Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
well under way. I then asked one of my friends if there had been any
disorder. Bill Jones was standing by. "Disorder hell!" said my friend.
"Bill Jones just stood there with one hand on his gun and the other
pointing over toward the new jail whenever any man who didn't have a
right to vote came near the polls. There was only one of them tried to
vote, and Bill knocked him down. Lord!" added my friend, meditatively,
"the way that man fell!" "Well," struck in Bill Jones, "if he hadn't
fell I'd have walked round behind him to see what was propping him up!"
In the days when I lived on the ranch I usually spent most of the
winter in the East, and when I returned in the early spring I was always
interested in finding out what had happened since my departure. On one
occasion I was met by Bill Jones and Sylvane Ferris, and in the course
of our conversation they mentioned "the lunatic." This led to a question
on my part, and Sylvane Ferris began the story: "Well, you see, he was
on a train and he shot the newsboy. At first they weren't going to do
anything to him, for they thought he just had it in for the newsboy. But
then somebody said, 'Why, he's plumb crazy, and he's liable to shoot any
of us!' and then they threw him off the train. It was here at Medora,
and they asked if anybody would take care of him, and Bill Jones said he
would, because he was the sheriff and the jail had two rooms, and he was
living in one and would put the lunatic in the other." Here Bill Jones
interrupted: "Yes, and more fool me! I wouldn't take charge of another
lunatic if the whole county asked me. Why" (with the air of a man
announcing an astounding discovery), "that lunatic didn't have his right
senses! He wouldn't eat, till me and Snyder got him down on the shavings
and made him eat." Snyder was a huge, happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted
Pennsylvania Dutchman, and was Bill Jones's chief deputy. Bill
continued: "You know, Snyder's soft-hearted, he is. Well, he'd think
that lunatic looked peaked, and he'd take him out for an airing. Then
the boys would get joshing him as to how much start he could give him
over the prairie and catch him again." Apparently the amount of the
start given the lunatic depended upon the amount of the bet to which the
joshing led up. I asked Bill what he would have done if Snyder hadn't
caught the lunatic. This was evidently a new idea, and he responded that
Snyder always did catch him. "Well, but suppose he hadn't caught him?"
"Well," said Bill Jones, "if Snyder hadn't caught the lunatic, I'd have
whaled hell out of Snyder!"
Under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and always did catch the
patient. It must not be gathered from this that the lunatic was badly
treated. He was well treated. He become greatly attached to both Bill
Jones and Snyder, and he objected strongly when, after the frontier
theory of treatment of the insane had received a full trial, he was
finally sent off to the territorial capital. It was merely that all the
relations of life in that place and day were so managed as to give ample
opportunity for the expression of individuality, whether in sheriff or
ranchman. The local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at
the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result. "You
know Bixby, don't you? Well," with deep disapproval, "Bixby thinks he
is funny, he does. He'd come and he'd wake that lunatic up at night, and
I'd have to get up and soothe him. I fixed Bixby all right, though. I
fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic
out on him. He 'most bit Bixby's nose off. I learned Bixby!"
Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of
sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the
police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor
over the head with his gun one day." He added: "The Mayor, he didn't
mind it, but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I'd better
resign." His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent of Police
was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life.
It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth
Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, and
a man he had wanted--a horse thief--I finally got, I being at the time
deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north. The man went by
a nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve"; a year or two afterwards
I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly
respectable man in a Western State; and later this uncle and I met at
Washington when I was President and he a United States Senator. It
was some time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to Deadwood on
business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback, while Bill Jones drove the
wagon. At a little town, Spearfish, I think, after crossing the last
eighty or ninety miles of gumbo prairies, we met Seth Bullock. We had
had rather a rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I suppose
we looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with rather distant
courtesy at first, but unbent when he found out who we were, remarking,
"You see, by your looks I thought you were some kind of a tin-horn
gambling outfit, and that I might have to keep an eye on you!" He then
inquired after the capture of "Steve"--with a little of the air of
one sportsman when another has shot a quail that either might have
claimed--"My bird, I believe?" Later Seth Bullock became, and has ever
since remained, one of my stanchest and most valued friends. He served
as Marshal for South Dakota under me as President. When, after the close
of my term, I went to Africa, on getting back to Europe I cabled Seth
Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet me in London, which he did;
by that time I felt that I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my
neighborhood dialect.
