I'd rather hear a rattler rattle, I'd rather buck stampeding cattle, I'd rather go to a greaser battle, Than-- Than to-- Than to fight-- Than to fight the bloody In-ji-ans. I'd rather eat a pan of dope, I'd rather ride without a rope, I'd rather from this country lope, Than-- Than to-- Than to fight-- Than to fight the bloody In-ji-ans. _Cowboy song_ All through that autumn of 1885, Roosevelt remained in the Bad Lands. With his whole being he reveled in the wild and care-free life; but the newspapers did not seem to be able to rise above the notion that he was in Dakota for political purposes: Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, it is rumored [remarked the Chicago _Tribune_] has an eye on politics in Dakota, and is making himself popular with the natives. He is bright, certainly, but Mr. Roosevelt will find the methods in Dakota quite different from those which gave him sudden prominence in New York. There is a great deal of breeziness in a Dakota convention, but it is not the breeziness of innocence. It is high art. The number of gentlemen who are in training for United States senatorships, when Dakota shall have acquired admission, is not limited, and each and every aspirant can pull a wire with a silent grace which is fascinating. If Mr. Roosevelt really likes politics, he will enjoy himself in Dakota. If Roosevelt had any notion of entering the race for the senatorship in Dakota, he has left no record of it. Howard Eaton spoke to him once about it. He was interested and even a little stirred, it appeared, at the possibility of representing the frontier in the United States Senate as, half a century previous, Thomas H. Benton, of Tennessee, whom he greatly admired, had represented it. But the thought failed to take permanent hold of him. He was, moreover, thinking of himself in those days more as a writer than as a politician. The autumn was not without excitement. A small band of Indians began here and there to set fire to the prairie grass, and before the cattlemen realized what was happening, thousands of acres of winter feed lay blackened and desolate.