e had handled the old
reprobate who was her husband; and by her skill in making buckskin
shirts. She was a dead shot, and it was said of her that even
"Calamity Jane," Deadwood's "first lady," was forced "to yield the
palm to Mrs. Maddox when it came to the use of a vocabulary which
adequately searched every nook and cranny of a man's life from birth
to ultimate damnation."

They found her in her desolate, little mud-roofed hut on Sand Creek, a
mile south of the old Keogh trail. She was living alone, having
recently dismissed her husband in summary fashion. It seems that he
was a worthless devil, who, under the stimulus of some whiskey he had
obtained from an outfit of Missouri "bull-whackers" who were driving
freight to Deadwood, had picked a quarrel with his wife and attempted
to beat her. She knocked him down with a stove-lid lifter and the
"bull-whackers" bore him off, leaving the lady in full possession of
the ranch. She now had a man named Crow Joe working for her, a
slab-sided, shifty-eyed ne'er-do-well, who was suspected of stealing
horses on occasion.

She measured Roosevelt for his suit[5] and gave him and Lincoln a
dinner that they remembered. A vigorous personality spoke out of her
every action. Roosevelt regarded her with mingled amusement and awe.

[Footnote 5: The buckskin suit which was still doing
service thirty years later, was made under the
supervision of Mrs. Maddox by her niece, now Mrs.
Olmstead, of Medora.]

They found their antelope on the way home. They found two antelopes,
in fact, but Roosevelt, who had been as cool as an Indian an instant
before, was so elated when he saw the first drop to his rifle that he
was totally incapacitated from aiming at the second when that animal,
evidently bewildered, began to run in circles scarcely twenty-five
yards away. He had dropped his gun with a whoop, waving his arms over
his head and crying, "I got him! I got him!"

"Shoot the other one!" Lincoln called.

Roosevelt burst into a laugh. "I can't," he called back. "Not to save
my life."

They met at the side of the antelope. "This would not have seemed
nearly so good if somebody had not been here to see it," Roosevelt
exclaimed. "Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to make you
a present of my shot-gun."

Lincoln, being only sixteen, did not know exactly what to make of the
generosity of this jubilant young man. It struck him that