rst man to bring cattle into the Bad Lands, and it was some of
his cattle, held by Ferris and Merrifield on shares, which Roosevelt
had bought in the autumn of 1883.

Roosevelt's first call on Mrs. Wadsworth had its serio-comic aspects.
The Wadsworths had a great wolf-hound whom Roosevelt himself described
as "a most ill-favored hybrid, whose mother was a Newfoundland and
whose father was a large wolf," and which looked, it seemed, more like
a hyena than like either of its parents. The dog both barked and
howled, but it had a disconcerting habit of doing neither when it was
on business bent. The first intimation Roosevelt had of its existence
one day, as he was knocking at the door of the Wadsworth cabin, was a
rush that the animal made for his trousers.

Pete Pellessier, a round-faced, genial cowpuncher from Texas,
subsequently told about it. "It was one of those dogs that come
sneaking around, never a growl or anything else--just grab a hunk of
your leg to let you know they're around. That's the kind of a dog this
was. Roosevelt just started to make a bow to Mrs. Wadsworth, 'way
over, real nice. Well, that dog flew and grabbed him in the seat of
the pants--he had on corduroy pants.

"'Get out of here, you son-of-a-gun!' he says; 'get out of here, I
tell you!'

"Then he turns to Mrs. Wadsworth. 'I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wadsworth,'
he says politely, 'that dog was grabbing me an'--'

"Just then the dog reached for another helping. 'Get out of here!'
Roosevelt shouts to the dog, and then turns back, 'How do you do?' he
says to Mrs. Wadsworth. But the dog came back a third time, and that
time Roosevelt gave that wolf-hound a kick that landed him about ten
rods off. An' Roosevelt went on with his visiting."

It was a free and joyous life that Roosevelt lived with his
warm-hearted companions at Elkhorn those late summer days of 1885. Now
and then, when work was done, he would sit on the porch for an hour or
two at a time, watching the cattle on the sand-bars, "while," as he
wrote subsequently, "the vultures wheeled overhead, their black
shadows gliding across the glaring white of the dry river-bed." Often
he would sink into his rocking-chair, grimy and hot after the day's
work, and read Keats and Swinburne for the contrast their sensuous
music offered to the vigorous realities about him; or, forgetting
books, he would just rock back and forth, looking sleepily out across
the river while the scarlet crests of the butte