Footnote 1:Roosevelt tells, in hisHunting Trips of a Ranchman, of the most notable of these, a former scout and Indian fighter named "Vic" Smith, whose exploits were prodigious.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 2:"I would start to make biscuits and as usual go about putting shortening into them, which father didn't like. We'd argue over it a little, and I would say, 'Good biscuits can't be made without grease.' Then he'd say, 'Well, use elbow grease.' I'd say then, 'Well, all right, I'll try it.' Then I'd go to work and knead the doughhard(on purpose), understanding, of course, that kneading utterly spoils biscuit dough, whether there is shortening in it or not. The result is a pan of adamantine biscuits which, of course, I blame on him."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 3:SeeAppendix.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 4:A year later, Packard, as Chief of Police, officiated at what was euphemistically known as a "necktie party" at which his companion of that ride was the guest of honor.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 5:The buckskin suit which was still doing service thirty years later, was made under the supervision of Mrs. Maddox by her niece, now Mrs. Olmstead, of Medora.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 6:"As I recall Bill, his stories were never half as bad as Frank [Vine's], for instance. Where he shone particularly was in excoriating those whom he did not like. In this connection he could—and did—use the worst expressions I have ever heard. He was a born cynic, who said his say in 'plain talk,' not 'langwidge.' For all that, he was filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill was roundly hated by many because he had a way of talking straight truth. He had an uncanny knack of seeing behind the human scenery of the Bad Lands, and always told right out what he saw. That is why they were all afraid of him."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 7:"He held the grudge all right, and it may have been largely because father sided against him in regard to the killing. But I think the main reason was because father refused to take any hand in bringing about a consolidation of interests. Pender was a tremendously rich man and had the ear of some of the richest men in England, such as the Duke of Sutherland and the Marquis of Tweeddale."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 8:"I am inclined to doubt the truth of this story. Mrs. Maddox was a terror only to those who took her wrong or tried to put it over her. Normally she was a very pleasant woman with a good, strong sense of humor. My impression is she took a liking to T. R. that time I took him there to be measured for his suit. If she ever spoke as above, she must have been on the war-path about something else at the time."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 9:It was Packard's stage-line which brought Scipio le Moyne (in Owen Wister's novel) from the Black Hills to Medora to become the substitute cook of the Virginian's mutinous "outfit." The cook whom the Virginian kicked off the train at Medora, because he was too anxious to buy a bottle of whiskey, is said to have been a man named Macdonald. He remained in the Bad Lands as cook for one of the ranches, but he was such an inveterate drinker that "Nitch" Kendley was forced to take drastic measures. Finding him unconscious one day, just outside of Medora, he tied him hand and foot to the sagebrush. The cook struggled twelve hours in the broiling sun before he could free himself. Tradition has it that he did not touch another drop of liquor for three years.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 10:The andirons are still doing service at the ranch of Howard Eaton and his brothers in Wolf, Wyoming.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 11:"I never was bothered by gumbo in the Bad Lands. There wasn't a sufficient proportion of clay in the soil. But out on the prairie, oh, my martyred Aunt Jane's black and white striped cat!"—A. T. Packard.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 12:Joe Ferris was made aware of this scornful reference to his judgment through a cowboy, Carl Hollenberg, who overheard it, and sixteen years later came into Joe's store one September day shouting, "That fool, Joe Ferris, says that Roosevelt will be President some day!" The point was that Roosevelt had that week succeeded McKinley in the White House.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 13:A celebrated murder case in Boston.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 14:Roosevelt: Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.
"Am inclined to think that this assertion of Mr. Roosevelt's would be open to criticism on the part of the real old-time cowpunchers. Much depended upon the weather, of course, but in a general way most of them regarded the work as anything but a picnic. Usually, it came closer to being 'Hell,' before we got through with it, as was the case on that particular round-up in 1885, when Mr. Roosevelt was along. Rained much of the time, and upon one occasion kept at it for a week on end. Tied the whole outfit up for several days at one point and I recall we had to wring the water out of our blankets every night before retiring. The boys liked to work on general round-ups, hard and all as they were, mainly because it brought them into contact with the boys from other ranges, so that they had a chance to renew old acquaintances. Generally the boys were all inclined to be a little wild at the start, or until cooled down by a few days of hard work. After that things got into a steady groove, eighteen hours per day in the saddle being nothing unusual.
"At the start, the round-up bore many of the aspects of a county fair, just as Mr. Roosevelt states, and unless the trip proved to be unusually hard there was always more or less horse-play in the air."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 15:Autobiography.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 16:Roosevelt gives an admirable description of a round-up in hisRanch Life and the Hunting Trail.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 17:"During the course of the Barnes-Roosevelt trial at Syracuse in 1916, Roosevelt was taking dinner one evening at the house of Mr. Horace S. Wilkinson. Chancellor Day, of Syracuse University, who was present, said: 'Mr. Roosevelt, my attention was first directed to you by an account of a scene when you were with the cowboys. It told of your trying to get astride a bronco, and it was a struggle. But you finally conquered him, and away you went in a cloud of dust.'
