ame, for the
purposes of this narrative, shall be Cummins, had been sent to Dakota
as ranch manager for a syndicate of Pittsburgh men, why, no one
exactly knew, since he was a designer of stoves, and, so far as any
one could find out, had never had the remotest experience with cattle.
He was an excellent but ineffective little man, religiously inclined,
and consequently dubbed "the Deacon." Nobody paid very much attention
to him, least of all his wife. That lady had drawn the fire of Mrs.
Roberts before she had been in the Bad Lands a week. She was a good
woman, but captious, critical, complaining, pretentious. She had in
her youth had social aspirations which her husband and a little town
in Pennsylvania had been unable to gratify. She brought into her life
in Dakota these vague, unsatisfied longings, and immediately set to
work to remould the manners, customs, and characters of the community
a little nearer to her heart's desire. To such an attitude there was,
of course, only one reaction possible; and she got it promptly.

Mrs. Roberts, energetic, simple-hearted, vigorous, plain-spoken, was
the only woman within a dozen miles, and it was not long before Mrs.
Roberts hated Mrs. Cummins as Jeremiah hated Babylon. For Mrs. Cummins
was bent on spreading "culture," and Mrs. Roberts was determined that
by no seeming acquiescence should it be spread over her.

"Roosevelt was a great visitor," said Howard Eaton in after time.
"When he first came out there, he was a quiet sort of a fellow, with
not much to say to anybody, but the best kind of a mixer I ever saw."

The Bad Lands no doubt required the ability to mix with all manner of
men, for it was all manner of men that congregated there. Roosevelt
evaded the saloons but established friendly relations with the men who
did not. When he rode to town for his mail or to make purchases at Joe
Ferris's new store, he contracted the habit of stopping at the office
of the _Bad Lands Cowboy_, where those who loved conversation more
than whiskey had a way of foregathering.

It was there that he came to know Hell-Roaring Bill Jones.

Bill Jones was a personage in the Bad Lands. He was, in fact, more
than that. He was (like Roosevelt himself) one of those rare beings
who attain mythical proportions even in their lifetime and draw about
themselves the legendry of their generation. Bill Jones was the type
and symbol of the care-free negation of moral standards in the wild
little towns