There was no trail, but he kept his course along the foot-hills where glades and little prairies broke the pine forest; and it was not until the end of this, the second day of his solitary journeying, that he had difficulty finding his way. That afternoon, however, he became enmeshed in a tangle of winding valleys at the foot of the steep mountains. Dusk was coming on. For the moment he was "lost." He decided to camp where he was. He threw his pack and his buffalo sleeping-bag on the soft pine needles and strolled off through the frosty gloaming with his rifle on his shoulder, to see if he could pick up a grouse for his supper.

He found no grouse. Among the tall, slender pines the daylight was rapidly fading and he turned toward his camp again at last.

Suddenly, as he stole noiselessly up to the crest of a ridge, he caught the loom of a large, dark object. It was a great grizzly, walking slowly off with his head down.

Roosevelt fired. The bear uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop. Roosevelt ran to cut him off. The bear entered a laurel thicket, and for a time remained hidden in the jungle of twisted stems and foliage, now and again uttering a strange, savage whine. Roosevelt began to skirt the edge, peering anxiously through the dusk.

The bear plunged out of the laurel on the farther side, wheeled, and stood for a moment broadside to the hunter. Stiffly he turned his head. Scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.

Roosevelt fired again. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth. Roosevelt saw his white fangs gleam as the grizzly charged straight at him, crashing and bounding through the laurel-bushes. He did not fire at once. The raging animal came plunging on. As he topped a fallen tree, Roosevelt fired again. The ball went through the bear's chest, but the grizzly neither swerved nor flinched, but came steadily on. Roosevelt had only one more shot in his magazine, and in a second the bear would be upon him.

He fired for the beast's forehead, but his bullet went low, smashing the bear's lower jaw and entering his neck. Roosevelt leaped aside even as he pulled the trigger. The smoke hung for an instant, and through it he saw a great paw striking viciously at him. He flung himself back, hurriedly jamming a couple of cartridges into his rifle. The rush of the grizzly's charge carried him past his pursuer. As he struck he lurched forward, recovered himself, and made two or three leaps onward; then suddenly collapsed, rolling over and over.

Roosevelt's "hack at the bears" had been suc

cessful.

For a time he had still kept cattle on his ranges in the Bad Lands, with Merrifield and the Ferrises in charge at Elkhorn. In 1890 he was at the ranch with Mrs. Roosevelt; a year later he hunted elk with an Englishman named Ferguson, now his ranch partner, at Two-Ocean Pass in the Shoshones

in northwestern Wyoming. That autumn he closed the ranch-house. A year later he returned to Elkhorn for a week's hunting. The wild forces of nature had already taken possession. The ranch grass grew tall in the yard and on the sodded roofs of the stables and sheds; the weather-beaten log walls of the house itself were one in tint with the trunks of the gnarled cottonwoods by which it was shaded.

"The ranch-house is in good repair," he wrote to Bill Sewall, "but it is melancholy to see it deserted.” His life had wonderfully expanded since the golden days of the ranch, seven years before; but those days had held a zest and glory which no success or family happiness could ever crowd from their unique place in his memory.

The men and women who had been his companions in hardship and adventure were scattered. The Ferrises had retired on their earnings, Merrifield had moved to Oregon, the Sewalls had settled down again to the life of the Maine backwoodsman, Will Dow was dead.

A year or two later the waters of the Little Missouri rose and flooded the banks and carried away the ranch-house, and that was the end of that chapter in the life of Theodore Roosevelt.

CHAPTER XI

HE JUMPS INto a tiger's den and emERGES, TO THE

DISCOMFITURE OF THE TIGER

ROOSEVELT resigned his position on the Civil

Service Commission in the spring of 1895, and returned to New York to take up a commissionership of a different sort.

A wave of virtuous indignation had in the autumn of 1894 thrown Tammany Hall out of power in New York City and instated a non-partisan group of public-spirited citizens under Mayor Strong. Roosevelt, who in his first political fight in the Republican organization of the Twenty-first Assembly District had been snowed under on a motion to commit the organization to a non-partisan system of streetcleaning, was offered the position of Street Cleaning Commissioner.

I have been dreadfully harassed over this offer of Strong's [he wrote his sister "Bamie," in December, 1894]. Finally I refused, after much hesitation. I should much have liked to help him, and to find myself again in close touch with my New York friends; but I was not willing to leave this work at this time, just when the ends are loose.

In April of the following year the Mayor offered him the Police Commissionership.

His friends,

notably Lodge, whose judgment he trusted, urged him to accept.

I hated to leave Washington [he wrote], for I love the life; and I shall have, if I go, much hard work, and I will hardly be able to keep on with my literary matters. Moreover, it is a position in which it is absolutely impossible to do what will be expected of me; the conditions will not admit it. I must make up my mind to much criticism and disappointment. But, on the other hand, I am nearly through what I can do here; and this is a good way of leaving a position which I greatly like but which I do not wish permanently to retain, and I think it a good thing to be definitely identified with my city once more. I would like to do my share in governing the city after our great victory; and so far as may be, I would like once more to have my voice in political matters. It was a rather close decision; but on the whole I felt I ought to go, though it is "taking chances."

He began his new work early in May, 1895.

The Force had, through years of Tammany misgovernment, become demoralized by favoritism and corruption. There was a regular table of charges for appointments and promotions, so much for admission to the Force, so much for each step upward. A man without money or political backing had no hope of advancement. Graft was everywhere. Criminals received immunity. Policemen, on the other hand, were punished for making arrests against the wishes of the politicians. The morale of the rank and file had consequently suffered. While the few who were dishonest intrigued and "grafted" and grew powerful, the majority who were "square" lost heart in their work and pride in the Force. The poison of corruption sapped their energy and purpose.