AMONG THE COWBOYS AND IN THE HUNTING FIELD 41 
started out, but before reaching the town where the Marquis was he 
met the messenger returning with a second note in which the French-* 
man apologized and cordially invited Roosevelt to dine with him. 
The most exciting of Roosevelt’s adventures was that of his win¬ 
ter hunt for a gang of cattle thieves, down a stream filled with pack 
ice. He got them, three of them, and held them prisoner by mak¬ 
ing them take off their boots. It was a cactus country, through 
which no one would dare to go unshod. The nearest wagon was 
fifteen miles away, but Roosevelt went for it, leaving his assistants on 
guard over the thieves. The settler loaned it, though he swore that he 
could not understand why so much trouble was taken with thieves who 
might be hanged off hand. 
With his three prisoners in the wagon Roosevelt set out for Dick¬ 
inson, the nearest town. The roads were very bad and it took two 
days and a night to make the journey. His two assistants having to 
leave him, he had nobody but himself and the driver, of whom he knew 
nothing, to guard the three “bad men.” 
Putting them in the wagon, he walked behind, a Winchester across 
his shoulder to use in case of need. The road was ankle deep in icy 
mud. The night passed in a frontier hut, in which the self-appointed 
guard sat wide awake all night against the cabin door and watched his 
cowed captives. Late the next day he handed over his prisoners to the 
sheriff of Dickinson. Nothing could show better the dogged deter¬ 
mination of Theodore Roosevelt when he had made up his mind to do a 
thing. 
Such are the current anecdotes of Roosevelt’s ranch life in the 
West. But there was another side to this life, the hunting one, which 
calls for some attention. The Indians of the West at that time were 
fairly quiet, though he did have one adventure with the “noble red- 
man” in which a ready show of his rifle prevented something worse. 
But there was big game in abundance, the grizzly bear, the elk, the 
mountain sheep, the deer and antelope, and even the bison, which as 
yet had not been quite exterminated. 
Of the several tales of his hunting life much the most thrilling is 
that of an encounter he had with a grizzly, at a time when he was hunt¬ 
ing alone in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Having made his 
B 
