follow it. Most of the people of the plains came from the South and the middle West. But it lured the adventurer from the East and from all lands and from all conditions of life. The college-bred from the older states, and the younger sons of European nobles were in the mass of ranchmen and rustlers, half-breeds, and greasers.

There was a French nobleman at Medora, the Marquis de Mores, and the town took its name from the marchioness. The proprietors of the herds lived like Arab sheiks, each with his own brand, which all honest men respected. These cattle barons seldom owned more than a small part of the range over which their beasts grazed, most of it being "free grass" on United States land not yet surveyed. When their branding irons had burned the sign of their ownership on hip, shoulder, or side of a fourlegged creature, any one imitating or ignoring the brand was severely punished. Any unbranded cattle belonged to him who would affix his brand to them.

The cowboys might on occasion become the terror of a town, but it must be said that as a rule they were careful of property rights. They hated thieves and

rowdyish loafers and would kill them as readily as they would kill a snake. The cowboy was a most picturesque figure. As he sat free on his little pony, his knees hardly bent for his long stirrups, the keen eyes in his wind-tanned face searching the horizon, he was a fit subject for the art of the sculptor. On his legs he wore leathern overalls, big revolvers peeped out from under his belt, and a brilliant silk handkerchief was wound about his neck, while a broadbrimmed hat was tilted on his head and big spurs jingled at his heels. He was as simple and free from guile as a child, but as proud as a lord.

His pay usually was $40 a month and the only use he had for a town was to spend his money in it. Mr. Roosevelt in one of his books of the Wild West has drawn a moving picture of such a town in Miles City, a typical cow town, thronged at times with ranch owners and cowboys, hunters from the Plains, trappers from the mountains in buckskin shirts, stage drivers vain of their fame, blanketed Indians, miners, gamblers, horse thieves, desperadoes, and every kind of "bad men."

It was the lonely and pathless plains that thrilled Mr. Roosevelt with a new joy and opened up to him

a new life. In "The Wilderness Hunter," he has described the feelings of a man who, like himself, has been brought within the strange charm of that boundless world: "In after years there shall come forever to his mind the memory of endless prairies shimmering in the bright sun; of vast snow-clad wastes, lying desolate under gray skies; of the melancholy marshes; of the rush of mighty rivers; of the breath of the evergreen forest in summer; of the crooning of ice-armored pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of cataracts roaring between hoary mountain passes; of all the innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness and of the silences that brood in its still depths."

Before his first visit was at an end, he had become a ranchman. He had listened, with increasing interest, to the gossip of his two hunting companions about ranches and ranching. One night he asked them how much money it would take to go into the business. They told him it would spoil the looks of $45,000. Then he asked how much of that sum would need to be in cash, and they answered that $10,000 would be enough. In this talk they had in mind a particular place, the Chimney Butte ranch.

The next morning he informed the plainsmen that he had resolved to own a ranch and that he was ready to draw a check for the first payment of $10,000.

This was a characteristic thing for him to do, to push the transaction to a conclusion while his impulse was warm and to pick these men without references, solely on the strength of his own experience with them.

AS A RANCHMAN

Bill

He turns from domestic sorrows and political reverses, in 1884, to a new life in the solitude of the great cattle country. Sewall joins him at Elkhorn Ranch on the Little Missouri. His immense herds. Hard work on the round-up. — In the saddle for twenty-four hours. - Sleeping in the snow. Fighting the prairie fires. - Bronco busting. The long battle for health completely won.

RANCH life began in earnest for Mr. Roosevelt with his political disappointments in 1884.

A far deeper shadow was cast over his life by domestic sorrows in that year. In February, his mother died and two days afterward his wife passed from life as her daughter entered it. By this double blow, he lost his new home and his old. He turned to his public duties with added zeal. When, however, the faction which he opposed gained control in the Chicago convention, and under its leadership his party rushed to defeat at the polls, he faced westward and eagerly welcomed toil and solitude on the distant banks of the Little Missouri.

Ranching became his business rather than his