CHAPTER IV 



Among the Cowboys and in the Hunting Field 



WE do not know if the spirit of adventure and the love of wild 

 life is innate in the Roosevelt blood, or if Theodore Roose- 

 velt got these traits from the Scotch-Irish strain of his 

 mother's race. What we do know is that he has them implanted in 

 the very fibre of his being. Civilized life and the strife of politics are 

 persistent in their demands, but they have never been strong enough 

 to hold him a close prisoner. He has broken away from them at 

 frequent intervals for a bout in the hunting field, and did so decidedly 

 after his three years of legislative life at Albany, seeking a region 

 wide enough for him to breathe in freely on the vast plains of the 

 wide West. 



Shaking the mire of legislative life from his feet, he sought a 

 new field of activity in the frontier region of Dakota, where he spent 

 several years in the enjoyment of unadulterated nature, hunting, 

 fishing, ranching and roughing it in true Western style, while gath- 

 ering an ample supply of that buoyant health that has stood him in 

 such good stead since. He started and ran a cattle ranch of his own, 

 living in a rough log house partly the work of his own hands. H; was 

 so far in the wilderness that he had the experience of shooting a deer 

 from his own front door. 



He had his own herds to care for and did so in true cowboy style. 

 Dressed in a flannel shirt and rough overalls tucked into alligator 

 boots, he would help his men in rounding up the cattle, riding 

 with the best of them and keeping in the saddle to the end. Then he 

 would go home, tingling with the spice of wild outdoor life, to sleep 

 oflf his fatigue in bearskins and bufifalo robes, the former wearers of 

 which may have fallen under his own rifle. It was a rough and ready 

 life, but Roosevelt seemed to the manner born, and enjoyed it as thor- 

 oughly as if he had never known what luxury and ease meant. 



(37) 



