The road is wide and the stars are out, and the breath of night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet,
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,
And leave the splendor of out-of-doors for a human dwelling-place.

Joyce Kilmer

A few days after the celebration in Dickinson. Roosevelt went East. The political sirens were calling. He was restless for something to do that would bring into service the giant's strength of which he was becoming increasingly conscious, and, incidentally, would give him an opportunity to win distinction. He had been half inclined to accept an offer from Mayor Grace of New York to head the Board of Health, but Lodge, as Roosevelt wrote to his sister Corinne, thought it "infra dig," and he reluctantly rejected it. There were rumors in the air that he might have the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York if he wanted it. He went East, possibly for the purpose of investigating them, returning to Elkhorn early in August.

Roosevelt was unquestionably restless. He loved the wild country, but he had tasted all the various joys and hardships it had to offer, and, although he said again and again that if he had no ties of affection and of business to bind him to the East, he would make Dakota his permanent residence, down in his heart he was hungering for a wider field of action. The frontier had been a challenge to his manhood; now that he had stood every test it had presented to him, its glamour faded and he looked about for a sharper challenge and more exacting labors.

For a few weeks that August he half hoped that he might find them on the field of battle. Several American citizens, among them a man named Cutting, had been arrested in Mexico, apparently illegally, and Bayard, who was President Cleveland's Secretary of State, had been forced more than once to make vigorous protests. Relations became strained. The anti-Mexican feeling on the border spread over the whole of Texas, regiments were organized, and the whole unsettled region between the Missouri and the Rockies, which was inclined to look upon Mexico as the natural next morsel in the fulfillment of the nation's "manifest destiny," began to dream of war.

Roosevelt, seeing how matters were tending, set about to organize a troop of cavalry in the Bad Lands. He notified the Secretary of War that it stood at the service of the Government.

Roosevelt went to Bismarck and found the Territorial Governor friendly to his project.

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, the famous statesman, ranchman, and hunter [runs the story in the Bismarck Tribune], has been making inquiries since the announcement of the Mexican difficulties as to the available volunteer troops in the Northwest, and in the event of action being required, it is confidently believed Mr. Roosevelt would tender to the Government the services of an entire regiment of cowboys, under his command. At a recent visit here he was assured of two companies of Dakota cowboys to accompany him. Mr. Roosevelt has been the captain of a company of militia in New York, and no better man could be found to lead the daring cowboys to a seat of war and no commander would have more effective troops.

The war cloud blew over. Roosevelt evidently received a letter from Lodge explaining that the Mexican incident was of a trivial nature, for, on the 20th of August, he wrote him rather apologetically:

The season which began with Finnegan and Company was richer in varied experiences than it was in financial returns. Roosevelt recognized that there were already too many cattlemen in the business to make large profits possible.

In certain sections of the West [he told a reporter of the Mandan Pioneer in July] the losses this year are enormous, owing to the drought and overstocking. Each steer needs from fifteen to twenty-five acres, but they are crowded on very much thicker, and the cattlemen this season have paid the penalty. Between the drought, the grasshoppers, and the late frosts, ice forming as late as June 10th, there is not a green thing in all the region I have been over. A stranger would think a donkey could not live there. The drought has been very bad throughout the region, and there is not a garden in all of it.

Sewall was aware of that fact to his sorrow, for the garden he himself had planted and tended with infinite care had died between dawn and dusk on that memorable Fourth of July on which Roosevelt addressed the citizens of Dickinson.

They say dry years are best for cattle [he wrote his brother]. If so, this must be a nice one and they do seem to be doing well so far, but if we have much snow next winter it looks to me as if they would have short picking.

The prospect was not engaging. But, though Roosevelt was not getting much financial return on his rather generous investment, he was getting other things, for him at this time of far greater value. He who had been weak in body and subject to racking illnesses had in these three years developed a constitution as tough and robust as an Indian's. He had achieved something beside this. Living, talking, working, facing danger, and suffering hardships with the Sewalls and the Dows, the Ferrises and the Langs, and Merrifield and Packard and Bill Dantz and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones, and countless other stalwart citizens of the Bad Lands, he had come very close to the heart of the "plain American." He loved the companions of his joys and labors, and they in turn regarded him with an admiration and devotion which was all the deeper because of the amazing fact that he had come from the ranks of the "dudes."

