtesy at first but unbent when he found out who we were remarking you see by your looks I thought you were some sort of tin horn gambling outfit and that I might have to keep an eye on you he then inquired after the capture of Steve with a little of the air of one sportsman when another has shot a quail that either might have claimed my bird I believe later Seth Bullock became and has ever remained one of my staunchest and most valued friends he served as Marshal for South Dakota under me as president when after the close of my term I went to Africa on getting back to Europe I cabled Seth Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet me in London which he did by that time I felt I had just had to meet my own people who spoke my neighborhood dialect after serving as deputy sheriff I was impressed with the advantage the officer of the law has over ordinary wrongdoers provided he thoroughly knows his own mind there are exceptional outlaws man with a price on their heads and a remarkable prowess who are utterly indifferent to taking life and whose warfare against society is as open as that of a savage on the warpath the law officer has no advantage whatever over these men save what his own prowess may or may not give him such a man was Billy the Kid the notorious man killer in Desperado of New Mexico who was himself finally slain by a friend of mine when I was president I made collector of customs at El Paso but the ordinary criminal even when murderously inclined feels just a moment's hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the law engaged in his duty I took in more than one man who was probably a better man than I was with both rifle and revolver but in each case I knew just what I wanted to do and like David Harrom I did it first whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in a position where it was useless for him to resist I owe more than I can ever express to the west which of course means to the men and women I met in the west there were a few people of bad type in my neighborhood and that would be true of every group of men even in a theological seminary but I could not speak with too great affection and respect of the great majority of my friends the hard working men and women who dwelt for a space of perhaps 150 miles along the little Missouri I was always as welcome at their houses as they were at mine everybody worked everybody was willing to help everybody else and yet nobody asked any favors the same thing was true of the people whom I got to know 50 miles east and 50 miles west in my own range and of the men I met on the roundups they soon accepted me as a friend and fellow worker who stood on an equal footing with them and I believe that most of them have kept their feeling for me ever since no guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps the man with whom I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail board of a chuck wagon whenever they turned up a Washington during my presidency I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one day just before lunch a huge powerful man whom when I knew him had been distinctly a fighting character it happened that on that day another old friend the British ambassador Mr. Bryce was going to lunch just before I went in I turned to my cow puncher friend and said to him with great solemnity remember Jim that if you shot at the feet of the British ambassador to make him dance it would be likely to cause international complications to which Jim responded with unaffected horror why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it I shouldn't think of it not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite unconsciously helped me by the insight which working and living with them enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the right type but they helped me in another way I made up my mind that the men were of just the kind whom would be well to have with me if ever it became necessary to go to war when the Spanish war came I gave this thought practical realization fortunately, Whister and Remington with pen and pencil have made these men live as long as our literature does I have sometimes been asked why the Virginian is not overdrawn why one of the men I have mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real life not only in his force but in his charm half of the men I worked with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards in my regiment might have walked out of Whister stories or Remington's pictures there were bad characters in the western country at that time, of course and under the conditions of life they were probably more dangerous I hardly ever had any difficulty, however I never went into a saloon and in the little hotels I kept out of the bar room unless as sometimes happened the bar room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining room I always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade me by making any further effort to avoid it and I rarely had even the semblance of trouble of course amusing incidents occurred now and then usually these took place when I was hunting lost horses for in hunting lost horses I was ordinarily alone and occasionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles away from my own country on one such occasion I reached a little cow town long after dark stable my horse in an empty outbuilding and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my request for a bed that I could have the last one left as there was only one other man in it the room to which I had shown contained one contained two men fast asleep the other only one man also asleep this man proved to be a friend one of the Bill Joneses who I previously mentioned I undressed according to the fashion of the day and place that is I put my trousers, boots chaps and gun down next to the bed and turned in a couple of hours later I was awakened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashing in my face the light gleamed on the muzzle and I said to the lantern bearer it ain't him the next moment my bedfellow was covered with two guns and addressed now Bill don't make a fuss but come along quiet I'm not thinking of making a fuss said Bill that's right was the answer we're your friends we