control. His force and influence were unquestioned. He was known as the "cyclone member."

It would have been strange if his swift rise had not somewhat turned his head. It did turn it for a brief period. He had won his place in the Assembly and in the respect of the people of the state through his straightforward and blunt independence. He thereupon became so impressed with the virtue of complete independence that he paid no attention to the opinions or the prejudices of others. He had fought the fight against Judge Westbrook practically alone. He came to the conclusion consequently that he could fight any fight alone.

He no longer sought advice or co-operation. His own conscience, his own judgment, were to decide all things. He refused to make concessions, being unable to see that a man might disagree with him on details or methods and yet be heartily with him in principle.

His opponents talked of "big head." His friends grumbled: "What's got into Roosevelt? He won't listen to anybody. He thinks he knows it all."

He fought hard for good causes. But he was no longer successful. Before he knew what was happening, his influence had evaporated. He was a leader without a following—the laughing-stock of his enemies, the despair of his friends.

But he had vision; and he had a sense of humor. Gradually he began to understand. No one can live by himself alone, he realized, and with increasing clearness he saw that his only hope of doing effective work lay in close co-operation with the men who,

though differing from him in minor matters, agreed with him on the fundamentals.

It was not easy for Theodore Roosevelt to eat humble pie.

But he ate it.

It

CHAPTER VI

HE GOES ON HIS FIRST REAL HUNT

'T was in the late summer of 1883. Theodore the younger had had a recurrence of his asthma, complicated by an attack of that other enemy of his boyhood, cholera morbus. On a postal card addressed to his "motherling" he speaks of the "nightmare" of that period of illness. Oyster Bay could give him no relief, and he fled westward, hoping that the dry air and vigorous outdoor life of Dakota would restore him to strength before the opening of another season of political struggle. He had no particular destination. He wanted to hunt buffalo while there were still buffalo to hunt-that was all. He wanted to taste the life of the "wild West" before that life vanished like mist before the wind.

The West had begun to call him before he was out of his teens. His brother Elliott, two years younger than he, had shot buffalo in Texas while Theodore the younger was tamely acquiring an education in Massachusetts, and had returned with thrilling stories of hairbreadth escapes from wild beasts and wilder men. More than once he had been charged by a wounded buffalo; he had been caught in a

stampede, escaping with his life by a miracle; his camp had been raided by Comanches and his horses stolen; he had gone for two days without water or food; now and then, at a ranch or at one of the border towns where he and his companions stopped for the night, he had become involved in what his journal briefly recorded as "big fights." And he was just seventeen.

Theodore ached to find the country where adventures like that grew. But for the moment they were not for him. It was five years before he saw the West on a brief and uneventful hunting-trip beyond the Red River in Dakota; it was six before he first saw the Little Missouri winding through those "Bad Lands" which, for all their sinister desolation, were, ever after, to be the best beloved of lands for him.

Theodore Roosevelt, bound westward, left New York one evening in late summer, still weak and miserable from the effects of his illness. But the mere prospect of a touch of wild life seemed to be a restorative. Before he reached Chicago he had written his mother that he felt "like a fighting-cock"; before he arrived at his destination in Dakota he was ready for any hardships or adventures Dakota had to offer.

Dakota, it seems, was ready for him with a complete assortment of both.

It was three o'clock of a cool September morning when he dropped off the train at a "busted cow town" on the Northern Pacific, called Medora. It was no metropolis. It consisted of the railroad station, another rather ramshackle building known as

the Pyramid Park Hotel, and a population estimated later, by one of the cowboys who used to stray in from the outlying ranches on pay-day, as “eleven-counting the chickens-when they're all in town."

Roosevelt dragged his duffle-bag through the blackness toward the hotel, and hammered on the door. The frowsy proprietor, after a long while, admitted him, muttering oaths, and gave him lodging for what remained of the night. But he knew of no guide who would take an Easterner with spectacles hunting bison.

It happened, however, that a certain man named Ferris was in town, having driven in from his ranch, the Chimney Butte, for supplies. He suggested that Roosevelt go back with him. His ranch, he said, was ten or twelve miles up the Little Missouri. Roosevelt agreed.

Chimney Butte Ranch turned out to be a log structure with a dirt roof, a chicken-house attached, and a corral for the horses near by. There was only one room inside, with a table, three or four chairs, a cooking-stove, and three bunks for Ferris, whose first name was Joe, his brother Sylvane, and their partner, Joe Merrifield. The three men were "ranchmen"-that is, they were cowboys with a small herd of their own. Roosevelt liked them, and after they had reconciled themselves to his glassesalways looked upon with suspicion by plainsmen in those days "as a sign of a defective moral character"-they decided that they liked him.

Joe Ferris volunteered to be the one to help Roose