uffs and shut
out from his vision everything but a dim track in the snow faintly
illuminated by the stars. Roosevelt hurried his pony. Clouds were
gathering overhead, and soon, Roosevelt knew, even the light that the
stars gave would be withdrawn. The night was very cold and the silence
was profound. A light snow rendered even the hoof-beats of his horse
muffled and indistinct, and the only sound that came out of the black
world about him was the long-drawn, melancholy howling of a wolf.

Captain Robins's shack stood in the midst of a large clump of
cottonwoods thickly grown up with underbrush. It was hard enough to
find in the day-time, but in the darkness of that wintry night it
proved tantalizingly elusive. There was no light in it to guide him,
which depressed him.

He found the cabin at last, but it was empty and chill. He lit a fire
and hunted about among the stores of the old seafaring man for
something of which to make supper. The place was stripped bare. He
went down to the river with an axe and a pail and brought up some
water; in his pocket he had a paper of tea. It was not an altogether
satisfying supper for a tired and hungry man.

He was out with his rifle at break of day. Outside the hut the prairie
fowl were crowing and calling to one another in the tall trees,
evidently attracted by the thick growth of choke-cherries and wild
plums. As the dawn deepened, the sharp-tails began to fly down from
their roosts to the berry bushes. Up among the bare limbs of the
trees, sharply outlined against the sky, they offered as good a target
as any hungry man might ask. He shot off the necks of five in
succession, and it was not long before two of the birds, plucked and
cleaned, were split open and roasting before the fire.

He found that Sewall and Dow had cut all the timber for the house, and
were beginning work on the walls. It was a roomy place they were
building, a palace as houses went in the Bad Lands. Roosevelt worked
with them for two days. Both men were excellent company, Dow a
delightful spinner of yarns, witty and imaginative, Sewall full of
horse sense and quiet philosophizing. Roosevelt himself was much
depressed. His virtual elimination from politics, together with the
tragic breaking-up of his home life, had left him for the moment
aimless and without ambition. There is a wistful note in a letter he
wrote, that week to Lodge. "The statesman (?) of the past has been
merged, alas, I fear for good, in