settlement, we went into camp on the open prairie, with our saddle blankets over us, our horses picketed and the picket ropes tied about the horns of our saddles, which we used for pillows. In the middle of the night there was a rush, our pillows were swept from under our heads and our horses went tearing off over the prairie, frightened by wolves.

"Roosevelt was up and off in a minute after the horses.

"On the fourth or fifth day out, I think it was, our horses pricked up their ears and I told Roosevelt there was a buffalo close at hand. We dismounted and advanced to a big 'washout' near, peered over its edge, and there stood a huge buffalo bull, calmly feeding and unaware of our presence.

"Hit him where that patch of red shows on his side,' said I, ‘and you've got him.'

"Roosevelt was cool as a cucumber, took a careful aim and fired. Out came the buffalo from the washout, with blood pouring from his mouth and nose. 'You've shot him,' I shouted, and so it proved, for the buffalo plunged a few steps and fell."

One of the early and useful friends of Roosevelt in the Wild West among the Rough Riders, was Colonel Cody, the famous Buffalo Bill, and many a wild ride they had. One of the most fearless and tireless of riders, Roosevelt was never fond of breaking the bucking bronchos, as seen in the shows of his friend on horseback. There were better ways of expending strength, and his plan of life was the useful investment of all his resources.

He went into the cattle business, and started with five hundred steers, and his guide remarks: "He worked for a part of a season as a cowboy. He had his own 'string' of horses and they were as ugly and ill-tempered as the majority of cow-horses. He was not a broncho-breaker, as he has been pictured to be, and he took no unnecessary chances in mounting or endeavoring to tame an especially ugly horse. But he did not shrink from riding his own horses when they cut up the customary capers of mustangs, and although he was sometimes thrown and on one or two occasions pretty badly bruised and hurt, he stuck to his mounts until he had mastered them."

President Roosevelt is not only the hero of a great number of the Bear stories of the country-for bear stories are a literature by themselves-but he tells the stories of others' adventures with big bears in a captivating way. He is death on bears with a rifle, ånd brings them to life with his pen. He says: "In 1872, near Fort Wingate, New Mexico, two soldiers of a cavalry regiment came to their death at the claws of a grizzly bear. The army surgeon who attended them told me the particulars, as far as they were known. The men were mail carriers, and one day did not come in at the appointed time. Next day, a relief party was sent out to look for them, and after some search found the bodies of both as well as that of one of the horses. One of the men showed

signs of life; he came to his senses before dying and told the story. They had seen a grizzly and pursued it on horseback, with their Spencer rifles. On coming close, one had fired into its side, when it turned with marvelous quickness for so large and unwieldy an animal, and struck down the horse, at the same time inflicting a ghastly wound on the rider. The other man dismounted and came up to the rescue of his companion. The bear then left the latter and attacked the other. Although hit by the bullet, it charged home and threw the man down, and then lay on him and deliberately bit him to death, while his groans and cries were frightful to hear. Afterward it walked off into the bushes without again offering to molest the already mortally wounded victim of its first assault.

"Any one of the big bears we killed on the mountains would, I should think, have been able to make short work of either a lion or a tiger; for the grizzly is greatly superior in bulk and muscular power to either of the great cats, and its teeth are as large as theirs, while its claws, though blunter, are much longer; nevertheless, I believe that a lion or a tiger would be fully as dangerous to a hunter or other human being, on account of the superior speed of its charge, the lightning-like rapidity of its movements, and its apparently sharper senses.

"A hunter at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains had chased a large bear and finally wounded him. The animal turned at once and came straight at the man, whose second shot missed. The bear then closed and passed on, after striking only a single blow; yet that one blow, given with all the power of its thick, immensely muscular forearm, armed with nails as strong as so many hooked steel spikes, tore out the man's collar-bone and snapped through three or four ribs. He never recovered from the shock and died that night.