They admired him for his courage and his feats of endurance, but, being tender-hearted themselves, they loved him for his tenderness, which had a way that they approved, of expressing itself, not in words, but in deeds. Bill Sewall had a little girl of three, "a forlorn little mite," as Roosevelt described her to "Bamie," and it was Roosevelt who sent the word East which transported the child, that had neither playmates nor toys, into a heaven of delight with picture blocks and letter blocks, a little horse and a rag doll.

His warm human sympathy found expression in a dramatic manner a day or two before his departure late that August for the Coeur d'AlÊnes. He was rounding up some cattle with his men near Sentinel Butte, twenty miles west of Medora, when word came that a cowpuncher named George Frazier had been struck by lightning and killed, and that his body had been taken to Medora. Frazier belonged to the "outfit" of the Marquis de Mores, but he had worked for Roosevelt two years previous, digging post-holes with George Myers in June, 1884. Roosevelt knew that the man had no relatives in that part of the world, to see that a fitting disposition of the body was made, and instantly expressed his determination to take charge of the arrangements for the funeral.

"We will flag the next train and go to Medora," he said. The next train, they knew, was "No. 2," the finest train running over the road. It did not, on the surface, look probable that it would stop at a desolate spot in the prairie to permit a handful of cowboys to get on. "They won't stop here for nuthin'," one of the men insisted. "By Godfrey, they'll have to stop!" Roosevelt retorted, and sent a man down to the track to flag the train.

The engineer saw the warning signal and slowed down, but did not stop. The cowboys dashed alongside the engine, firing shots in the air. The engineer, believing that he was being held up by bandits and that the next shot might be aimed at himself, brought the train to a standstill. There was a wild scramble among the passengers; even the train crew expected the worst. Valuables were hurriedly secreted. "I don't believe," remarked George Myers afterward, "some of the passengers ever did find all the things that was hid away."

Leaving their horses in charge of one of the cowboys, Roosevelt, followed by Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Myers, and Johnny Goodall, boarded the train. The conductor was resigned by this time to a hold-up; but when he discovered the actual nature of their mission, he flew into a rage and threatened to put them all off.

"You be good," cried Roosevelt, "or you'll be the one to get off!" His vigorous advice was supplemented by impressive injunctions from other members of the party. When they finally did get off, it was at Medora. A salvo of profanity from the train crew followed them. "You'll hear from this!" thundered the conductor. They did not hear from it. It would not have greatly disturbed Roosevelt if they had. He opened a subscription to cover the expenses of the funeral. Everybody "chipped in," and the unfortunate received the burial that a God-fearing cowpuncher deserved.

Roosevelt went with Merrifield west to the Coeur d'AlÊnes, in northern Idaho, almost immediately after Frazier's funeral. He was to meet a hunter named John Willis, who was to take him and Merrifield out after white goat. He had never met Willis, but his correspondence with him had suggested possibilities of interest beside the chase. Roosevelt had written Willis in July that he had heard of his success in pursuit of the game of the high peaks. "If I come out," he concluded, "do you think it will be possible for me to get a goat?"

The answer he received was written on the back of his own letter and was quite to the point. "If you can't shoot any better than you can write, I don't think it will be."

Roosevelt's reply came by wire. "Consider yourself engaged."

It would have been strange if, after this epistolary exchange, the two men should not have been rather curious about each other's personalities. Roosevelt, descending from the train at a way-station in the mountains, found a huge, broad-shouldered man his own age, waiting for him, The man was not over-cordial. He did not, he later admitted, regard Roosevelt's corduroy knee-pants with favor.

Roosevelt, knowing how to catch a hunter, showed Willis his guns. "Will you go on a trip with me?" he asked.

"I am going to start out day after to-morrow for a three or four weeks' hunt," Willis answered. "If you want to go along as my guest, you are welcome to. But I want to tell you before we go, I won't take any booze."

"Why do you say that?" asked Roosevelt, thoroughly interested in this strange creature.

"Why, I've an idea you are some brewer's son who's made a lot of money. You look as if you'd been raised on beer."

Roosevelt roared with delight. "I want to make a contract with you," he said. "I will give you twenty-five dollars for everything that you show me in the way of game."

"I don't want it," said Willis gruffly.

"Then I will buy the grub."

"All the grub I'll take along won't amount to more than three or four dollars—a hundred pounds of flour, twenty-five pounds of bacon, dried apples, and black tea. That's all you'll get."

