30 The Rough Riders 



in the bigger hunting which we were to carry on 

 through the tropic mid-summer. 



The temptation is great to go on enumerating 

 man after man who stood pre-eminent, whether as 

 a killer of game, a tamer of horses, or a queller of 

 disorder among his people, or who, mayhap, stood 

 out with a more evil prominence as himself a dan- 

 gerous man one given to the taking of life on 

 small provocation, or one who was ready to earn his 

 living outside the law if the occasion demanded it. 

 There was tall Proffit, the sharpshooter, from North 

 Carolina sinewy, saturnine, fearless; Smith, the 

 bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, the Ari- 

 zona bookkeeper, who had begun life as a buffalo- 

 hunter. There was Crockett, the Georgian, who had 

 been an Internal Revenue officer, and had waged 

 perilous war on the rifle-bearing "moonshiners." 

 There were Darnell and Wood of New Mexico, who 

 could literally ride any horses alive. There were 

 Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong the 

 ranger, crack shots with rifle or revolver. There 

 was many a skilled packer who had led and guarded 

 his trains of laden mules through the Indian-haunted 

 country surrounding some outpost of civilization. 

 There were men who had won fame as Rocky Moun- 

 tain stage-drivers, or who had spent endless days 

 in guiding the slow wagon-trains across the grassy 

 plains. There were miners who knew every camp 



