Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. Hermann Hagedorn
they had adventurous spirits.
The Republican National Convention met in Chicago in the first days of June. Roosevelt, supported by his friend Henry Cabot Lodge and a group of civil service reformers that included George William Curtis and Carl Schurz, led the fight for Edmunds. But the convention wanted Blaine, the "Plumed Knight"; and the convention got Blaine.
Roosevelt raged, but refused to follow Curtis and Schurz, who hinted darkly at "bolting the ticket." He took the first train to Dakota, sick at heart, to think things over.[Back to Contents]
V.
He wears a big hat and big spurs and all that,
And leggins of fancy fringed leather;
He takes pride in his boots and the pistol he shoots
And he's happy in all kinds of weather;
He's fond of his horse, it's a broncho, of course,
For oh, he can ride like the devil;
He is old for his years and he always appears
Like a fellow who's lived on the level;
He can sing, he can cook, yet his eyes have the look
Of a man that to fear is a stranger;
Yes, his cool, quiet nerve will always subserve
For his wild life of duty and danger.
He gets little to eat, and he guys tenderfeet,
And for fashion, oh well! he's not in it;
But he'll rope a gay steer when he gets on its ear
At the rate of two-forty a minute.
Cowboy song
Blaine was nominated on June 7th. On the 8th Roosevelt was already in St. Paul, on his way to the Bad Lands. A reporter of the Pioneer Press interviewed him and has left this description of him as he appeared fresh from the battle at Chicago:
He is short and slight and with rather an ordinary appearance, although his frame is wiry and his flashing eyes and rapid, nervous gestures betoken a hidden strength. He is not at all an ideal Harvard alumnus, for he lacks that ingrained conceit and grace of manner that a residence at Cambridge insures. Although of the old Knickerbocker stock, his manner and carriage is awkward and not at all impressive.
He arrived in Medora on the evening of the 9th. The Ferrises and Merrifield were at the "depot" to meet him. They all adjourned to Packard's printing-office, since that was the only place in town of a semi-public character which was not at that hour in possession of a noisy aggregation of Medora's thirstiest citizens.
The office of the Bad Lands Cowboy, which stood under a gnarled cottonwood-tree north of the Marquis's store, was a one-room frame building which served as the editor's parlor, bedroom, and bath, as well as his printing-office and his editorial sanctum. It was built of perpendicular boards which let in the wintry blasts in spite of the two-inch strips which covered the joints on the outside. It had, in fact, originally served as the Marquis's blacksmith shop, and the addition of a wooden floor had not altogether converted it into a habitable dwelling, proof against Dakota weather. On this particular June night the thermometer was in the thirties and a cannon stove glowed red from a steady application of lignite.
A half-dozen voices greeted Roosevelt with pleas for the latest news of the "great Republican round-up." Roosevelt was not loath to unburden his soul. For an hour he told of the battles and the manipulations of the convention, of the stubborn fight against an impending nomination which he had known would be a fatal mistake, but which the majority seemed to be bound to make.
Packard told about it years afterward. "He gave us such a swinging description of the stirring scenes of the convention that the eyes of the boys were fairly popping out of their heads. But it was when he told how Roscoe Conkling attempted to dominate the situation and override the wishes of a large portion of the New York delegation that the fire really began to flash in his eyes. I can see him now as plainly as I did then, as he straightened up, his doubled fist in the air, his teeth glittering, and his eyes squinting in something that was far from a smile as he jerked out the words, 'By Godfrey! I will not be dictated to!'"
Roosevelt rode to the Maltese Cross next morning. The old stockade shack, with the dirt floor and dirt roof, had, as he had suggested, been converted into a stable, and a simple but substantial one-and-a-half story log cabin had been built with a shingle roof and a cellar, both luxuries in the Bad Lands. An alcove off the one large room on the main floor was set aside for Roosevelt's use as combined bedroom and study; the other men were quartered in the loft above. East of the ranch-house beside a patch of kitchen-garden, stood the strongly made circular horse-corral, with a snubbing-post in the middle, and at some distance from it the larger cow-corral for the branding of the cattle. Between them stood the cowsheds and the hayricks.
The ranch-buildings belonged to Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield. In buying out the Maltese Cross, Roosevelt had bought only cattle and horses; not buildings or land. The ranges on which his cattle grazed were owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and by the Government. It was the custom for ranchmen to claim for grazing purposes a certain stretch of land north, east, south, and west of the bottom on which the home ranch stood.
"You claim so much land each way," Sylvane explained to a tenderfoot a long time after, "according to how many cattle you have. For instance, if you have one hundred head of cattle, you don't require very much range; if you have a thousand head, you need so much more. There wouldn't be any sense of one man trying to crowd his cattle onto your range and starve out both outfits. So each man claims as much land as he needs. Of course, that doesn't mean that the other fellow doesn't get over on your range—that's the reason we brand our cattle; it simply means that a certain given number of cattle will have a certain given amount of grazing land. Our cattle may be on the other fellow's range and some of his may be on our range, but he'll claim so much land each way and we'll claim so much land each way, and then it doesn't make any difference if they do get on each other's territory, so long as there is enough grazing for the two outfits."
The range claimed by the "Maltese Cross outfit" extended northward to the river-crossing above Eaton's "Custer Trail Ranch," and southward to the crossing just below what was known as "Sloping Bottom," covering a territory that had a frontage of four miles on both sides of the river and extended back on each side for thirty miles to the heads of the creeks which emptied into the Little Missouri.
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