There were Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack, Smoky Moore, Rattlesnake Pete, and there were Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Pawnee Indians. There was an ex-city marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, whose ear had been "bitten off," as he explained. A sharpshooter from the North Carolina mountains and a bear hunter from Wyoming mingled with a buffalo hunter, a pursuer of moonshine stills, stage drivers, miners, and cow punchers. One man had been chief of scouts in the Riel Rebellion, in the Canadian Northwest, and there was McGinty, a McGinty, a famous bronco buster, who couldn't keep step on parade for the simple reason that he had walked so little. A trumpeter was an Italian who had been a soldier in Egypt and China. After a few days of reserve on both sides, the curled darlings of the Eastern cities and the bronzed rustlers from the Wild West were merged in an indistinguishable mass of good fellowship. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt found his old friend Woodbury Kane, huntsman and yachtsman, serving as cook and dish-washer for some New Mexicans, and "doing it well," as one of his superiors said. The Westerners delighted in giving ironical nicknames to the Easterners. A fastidious member of an Eastern club became "Tough Ike," and his bunkie, or tentmate, was a cow puncher. A young Jew was called "Pork Chops," and so on. Josephine, a mountain lion from Arizona, was a favorite of the regiment. Her sway was disputed by an eagle from New Mexico, who flew wherever he wished or walked up and down the company streets. He was young and had been taken from his nest when a fledgling. He could beat off Josephine at any time. There was a worthless cur of a dog, who was harried a good deal by the lion, although sometimes he would make bold to turn upon her and overawe her with a steady gaze. There was, however, much less play than work, hard, hot work in the dusty field. The regiment was worked night and day, and the men were not spared for a minute, in the determination to make them worthy to be taken with the first army of invasion. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt slept under his shelter tent in his poncho and blanket. He disdained any comfort which his men could not have and ate as they ate and slept as they slept. He and the officers proved themselves strict dis ciplinarians. Colonel Wood hated to do it, but for the man's own sake, he felt obliged to rebuke his Cherokee cook, who one day bawled out, "If you fellers don't come pretty soon everything 'll get cold." One child of the plains was so totally incapable of observing regulations in his new life that he was finally sentenced to six months' imprisonment. When the time came for the regiment to move, he begged so hard to be allowed to go, that the lieutenant-colonel said, "All right; you deserve to be shot as much as any one and you may come along." On receipt of marching orders, Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt embraced in their delight, and all the camp was wild with joy. THE FIRST BATTLE May 29, 1898, the Rough Riders leave San Antonio. - Arrival at Tampa, Florida, June 3.- Wood and Roosevelt, triumphing over the general confusion, get aboard the transport Yucatan. -Half the regiment and all the horses left behind. — Landing on Cuban soil, June 22. A forced march to the front under the tropic sun. "Wood's Weary Walkers." - The first fight at Las Guasimas, June 24.—The Rough Riders targets for an unseen foe. — Their heroism in their baptism of fire. — The country thrilled by the stories of the regiment's exploits. Indian and cowboy, miner and college athlete, all in a common grave. -- THE Rough Riders, with their animals, started from San Antonio in seven trains. LieutenantColonel Roosevelt waited for the last train and made the journey in a common old day coach, having given his sleeping-car berth to a sick soldier. They were four hot days and nights on the road to their destination at Tampa, Florida. Only three days' rations had been issued to them, and the dirty cars were awfully overcrowded. Long delays occurred at nearly every possible point, and the lieutenant-colonel talked to some railroad officials, whom he encountered, as if they were Span iards. In his spare moments he whiled away the time with a copy of M. Demoulin's "Superiorite des Anglo-Saxons." The men were pleasantly diverted by the enthusiastic receptions which awaited them throughout the South. Cheering crowds greeted them everywhere in Dixie, sometimes as early as four o'clock in the morning, and the pretty girls, with armfuls of flowers, coaxed away nearly all the buttons on their uniforms. Worn out and hungry, the regiment was landed many miles from its proper destination. Thence the troopers made their way on their equally tired horses to a point back of the big hotel in Tampa, where they camped. The lieutenant-colonel did not avail himself of the fair chance to take up his quarters comfortably in the hotel, but shared the lot of his men, as he had done in Texas and on the sultry train. In the confusion which reigned at Tampa, he himself furnished many of the needed supplies, and when asked by the Commission of Investigation, after the war, if he had been reimbursed by the Department, he replied, "Oh, Lord, no; that was a personal matter." After several days of waiting, orders came for |