Part 6 (1/2)

When serving as deputy sheriff I was ie the officer of the law has over ordinary wrong-doers, provided he thoroughly knows his own mind There are exceptional outlaws, men with a price on their heads and of re life, and whose warfare against society is as open as that of a savage on the war-path The law officer has no advantage whatever over these ive him Such a man was Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of New Mexico, as himself finally slain by a friend of mine, Pat Garrett, whom, when I was President, I made collector of customs at El Paso

But the ordinary criminal, even when murderously inclined, feels just a moment's hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the law engaged in his duty I took in more than one man as probably a better man than I ith both rifle and revolver; but in each case I knew just what I wanted to do, and, like David Harum, I ”did it first,”

whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in a position where it was useless for him to resist

I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of course means to the men and women I met in the West There were a few people of bad type in roup of ical sereat affection and respect of the greatmen and women elt for a space of perhaps a hundred and fiftythe Little Missouri I was always as welcome at their houses as they were atto help everybody else, and yet nobody asked any favors The saot to know fifty e, and of the men I met on the round-ups They soon acceptedwith the for uests were ever more welcome at the White House than these old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow ca circle and eaten at the tail-board of a chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washi+ngton during my Presidency

I reton one day just before lunch, a huge, powerfulcharacter It happened that on that day another old friend, the British A to lunch Just before ent in I turned to reat solemnity, ”Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause international complications”; to which Jim responded with unaffected horror, ”Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of it!”

Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite unconsciously helpwith thee Aht type, but they helped me in another way I made up my mind that the men were of just the kind whom it would be well to have with o to war When the Spanish War caht practical realization

Fortunately, Wister and Re as our literature lives I have soinian” is not overdrahy, one of the men I have inian in real life, not only in his force but in his charm Half of the men I worked with or played with and half of the ht have walked out of Wister's stories or Reton's pictures

There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of course, and under the conditions of life they were probably erous than they would have been elsewhere I hardly ever had any difficulty, however I never went into a saloon, and in the little hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the bar-roo-room I always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbadeany further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the se incidents occurred now and then Usually these took place when I was hunting lost horses, for in hunting lost horses I was ordinarily alone, and occasionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles away from my own country On one such occasion I reached a little con long after dark, stabled , and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my request for a bed that I could have the last one left, as there was only one other man in it The room to which I was shown contained two double beds; one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one man, also asleep This man proved to be a friend, one of the Bill Joneses who to the fashi+on of the day and place, that is, I put un down beside the bed, and turned in A couple of hours later I akened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed inon the muzzle of a cocked 45 Another man said to the lantern-bearer, ”It ain't hiuns, and addressed, ”Now, Bill, don'tof ht,” was the answer; ”we're your friends; we don't want to hurt you; we just want you to co, you knohy” And Bill pulled on his trousers and boots and walked out with them Up to this time there had not been a sound from the other bed Now a match was scratched, a candle lit, and one of the men in the other bed looked round the roo questions ”I wonder why they took Bill,” I said There was no answer, and I repeated, ”I wonder why they took Bill” ”Well,” said the man with the candle, dryly, ”I reckon they wanted him,” and with that he blew out the candle and conversation ceased Later I discovered that Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern Pacific train at a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him dance This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the ground that by delaying the train he had interfered with the mails

The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive little hotel than the one in question It was also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses Below the hotel had -room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it It was late in the evening when I reached the place

I heard one or two shots in the bar-roo in But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night

Inside the roo the kind of s believe to like what they don't like A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand alking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face

He was not a ”bad erous type, the true man-killer type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad s all his oay As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ”Four eyes,” in reference toto treat” I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice He followed h I tried to pass it off as a jest thisover e He was foolish to stand so near, and, ether, so that his position was unstable Accordingly, in response to his reiterated comot to, I've got to,” and rose, looking past hiht just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with ht He fired the guns, but I do not knohether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with uns, and the other people in the room, ere now loud in their denunciation of hiot dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from the s, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting athappened When my assailant caht

As I have said, iment were just such men as those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, so, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose coiment was disbanded the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents Our relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt ”as if I was a father” to the were sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly used by the feere behaving like very bad children indeed The great iment disbanded took up the business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another as the occasion arose; no iment than I had oftheularity, although often enough they had been first-class soldiers

It was fro which always caused my heart to sink--”Dear Colonel: I write you because I aht take almost any form One correspondent continued: ”I did not take the horse, but they say I did” Another coamy In the case of another the incident was more inning: ”Dear Colonel: I write you because I am in trouble I have shot a lady in the eye But, Colonel, I was not shooting at the lady I was shooting at arded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world

I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear any more of the incident for several years

Then, while I was President, a iment, Major Llewellyn, as Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting gossip about the comrades It ran in part as follows: ”Since I last wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed aa poker gae that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot Comrade Webb has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona Co was in the line of professional duty I was out at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade Gritto, who, youhis sister-in-law [this was the first information I had had as to the identity of the lady as shot in the eye] Since he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old Mexico with his (Gritto's) wife, and the people of Grant County think he ought to be let out” Evidently the sporting instincts of the people of Grant County had been roused, and they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had had a fair start, the other comrade should be let out in order to see ould happen

