"Bill Jones did not live long after that," said Howard Eaton. "The last I saw of him was two or three miles from Old Faithful. He said, 'I'm going to the trees.' We went out to look for him, but couldn't find a trace. This was in March. He wandered way up one of those ravines and the supposition is that he froze to death. Some fellow found him up there in June, lying at the edge of a creek. The coyotes had carried off one of his arms, and they planted him right there. And that was the end of old Bill Jones." Years passed, and bitter days came to Roosevelt, but though other friends failed him, the men of the Bad Lands remained faithful. In 1912, four of them were delegates to the Progressive Convention--Sylvane Ferris from North Dakota, where he was president of a bank; Joe Ferris, George Myers, and Merrifield from Montana. Even "Dutch Wannigan," living as a hermit in the wilderness forty miles west of Lake MacDonald, became an ardent Progressive. "I can't afford to go to Helena," he wrote in answer to an appeal from Merrifield to attend the State Progressive Convention, "but if you think there'll be a row, I'll try to make it." Packard and Dantz gave their pens to the cause. George Myers was the last of the "cowboy bunch" to see him. They met in Billings in October, 1918. The town was filled with the crowds who had come from near and far to see the man who, everybody said, was sure again to be President of the United States. "Have you got a room, George?" cried Roosevelt, as they met. Myers shook his head cheerfully. "Share mine with me," said Roosevelt, "and we'll talk about old times." Three months later to a day, the man who had been Little Missouri's "four-eyed tenderfoot" was dead. * * * * * The Bad Lands are still the Bad Lands, except that the unfenced prairies are fenced now and on each bit of parched bottom-land a "nester" has his cabin and is struggling, generally in vain, to dig a living out of the soil in a region which God never made for farming. The treacherous Little Missouri is treacherous still; here and there a burning mine still sends a tenuous wisp toward the blue sky; the buttes have lost none of their wild magnificence; and dawn and dusk, casting long shadows across the coulees, reveal the old heart-rending loveliness. Medora sleeps through the years and dreams of other days. Schuyler Lebo, who was shot by the Indians, delivers the mail; "Nitch" Kendley operates the pump for the water-tank at the railroad station; a nonogenarian called "Frenchy," who hunted with Roosevelt and has lost his wits, plays cribbage all day long at the "Rough Riders Hotel." These three are all that remain of the gay aggregation that made life a revel at the "depot" and at Bill Williams's saloon. And yet, even in its desolation, as the cook of the "Rough Riders Hotel" remarked, "There's something fascinating about the blinkety-blank place. I don't know why I stay here, but I do."