"'Very true, very true,' said Roosevelt, 'but I rode him all the way from the tip of his ear to the end of his tail.'"—Rev. D. B. Thompson, Syracuse, N.Y.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 18:Toronto was the name of Lodge's hunter.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 19:"Whoever wrote that was badly off his base. The simon-pure cowpuncher would not accept a self-cocker as a gift. They laughed at them in fact. Once, on a bet, a cowpuncher shot off all six shots with his single-action Colt .45 while his opponent was getting off three with his self-cocker."—Lincoln Lang.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 20:The DickinsonPressburst into verse in describing the exploits of one of the preachers.
"Of a gospel preacher we now will tellWho started from Glendive to save souls from hell.At the Little Missouri he struck a new game,With the unregenerate, 'Honest John' is its name."He indulged too much in the flowing bowls,And forgot all about the saving of souls,But 'dropped' his three hundred, slept sweetly and well,And let the Little Missourians wander to ——that place whose main principles of political economy arebrimstone and caloric."
"Of a gospel preacher we now will tellWho started from Glendive to save souls from hell.At the Little Missouri he struck a new game,With the unregenerate, 'Honest John' is its name.
"He indulged too much in the flowing bowls,And forgot all about the saving of souls,But 'dropped' his three hundred, slept sweetly and well,And let the Little Missourians wander to ——that place whose main principles of political economy arebrimstone and caloric."
But the verses tell only half the story. As Sylvane Ferris relates it Bill Williams, conniving with Jess Hogue to fleece the preacher, gave him the impression that he too was losing heavily; and actually shed tears. The preacher was heard to murmur, as he staggered into the night, "I don't mind losing my own money, but I am so sorry for that nice Mr. Williams."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 21:The thieves were tried at Mandan in August, 1886. The German, known as "Dutch Chris," was acquitted, but Finnegan, and Bernstead, known as "the half-breed," were sentenced to twenty-five months in the Bismarck Penitentiary. Finnegan glared at Roosevelt as he passed him in the court room. "If I'd had any show at all," he cried, "you'd have sure had to fight!"
That was no doubt true, but his anger evidently wore off in the cool of the prison, for a little later he wrote Roosevelt a long and friendly epistle, which was intended to explain many things:
In the first place I did not take your boat Mr. Roosevelt because I wanted to steal something, no indeed, when I took that vessel I was labouring under the impression, die dog or eat the hachette.... When I was a couple of miles above your ranch the boat I had sprung a leak and I saw I could not make the Big Missouri in it in the shape that it was in. I thought of asking assistance of you, but I supposed you had lost some saddles and blamed me for taking them. Now there I was with a leaky boat and under the circumstances what was I two do, two ask you for help, the answer I expected two get was two look down the mouth of a Winchester. I saw your boat and made up my mind two get possession of it. I was bound two get out of that country cost what it might, when people talk lynch law and threaten a persons life, I think that it is about time to leave. I did not want to go back up river on the account that I feared a mob.... I have read a good many of your sketches of ranch life in the papers since I have been here, and they interested me deeply. Yours sincerely.&c.P.S. Should you stop over at Bismarck this fall make a call to the Prison. I should be glad to meet you.[Back to Main Text]
In the first place I did not take your boat Mr. Roosevelt because I wanted to steal something, no indeed, when I took that vessel I was labouring under the impression, die dog or eat the hachette.... When I was a couple of miles above your ranch the boat I had sprung a leak and I saw I could not make the Big Missouri in it in the shape that it was in. I thought of asking assistance of you, but I supposed you had lost some saddles and blamed me for taking them. Now there I was with a leaky boat and under the circumstances what was I two do, two ask you for help, the answer I expected two get was two look down the mouth of a Winchester. I saw your boat and made up my mind two get possession of it. I was bound two get out of that country cost what it might, when people talk lynch law and threaten a persons life, I think that it is about time to leave. I did not want to go back up river on the account that I feared a mob.... I have read a good many of your sketches of ranch life in the papers since I have been here, and they interested me deeply. Yours sincerely.
&c.
P.S. Should you stop over at Bismarck this fall make a call to the Prison. I should be glad to meet you.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 22:Willis was a great teller of tales. SeeHunting the Grizzly, by Theodore Roosevelt (The Sagamore Series, G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 216 ff.), for the most lurid of his yarns.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 23:When Roosevelt came to Helena in 1911, John Willis was one of the crowd that greeted him. Willis clapped Roosevelt on the back familiarly. "I made a man out of you," he cried. Quick as a flash, came Roosevelt's retort: "Yes. John made a man out of me, but I made a Christian out of John."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 24:SeeAppendixfor a statement of Roosevelt's cattle investment.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 25:The account of Roosevelt's triumphant return to Medora is taken verbatim from contemporary newspapers.[Back to Main Text]