Part 2 (2/2)
So on he came, accoutred as he was,--coatless, hatless, but not latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was to see those sheep do their ”stunt.” With gla.s.ses in hand, we watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zigzagging or plunging straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME.
By kind permission of Forest and Stream.]
In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks.
Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead.
TROUT FIs.h.i.+NG
The next day, while the rest of us went fis.h.i.+ng for trout in the Yellowstone, three or four miles above camp, over the roughest trail that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the sheep, and was back in camp before we were.
We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very singular spectacle.
RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE
We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old frontiersman, who died a few weeks later.
AROUND THE CAMP FIRE
While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science, politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, Civil Service commissioner, police commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confessions, the most telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always surprising by his candor, astonis.h.i.+ng by his memory, and diverting by his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type of memory which retains details as well as ma.s.s and generalities. One night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed palaeontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day.
He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes easy to him.
At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British major on his mettle to keep pace with him.
THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES
One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, and his letter ran something like this:--
”DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife.”
And the presidential laughter rang out over the treetops. To another Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough wrote that his trial never came off. ”_We elected our district attorney_;” and the laughter again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by.
On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by any of the ”bad men” of the frontier, with whom he had often come in contact. ”Only once,” he said. The cowboys had always treated him with the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; ”and the few real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite.” Once only was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_ ”bad man,” but by a ”broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace type.” He had been compelled to pa.s.s the night at a little frontier hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling different ones to treat.
FLOORING A RUFFIAN
”I went and sat down behind the stove,” said the President, ”as far from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that I wore gla.s.ses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with impunity. He very soon approached me, flouris.h.i.+ng his two guns, and ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, 'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him and put him in an outhouse.” The President alludes to this incident in his ”Ranch Life,” but does not give the details. It brings out his mettle very distinctly.
He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents at Albany, during his early career as a member of the a.s.sembly, to besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was not caught. His innate rect.i.tude and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct.
His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and hesitate.
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