Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
hurt you; we just want you to come along, you know why." And Bill pulled
on his trousers and boots and walked out with them. Up to this
time there had not been a sound from the other bed. Now a match was
scratched, a candle lit, and one of the men in the other bed looked
round the room. At this point I committed the breach of etiquette of
asking questions. "I wonder why they took Bill," I said. There was no
answer, and I repeated, "I wonder why they took Bill." "Well," said the
man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted him," and with that
he blew out the candle and conversation ceased. Later I discovered that
Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern Pacific train at
a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him
dance. This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific
people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint
the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the ground that by
delaying the train he had interfered with the mails.
The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive
little hotel than the one in question. It was also on an occasion when
I was out after lost horses. Below the hotel had merely a bar-room, a
dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or
twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the place.
I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked
going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night.
Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were
wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like
what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked
gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident
profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or
three holes in its face.
He was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer
type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully
who for the moment was having things all his own way. As soon as he saw
me he hailed me as "Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said,
"Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the
stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however,
and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more
offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very
foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels
were close together, so that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in
response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I
said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the
point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then
again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this
was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to
shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his
head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and
if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he
was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room,
who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put
him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner
of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed
where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting
at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant
came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight.
As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just such men as
those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, some of my ranch friends were
in the regiment--Fred Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose
company I shot my biggest mountain ram. After the regiment was disbanded
the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents. Our
relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt
"as if I was a father" to them. The manifestations of this feeling were
sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly
used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed. The
great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the
business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months
previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another
as the occasion arose; no man ever had more cause to be proud of his
regiment than I had of mine, both in war and in peace. But there was
a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of
peaceful regularity, although often enough they had been first-class
soldiers.
It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped opening which
always caused my heart to sink--"Dear Colonel: I write you because I am
in trouble." The trouble might take almost any form. One correspondent
continued: "I did not take the horse, but they say I did." Another
complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy. In
the case of another the incident was more markworthy. I will call him
Gritto. He wrote me a letter beginning: "Dear Colonel: I write you
because I am in trouble. I have shot a lady in the eye. But, Colonel,
I was not shooting at the lady. I was shooting at my wife," which he
apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.
I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear
any more of the incident for several years.
Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn,
who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a
letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting
gossip about the comrades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last
wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado. I understand
that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the man sat into the game
and used such language that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot. Comrade Webb
has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona. Comrade Webb is in the Forest
Service, and the killing was in the line of professional duty. I was out
at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade Gritto, who, you may
remember, was put there for shooting his sister-in-law [this was the
first information I had had as to the identity of the lady who was shot
in the eye]. Since he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old
Mexico with his (Gritto's) wife, and the people of Grant County think he
ought to be let out." Evidently the sporting instincts of the people of
Grant County had been roused, and they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had
had a fair start, the other comrade should be let out in order to see
what would happen.
The men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped me when I was
running for office. On one occasion Buck Taylor, of Texas, accompanied
me on a trip and made a speech for me. The crowd took to his speech from
the beginning and so did I, until the peroration, which ran as follows:
"My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel! vote for my Colonel! _and he
will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter_!" This hardly
seemed a tribute to my military skill; but it delighted the crowd, and
as far as I could tell did me nothing but good.
On another tour, when I was running for Vice-President, a member of
the regiment who was along on the train got into a discussion with
a Populist editor who had expressed an unfavorable estimate of my
character, and in the course of the discussion shot the editor--not
fatally. We had to leave him to be tried, and as he had no money I
left him $150 to hire counsel--having borrowed the money from Senator
Wolcott, of Colorado, who was also with me. After election I received
from my friend a letter running: "Dear Colonel: I find I will not have
to use that $150 you lent me, as we have elected our candidate for
District Attorney. So I have used it to settle a horse transaction in
which I unfortunately became involved." A few weeks later, however, I
received a heartbroken letter setting forth the fact that the District
Attorney--whom he evidently felt to be a cold-blooded formalist--had
put him in jail. Then the affair dropped out of sight until two or three
years later, when as President I visited a town in another State,
and the leaders of the delegation which received me included both my
correspondent and the editor, now fast friends, and both of them ardent
supporters of mine.
At one of the regimental reunions a man, who had been an excellent
soldier, in greeting me mentioned how glad he was that the judge had let
him out in time to get to the reunion. I asked what was the matter, and
he replied with some surprise: "Why, Colonel, don't you know I had
a difficulty with a gentleman, and . . . er . . . well, I killed the
gentleman. But you can see that the judge thought it was all right or he
wouldn't have let me go." Waiving the latter point, I said: "How did it
happen? How did you do it?" Misinterpreting my question as showing
an interest only in the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher
replied: "With a .38 on a .45 frame, Colonel." I chuckled over the
answer, and it became proverbial with my family and some of my friends,
including Seth Bullock. When I was shot at Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired
an inquiry to which I responded that it was all right, that the weapon
was merely "a .38 on a .45 frame." The telegram in some way became
public, and puzzled outsiders. By the way, both the men of my regiment
and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a
little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being
shot. This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing
for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the non-performance of
which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being
creditable. They would not have expected a man to leave a battle, for
instance, because of being wounded in such fashion; and they saw no
reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty.
One of the best soldiers of my regiment was a huge man whom I made
marshal of a Rocky Mountain State. He had spent his hot and lusty youth
on the frontier during its viking age, and at that time had naturally
taken part in incidents which seemed queer to men "accustomed to die
decently of zymotic diseases." I told him that an effort would doubtless
be made to prevent his confirmation by the Senate, and therefore that
I wanted to know all the facts in his case. Had he played faro? He had;
but it was when everybody played faro, and he had never played a brace
game. Had he killed anybody? Yes, but it was in Dodge City on occasions
when he was deputy marshal or town marshal, at a time when Dodge City,
now the most peaceful of communities, was the toughest town on the
continent, and crowded with man-killing outlaws and road agents; and he
produced telegrams from judges of high character testifying to the need
of the actions he had taken. Finally I said: "Now, Ben, how did you
lose that half of your ear?" To which, looking rather shy, he responded:
"Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you
see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and
he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben,
looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about
even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on
the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by