THE COWBOY PRESIDENT

by Michael F. Blake

  This trip on his own would be his first test. He would ride off into the Badlands and the prairie to prove that he could handle himself in the wilds like Crockett, Boone, and even Sewall. This was a boy’s true adventure, enacting the role of the great frontiersman, and—in what would soon become typical fashion—Theodore’s way of life. His childlike enthusiasm in embracing such adventures would make him irresistible to his future public, and provide great press.

  “I started in the very earliest morning,” he wrote in Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, “when the intense brilliancy of the stars had just begun to pale before the first streak of dawn. By the time I left the river bottom and struck off up the valley of a winding creek, which led through the Bad Lands, the eastern sky was growing rosy; and soon the buttes and cliffs were lit up by the level rays of the cloudless summer sun. The air was fresh and sweet, and odorous with sweet scents of the spring-time that was barely passed; the dew lay heavy, in glittering drops, on the leaves and the blades of grass, whose vivid green, at this season, for a short time brightens the desolate and sterile-looking wastes of the lonely western plains. The rose-bushes were all in bloom, and their pink blossoms clustered in every point and bend of the stream; and the sweet, sad songs of the hermit thrushes rose from the thickets, while the meadow larks perched boldly in sight as they uttered their louder and more cheerful music.”25

  Theodore made his way through the Badlands with its rounded hills tinted with scoria and red volcanic rock that peeked up through the growing grass. Clumps of sagebrush and wild rose populated the area, and at one point he spotted “two magpies, who lit on an old buffalo skull, bleached white by the sun and snow.” He passed the remaining buttes that acted as a gateway to the “great, seemingly endless stretches of rolling or nearly level prairie.” Seeing this land reaching out as far as the horizon leaves a rider with an overwhelming sense of awe and insignificance. The vast openness of the prairie only accentuates one’s isolation from civilization, but it also stimulates the sense of adventure for what may lie over the next rolling hill.

  However, the prairie can be dangerous. What seems to be level ground can quickly give way to a sharp dip, or to hidden prairie dog or badger holes. Riding at a lope or gallop, many a horse has caught a hoof in one of these holes, sending both rider and mount tumbling. A horse that trips in such a hole on the prairie could be left with a broken leg, having to be put down, while the rider would be miles from any cow camp, shack, or ranch. In the summer, the prairie can be a furnace, reflecting the rays of a blistering sun, drying up creek beds or a once-shallow water hole. As in the desert, water is a very valuable commodity on the prairie. Water means life, not just for people, but for animals. The prairie also offers little shelter from the sun, rain, and snow. The wind uses it as an expressway, blowing hard with little care of what it does to anything in its way. Like the rest of the American West, the prairie, while offering a beautiful view and dreams of wealth, is an exacting taskmaster. As with the Badlands, animals and man do not conquer the prairie; they live with it and accept the daily lessons it hands out.

  Theodore was mounted on his favorite horse, Manitou, whom he referred to as “a wise old fellow, with nerves not to be shaken by anything.”26 In his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Theodore uses the word “we” to describe the travels of horse and rider in the chapter “A Trip on the Prairie.” To him, Manitou was not simply a horse but a partner. He carried a telescope that his father had given him, using it to scan the area for game, writing, “The greatest caution was used in riding up over any divide, to be sure that no game on the opposite side was scared by the sudden appearance of my horse or myself.”27 Spotting some pronghorns, he fired at them without much success. “I had fired half a dozen shots without effect; but while no one ever gets over his feeling of self-indignation at missing an easy shot at close quarters, anyone who hunts antelope . . . soon learns that he has to expect to expend a good deal of powder and lead before bagging his game.”28

  As the sun lifted overhead, Theodore followed a dry creek until he found “a small spot of green” near a faint pool of water. Unsaddling Manitou, he allowed the horse to graze and drink while he himself had a biscuit and some water and rested for a few hours. Then they went across the dry creek bed and soon found themselves floundering in quicksand. Both rider and horse struggled but managed to get out of the mess. The authority and detail with which Theodore reports the dangers of being caught in quicksand in Hunting Trips of a Ranchman indicate that such material could come only from risky personal experience.