don't want to hurt you we just want you to come along you know why and Bill pulled up his trousers and boots and walked out with them there had not been a sound from the other bed now a match was scratched a candle lit and one of the men in the other bed looked around the room at this point I committed the breach of etiquette of asking questions I wonder why they took Bill I said there was no answer I repeated I wonder why they took Bill well the man said with the candle dryly I reckon they wanted him and with that he blew out the candle and conversation ceased and Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the northern Pacific train at a nearby station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him dance this was purely a joke on Bill's part but the northern Pacific people possessed a less robust sense of humor and on their complaint the United States Marshal was sent after Bill on the ground that by delaying the train he had interfered with the males the only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive little hotel than the one in question it was also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses below the hotel had merely a bar room a dining room and a lean-to kitchen above was aloft with 15 or 20 beds in it it was late in the evening when I reached the place I heard one or two shots in the bar room as I came up and I disliked going in but there was nowhere else to go and it was a cold night inside the room were several men who, including the bartender sharing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don't like a shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity he had evidently been shooting at the clock which had two or three holes in its face he was not a bad man of the really dangerous type the true man-killer but he was an abjectionable character a would-be bad man a bully who for the moment was having things all his own way as soon as he saw me he hailed me as four eyes in reference to my spectacles and said, four eyes is going to treat I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down thinking to escape notice he followed me however and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive and he stood leaning over me a gun in each hand using very foul language he was foolish to stand so near and moreover his heels were close together so that his position was unstable accordingly in response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks I said, well if I've got to, I've got to and rose looking past him as I rose I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw hitting with my left as I straightened out and then again with my right he fired his guns but I did not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me when he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head it was not a case in which you could afford to take chances and if he had moved as I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees but he was senseless I took away his guns and the other people in the room who were now loud in their denunciation of him hustled him out and put him in a shed I got dinner as soon as possible sitting in a corner of the dining room away from the windows and then went upstairs to the bed where it was so dark that there would be no chance of anyone shooting at me from the outside however nothing happened when my assailant came to he went down to the station and left unafraid as I have said most of the men in my regiment were just such men as those I knew in the ranch country indeed some of my ranch friends were in the regiment Fred Herig the forest ranger for instance in whose company I shot my biggest mountain ram after the regiment was disbanded the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents our relations were of the friendliest and as they explained they felt that as if I was a father to them the manifestations of this feeling were sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded as it was chiefly used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed the great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the businesses of their lives where they had dropped it a few months previously and these men merely tried to help me or help one another as the occasion arose no man ever had more cause to be proud of his regiment than I had a mine both in war and in peace but there was a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of peaceful regularity although often enough they had been first class soldiers it was from one of these men that letters came with the stereotype opening which always caused my heart to sink Dear Colonel I write to you because I am in trouble the trouble might take almost any form one correspondent continued I did not take the horse but they say I did another complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy in the case of another the incident was more mark worthy I will call him Grito he wrote me a letter beginning Dear Colonel I write to you because I am in trouble I have shot a lady in the eye but Colonel I was not shooting at the lady in the life which he apparently regarded as sufficient excuse as between men of the world I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies and did not hear any more of the incident for several years then while I was president a member of the regiment major Lou Ellen who was federal district attorney under me in New Mexico wrote me a letter filled as his letters usually were with bits of interesting gossip about the comrades it ran in part as follows since I last wrote to you commander Richie has killed a man in Colorado I understand that the comrade was playing a poker game and the man sat into the game and used such language that comrade Richie had to shoot comrade Webb has killed two men in beaver Arizona comrade Webb is in the forest service and the killing was in the line of professional duty I was out at the penitentiary the other day and saw comrade Grito who you may remember was put there for shooting his sister-in-law this was the first information I had as to the identity of the lady who was shot in the eye since he was in there comrade Boyne has run off to old Mexico with his, Grito's wife and the people of Grant County think he ought to be let out