Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [176]
At last all the snakes … were thrown at the foot of the natural stone pillar, and immediately, with a yell, the dancers leaped in, seized each of them, several snakes, and rushed away, east, west, north, and south, dashing over the edge of the cliff and jumping like goats down the precipitous trails. At the foot of the cliff, or on the plain, they dropped the snakes, and then returned to purify themselves by drinking and washing from pails of dark sacred water—medicine water—brought by the women.
Roosevelt left Walpi with the boys by automobile later that evening, but not before he had set down in longhand a three-thousand-word account of the day’s experiences. “If I don’t write the article now I never will,” he told Natalie Curtis, “because my life is too full.”
He explained that in two days’ time he would be taking the California Limited from Gallup, New Mexico, en route home. Then he must write four lectures for delivery in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. The governments of the latter countries were demanding that he address their learned societies as well as the one in Buenos Aires. Inevitably, his forthcoming itinerary had had to be extended.
“I can never afford to be in arrears,” Roosevelt said.
Natalie complimented him on his orderliness and dynamic drive.
“I like the strenuous life, you know,” he said, smiling, “and I am going to South America now because I very much want to make that exploring trip.” He figured he had about six more years of real energy left. “I am nearly fifty-five.… I suppose that after sixty it won’t be well for me to tax my resistance in the same way.”
THE COLONEL RETURNED to Oyster Bay on 26 August to find Edith back from Europe. He was overjoyed when she agreed to accompany him on the official part of his tour, linking São Paulo and Rio to Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. She declined to contemplate a return crossing of the Andes by ox wagon. If he was determined to see Patagonia, from whatever altitude, he could do it without her. Her plan was to sail home from Valparaiso, Chile, at the end of November, and await the birth of Ethel’s baby, due early the following March. By then, she hoped, her husband’s jungle adventure would be over, and they could face old age in peace. One of her favorite quotations, recalled from the story of Troilus, was, “Life is short—let us spend it together.”
This appeared also to be the sentiment of the veterans of Armageddon, querulous about Roosevelt’s long-term loyalty. “I am having my usual difficulties with the Progressive Party, whose members drive me nearly mad,” he told Quentin. “I have to remember, in order to keep myself fairly good tempered, that even though the wild asses of the desert are mainly in our ranks, our opponents have a fairly exclusive monopoly of the swine.”
He did what he could to console Party members for deserting them at the start of the new political season. On 27 September he attended the New York Progressive convention in Rochester, roundly attacked William Barnes Jr., and the state GOP, and forced the nomination of Learned Hand for chief judge of the court of appeals. He published his long-delayed commentary on the national political situation in the October issue of The Century, but the writing was tired: it was little more than an update of his campaign platform of the year before.
Finally he allowed 2,350 wildly applauding Progressives to give him a farewell dinner in the roof garden of the New York Theater on 3 October. He promised that before he went into the Brazilian jungle, he would impress their ideology upon the intellectual and political elite of South America. “Next spring I shall return to devote myself with whatever strength I have to working with you for the success of the Progressive Party and of the great principles for which the Progressive Party stands.”
VARIOUS OTHER SERPENTS had to be stroked before Roosevelt