e.

Roosevelt, learning a great deal about the ways of men who are
civilized too little and men who are civilized too much, spent a week
waiting in Little Missouri and roundabout for word from Merrifield and
Sylvane. It came at last in a telegram saying that Wadsworth and
Halley had given them a release and that they were prepared to enter
into a new partnership. Roosevelt started promptly for St. Paul, and
on September 27th signed a contract[3] with the two Canadians.
Sylvane and Merrifield thereupon went East to Iowa, to purchase three
hundred head of cattle in addition to the hundred and fifty which they
had taken over from Wadsworth and Halley; while Roosevelt, who a
little less than three weeks previous had dropped off the train at
Little Missouri for a hunt and nothing more, took up again the sober
threads of life.

[Footnote 3: See Appendix.]

He returned East to his lovely young wife and a campaign for a third
term in the New York Legislature, stronger in body than he had ever
felt before. If he expected that his family would think as highly of
his cattle venture as he did himself, he was doomed to disappointment.
Those members of it whom he could count on most for sincere solicitude
for his welfare were most emphatic in their disapproval. They
considered his investment foolhardy, and said so. Uncle James and the
other business men of the family simply threw up their hands in
despair. His sisters, who admired him enormously and had confidence in
his judgment, were frankly worried. Pessimists assured him that his
cattle would die like flies during the winter.

He lost no sleep for apprehensions.

Little Missouri, meanwhile, was cultivating the air of one who is
conscious of imminent greatness. The Marquis was extending his
business in a way to stir the imagination of any community. In Miles
City he built a slaughter-house, in Billings he built another. He
established offices in St. Paul, in Brainerd, in Duluth. He built
refrigerator plants and storehouses in Mandan and Bismarck and
Vedalles and Portland.

His plan, on the surface, was practical. It was to slaughter on the
range the beef that was consumed along the Northern Pacific Railway,
west of St. Paul. The Marquis argued that to send a steer on the hoof
from Medora to Chicago and then to send it back in the form of beef to
Helena or Portland was sheer waste of the consumer's money in freight
rates. A steer, traveling for days in a crowd