evidently the sporting instincts of the people of Grant County had been roused and they felt that as comrade Boyne had had a fair start the other comrade should be let out to see what would happen the men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped me when I was running for office on one occasion buck Taylor of Texas accompanied me on a trip and made a speech for me the crowd took to his speech from the beginning and so did I until the peroration which ran as follows my fellow citizens vote for my colonel vote for my colonel and he will lead you as he let us like sheep to the slaughter this hardly seemed a tribute to my military skill but it delighted the crowd and as far as I could tell did nothing but good on another tour when I was running for vice president a member of the regiment who was along on the train got into a discussion with a populist editor who had expressed an unfavorable estimate of my character and in the course of the discussion shot the editor, not fatally we had to leave him to be tried and as he had no money I left him $150 to hire counsel having borrowed the money from Senator Walcott from Colorado who was also with me after election I received from my friend a letter running Dear Colonel, I find I will not have to use that $150 you let me as we have elected our candidate for district attorney so I have used it to settle the horse transaction in which I unfortunately became involved a few weeks later however I received a heartbroken letter setting forth the fact that the district attorney whom he evidently felt to be a cold blooded formalist had put him in jail then the affair dropped out of sight until two or three years later when as president I visited a town in another state and the leaders of the delegation which received me included both my correspondent and the editor now fast friends and both of them ardent supporters of mine at one of the regimental reunions a man who had been an excellent soldier in greeting me mentioned how glad he was that the judge had led him out in time to get to the reunion with the matter and he replied with some surprise why, Colonel, don't you know I had a difficulty with a gentleman and or well I killed the gentleman but you could see that the judge thought it was alright or he wouldn't have let me go waving the ladder point I said, how did it happen how did you do it misinterpreting my question as showing an interest only in the technique of the performance the ex-puncher replied with a 38 on a 45 frame I chuckled over the answer and it became proverbial with my family and some of my friends including Seth Bullock when I was shot at Milwaukee Seth Bullock wired an inquiry to which I responded that it was alright that the weapon was merely a 38 on a 45 frame the telegram in some way became public and puzzled outsiders by the way both the men of my regiment and the friends I had made in the old days in the west were themselves a little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being shot this is what they expected what they accepted is the right thing for a man to do under the circumstances a thing the non-performance of which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being creditable they would not have expected a man to leave a battle for instance because of being wounded in such fashion they saw no reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty one of the best soldiers in my regiment was a huge man whom I made marshal of a rocky mountain state he had spent his hot and lusty youth on the frontier during its viking age and at that time had naturally taken part in incidents which seemed queer to men accustomed to die decently of zymotic diseases I told him that an effort would doubtless be made to prevent his confirmation by the senate and therefore that I wanted to know all the facts in his case had he played faro he had but it was when everybody played faro and he had never played a brace game had he killed anybody yes but it wasn't dodge city on occasions when he was deputy marshal or town marshal at a time when dodge city now the most peaceful of communities was the toughest town on the continent and crowded with man-killing outlaws and road agents and he produced telegrams from judges of high character testifying to the need of the actions he had taken finally I said now Ben how did you lose that half of your ear to which looking rather shy he responded well colonel it was bit off how did that happen Ben well you see I was sent to arrest a gentleman and him and me mixed it up and he bit off my ear what did you do to the gentleman Ben and Ben looking more coy than ever responded well colonel we broke about even I forebored to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on the gentleman after considerable struggle I got him confirmed by the senate and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service exactly as he had already made one of the best soldiers in the regiment and I never wish to see a better citizen nor a man in whom I would more implicitly trust in every way when in 1900 I was nominated for vice president I was sent by the national committee on a trip into the states of the high plains in the rocky mountains I was all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Brian on the free silver issue four years previously and it was thought that I, because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people might accomplish something towards bringing them back into line it was an interesting trip and the monotony usually attendant upon such a campaign of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashion by occasional hostile audiences one or two of the meetings ended in riots one meeting was finally broken up by a mob everybody fought so that the speaking had to stop soon after this we reached another town where we were told there might be trouble here the local committee included an old and valued friend a two-gun man of repute who was not in the least quarrel some but who always kept his word we marched around to the local opera house which was packed with a mass of men many of them rather rough looking my friend the two-gun man sat immediately behind me each hip his arms folded looking at the audience fixing