earance because they
respected the men with whom he had associated himself. They came from
all parts of the Union and spoke a language all their own.

"We'll throw over an' camp to-night at the mouth o' Knutson Creek,"
might run the round-up captain's orders. "Nighthawk'll be corralin'
the cavvy in the mornin' 'fore the white crow squeals, so we kin be
cuttin' the day-herd on the bed-groun'. We'll make a side-cut o' the
mavericks an' auction 'em off pronto soon's we git through."

All that was ordinary conversation. When an occasion arose which
seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon"
was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of
startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to
extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual
shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that,
in the phrase of one contemplative cowpuncher, "absodarnnlutely had to
be parted in the middle to hold an extra one."

It was to ears attuned to this rich and racy music that Roosevelt came
with the soft accents of his Harvard English. The cowboys bore up,
showing the tenderfoot the frigid courtesy they kept for "dudes" who
happened to be in company, which made it impolite or inexpedient to
attempt "to make the sucker dance."

It happened, however, that Roosevelt broke the camel's back. Some cows
which had been rounded up with their calves made a sudden bolt out of
the herd. Roosevelt attempted to head them back, but the wily cattle
eluded him.

"Hasten forward quickly there!" Roosevelt shouted to one of his men.

The bounds of formal courtesy could not withstand that. There was a
roar of delight from the cowpunchers, and, instantly, the phrase
became a part of the vocabulary of the Bad Lands. That day, and on
many days thereafter when "Get a git on yuh!" grew stale and "Head off
them cattle!" seemed done to death, he heard a cowpuncher shout, in a
piping voice, "Hasten forward quickly there!"

Roosevelt, in fact, was in those first days considered somewhat of a
joke. Beside Gregor Lang, forty miles to the south, he was the only
man in the Bad Lands who wore glasses. Lang's glasses, moreover, were
small and oval; Roosevelt's were large and round, making him, in the
opinion of the cowpunchers, look very much like a curiously nervous
and emphatic owl. They called him "Four Eyes," and spoke without too
much respect, of "Roosenfelder."