The i for office On one occasion Buck Taylor, of Texas, accompanied me on a trip and made a speech forand so did I, until the peroration, which ran as follows: ”My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel! vote for my Colonel! _and he will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter_!” This hardly seehted the crowd, and as far as I could tell didfor Vice-President, a ot into a discussion with a Populist editor who had expressed an unfavorable estimate of my character, and in the course of the discussion shot the editor--not fatally We had to leave him to be tried, and as he had noborrowed the money from Senator Wolcott, of Colorado, as also with : ”Dear Colonel: I find I will not have to use that 150 you lent me, as we have elected our candidate for District Attorney So I have used it to settle a horse transaction in which I unfortunately became involved” A feeeks later, however, I received a heartbroken letter setting forth the fact that the District Attorney--whom he evidently felt to be a cold-blooded formalist--had put hiht until two or three years later, when as President I visited a town in another State, and the leaders of the delegation which received me included both my correspondent and the editor, now fast friends, and both of theireeting e had let hiet to the reunion I asked as the matter, and he replied with some surprise: ”Why, Colonel, don't you know I had a difficulty with a gentleentleht or he wouldn't have letthe latter point, I said: ”How did it happen? How did you do it?” Misinterpretingan interest only in the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher replied: ”With a 38 on a 45 frame, Colonel” I chuckled over the answer, and it beca Seth Bullock When I was shot at Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired an inquiry to which I responded that it was all right, that the weapon was ram in some way became public, and puzzled outsiders By the way, both the iment and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were theshot This hat they expected, what they accepted as the right thing for athe non-performance of which would have been discreditable rather than the perfor creditable They would not have expected awounded in such fashi+on; and they saw no reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty

One of the best soldiers of e man whom I made marshal of a Rocky Mountain State He had spent his hot and lusty youth on the frontier during its viking age, and at that time had naturally taken part in incidents which seemed queer to men ”accustomed to die decently of zymotic diseases” I told him that an effort would doubtless be made to prevent his confirmation by the Senate, and therefore that I wanted to know all the facts in his case Had he played faro? He had; but it hen everybody played faro, and he had never played a brace gae City on occasions when he was deputy e City, now the hest town on the continent, and croith ra to the need of the actions he had taken Finally I said: ”Now, Ben, how did you lose that half of your ear?” To which, looking rather shy, he responded: ”Well, Colonel, it was bit off” ”How did it happen, Ben?” ”Well, you see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me entle more coy than ever, responded: ”Well, Colonel, we broke about even!” I forebore to inquire what variety of entleot him confirmed by the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service, exactly as he had already iment; and I never wish to see a better citizen, nor a man in whom I would more implicitly trust in every way

When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was sent by the National Coh plains and the Rocky Mountains These had all gone overwhelly for Mr Bryan on the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was thought that I, because of ht acco the trip, and the n of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashi+on by occasional hostile audiences One or two of thewas finally broken up by ahad to stop Soon after this we reached another tohere ere told there ht be trouble Here the local coun” man of repute, as not in the least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word We marched round to the local opera-house, which was packed with aMy friend the two-gun un on each hip, his araze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which there came so much as a whisper The audience listened to me with rapt attention At the end, with a pride inof the situation, I remarked to the chairman: ”I held that audience well; there wasn't an interruption” To which the chairuess not! Seth had sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he'd kill him!”

There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should like to see imitated inbaseness and cruelty were never forgiven But in the case of ordinary offenses, the ood was given a fair chance; and of course this was equally true of the women Every one who has studied the subject at all is only too well aware that the world offsets the readiness hich it condones a cri relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who _is_ punished, and who therefore has made his atonement On the frontier, if the enerally a disposition to give him fair play and a decent show Several of the men I knew and whom I particularly liked caiment, a man who had served a term for robbery under arms, and who had atoned for it by h official position, and no man under me rendered better service to the State, nor was there any man whom, as soldier, as civil officer, as citizen, and as friend, I valued and respected--and now value and respect--ather from this that I favor men who commit crimes I certainly do not favor them I have not a particle of sympathy with the sentimentality--as I deem it, the mawkishness--which overfloith foolish pity for the criminal and cares not at all for the victi-doers punished The punishment is an absolute necessity from the standpoint of society; and I put the reformation of the criminal second to the welfare of society But I do desire to see the man or woiven a helping hand--surely every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he too may stumble, and should be anxious to help his brother or sister who has stumbled When the criminal has been punished, if he then shows a sincere desire to lead a decent and upright life, he should be given the chance, he should be helped and not hindered; and if he ood, he should receive that respect fro self-respect--the most invaluable of all possessions

CHAPTER V

APPLIED IDEALISM

In the spring of 1899 I was appointed by President Harrison Civil Service Commissioner For nearly five years I had not been very active in political life; although I had done son speeches, and in 1886 had run for Mayor of New York against Abrae, Independent, and had been defeated

I served six years as Civil Service Commissioner--four years under President Harrison and then two years under President Cleveland I was treated by both Presidents with the ut h Thompson, of South Carolina, and at another time John R Proctor, of Kentucky They were Democrats and ex-Confederate soldiers I became deeply attached to both, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every contest in which the Commission was forced to take part