his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which there came so much as a whisper the audience listened to me with rapt attention at the end with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation I remarked to the chairman I held that audience well there wasn't an interruption to which the chairman replied interruption well I guess not the general word that if any son of a gun peeped he'd kill him there was one bit of frontier philosophy which I would like to see imitated in more advanced communities certain crimes of revolting baseness and cruelty were never forgiven but in the case of ordinary offenses the man who had served his term and who then tried to make good was given a fair chance and of course this was equally true of the women everyone who had studied the subject at all is only too well aware that the world offsets the readiness with which it condones a crime for which a man escapes punishment by its unforgiving relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who is punished and who therefore has made his atonement on the frontier if the man honestly tried to behave himself there was generally a disposition to give him fair play in a decent show several of the men I knew and whom I particularly liked came in this class there was one such man in my regiment a man who had served a term for robbery under arms and who had atoned for it by many years a fine performance of duty I put him in a high official position and no man under me rendered better service to the state nor was there any man whom as soldier, as civil officer as citizen and as friend I valued and respected and now value and respect more now I suppose some good people will gather from this that I favor men who commit crimes I certainly do not favor them I have not a particle of sympathy with the sentimentality as I deem it the malchishness which overflows with foolish pity for the criminal and cares not at all for the victim of the criminal I am glad to see wrongdoers punished the punishment is an absolute necessity from the standpoint of society and I put the reformation of the criminal second to the welfare of society but I do not desire to see the man or woman who has paid the penalty and who wishes to reform given a helping hand surely every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he too may stumble and should be anxious to help his brother or sister who has stumbled when the criminal has been punished if he then shows a sincere desire to lead a decent and upright life he should be given the chance he should be helped and not hindered and if he makes good he should receive that respect from others which so often aids in creating self-respect, the most invaluable of all possessions End of chapter 4 Chapter 5 Applying Ideas Part 1 The spring of 1889 as appointed by President Harrison Civil Service Commissioner for nearly 5 years had not been very active in particular life although it had done some routine work in the organization and had many campaign speeches and in 1886 had run for a million New York Liberalist, Suit Democrat and Henry George Independent and had been defeated As for 60 years Civil Service Commissioner 4 years under President Harrison then 2 years under President Cleveland as treated by both Presidents without much consideration Among my fellow commissioners there was at one time my headscanner Hugh Thompson a South Carolina and at another time I was working on a project over Kentucky there were Democrats and ex-conferit soldiers and became deeply attached to both we said soldier to soldier and every context and mission was for it to take part Civil Service Reform had two sides there is first the efforts to secure a more efficient administration of the public service and second the even more important effort to withdraw the administrative offices of the government from the domain of sports politics thereby cut out of American political life the fruitful sorts of corruption and degradation the sports series of politics that public office is still much plunder with the Victoria political party is entitled to appropriate to the use of its adherence and there is its system it was often done well even in those days when Civil Service Reform was only experiment because the man running in the office from south and east when a far sighted man knew that any facility in the administration would be visited on his head in the long run therefore it insisted upon most of his subordinates doing good work and moreover the men appointed under the sports system were necessary men of a certain initiative in power because those who lacked these qualities were not able to soldier themselves to the front yet there are many fragmented instances of inefficacy where a powerful chief quartered friend or kind of men upon the government moreover the necessary happy nature of the employment the need of attaining and holding the office by service wholly unconnected with the fits of duty and have to be tended to lower the standard of public morality like among the office orders and among the politicians who rendered party service with the help of the world in office indeed the titan that to the victor belongs to spores the cynical battle cry that spores politicians in America for the 60 years presenting my own interest into public life the so naked revisits that few right-thinking men have trained my defense to appoint, promote, reduce next spell from the public service that are carriers, general graffers women type priders clerks because of the politics of themselves or the friends without regard to their own service is from the standpoint of the people at large as foots and regretting as it is wicked so in the case it would seem at first sight extraordinary that it would be so difficult to uproot the system unfortunately it was permitted to become habitual traditional in American life so that the conception of public confidence that something to be used primarily for the good of the dominant political party became ingrained in the mind of the average American he grew so accustomed to the whole process that it seemed part of the order of nature not merely the politicians but the bulk of the people accepted that it is in a matter of course way as the only proper attitude there were plenty