The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [112]
And what a huge grizzly it was, standing about nine feet tall and weighing more than 1,200 pounds. It would have been impossible for Roosevelt to have found a better specimen for his North American mammal collection.93 “He had heard us but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we were, for he reared up on his haunches sideways to us,” he wrote. “Then he saw us and dropped down again on all fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders seeming to bristle as he turned toward us. As he sank down to his forefeet I had raised the rifle…Half-rising up, the huge beast fell over on his side in the death throes, the ball having gone into his brain, striking as fairly between the eyes as if the distance had been measured by a carpenter’s rule.”94
The killing of this first grizzly bear was cathartic. During the coming days Roosevelt bagged two more: a mother and a cub. Why was he was so compelled to slaughter an animal he loved so deeply? How could he have shot a baby face-to-face? Roosevelt would claim that he needed multiple specimens for scientific study. He would claim that the bear meat went into the evening pot. But both answers were bunk. Quite simply, he enjoyed shooting the birds and animals he loved the most. The brutality of such acts never seemed to bother Roosevelt, for he considered himself privileged as a Darwinian biologist, a big game hunter, and a naturalist.
Feeling like a champion hunter, Roosevelt descended with Merrifield and Lebo out of the Bighorns carrying enough trophies to fill the walls of a small Wyoming lodge. They arrived in the town of Buffalo on September 18 full of superlatives, and rented rooms at the Occidental Hotel.95 That evening Roosevelt, the harried traveler, dined with U.S. Cavalry officers at Fort McKinney, listening to snatches of conversations about the peace settlements with the northern Cheyenne.96
Even though Lebo was a blacksmith, the Roosevelt party’s horses were going lame from collapsing in creeks and ravines.97 Although local wisdom dictated that any cowboy needed about a dozen mounts for round-ups or 1,000-mile treks, the Roosevelt trio started their journey back to Medora with just a couple of horses.98 On October 1 they got caught in what Roosevelt called a “furious hurricane” that whirled with “driving rain squalls.”99 For a couple of days they were forced to hide out in butte alcoves, desperate to stay warm and dry. By the time the weather cleared, Roosevelt had had enough. Leaving Lebo behind with the prairie schooner of supplies, he started riding off with Merrifield toward Medora. With winter around the corner and a presidential election just weeks away, Roosevelt was eager to return to New York with his fine trophies.
In Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Roosevelt wrote eloquently of what it was like to be an adventurer in the Bighorns and to see your ranch appear on the open range, promising clean sheets and a library shelf packed with books by Shakespeare and Hawthorne. He bowed to the unassailable beauty of the West. If nothing else, the Badlands had encouraged Roosevelt to be more poetic as a writer. He was inspired by nature, and his writing now took on a more colorful cast. Whatever hardships he endured had been distilled into only postcard memories. Clearly, he had the talent to succeed as a wilderness writer. As the naturalist E. O. Wilson of Harvard once aptly noted, field biologists have a lot more “gee whiz” or “sense of wonder” than other kinds of scientists.100
“The rolling plains stretched out on all sides of us, shimmering in the clear moonlight; and occasionally a band of spectral-looking antelope swept silently away from before our path,” Roosevelt wrote. “Once we went by a drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at the intruders; as we passed they charged down by us, the ground rumbling beneath their