"By George," cried Roosevelt, "that's fine!"

"You can't stand a trip like this," Willis remarked with deadly frankness.

"You take me on the trip and I'll show you. I can train myself to walk as far as you can."

Willis doubted it and said so. They camped far up in the mountains, hunting day after day through the deep woods just below the timber-line. Roosevelt and Merrifield were accustomed to life in the saddle, and although they had varied it with an occasional long walk after deer or sheep, they were quite unable to cope with Willis when it came to mountaineering. The climbing was hard, the footing was treacherous, and the sharp rocks tore their moccasins into ribbons. There was endless underbrush, thickets of prickly balsam or laurel—but there were no goats.

At last, one mid-afternoon, as he was supporting himself against a tree, halfway across a long landslide, Roosevelt suddenly discovered one of the beasts he was after, a short distance away, making his way down a hill, looking for all the world like a handsome tame billy. He was in a bad position for a shot, and as he twisted himself about he dislodged some pebbles. The goat, instantly alert, fled. Roosevelt fired, but the shot went low, only breaking a fore-leg.

The three men raced and scrambled after the fleeing animal. It leaped along the hillside for nearly a mile, then turned straight up the mountain. They followed the bloody trail where it went up the sharpest and steepest places, skirting the cliffs and precipices.

Roosevelt, intent on the quarry, was not what Bill Sewall would have called "over-cautious" in the pursuit.

He was running along a shelving ledge when a piece of loose slate with which the ledge was covered slipped under his foot. He clutched at the rock wall, he tried to fling himself back, but he could not recover himself.

He went head first over the precipice.

Roosevelt's luck was with him that day. He fell forty or fifty feet into a tall pine, bounced through it, and landed finally, not uncomfortably, in a thick balsam, somewhat shaken and scratched, but with no bones broken and with his rifle still clutched in his hand.

From above came the hoarse voice of John Willis. "Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No," answered Roosevelt, a trifle breathless.

"Then come on!"

Roosevelt "came on," scrambling back up the steep height he had so swiftly descended, and raced after the guide. He came upon the goat at last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot too high, cutting the skin above the spine. The goat plunged downhill and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal until darkness covered the trail.

"Now," said Willis, "I expect you are getting tired."

"By George," said Roosevelt, "how far have we gone?"

"About fifteen or twenty miles up and down the mountains."

"If we get that goat to-morrow, I will give you a hundred dollars." "I don't want a hundred dollars. But we'll get the goat."

Roosevelt brought him down the next day at noon.

Roosevelt spent two weeks with Willis in the mountains. It was a rich experience for the Easterner, but for the tall Missourian it proved to be even more. Willis was a child of the frontier, who had knocked about between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border ever since his boyhood, doing a hundred different things upon which the law and civilized men were supposed to look with disapproval.[22]

To this odd child of nature, bred in the wilderness, Roosevelt opened the door to a world which John Willis did not know existed.

"He was a revelation to me," said Willis long afterward. "He was so well posted on everything. He was the first man that I had ever met that really knew anything. I had just been with a lot of roughnecks, cowpunchers, horse-thieves, and that sort. Roosevelt would explain things to me. He told me a lot of things."

Among other things, Roosevelt told Willis some of his experiences in the New York Assembly. Huge sums had been offered him to divert him from this course or that which certain interests regarded as dangerous to their freedom of action. To Willis it was amazing that Roosevelt should not have accepted what was offered to him, and he began to be aware of certain standards of virtue and honor.

To Roosevelt the trip was a splendid adventure; to Willis it proved a turning-point in his life.[23]

Roosevelt returned to Elkhorn the middle of September, to find that Sewall and Dow had come to a momentous decision. Dow had, during his absence, taken a train-load of cattle to Chicago, and had found that the best price he was able to secure for the hundreds of cattle he had taken to the market there was less by ten dollars a head than the sum it had cost to raise and transport them. Sewall and Dow had "figured things over," and had come to the conclusion that the sooner they terminated their contract with Roosevelt the less money he would lose. They recognized that they themselves were safe enough, for by the "one-sided trade," as Sewall called it, which Roosevelt had made with them, they were to share in whatever profits there were, and in case there were no profits were to receive wages. But neither of them enjoyed the part he was playing in what seemed to both of them a piece of hopeless business.

Ferris And Merrifield On The Ruins Of The First Shack At Elkhorn.
It was this shack which Maunders claimed.