of communities with the citizens themselves did not think it natural or indeed prompt for that the post office that would be held by a man belonging to the defeated party moreover, unless both sides were forbidden to use the offices for purposes of political reward the side that did use them possessed such an advantage over the other that in the long run it was out the question for the other not to follow the bad example that had been set each party profited by the offices went in power and went into non-position each party in society denounced its opponents for doing exactly what itself had done intended to do again it was necessary in order to remedy the evil of graduating to changing average citizens meant to attitude toward the question and also to secure the proper laws and the proper administration of the laws the work is far from finished even yet there are still masses of office soldiers who can be used by the groupiest administration to debauch political conventions in front we overcome public sentiment especially in the right and bureau districts where the party is not strong where the office soldiers in consequence of a disproportionate influence this was done by the republican administration in 1912 to the ruin of the republican party moreover there are a number of states and municipalities where very little has yet been done to do away with this power system but in the national government recorded thousands of offices being put under the merit system chiefly through the action of the national several service commission the use of government offices as patronage is a handicap difficult to over estimate from the standpoint of those who strategy a good government in the effort to reform a very short national state the municipal results in the reforms immediately finding themselves face to face with an organized vendor drill and mercenaries who are paid out of the public jets to train themselves with such skill that ordinary good citizens when they meet them at the polls are much the position of much the massed against regular troops yet these citizens themselves support and pay their opponents in such a way that they are drill to overthrow the very men who support them civil service reform is designed primarily to give the average American citizen a fair chance in politics to give to this citizen the same way in politics that the ward healer has patronage does not really help a party it helps the bosses to get control of the machinery of the party as in 1912 was true to the republican party but it does not help the party on the average the much sweeping party victories not history have been one when the patronage was against the victors on that the patronage does to help the worst element in the party retain control of the party organization to the evil elements in government in which good citizens have to continue on their own one, the lack of continuous activity on the part of these good citizens themselves and two, the ever present activity of those who have only a self-interest in political life it is difficult to interest the average citizen in any particular movement to the degree of getting him to take any fits and part in it he wishes this movement well but he will not cannot take the time and the trouble to serve efficiently this whether he happens to be a mechanic or a banker a telegram front-prater or a storekeeper he has his own interests his own business and it is difficult for him to spare the time to go to the primaries to see to the organization to see to getting out the vote is what tend to all the thousand details of the political management the other hand the spoil system breeds quite some in which financial interest is to take this necessary time and trouble they are paid for so doing they are paid out of the public chests and that of the spoil system a man is appointed to an ordinary clerical minister or position in the municipal federal or state government he is appointed to the party because he is expected to be a good servant but because he has endured help to some big boss or to the henchmen of some big boss his stay in office depends not upon how he performs service but upon how he retains his influence on the party this nature means that his attention to the interests of the public and the hearts even though real or to the interests of the warden dealer who put him in his place so he and his fellows attend to the politics not once a year not two or three times a year like the average citizen but every day in the year this is one thing they talk about for it's their bread and butter they plan about it and they scheme about it they do it because it is their business they are not bringing them in the least by much to the people for we ought to make it clear as the bell that the business is serving the people in one of the ordinary ministerial government positions which have nothing to do with deciding the policy of the government so to have no necessary connection with the management of primaries of caucuses and of nominating convinces as a result of our wrong thinking and supinates we American citizens to breed a mass of men whose interests in governmental matters are often invoked to ours who are thoroughly drilled thoroughly organized make their livelihood out of politics and frequently make their livelihood out of bad politics they know every little twists and turns no matter how intricate the politics of their several wards and when the election day comes the ordinary citizen has married the interests of all good men all decent citizens and said how in political life finds himself as helpless before these men as if he were a solitary volunteer the presence of a band of drilled mercenaries when they filled a battle there are a couple of hundred thousand federal offices not to speak of state municipal offices the men who filled these offices and the men who used to fill them for then and without the dominant party for the time being make your regular army whose interests it is that the system of bread and butter politics shall continue against their country's interests we have married the juniorly unorganized sentiment as the community in favor of putting things on a decent basis the large number of men who believe vaguely in good and