owed Roosevelt across the room.

"Four-eyes is going to treat," he repeated.

Roosevelt passed the comment off as a joke. But the bully leaned over
Roosevelt, swinging his guns, and ordered him, in language suited to
the surroundings, "to set up the drinks for the crowd."

For a moment Roosevelt sat silent, letting the filthy storm rage
round him. It occurred to him in a flash that he was face to face with
a crisis vastly more significant to his future than the mere question
whether or not he should let a drunken bully have his way. If he
backed down, he said to himself, he would, when the news of it spread
abroad, have more explaining to do than he would care to undertake. It
was altogether a case of "Make good now, or quit!"

The bully roared, "Set up the drinks!"

It struck Roosevelt that the man was foolish to stand so near, with
his heels together. "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," he said and
rose to his feet, looking past his tormentor.

As he rose he struck quick and hard with his right just to one side of
the point of the jaw, hitting with his left as he straightened out,
and then again with his right.

The bully fired both guns, but the bullets went wide as he fell like a
tree, striking the corner of the bar with his head. It occurred to
Roosevelt that it was not a case in which one could afford to take
chances, and he watched, ready to drop with his knees on the man's
ribs at the first indication of activity. But the bully was senseless.
The sheepherders, now loud in their denunciations, hustled the
would-be desperado into a shed.

Roosevelt had his dinner in a corner of the dining-room away from the
windows, and he went to bed without a light. But the man in the shed
made no move to recover his shattered prestige. When he came to, he
went to the station, departing on a freight, and was seen no more.

The news of Roosevelt's encounter in the "rum-hole" in Mingusville
spread as only news can spread in a country of few happenings and much
conversation. It was the kind of story that the Bad Lands liked to
hear, and the spectacles and the fringed buckskin suit gave it an
added attraction. "Four-eyes" became, overnight, "Old Four Eyes,"
which was another matter.

"Roosevelt was regarded by the cowboys as a good deal of a joke until
after the saloon incident," said Frank Greene, a local official of the
Northern Pacific, many years later. "After that it was different."

Roosevelt departed for the Eas