THE COWBOY PRESIDENT

by Michael F. Blake

  Two men climbed down from the Pullman. One of them had on the corduroy knickers and coat of [a] tenderfoot. I knew he was Roosevelt, and he looked too much like a dude to make any hit with me . . . The only thing about him that appealed to me at all was his eyes. They were keen and bright and dancing with animation. From them I knew he was honest and had a mind that worked fast and smoothly and was set on a hair trigger. But in spite of that I didn’t like his looks.7

  Merrifield, Willis observed, was “properly garbed” in buckskins. Theodore shouted to Willis, “I’m here!’ and shook his hand as if he were working a water pump. Anxious to get started, Willis quickly threw cold water on Theodore’s plans. He informed him that he didn’t work for anyone on a salary, adding, “I go where I like and when I like and do as I damned well please.” Theodore managed to convince Willis to come to his hotel room and talk further. In his room, he gave Willis a Sharps rifle as a gift, which the hunter promptly handed back to him. Willis admitted, however, as did others who were at first put off by Theodore’s enthusiasm, that the more the man talked to him, the better he liked him. “There was something of the savor of the West in his manner and his frankness, and, so long as I could keep my eyes away from his foolish pants, I cottoned to the things he said and the way he said them,” Willis recalled.8

  Willis struck a deal with Theodore and Merrifield where they could accompany him as guests on a hunt he had already planned in two days. He refused to let Theodore pay for supplies, saying the two men “might get sore and walk off and leave me afoot.” Happy with the arrangements, Theodore was raring to go.

  Hunting mountain goats is a tough task for even an experienced hunter. The animals, which are sure-footed climbers, are generally found in the higher altitudes, usually along rocky cliffs and mountainous areas that are heavily iced. Their black, sleek horns contrast with their thick white wool coats, which allow them to withstand temperatures of minus-40 degrees and winds of one hundred miles per hour. Because mountain goats primarily stay above the timber line, hunters have to track them on foot, which means scaling the sheer cliffs and the rocky shale that covers them. It is dangerous, hard climbing—especially for a man like Theodore, who had no experience with such locations. Willis, who expected the dude to slow him down, admired Theodore’s gameness in keeping up with him, while pausing only occasionally to acclimate himself to the altitude or to wipe the sweat from his glasses.

  Their first day out, they located a salt lick, which was something that would attract the mountain goats. Willis positioned them above the salt lick, noting that a goat always runs uphill when attacked. Within thirty minutes, a large male, called a “billy,” came to the salt lick.

  The animal was less than two hundred yards away. Theodore took aim and fired.

  He missed.

  As the goat ran off, Theodore fired off another shot, and Willis saw a bit of the animal’s wool coat fly off around the foreleg. Certain that Theodore had wounded the animal, they followed the blood trail over the rocks until late in the afternoon. Then the two men hiked the nine miles back to camp.

  That night, Theodore complained not of his blistered feet but of his poor marksmanship on such an easy shot. The next morning, leaving Merrifield in camp to nurse his own blistered feet, Theodore and Willis went back and scouted the previous day’s trail in hopes of finding the mountain goat. At daylight, Willis spotted a mountain goat on a butte, at least a quarter-mile away. Pointing out the target to Theodore, they both realized that it was the goat he had wounded the previous day. Placing his Winchester against his shoulder, Theodore sighted down on the target. Willis told him he was wasting ammunition, not only because of the distance, but also because a strong wind was blowing.

  It was, Willis said, an “impossible shot.” Theodore decided he’d give it a try.

  His shot hit the goat through the heart, dropping him instantly.

  As he had done before, Theodore jumped and hollered. “The yell of delight he let loose could have been heard for two miles in any country,” Willis said. Theodore pressed a hundred-dollar bill into Willis’s hand, but the hunter refused it. It turned out that the goat was indeed the same one he had wounded the previous day. Theodore had Willis hike back to camp to get his portable camera and asked him to bring Merrifield along, sore feet and all, to record the event. While Theodore was full of joy over his new trophy, poor Merrifield offered a lackluster smile through gritted teeth to conceal his pain.9

  The following day, Theodore and Willis were once again hiking through the highlands on the trail of another goat. Crossing along a narrow ledge of slate rock, with a high cliff on one side and a very sheer drop on the other, Theodore’s smooth, soft-soled shoes slipped on the loose shale, and he fell off the ledge. Willis wasn’t close enough to grab him, but saw Theodore fall headfirst, still holding his rifle. “When I saw him fall I wouldn’t have given two-bits for his life,” Willis wrote, adding that the fall was at least sixty feet, the bottom covered with jagged rocks. Fortunately for Theodore, he struck the top of a pine tree, which cushioned his fall. He continued downward through several branches before coming to rest on a thick bunch of moss, rifle in hand. Assuring Willis that he wasn’t hurt, he asked for a moment to locate his glasses before climbing back up the hill to continue his hunt.10

  During the time he spent with Willis, Theodore continually preached to the man that his hunting skins for profit was not sportsmanship but wholesale murder. Willis, who enjoyed Theodore’s company, chose not to argue the issue. Theodore continued his proselytizing, and finally, either his words, his magnetic personality—or both—convinced Willis that killing game for the skins was wrong.