pitted against the smart but still an ordinary number of men whose interests it often becomes to act very concretely and actively for evil and it is small wonder that the struggle is doubtful during my six years service as a citizen the field of the merit system was extended at the expense of the system so as to include several times the number of offices that had originally been included generally this was done by the introduction of competitive interests examinations sometimes as in the navy yards by a system of registration this of itself was a good work even better work was the making of the law it fits it in general and where it applied as it was inevitable in the introduction of the system there was at first only parts of the system for instance applying to the ordinary employees the big custom houses and post offices but not to the heads of these offices a number of the heads in the offices were separate politicians with a low moral grade themselves appointed under the sport system and they exists directly or indirectly to break down the merit system to pay their own critical debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the positions under them occasionally these men acted with open and naked brutality ordinary they sought by cunning to evade the law the civil service reformers on the other hand were in most cases not much use to political parties and were often well now helpless when pitted against veteran professional politicians in consequence I found at the beginning of my experiences that there were many offices that said execution of the law was a sound this was very damaging because it encouraged the politicians to sort the law everywhere and on the other hand made good people feel that the law was not worthwhile defending the first effort of myself and my colleagues was to secure the genuine enforcement of the law this we seceded after a number of lively fights but of course these fights were obliged to strike a large number of influential politicians some of them in congress some of them the supporters and factors of them in congress accordingly we soon found ourselves engaged in a series of contacts with prominent senators and congressmen there were a number of senators and congressmen afterwards senator H.C. Lodge in Massachusetts senator coachman K. Davis Minnesota senator Orville H. Platt of Connecticut senator Cronkwell of Missouri congressmen afterwards president McHenry and congressmen Darget of South Carolina who had whore of the business of the spasmen who efficiently and resolutely championed the reform at every turn without them the whole reform would certainly have failed but there were plenty of other senators and congressmen who hated the whole reform and everything concerned with it and everybody who championed it sometimes to use a legal phrase the hatred was for cause and sometimes it was porintory that is sometimes the commission interfered with the most effecent and incidentally most corrupt and its groupiest supporters now other times there was no such interference that is sometimes the commission interfered with their most effecent and incidentally most corrupt and misappropriate supporters now other times there was no such interference a man nevertheless and in the night the strike of anything that tended to decency in the government these men were always waging war against us these we had the more or less open support of a certain number of government officials from cabinet officers down the senators and congressmen were posted out in many different ways sometimes for instance they had committees appointed to investigate us during my public career without and within the office I grew accustomed to accept appearances before investigating committees as a part of the natural order of things sometimes they tried to cut off the appropriation for the commission occasionally we would bring to terms these senators and congressmen who found the commission by the simple expedient and not holding examinations in their districts this always brought frantic pills from their constituents and we would explain that unfortunately the appropriations had been cut so that we could not hold examinations in every district and that obviously we could not regret the districts of those congressmen who believed in the reform and therefore in these examinations the constituents turned their attention to the congressmen and the result was at the long run we obtained assistant money to enable us to do our work on the whole the most prominent leaders favored us any man who is ahead of a big department if he has any fitness at all wishes to see that department run well very little practical experience but he cannot be run well if he wants to make his appointments in place spores, margarine, politicians as it was almost every reform that I have ever undertaken most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd slander an important strategy for you on the downright misinterpretation of what it was that we were trying to accomplish and of our methods acts and personalities and more than one knife we encountered with the authors and sponsors of these misinterpretations which at the time were full of interest to me but it would be a dreary thing now to go over the record as you spoiled in mendacity or to expose the meanest amounts summed by some men of high physical position a favorite argument was to call those foreign Chinese because the Chinese had constructed any physical governmental system based on the theory of written competitive examinations the argument was simple there had been written examinations in China it was proposed to establish examinations in the United States therefore the proposed system was Chinese the argument had been applied still further for instance the Chinese had used gunpowder for centuries gunpowder is used in Springfield rifles therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese one argument is quite as logical as the other it's impossible to answer every thought said about the system but it was possible to answer certain thoughts especially when uttered by some center or congressmen of note usually these thought statements took the form of answerations that we had asked questions of applicants at times they also