The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [114]
My pony, frightened into momentary activity, spun round and tossed up his head; I was holding the rifle in both hands, and the pony’s head, striking it, knocked it violently against my forehead, cutting quite a gash … heated as I was, the blood poured into my eyes.57 Meanwhile the buffalo, passing me, charged my companion, and followed him as he made off, and, as the ground was very bad, for some little distance his lowered head was unpleasantly near the tired pony’s tail. I tried to run in on him again, but my pony stopped short, dead beat; and by no spurring could I force him out of a slow trot. My companion jumped off and took a couple of shots at the buffalo, which missed in the dim moonlight; and to our unutterable chagrin the wounded bull labored off and vanished into the darkness.
The critical thing now was to find water, both for themselves and for their mounts. They had had nothing to drink for at least nine hours. Roosevelt and Ferris led the foaming, trembling animals in search of moisture, and after much wandering found a mud-pool “so slimy that it was almost gelatinous.” Parched though they were, “neither man nor horse could swallow more than a mouthful of this water.” The night grew chill, and the prairie was too bare to provide even twigs for a fire. Each man ate a horn-hard biscuit (baked, rather too conscientiously, by Lincoln Lang).58 Then, wrapping themselves in blankets, they lay down to sleep. For pillows they used saddles, lariated—since there was no other tether—to the horses.
It was some time before they could doze off, for the horses kept snorting nervously and peering, ears forward, into the dark. “Wild beasts or some such thing, were about … we knew that we were in the domain of both white and red horse-thieves, and that the latter might, in addition to our horses, try to take our scalps.”
About midnight the hunters were brutally awoken by having their saddles whipped from beneath their heads. Starting up and grabbing their rifles, they saw the horses galloping frantically off in the bright moonlight. But there were no thieves to be seen. Only a shadowy, four-footed form in the distance suggested that a wolf must have come to inspect the camp, and terrified the horses into flight.
Following the dewy path left by the trailing saddles, they captured both animals, returned to camp, and resumed their interrupted slumbers. But then a cold rain began to fall, and they woke to find themselves lying in four inches of water. Shivering between sodden blankets, Ferris heard Roosevelt muttering something. To Joe’s complete disbelief, the dude was saying, “By Godfrey, but this is fun!”59
AFTER YET ANOTHER rainy day, so cold it turned Roosevelt’s lips blue, and another sunny one, so hot it peeled the skin off his face, even he was willing to return to Lang’s ranch and admit failure yet again. He had had an easy shot at a cow buffalo in the rain, but his eyes were so wet he could hardly draw a bead—“one of those misses which a man to his dying day always looks back upon with wonder and regret.”60 Then, in the heat, there had been a somersault that pitched him ten feet beyond his pony into a bed of sharp bushes, and a quicksand that half swallowed his horse.… “Bad luck,” remarked Joe Ferris afterward, “followed us like a yellow dog follows a drunkard.”61 But Roosevelt still insisted he was having “fun.” Indeed, he might well have continued the hunt indefinitely had he not had an important business decision to communicate to his host.
“I have definitely decided to invest, Mr. Lang. Will you take a herd of cattle from me to run on shares or under some other arrangement to be determined between us?”
The rancher was flattered, but regretfully declined. He was already tied to one financial backer, he said, and it would be disloyal to work for another man as well. “I am more than sorry.”
Swallowing his disappointment, Roosevelt asked