When he left Chicago at the close of the national convention in June, 1884, he did not return to New York, but went West to the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri Valley, where he had purchased a ranch in the previous year. The early love of natural history which never abated had developed into a passion for hunting and for life in the open. He had begun in the wilds of Maine and then turned to the West and to a cattle ranch to gratify both tastes. The life appealed to him and he came to love it. He herded and rounded up his cattle, he worked as a cow-puncher, only rather harder than any of them, and in the intervals he hunted and shot big game. He also came in contact with men of a new type, rough, sometimes dangerous, but always vigorous and often picturesque. With them he had the same success as with the practical politicians of the Twenty-first Assembly District, although they were widely different specimens of mankind. But all alike were human at bottom and so was Roosevelt. He argued with them, rode with them, camped with them, played and joked with them, but was always master of his outfit. They respected him and also liked him, because he was at all times simple, straightforward, outspoken, and sincere. He became a popular and well-known figure in that western country and was regarded as a good fellow, a "white man," entirely fearless, thoroughly good-natured and kind, never quarrelsome, and never safe to trifle with, bully, or threaten. The life and experiences of that time found their way into a book, _The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_, interesting in description and adventure and also showing a marked literary quality. In 1886 he ran as Republican candidate for mayor of New York and might have been elected had his own party stood by him. But many excellent men of Republican faith--the "timid good," as he called them--panic-stricken by the formidable candidacy of Henry George, flocked to the support of Mr. Abram Hewitt, the Democratic candidate, as the man most certain to defeat the menacing champion of single taxation. Roosevelt was beaten, but his campaign, which was entirely his own and the precursor of many others, his speeches with their striking quality then visible to the country for the first time, all combined to fix the attention of the people upon the losing candidate. Roosevelt was the one of the candidates who was most interesting, and again he had touched the imagination of the people and cut a little deeper into the popular consciousness and memory.