The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [121]
The big news around Medora was that Marquis de Mores had been arrested for murdering Riley Luffsey, a buffalo hunter who loathed de Mores’s barbed wire. De Mores was now in jail in Bismarck, awaiting trial. Furthermore, there was a rumor that he was furious at Roosevelt over land boundaries, cattle prices, Roosevelt’s rude ranchhands, and much else. Because Roosevelt was essentially a squatter, in the last years before fences and deeds transformed the open range into fixed property, enforcing boundaries was constantly a cause of friction. Sharp letters were exchanged between the two rich cattlemen. Talk of a pistol duel was even bandied about, but it proved empty. Eventually de Mores was found not guilty of murdering Luffsey.53 In any event, his arrest had been, at worst, an unpleasant distraction to Roosevelt, who had founded the Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association and prided himself on his western leadership role even more than on being a New York assemblyman. And the stockmen’s association did more than settle land and brand issues. Because of a drought, brushfires were common in the Badlands that summer. As head of the association, Roosevelt worked side by side with his neighbors to put out the blazes, many started by Plains Indians angry at white settlement.
By September 16 Roosevelt was headed back east, stopping at the Bismarck jail for a brief visit with de Mores. In the spring, writing Hunting Trips had left Roosevelt physically depleted, but now he was in high spirits back home in New York. He attended the state Republican convention in Saratoga Springs and spent time with his little Alice. Friends were impressed by his general happiness and vitality. For the first time since his wife’s death, he was open to the idea of a new romance. This changed attitude allowed him to reconnect with his childhood sweetheart, Edith Carow. “For nineteen months (since the deaths of Alice and Mittie) they had successfully avoided each other,” Sylvia Jukes Morris wrote in Edith Kermit Roosevelt. “But sometime early that fall, either by chance or design, they met.”54
Deeply refined, quietly attractive, and unmarried, Edith Carow was then twenty-four and still infatuated with Theodore. As Roosevelt had been winning elections and writing critically acclaimed books, his sister Bamie had constantly updated Edith, with whom she’d remained friends. Victorian etiquette called for a long mourning period, so as Theodore and Edith grew closer, they were very discreet. Even after Edith accepted Roosevelt’s proposal that November, they behaved in public only as friends for a full year. Somehow three years “in waiting” seemed much more socially appropriate than only two.
That Christmas season Roosevelt circulated at numerous social gatherings with Edith at his side. Nevertheless, he didn’t use her full name in his diary, referring to her as only “E” and reserving all his affection in the journal for Alice. No love letters between the two survive—Edith ordered their correspondence destroyed—and, in fact, it’s quite possible there weren’t any. By all accounts, Edith was an intensely private woman, with a unique ability of tamping down Roosevelt’s over-the-top enthusiasms. “Edith was not the sort of person to encourage rhapsodies anyway,” according to the historian Edmund Morris. “She disapproved of excess, whether it be in language, behavior, clothes, food, or drink.”55
Keeping Sagamore Hill running and maintaining the Dakota ranches were expensive propositions for Roosevelt. As marriage plans were privately discussed, he dreamed of having a large family.