The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [102]
Map of the Little Missouri River in the Dakota Badlands with all its creeks and offshoots.
Map of the Little Missouri River. (Courtesy of T.R. Medora Foundation)
Roosevelt and Ferris made it by dusk to their destination—a ramshackle, rat-infested cabin in a field situated at the mouth of Little Cannonball Creek. Out to greet them with extended hands were Gregor Lang and his sixteen-year-old son, Lincoln, who were operating the Neimmela Ranch for the rich London capitalist Sir John Pender.47 According to Lincoln, Roosevelt was full of hearty cheer, saying, “Dee-lighted to meet you!” In his memoir, Ranching with Roosevelt, Lincoln recalled the wild-eyed “radio-active” enthusiasm of the future president. “I could make out that he was a young man, who wore large conspicuous-looking glasses, through which I was being regarded with a pair of twinkling eyes,” Lang wrote. “Amply supporting them was the expansive grin overspreading his prominent, forceful lower face, plainly revealing a set of larger white teeth. Smiling teeth, yet withal conveying a strong suggestion of hang-and-rattle.”48
After supper Roosevelt held court, telling the Langs his stories about the world at large. Even after the others fell asleep, Gregor, a sharp-whiskered Scotsman, and Theodore kept going at the big issues of the day, locking horns over literature and politics. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship Roosevelt would have with the Langs. As fellow plainsmen on the prowl for buffalo during the next week, Roosevelt and his new hired friends grew closer. What Roosevelt relished about buffalo hunting, it seemed, was that social class was temporarily suspended. A man’s skill and courage were the criteria for acceptance.
The next morning, Roosevelt’s hunt party traveled together in a heavy rain, between conical buttes, anxious to find a single lonesome George or a small band of younger bulls. The soaking made it impossible to track any buffalo, and it made the Badlands clay (often called gumbo) slimy and slippery; this was very dangerous for their horses, who could easily break a leg trying to climb hillocks.49 With creeks rising quickly and rain pounding down on their backs, Roosevelt’s party spent most of the time avoiding ooze holes and slow sand. At the rate they were going Roosevelt would have been lucky to bag a turkey vulture or common skunk. When a mule deer finally appeared, Roosevelt took aim and missed. It was an embarrassingly bad shot. Quickly Joe Ferris took a try and got his kill. Deeply impressed by the Canadian’s marksmanship, Roosevelt shouted, “By Godfrey I’d give anything in the world if I could shoot like that.”50
That smallish deer was the high-water mark of the hunt for the first four days. Ferris hinted that it might be wise to venture back to Little Missouri and dry off for a spell; but Roosevelt insisted they grind on. Lincoln Lang was surprised at how calm Roosevelt seemed to be in the teeth of a downpour. He positively glowed in the deluge. At one point, wallowing in the flash-flood puddles, he applied mud to his face as an emollient, almost like a Lakota Sioux putting on war paint. The other men watched in shocked silence, but Lincoln dubbed him the Great White Chief.51
Despite the unrelenting bad weather, Roosevelt continued to be entranced by his surroundings. The winds were as fierce as those along any seashore. The light—when it got a chance to break through the clouds—was often an amazing chartreuse. Like the ocean floor, much of the region was still unknown to cartographers. Every day in the Badlands he encountered some new revelatory feature of intense geological