"A neighbor of mine has a small ranch on the Little Missouri. He was out on a mining trip, and was prospecting with two other men near the headwater of the Little Missouri, in the Black Hills country. They were walking down along the river, and came to a point of land, thrust out into it, which was densely covered with brush and fallen timber. Two of the party walked round by the edge of the stream; but the third, a German, and a very powerful fellow, followed a well beaten game trail, leading through the bushy point. When they were some forty yards apart the two men heard an agonized shout from the German, and at the same time the loud coughing growl, or roar, of a bear. They turned just in time to see their companion struck a terrible blow on the head by a grizzly, which must have been roused from its lair by his almost stepping on it; so close was it that he had no time to fire his rifle, but merely held it up over his head as a guard. Of course it was struck down, the claws of the great brute at the same time shattering his skull like an egg-shell." The reputation of the President for believing himself to be an uncommonly

good shot, is a mistake. He says: "My eyes are bad and my hand is not over steady. I can never hope to be a very fine shot."

His idea of a thrill is quite original, if not altogether delightful. While hunting alone in Idaho, he was rushed by a wounded grizzly, and himself relates the happy experience, the most thrilling of his life, he says:

"I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs: and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it, with a ball which entered his chest, and went through the cavity of his body; but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into his neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke, the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself, and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up; but as he did so, his muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head dropped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound."

The reason why he is so successful in killing game, is he is as cool in firing at a beast as in target shooting. He says, in his "Shooting Trips of a Ranchman," which abounds with sport and information:

"Our Western hunters are, as a body, to the full as good marksmen as, and probably much better than, any other body of men in the world, not even excepting the Dutch Boers or Tyrolese Jagers, and a certain number of them who shoot a great deal at game, and are able to squander cartridges very freely, undoubtedly become crack shots and perform really wonderful feats. As an instance, there is old 'Vic,' a former scout and Indian fighter, and concededly the best hunter on the Little Missouri; probably there are not a dozen men in the West who are better shots or hunters than he is, and I have seen him do more skillful work. He can run the muzzle of his rifle through a board so as to hide the sights, and yet do quite good shooting at some little distance; he will cut the head off a chicken at eighty or ninety yards, shoot a deer running through brush at that distance, kill grouse on the wing early in the season, and knock over antelopes when they are so far off that I should not dream of shoot

ing. He firmly believes, and so do most men that speak of him, that he never misses. Yet I have known him make miss after miss at game, and some that were not especially difficult shots either. One secret of his success is his constant practice. He is firing all the time at marks, small birds, etc., etc., and will average from fifty to a hundred cartridges a day; he certainly uses nearly twenty thousand a year."

The President says of the old time hunters, that nearly a hundred years. ago they struck out beyond the Mississippi, "steered their way across the flat and endless seas of grass, or pushed up the valleys of the great lonely rivers, crossed the passes that wound among the towering peaks of the Rockies, toiled over the melancholy wastes of sage brush and alkali, and at last, breaking through the gloomy woodland that belts the coast, they looked out on the heaving waves of the greatest of all the oceans."

He adds there are not many of them left now. "The basin of the Upper Missouri was their last stronghold, being the last great hunting ground of the Indians, with whom the white trappers were always fighting and bikering, but who nevertheless by their presence protected the game that gave the trappers their livelihood. My cattle were among the very first to come into the land, at a time when the buffalo and beaver still abounded, and then the old hunters were common. Many a time I have hunted with them, spent the night in their smoky cabins, or had them as guests at my ranch. But in a couple of years after the inrush of the cattlemen, the last herds of the buffalo were destroyed, and the beaver were trapped out of all the plains' streams."

This story by the President of Big Horned Sheep, relates largely to the art of keeping warm. He says:

"We started by starlight. The snow lay several inches deep on the ground; the whole land was dazzling white. It was very cold. Within the ranch everything was frozen solid in spite of the thick log walls; but the air was so still and clear that we did not realize how low the temperature was. Accordingly, as the fresh horse I had to take was young and wild, I did not attempt to wear my fur coat. I soon felt my mistake. The windless cold ate into my marrow; and when, shortly after the cloudless winter sunrise, we reached our hunting grounds and picketed out the horses, I was already slightly frost bitten. But the toil of hunting over the snow covered crags soon made me warm. All day we walked and climbed through the white wonderland. On every side the snowy hills, piled one on another, stretched away, chain after chain, as far as sight could reach. The stern and iron-bound land had been changed to a frozen sea of billowy, glittering peaks and ridges. At last, late in the afternoon, three great big horn suddenly sprang up to our right and crossed the table land in front of and below us at a strong, stretching gallop. The lengthening sunbeams glinted on their mighty horns; their great supple brown bodies