When serving as deputy sheriff I was impressed with the advantage the
officer of the law has over ordinary wrong-doers, provided he thoroughly
knows his own mind. There are exceptional outlaws, men with a price on
their heads and of remarkable prowess, who are utterly indifferent to
taking life, and whose warfare against society is as open as that of a
savage on the war-path. The law officer has no advantage whatever over
these men save what his own prowess may--or may not--give him. Such a
man was Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of New
Mexico, who was himself finally slain by a friend of mine, Pat Garrett,
whom, when I was President, I made collector of customs at El Paso.
But the ordinary criminal, even when murderously inclined, feels just a
moment's hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the
law engaged in his duty. I took in more than one man who was probably a
better man than I was with both rifle and revolver; but in each case I
knew just what I wanted to do, and, like David Harum, I "did it first,"
whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in
a position where it was useless for him to resist.
I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of course means to
the men and women I met in the West. There were a few people of bad type
in my neighborhood--that would be true of every group of men, even in a
theological seminary--but I could not speak with too great affection and
respect of the great majority of my friends, the hard-working men and
women who dwelt for a space of perhaps a hundred and fifty miles along
the Little Missouri. I was always as welcome at their houses as they
were at mine. Everybody worked, everybody was willing to help everybody
else, and yet nobody asked any favors. The same thing was true of the
people whom I got to know fifty miles east and fifty miles west of my
own range, and of the men I met on the round-ups. They soon accepted me
as a friend and fellow-worker who stood on an equal footing with them,
and I believe the most of them have kept their feeling for me ever
since. No guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these
old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps--the men with whom
I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a
chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washington during my Presidency.
I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one day just before
lunch, a huge, powerful man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a
fighting character. It happened that on that day another old friend,
the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was among those coming to lunch. Just
before we went in I turned to my cow-puncher friend and said to him with
great solemnity, "Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the
British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause
international complications"; to which Jim responded with unaffected
horror, "Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of
it!"
Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite
unconsciously help me, by the insight which working and living with them
enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the
right type, but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind that
the men were of just the kind whom it would be well to have with me if
ever it became necessary to go to war. When the Spanish War came, I gave
this thought practical realization.
Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, have made these
men live as long as our literature lives. I have sometimes been asked
if Wister's "Virginian" is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have
mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real
life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked
with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards
in my regiment might have walked out of Wister's stories or Remington's
pictures.
There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of
course, and under the conditions of life they were probably more
dangerous than they would have been elsewhere. I hardly ever had any
difficulty, however. I never went into a saloon, and in the little
hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the
bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I
always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade
my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the
semblance of trouble.
Of course amusing incidents occurred now and then. Usually these took
place when I was hunting lost horses, for in hunting lost horses I was
ordinarily alone, and occasionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred
and fifty miles away from my own country. On one such occasion I
reached a little cow town long after dark, stabled my horse in an empty
outbuilding, and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my
request for a bed that I could have the last one left, as there was only
one other man in it. The room to which I was shown contained two double
beds; one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one man,
also asleep. This man proved to be a friend, one of the Bill Joneses
whom I have previously mentioned. I undressed according to the fashion
of the day and place, that is, I put my trousers, boots, shaps, and
gun down beside the bed, and turned in. A couple of hours later I was
awakened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed in my face,
the light gleaming on the muzzle of a cocked .45. Another man said to
the lantern-bearer, "It ain't him"; the next moment my bedfellow was
covered with two guns, and addressed, "Now, Bill, don't make a fuss,
but come along quiet." "I'm not thinking of making a fuss," said Bill.
"That's right," was the answer; "we're your friends; we don't want to