r is lost to history.

In 1890, Roosevelt was at the ranch at Elkhorn with Mrs. Roosevelt; a
year later he hunted elk with an English friend, R. H. M. Ferguson, at
Two Ocean Pass in the Shoshones, in northwestern Wyoming. That autumn
the Merrifields moved to the Flathead country in northwestern Montana,
and Roosevelt closed the ranch-house. A year later he returned to
Elkhorn for a week's hunting. The wild forces of nature had already
taken possession. The bunch-grass grew tall in the yard and on the
sodded roofs of the stables and sheds; the weather-beaten log walls of
the house itself were one in tint with the trunks of the gnarled
cottonwoods by which it was shaded. "The ranch-house is in good
repair," he wrote to Bill Sewall, "but it is melancholy to see it
deserted."

Early the next spring Roosevelt took Archibald D. Russell, R. H. M.
Ferguson, and his brother-in-law Douglas Robinson into partnership
with him and formed the Elkhorn Stock Company, transferring his equity
in the Elkhorn Ranch to the new corporation.[24]

[Footnote 24: See Appendix for a statement of
Roosevelt's cattle investment.]

It was at the end of a wagon-trip to the Black Hills, which Roosevelt
took with Sylvane and Hell-Roaring Bill Jones in 1893, that Roosevelt
met Seth Bullock.

Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district
[wrote Roosevelt in his "Autobiography"], and a man he had
wanted--a horse-thief--I finally got, I being at the time
deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north. The
man went by a nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve." It
was some time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to
Deadwood on business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback,
while Bill Jones drove the wagon. At a little town,
Spearfish, I think, after crossing the last eighty or ninety
miles of gumbo prairie, we met Seth Bullock. We had had
rather a rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I
suppose we looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with
rather distant courtesy at first, but unbent when he found
out who we were, remarking, "You see, by your looks I
thought you were some kind of a tin-horn gambling outfit,
and that I might have to keep an eye on you!" He then
inquired after the capture of "Steve"--with a little of the
air of one sportsman when another has shot a quail that
either might have