  Topping a crest, Theodore’s luck soon changed. He came across six or eight pronghorns about a quarter of a mile away. “A group of bucks, six or eight feeding together, started to run across my path, while I was riding alone on the prairie; I was on a first rate pony, and galloped full speed diagonally to their course; I leaped off as they passed within twenty-five yards, and gave them both barrels, killing a fine buck shot through the shoulders,” he detailed in his diary.29 Theodore found a campsite in a rich bottomland with cottonwood trees and pools of water. He picketed Manitou, who grazed on the grass, and spread out on the ground his horse blanket and slicker for his bed. Heating a cup of water for tea and roasting the pronghorn hams, Theodore settled down for the night. “It is wonderful how cozy a camp, in clear weather, becomes if there is a good fire and enough to eat, and how sound the sleep is afterwards in the cool air, with the brilliant stars glimmering through the branches overhead,” he commented.30 In his first day in the wilderness on his own, Theodore was living the experience he had only briefly grasped in tours with Bill Sewall and Joe Ferris. Now he was on his own, a lone rider in the vast American West.

  Awakened in the early morning by the sound of prairie dogs emerging from their burrows, Theodore, rifle in hand, walked out onto the prairie. Scanning the open ground, he saw no sign of game, and only the shrill chirps of the prairie dogs and the song of a skylark filled the air. Saddling Manitou, he rode off. The sun was soon beating down on them, causing Manitou to break into a sweat even though they were simply walking. Finding a “bitter alkaline pool,” Theodore stopped to rest. The bank was too steep for Manitou to manage, so Theodore filled the inside of his hat with water and brought it up to his friend. Moving closer to the fringes of the Badlands, he spotted more pronghorns, but his attempt to shoot any was unsuccessful. Continuing on, Theodore once again spotted two pronghorns. “On riding round a little knoll, I saw two antelope a long distance off, looking at me; I dismounted and fired off hand, with careful aim . . . By actual measurement the distance was three hundred yards; the best shot I ever made with the rifle,” he wrote in his diary.31

  With his supply of biscuits running low, and pronghorn meat good only for roughly twenty-four hours, Theodore headed back to Maltese Cross Ranch the following morning. As he wrote in his book, the solo trip into the wilds “always has great attraction” for anyone who loves the sport and nature, and can be “his own good companion.” Of course, such an excursion depends a great deal on favorable weather, because winter snows or rain make such travel tiresome and dangerous. On the way back to the ranch, a storm rolled in, drenching both Theodore and Manitou. “But when a man’s clothes and bedding and rifle are all wet, no matter how philosophically he may bear it,” Theodore wrote in his book, “it may be taken for granted that he does not enjoy it.”32 Returning to the ranch on the evening of June 22, the following day he was off on a different adventure.

  Although he was comfortable at the Maltese Cross, Theodore found that the location did not always afford him the privacy he desired. Its location—thirty miles south of Medora, and near a well-traveled route that ran north to south—guaranteed that the ranch never lacked company. For Theodore, privacy and remoteness fitted his current frame of mind. In addition, the Maltese Cross was not conducive to the solitude he needed to write a book. The morning after his four-day sojourn, he saddled up and headed north, searching for a new location to build another cabin.

  Passing th
rough Medora, he stopped at the office of the town newspaper for a short visit with Arthur Packard, who informed him that reform-minded members of the Republican Party, who had opposed James G. Blaine’s nomination, were upset that Roosevelt and his friend, Henry Cabot Lodge, would not leave the party and would support Blaine. Shrugging off the verbal attacks, Packard noted in the next edition of the Bad Lands Cow Boy that Theodore was “perfectly non-committal on politics and the alleged interview with him, published in St. Paul Pioneer Press, speaks more for the reporter’s asininity than for his perspicacity.”33

