ample
opportunity for the expression of individuality, whether in sheriff or
ranchman. The local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at
the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result. "You
know Bixby, don't you? Well," with deep disapproval, "Bixby thinks he
is funny, he does. He'd come and he'd wake that lunatic up at night, and
I'd have to get up and soothe him. I fixed Bixby all right, though. I
fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic
out on him. He 'most bit Bixby's nose off. I learned Bixby!"

Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of
sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the
police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor
over the head with his gun one day." He added: "The Mayor, he didn't
mind it, but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I'd better
resign." His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent of Police
was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life.

It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth
Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, 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"; a year or two afterwards
I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly
respectable man in a Western State; and later this uncle and I met at
Washington when I was President and he a United States Senator. 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 prairies, 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
claimed--"My bird, I believe?" Later Seth Bullock became, and has ever
since remained, one of my stanchest a