Biography; Frontier and pioneer life -- Dakota Territory; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
"I never saw any one so enthused in my life," he said in after days,
"and, by golly, I was enthused myself for more reasons than one. I was
plumb tired out, and, besides, he was so eager to shoot his first
buffalo that it somehow got into my blood; and I wanted to see him
kill his first one as badly as he wanted to kill it."
Roosevelt, out of the gladness of his heart, then and there presented
him with a hundred dollars; so there was another reason for Joe to be
happy.
They returned to Lang's, chanting paeans of victory. Early next day
Roosevelt returned with Joe to the place where they had left the
buffalo and with endless labor skinned the huge beast and brought the
head and slippery hide to camp.
The next morning Roosevelt took his departure.
Gregor Lang watched the mounted figure ride off beside the rattling
buckboard. "He is the most extraordinary man I have ever met," he said
to Lincoln. "I shall be surprised if the world does not hear from him
one of these days."
III
Some came for lungs, and some for jobs,
And some for booze at Big-mouth Bob's,
Some to punch cattle, some to shoot,
Some for a vision, some for loot;
Some for views and some for vice,
Some for faro, some for dice;
Some for the joy of a galloping hoof,
Some for the prairie's spacious roof,
Some to forget a face, a fan,
Some to plumb the heart of man;
Some to preach and some to blow,
Some to grab and some to grow,
Some in anger, some in pride,
Some to taste, before they died,
Life served hot and _a la cartee_--
And some to dodge a necktie-party.
From _Medora Nights_
Roosevelt remained in Little Missouri to wait for news from Merrifield
and Sylvane, who had departed for Minnesota a day or two previous.
Possibly it occurred to him that a few days in what was said to be the
worst "town" on the Northern Pacific might have their charm.
Roosevelt was enough of a boy rather to relish things that were
blood-curdling. Years after, a friend of Roosevelt's, who had himself
committed almost every crime in the register, remarked; in commenting
in a tone of injured morality on Roosevelt's frank regard for a
certain desperate character, that "Roosevelt had a weakness for
murderers." The reproach has a delightful suggestiveness. Whether it
was merited or not is a large question on which Roosevelt himself
might have discoursed with emphasis and humor. If he actually did
possess such a weakness, Little Missouri and the boom town were fully
able to satisfy it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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