  The newspaper office became Theodore’s favorite place to stop when in Medora. A virtual teetotaler, Theodore avoided the town’s saloons. He preferred to sit in a rocking chair by Packard’s stove, drinking coffee or tea and discussing politics or the events of the day. Theodore genuinely liked Packard and his sense of right versus wrong. Packard was also responsible for saving Theodore from potential danger in town. When he’d ride into Medora, Theodore always wore his gun and holster, as did most of the men in the area. Packard, understanding the problems that wearing a gun in town can cause, recommended Theodore leave his sidearm at the newspaper office while in town. When Theodore questioned Packard’s request, the newspaperman had William Roberts, a man handy with pistols, demonstrate. Throwing two tomato cans into the air, Roberts quickly blasted them with his pistols while they were airborne. When they landed, Roberts continued to fire away at the cans, moving them along the ground. Claiming it a wonderful exhibition, Theodore also realized Packard’s point, and he never wore his pistol in Medora again.34

  “The cowboys are a much misrepresented set of people,” Theodore stated in an interview with the New York Tribune. “It is a popular impression when one goes among them he must be prepared to shoot. But this is a false idea. I have taken part with them in the rounding up, have eaten, slept, hunted and herded cattle with them, and have never had any difficulty. If you choose to enter rum shops with them, or go on drinking sprees with them, it is easy to get into a difficulty out there as it would be in New York, or anywhere else. But if a man minds his own business and at the same time shows he is fully prepared to assert his rights—if he is neither a bully or a coward and keeps out of places in which he has no business to be, he will get along well as in Fifth Avenue. I have found them a most brave and hospitable set of men. There is no use in trying to be overbearing with them, for they won’t stand the least assumption of superiority, yet there are many places in our cities where I should feel less safe than I would among the wildest cowboys of the west.”35

  Riding out of Medora, Theodore met rancher Howard Eaton and shared with him his desire for a new cabin. Eaton suggested riding north, roughly thirty miles from Medora, to investigate the bottomland along the Little Missouri River. Finding the area Eaton described, Theodore noted a wide grassy stretch that extended a hundred feet from the riverbank, perfect for grazing. Beyond that was a grove of cottonwood trees following the course of the river, which provided shade and more than enough space to build a substantial cabin. The trees also served as a spot for numerous birds to rest and sing their songs, something that was literally music to Theodore’s ears. Beyond the grove of trees was a flat area that would house his second cabin, and beyond that stood the wind-worn hills of the Badlands. Near this location, Theodore found a small shack and paid $400 to the owner in return for obtaining proper claim to the land.

  The area was isolated. Quiet. Peaceful. Only the birds singing and the wind passing through the leaves of the cottonwood trees muffled the sound of the river making its way north. It was what Theodore wanted— and needed. Not far from his chosen site, he found the skulls of two elks, their antlers interlocked, who had done battle to the death.

  He named his new ranch the Elkhorn.

  One problem cattle ranchers faced in such remote areas was theft. Cattle rustlers and horse thieves were commonplace in the West, and with vast stretches of open range, stealing a few head—or even a hundred—could easily happen without the owner’s immediate knowledge. Thieves generally were cautious about how many head of cattle or horses they stole, in order to avoid detection. One way of aiding their crime was to doctor the brand. A CS brand, for example, could easily be made to look like O8 with a heated cinch ring. Unless the doctoring was poorly executed, it wouldn’t be noticed until the cow was butchered; then the inside of the hide would show that two brands had been burned in. When a cattle rustler or horse thief had the misfortune of being caught, justice was swift and unmerciful. Offenders were either shot or hanged, usually without a burial. Law enforcement was often spread thin over wide distances, and traveling to a town for a trial was a great inconvenience for cattlemen. Dispensing justice immediately also served as a warning to other potential thieves.

