This is a good place for a man with plenty of money to make more, but if I had enough money to start here I never would come, think the country ought to have been left to the annimils that have laid their bones here. Roosevelt had, ever since the Chicago convention, planned to go on an extensive hunting trip, partly to take his mind from the political campaign, from which, in his judgment, the course of events had eliminated him, and partly to put himself out of reach of importunate politicians in various parts of the country, who were endeavoring to make him commit himself in favor of the Republican candidate in a way that would make his pre-convention utterances appear insincere and absurd. The tug of politics was strong. He loved "the game" and he hated to be out of a good fight. To safeguard himself, therefore, he determined to hide himself in the recesses of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. In a day or two I start out [he wrote on August 12th to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, who had suffered defeat at his side at the convention] with two hunters, six riding-ponies, and a canvas-topped "prairie schooner" for the Bighorn Mountains. You would be amused to see me, in my broad sombrero hat, fringed and beaded buckskin shirt, horsehide chaparajos or riding-trousers, and cowhide boots, with braided bridle and silver spurs. I have always liked horse and rifle, and being, like yourself, "ein echter Amerikaner," prefer that description of sport which needs a buckskin shirt to that whose votaries adopt the red coat. A buffalo is nobler game than an anise-seed bag, the Anglomaniacs to the contrary notwithstanding. He did not start on the day he had planned, for the reason that the six riding-ponies which he needed were not to be had for love or money in the whole length and breadth of the Bad Lands. He sent Sylvane with another man south to Spearfish in the Black Hills to buy a "string" of horses. The other man was Jack Reuter, otherwise known as "Dutch Wannigan." For "Wannigan," like his fellow "desperado," Frank O'Donald, had returned long since to the valley of the Little Missouri and taken up again the activities which the Marquis had rudely interrupted. But, being a simple-hearted creature, he had sold no crop of hay to the Marquis "in stubble" for a thousand dollars, like his craftier associate. He had merely "gone to work." The fact that it happened to be Roosevelt for whom he went to work had something to do, no doubt, with the subsequent relations between Roosevelt and the Marquis.