included the assertion that we credited people to districts where they did not live that simply meaning that these persons were not known to the active ward partisans of those districts when appointed with whom we had rather than how we felt was Republican congressman from Ohio Mr. Grovesner one of the floor leaders Mr. Grovesner made his attack on the house and enumerated our sense in picturesque rather than at correct fashion there was a congressional committee investing it at the time my next appearance before them asked that Mr. Grovesner be requested to meet me before the committee Mr. Grovesner did not take up the challenge for several weeks until it was announced that I was leaving for my lance in Dakota whereupon demonet safe he wrote me a letter this person has ordered with that I should appear before the committee to meet him I promptly cancelled my ticket waited and met him he proved to be a person of happily treacherous memory so that the simple expedient of raising his statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion for instance he had been trapped into making the unwary remark I do not want to repeal the several servants all and I never said so I produced the final natural act from one of his speeches I will vote not only to strike count this provision but I will vote to repeal the whole law to this he merely planned that there is no inconsistency between those two statements here I started then with this P. Putnam fraudulently credited to Washington County, Ohio never lived in Washington County, Ohio or in my congressional district or in Ohio as far as I know reproduced the letter which thanks to a benefit providence he had himself written about Mr. Ruffits P. Putnam which he said Mr. Ruffits P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district and he has relatives living there now he explained first that he had not written the letter second that he had forgotten he hadn't written the letter and third that he was grocery deceived when he wrote it he said I have not been informed of one applicant who has found a place in the classified surface of my district we confronted him with the names of eight he looked them over and said yes the eight men are living in my district as now constituted but I did that his district had been gerrymandered so that he could no longer tell who did and who didn't live in it when I started to further question him he accused me of lack of humor and not approaching that his statements were made in a juxtaposing way and then announced that a congressman making his speech on the floor the house for representatives was perhaps in a little different position from a witness on the witness stand frank admits that he did not consider his actitude a statement that same when he was speaking as a congressman finally he rose with great dignity and said that it was his constitutional right not to be quits and doubts were as to what he said on the floor of the house of representatives and accordingly he left the delighted committee to pursue its investigation without further need from him a more important opponent was then the democratic leader of the senate Mr. Gorman in a speech attacking the commission Mr. Gorman described with moving pathos how a friend of his brought young men from Baltimore a Sunday school scholar well recommended by his pastor wished to be another carrier and how he went before it to be examined the first question we asked him said Mr. Gorman was a sort of trout from Baltimore to China to which a bright young man responded that he didn't want to go to China never studied up the route there a point said Mr. Gorman we asked him about the same stuff lines from the United States to Europe then branched him off into geology trying him in chemistry apparently Mr. Gorman did not know that we get full records of our examinations I at once wrote to him saying that he carefully looked through our examination papers and had been able to find one question even remotely resembling any of these questions which he alas had been asked that I would be greatly obliged if he could give me the name of the bright young man who had deceived him ever that bright young man remained permanently without a name I also asked Mr. Gorman if he did not wish to give us the name of his informant to give us the date of these emanations and which he was supposed to have taken part and offered if he would send out a representative to help through our files to give him on his aid we could in his effort to discover any such questions but Mr. Gorman not ever too known as a sensitive soul he spread himself a soul shocked at the thought that the veracity of the bright young man should be doubted that he could not bring himself to answer my letter so made a public statement to the fact that no such question had ever been asked Mr. Gorman brooded over this and during the next session of Congress he rose and complained that he received a very important letter from me my letter was a respectful note connoting to the fact that if he was he could by personal examination signify himself that his statements had now foundation in fact that he had been cruelly called to account by me because he had been daring to right a great wrong that the civil service commission had committed but he never then or afterwards furnished any clue to the identity of that child of his found his fancy the bright young man without a name this is a condescent of a speech I at the time made to the St. Louis reform association Senator Gorman was then the senate leader of the party that had dits been victorious in the congressional elections the incident is of note chiefly a setting like the mental makeup of the man who at the time was one of the two or three most influential leaders of the democratic party Mr. Gorman had been Mr. Cleveland's party manager in the presidential campaign and was the democratic leader in congress it seemed extraordinary that he should be so reckless as to make statements with no foundation in fact that he might have known that I would not permit to pass and challenge then as now the ordinary newspaper in New York is so reckless and it's misstatements of fact about public men measures but for a man in Mr. Gorman's position of responsible leadership