  Rustlers operated in groups of small numbers, generally no more than ten. These men may have worked for an outfit for a while, then quit with the idea of taking a small number of cattle, perhaps twenty, re-branding them, and selling them in another town or military post. Most rustlers frequented saloons, hash-houses, and anywhere else where they could gather information about a herd. Western Dakota Territory, the northwest of Wyoming, and the eastern border of Montana were prime locations for rustlers. The large areas of open range, and few cowboys to protect the herds, made the cattle a tempting target. By June 1884, Granville Stuart, president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, had had enough of cattle rustling. Rather than seeking the assistance of the law, he formed a private group known as the Stranglers to handle a recent increase in thefts. This group, made up of cattle owners and the loyal cowboys who worked for them, would eliminate the problem on their own. On June 24, Stuart held a meeting to explain his idea to the cattle owners. One of those present was the Marquis, who requested to join the Stranglers. Stuart refused, citing the Frenchman’s well-known presence as a distraction.

  No one really knows when Theodore and the Marquis actually met for the first time. There is nothing in Theodore’s diaries or in the Marquis’s records mentioning an initial meeting. However, both Theodore and the Marquis traveled on June 26 to Miles City in Montana Territory to meet with Stuart. They pleaded their case on why they should be allowed to join, and while Stuart listened patiently, he declined their request. He noted that the two men’s distinguished positions within society would draw unwanted attention to their actions, which they hoped to keep secret from the rustlers.36 “The vigilantes, or stranglers, as they were locally known, did their work thoroughly; but, as always happens with the bodies of the kind, toward the end they grew reckless in their actions, paid off private grudges, and hung men on slight provocation,” Theodore commented in his autobiography.37 Hermann Hagedorn claimed that Arthur Packard had been told that two known rustlers would be eliminated on a following Thursday. On the designated day, which was also the day Packard’s weekly paper came out, the editor included an article about their demise. Later in the day, dropping off copies of his newspaper at the Medora train station, he saw the two rustlers. It was a most uncomfortable moment, but, because the two men could not read, they were unaware of the premature announcement of their passing. They boarded the train and were hanged later that night.38

  As the Stranglers went about their deadly work with a calm efficiency, Theodore returned to New York. One of the first things he did upon his arrival was send a letter to Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow asking them to join him in the Badlands.

  * While the pronghorn resembles the antelope found in Africa and Eurasia, it is not an antelope. Many refer to the animal as a pronghorn buck, pronghorn antelope, or simply antelope. I have chosen to refer to the animal as a “pronghorn.”

  Dakota Rancher

  I understand you have threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing, and to let you know that, if you have anything to say against me, now is the time for you to say it.

  “I HOPE MY WESTERN VENTURE TURNS OUT WELL,” THEODORE WROTE to Bill Sewall a month after Alice’
s death. “If it does, and I feel sure you will do well for yourself by coming out with me, I shall take you and Will Dow out next August. Of course, it depends upon how the cattle have gotten through the winter. . . . [I]f the loss has been very heavy I will have to wait a year longer before going into a more extended scale.”1 Before leaving for the Badlands, Theodore had discussed with Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow the possibility of their coming out to Medora and working at Theodore’s ranch, where he guaranteed the two men a share of anything he made in the cattle business. If he suffered a loss, Bill and Wilmot would still be paid wages and Theodore would absorb the deficit. Sewall said it was a very one-sided offer, but if Theodore “could stand it, I thought we could.”

  Returning from Medora the first week in July, Theodore stayed at Bamie’s home, where he had a reunion with Baby Lee. He sent Sewall and Dow a letter, along with a $3,000 check to pay off mortgages, bills, and anything else that could keep them from heading west. Theodore promised their wives could come out if everything went well after the first year. “If you are afraid of hard work and privation, do not come West. If you expect to make a fortune in a year or two, do not come West. If you will give up under temporary discouragements, do not come West. If, on the other hand, you are willing to work hard, especially the first year; if you realize that for a couple of years you cannot expect to make much more than you are now making; and if you also know that at the end of that time you will be in receipt of about a thousand dollars for the third year, with an unlimited rise ahead of you and a future as bright as yourself choose to make it—then come . . . So fix up your affairs at once, and be ready to start before the end of this month.”2