  Up to the time I met him I had been killing game for years, by the thousands and tens of thousands . . . And until Roosevelt began telling me about the error of my ways it had never occurred to me that there was anything at all wrong about it. Others were doing it, though perhaps not so successfully, so why shouldn’t I? And game of all kinds was so plentiful that it didn’t seem possible there could ever be anything approaching extinction of it . . . It took Roosevelt to set me thinking along new lines, in that as well as in some other directions.11

  In later years, Theodore took delight in saying how he made Willis “a Christian” in turning from his hunting ways, while Willis would jokingly say that he had made a man out of Theodore. His sermons to Willis did change the hunter’s life. He gave up hunting skins for profit, eventually opening one of the largest department stores in northern Montana.

  With their hunting expedition completed, Willis waited at the Thompson Falls train station with Theodore and Merrifield. As they boarded the train, Theodore handed Willis a roll of bills with a rubber band around it. Willis had told his new friend that $150 would cover expenses for the hunting trip. Once the train left, Willis discovered the roll contained twelve $100 bills.12

  Returning to Medora on September 18, Theodore was greeted with a big headache. All the careful planning and subterfuge that he and Edith had undertaken to mask their romance and engagement was now for naught. The New York Times reported that Theodore and Edith were engaged, which brought an instant reply from Bamie that the newspaper was incorrect. Who the newspaper’s source was for the story remains unknown. Edith eventually told her mother and sister when they were in London, with the promise to keep it confidential. No one in Theodore’s family knew of the engagement, let alone suspected a romance between them.

  Theodore now had the unpleasant task of admitting to Bamie that it was all true.

  On returning from the mountains I was savagely irritated by seeing in the papers the statement that I was engaged to Edith Carow . . . But the statement itself is true . . . You are the first person to whom I have breathed one word on the subject . . . On returning to Medora I received letters giving definite shape to my [wedding] plans; I did not write you at once, because a letter is such a miserably poor substitute for talking face to face . . .

  I utterly disbelieve in and disapprove of secon
d marriages; I have always considered that they argued weakness in a man’s character. You could not reproach me one half as bitterly for my inconstancy and unfaithfulness, as I reproach myself . . . But I do very earnestly ask you not to visit my sins upon poor little Edith. It is certainly not her fault; the entire blame rests on my shoulders. Eight years ago she and I had very intimate relations; one day there came a break, for we both of us had, and I suppose have, tempers that were far from being of the best. To no soul now living have either of us ever since spoken a word of this.13

  He also assured Bamie that she could keep Baby Lee and that he would pay the expenses. Theodore stated he would write Elliott and Corinne, as well as his aunt Anna and uncle James, but asked her to say nothing to anyone else. Interestingly, unlike his other letters to his sister, which he signed as “Thee,” on this one he signed his full name.

  There is no doubt that, while writing this letter, Theodore was filled with guilt and shame, leaving him feeling like a coward. As much as he loved Edith, he was overwhelmed with bouts of guilt because he was being unfaithful to his deceased wife’s memory. (There is no published record of what Alice’s parents thought of his remarrying.) Staying at a friend’s home in Mandan, or at the room in Joe Ferris’s general store, he was often heard pacing and repeating that he was not steadfast. It was a difficult time for him, now made worse by his having to confess to family members that he had hidden the truth from them.

  Theodore was also forced to make serious decisions regarding his cattle business. The predictions and beliefs that Bill Sewall had harbored were, sadly, coming true. While Theodore was in the Rocky Mountains, Wilmot Dow went to Chicago to sell some of the Elkhorn cattle. With other ranchers flooding the beef market, the going price in Chicago was now ten dollars less than it would have cost to raise and transport the cattle. “It looked like we were throwing away Roosevelt’s money, and I didn’t like it,” Sewall said.14

  The three men met to look at the figures. It was obvious to Theodore that Sewall and Dow were not terribly happy in the Dakotas and longed to return to the Maine woods. He agreed to release them from their contract, asking how long it would take them to pack and leave. Sewall told him ten days.15 Theodore would leave the Elkhorn a day before his Maine friends departed, turning over management of the Elkhorn to Merrifield and Ferris. The evening before he left, Theodore took a long walk around the ranch property with Sewall. He told his friend that he was thinking of going back into politics, and asked his opinion. Sewall told him he should do it because good men like him were needed in the political arena, adding that he would likely become president. Theodore laughed off the comment, claiming that such an idea was “a long ways ahead.”

  “He never cared about making money and didn’t go to Dakota for the money he expected to make there,” Sewall later stated. “He came because he liked the country and he liked the people and he liked the wild, adventurous life. The financial side of the ranch was a side issue with him.”16

  Theodore stopped in Mandan for a few days, visiting with some friends before returning to New York. If he were debating with himself about reentering politics, he did not have to wait long before making a decision. On the afternoon of October 15, Theodore was visited by a number of leading Republicans who asked him to run for mayor of New York. Entering what would become a three-man race, with a slim chance of winning, Theodore accepted as a loyal party member. “It is of course a perfectly hopeless contest, the chance for success being so very small that it may be left out of account,” he informed Lodge.17 He was running against Henry George, who was on an independent Labor Party ticket, while the Democrats sponsored Abram Hewitt, a former congressman. Henry George worried Democrats and Republicans alike because he was a strong believer in the theory that it took many poor men to make one man rich. While the Republicans originally gave serious thought to supporting Hewitt, they finally chose to have their own candidate in the race.