such as seemed hardly worthwhile however it is at least to be said for Mr. Gorman that he was not trying by thought to take away any men's character it would be well for writers and speakers and the remark of Poonin had Wilson to the fact that when there are 999 kind of faucet the only kind of specifically condemnance creature just as murder, theft, adultery or condemn is very false witness against one's neighbor one of the worst features of this old swallow system was the roof of its cruelty and brutality it so often bred in their treatment with faithful public servants without political influence life is hard enough and cruel enough and best this is as true of public service as of private service and there is no system where it would be possible to deal with all favoritism and brutality and meanness and malice but at least we can try to minimize the exibition of these quantities once came across a case in Washington which very keenly decided my sympathy under administration prone to the one where it sounds connected a lady had been ousted from a government position she came to me to see if she could be reinstated this was not possible but by act of work I think it had put back a somewhat lower position this only by appeal to the sympathy of a certain official she was so powerful and care-warm that she decided my sympathy and I made inquiries about her she was a poor woman with two children a widow she and her two children were a natural one she could barely keep the two children decent could be cried she could not give them growing children in need three years before she had been employed in a bureau of a department of Washington doing her work faithfully at a salary about $800 it was enough to keep her and her two children in clothing, food and shelter one day the chief of the bureau caught her up and taught her that but that he had to dismiss her in great distress she asked him why she thought that she had been doing her work satisfactory he answered her that she had been doing very well that he was very much that he could keep her that he would do so if he possibly could but he could not for a certain center a very influential member of the senate who had demanded her place for a friend of his who had influence the woman told the bureau chief that it meant turning her out to starve she had been 13 or 14 years in the public service she had lost all touch with her friends in her native state dismissalment actually went for her and her children on this the chief was a kind man said that he would not have her turned out and sent her back to her work but three weeks afterwards he caught her up again and told her he could not say how sorry he was the thing had to be done the senator went around in person to know why the change had not been made and had told the chief that he would himself be removed or not given him the senator was a extremely influential man his want had to be attended to and the woman had to go and the ghost he did turned out she was to suffer with her children and to starve outright or to live in semi starvation just as might befall I did not pray to the bureau chief who hated to do what he did although he liked the curse to refuse and did not even very much blame the senator who did not know the hardship that he was causing and who had been counts a long training in the spa system but this system a system which permits and encourages such deeds is a system of brutal iniquity any man who cuts them to dealing with practical politics and difficulty keep a straight face when he reads or listens to some of the arguments advance against civil service reform one of these arguments a favorite within the same politicians takes the form of appeal to party loyalty and fill in minor offices why again and again these very same the same politicians of the opposite party as those of the own party in the underworld of politics the closest ties are sometimes those which knit together the active professional work workers of opposite political parties a friend of mine in the new york legislature the hero of the alpha and omega incident once remarked to me when he had been in the public life a little longer than this we'll understand that there are no politics in politics and the politics to which he was referring to this remark could be taken literally another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me about the same time by an acquaintance a temony man named constantly a good fellow according to his lights I hadn't been speaking to him I fight in one of the york downtown districts a democrat district which the republican party was in the whole place minority and more is spent into the half bread and stalwart factions it have been an interesting fight more than one way for instance the republican party the general election polled somewhere like 550 votes yet at the primary the two factions polled 725 all told the sum of this the sum of the parts were thus considerably greater than the whole there have been other little details that made the contacts worthy of note the hall in which the primary was held had been hired by the stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman to him the half bread supplied to know whether they could not hire the hall away from their opponents and offered him a substantial money advance the conscientious gentleman replied that his word was as good as his bond that he had hired the hall to the stalwarts that it must be there but he added that he was willing to hire the doorway the half bread if they paid him the additional sum of money they had mentioned the bargain was struck the meeting of the hostile host was spirited when the men who had rented the doorway sought to borrow the path for the men who rented the hall I was asking my friend about the details of the struggle as he seemed thoroughly acquainted with them and he smiled goodnight through over my surprise there having been more of a vote's cats than there were members of the party in the whole district said I Mr. Cotson you seem to have a great deal of knowledge about this how did it happen to Mr. Potter come down Mr. Roosevelt you know it's the same game that folks and all of the primaries end of chapter 5 part 1 according by I and Hartley if it's Tennessee USA