Biography; Frontier and pioneer life -- Dakota Territory; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
They admired him for his courage and his feats of endurance, but,
being tender-hearted themselves, they loved him for his tenderness,
which had a way that they approved, of expressing itself, not in
words, but in deeds. Bill Sewall had a little girl of three, "a
forlorn little mite," as Roosevelt described her to "Bamie," and it
was Roosevelt who sent the word East which transported the child, that
had neither playmates nor toys, into a heaven of delight with picture
blocks and letter blocks, a little horse and a rag doll.
His warm human sympathy found expression in a dramatic manner a day or
two before his departure late that August for the Coeur d'Alenes. He
was rounding up some cattle with his men near Sentinel Butte, twenty
miles west of Medora, when word came that a cowpuncher named George
Frazier had been struck by lightning and killed, and that his body had
been taken to Medora. Frazier belonged to the "outfit" of the Marquis
de Mores, but he had worked for Roosevelt two years previous, digging
post-holes with George Myers in June, 1884. Roosevelt knew that the
man had no relatives in that part of the world, to see that a fitting
disposition of the body was made, and instantly expressed his
determination to take charge of the arrangements for the funeral.
"We will flag the next train and go to Medora," he said.
The next train, they knew, was "No. 2," the finest train running over
the road. It did not, on the surface, look probable that it would stop
at a desolate spot in the prairie to permit a handful of cowboys to
get on. "They won't stop here for nuthin'," one of the men insisted.
"By Godfrey, they'll have to stop!" Roosevelt retorted, and sent a man
down to the track to flag the train.
The engineer saw the warning signal and slowed down, but did not stop.
The cowboys dashed alongside the engine, firing shots in the air. The
engineer, believing that he was being held up by bandits and that the
next shot might be aimed at himself, brought the train to a
standstill. There was a wild scramble among the passengers; even the
train crew expected the worst. Valuables were hurriedly secreted. "I
don't believe," remarked George Myers afterward, "some of the
passengers ever did find all the things that was hid away."
Leaving their horses in charge of one of the cowboys, Roosevelt,
followed by Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Myers, and Johnny Goodall,
boarded the train. The conductor was resigned by this time to a
hold-up; but when he discovered the actual nature of their mission, he
flew into a rage and threatened to put them all off.
"You be good," cried Roosevelt, "or you'll be the one to get off!" His
vigorous advice was supplemented by impressive injunctions from other
members of the party. When they finally did get off, it was at Medora.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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