Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [3]
For all Roosevelt knew, he was still Vice President, yet he already realized that he would soon assume supreme responsibility. Yesterday’s telegrams, relayed up the mountain by telephone operators, riders, and runners, had documented the spread of gangrene through his bullet-ridden Chief:
THE PRESIDENT IS CRITICALLY ILL
HIS CONDITION IS GRAVE
OXYGEN IS BEING GIVEN
ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE
The last telegram to reach Roosevelt’s vacation cabin in Upper Tahawus had been urgent enough to banish all thought of waiting for clearer weather:
THE PRESIDENT APPEARS TO BE DYING AND MEMBERS
OF THE CABINET IN BUFFALO THINK YOU SHOULD
LOSE NO TIME COMING
So, shortly before midnight, he had kissed his wife and children good-bye and begun the descent to North Creek station—at least a seven-hour drive, even by day.
He was now, at the moment of his accession, halfway through the second stage of this journey, some five miles north of Aiden Lair Lodge, where a new wagon and fresh horses awaited him. He sat alone on the passenger seat, shrouded against splashes of mud in a borrowed raincoat several sizes too big. His favorite hat, a broad-brim slouch pulled well over his ears, kept some of the drizzle off his spectacles—not that he could see anything beyond the buckboard’s tossing circle of lamplight. Nor had he much to say: since leaving Lower Tahawus, indeed, he had spoken hardly a word to the lanky youth in front of him. From time to time, he muttered to himself.
Sincere, if slight, grief for McKinley—a cold-blooded politician he had never much cared for—struggled in Roosevelt’s breast with more violent emotions regarding the assassin, Leon Czolgosz. In his opinion, those bullets at Buffalo had been fired, not merely at a man, but at the very heart of the American Republic. They were an assault upon representative government and civilized order. Unable to contain his rage, he leaned forward and blurted an excoriation of Czolgosz into the rain. “If it had been I who had been shot, he wouldn’t have got away so easily.… I’d have guzzled him first.”
MEANWHILE, IN WASHINGTON, Secretary of State John Hay sat alone, weeping. For hours, he had heard newsboys shrieking outside his library window: “Extra! Extra! All about the President dying!” Aging and increasingly hypochondriachal, Hay had once worked for Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, and seen them both assassinated. This third assassination, compounded by the recent death of his own son, was enough to extinguish all desire to go on living in an alien century. But duty had to be done. When the final knell sounded across Sixteenth Street, he wrote a telegram officially informing Theodore Roosevelt that McKinley was dead. He ordered it sent to North Creek Station.
AT ABOUT 3:30, the lights of Aiden Lair Lodge appeared in the mist. The landlord, Mike Cronin, was waiting outside with his rig. Roosevelt climbed down onto the wooden landing. “Any news?”
“Not a word.” Cronin spoke awkwardly, uncertain how to address his passenger. “Jump in right away, and we’ll be off.” He fumbled with a lantern. Roosevelt said, “Here, give it to me!” and joined him on the driver’s seat.
The new horses, two big black Morgans, started off swiftly. Cronin was an expert whip, and hoped to break his own daylight record of just under two hours to North Creek. The horses knew every curve of the sixteen-mile road, but the descent grew slippery, and one of them stumbled. Conscious of the precious value of his cargo, Cronin dragged on the reins.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter!” Roosevelt exclaimed. “Push ahead!”
(photo credit prl.1)
Most of the time, the road was invisible, except when log bridges drummed suddenly under the buckboard’s wheels, and errant boulders loomed out of the mud, necessitating detours. Roosevelt kept holding his watch to the lantern. “Hurry up! Go faster!” Their speed increased on the steep descent. Cronin worried aloud about skidding off a bend and falling hundreds of feet into the bogs