  No seats were available in the Cooper Union building the night of October 27, 1886, when New York Republicans gathered to ratify Theodore Roosevelt’s nomination for mayor. (It was also his twenty-eighth birthday.) As a student of history, Theodore could not help but be moved that the ratification vote was held in the same building where Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in 1860 that many say led to his presidential nomination. Chairman Thomas C. Acton introduced Theodore as “The Cowboy of Dakota.”

  While the phrase to describe him would change over the years, eventually becoming “The Cowboy President,” the reference to him as a cowboy would forever be part of Theodore’s life. The image of a hard-riding, no-nonsense cowboy in politics was born. It was an epithet, based on real-life experiences that Theodore heartily embraced. The cowboy was indeed part of his being. Even though cartoonists and reporters would enhance his Western pedigree, embellishing some incidents as the years went on, the foundation was solid and true. He had lived the life, eaten trail dust, ridden in stampedes, crossed paths with Indians, and dealt with outlaws. No one could ever take that away from Theodore, or dismiss what the life had done for him. In his heart, he considered himself a Westerner.

  Despite the appellation, and his active campaigning, when it came to counting the votes, Hewitt won the contest, with Theodore coming in third.18 Four days after the election, November 6, Theodore and Bamie quietly boarded the liner Etruria, early in the morning to avoid any reporters, under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Merrifield. Arriving seven days later in Liverpool, Theodore took a train to London while Bamie visited their mother’s relatives in the port town. Prior to the wedding, Theodore spent time traveling around London and the countryside, visiting with Edith and sharing a lunch with George Bernard Shaw. The wedding was held at St. George’s Church in Hanover Square on December 2. The day was christened with an impervious fog that blanketed not only London but also the inside of the church. Bamie would not have made out her brother at the altar if it had not been for the bright orange gloves that his best man, Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, had provided him.19

  The couple honeymooned in Europe until March. It was a long, not to mention expensive, trip for a man who had no real job waiting for him. In a January 3, 1887, letter to Bamie, Theodore expresses his concerns over finances, noting that he and Edith have seriously discussed closing up Sagamore Hill and moving out to his ranch for a year or two. He had instructed Corinne’s husband, Douglas, to sell his favorite horse, Saga-more, with great reluctance. (He later rescinded this decision.) “I must live well within my income and begin paying off my debt this year, at no matter what cost, even to the shutting up or renting of Sagamore Hill, bitterly as I should hate such an alternative,” he wrote.20

  One old-timer in the Badlands noted that “Nature was fixin’ up her folks for hard times.”21

  The fall season offered warnings to those who could read the signs. The hot weather continued. A continuous haze in the October sky was not residual smoke from summer grass fires, as some folks claimed, but an indication of moisture in high suspension. Lincoln Lang noted that there were frequent “sun and moon dogs together with halos and an uncanny stillness prevailing over all.”22 Muskrats along the river were building their houses twice the customary height and the walls double thick. Geese and ducks, which normally headed south in October, left a month earlier. The few remaining beavers in the area were storing up twice the amount of willow brush, their primary food source. Deer, pronghorns, horses, and cattle all had exceptionally long winter coats.

  Then came the arctic owls.

  Legend held that sightings of arctic owls indicated a harsh winter.

  Wishing for a Chinook

  It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

  IT BEGAN ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOVEMBER 13, 1886.

  No one paid much attention at first to the soft snowfall because it was not terribly unusual for the area. As the night wore on, however, the temperature dropped, and a fierce wind began to blow. The worst blizzard ever to strike the Badlands had begun. No one expe
cted it. No one was prepared for it.

  During the night, the temperature sank to 40 degrees below zero. Ice formed everywhere and on anything—including cattle. Cabins that had any kind of an opening in the walls, however small, were hit with the chilly blast of air. Anyone daring, or foolish, enough to venture outside was hit in the face with ice-dust particles that were said to be sharp as glass. The freezing air would burn a man’s lungs and face within seconds. The few who tried to travel in this numbing cold quickly lost any sense of direction, leaving them to wander aimlessly until they froze to death.

  The following morning, things did not get any better.

  Drifts were averaging six to eight feet deep, with the snow continuing to fall. Visibility was limited to a few yards at best. On opening their cabin door, the inhabitants were greeted by a solid block of snow several inches thick.1 As evening set in, the snow and the temperature both dropped, bringing equal misery. For the rest of the month, the snow fell, temperatures dropped, and the wind blew powdery, white destruction over the land. Some cattle, unlike buffalo or horses, which had better sense, stood facing the wind. The blowing snow was so fine that it plugged up the nostrils and throats of the animals until they were asphyxiated.2