d that he
intended to raise sheep also. The Haupt brothers protested, but the
Marquis was not to be diverted.

The hunters and cattlemen looked on in anger and disgust as sheep and
ever more sheep began to pour into the Bad Lands. They knew, what the
Marquis did not know, that sheep nibble the grass so closely that they
kill the roots, and ruin the pasture for cattle and game. He tempered
their indignation somewhat by offering a number of them a form of
partnership in his enterprise. "His plan," says the guidebook of the
Northern Pacific, published that summer of 1883, "is to engage
experienced herders to the number of twenty-four, supply them with as
many sheep as they may desire, and provide all necessary buildings and
funds to carry on operations for a period of seven years. At the end
of this time a division of the increase of the flocks is to be made,
from which alone the Marquis is to derive his profits."

There was no one in the Bad Lands, that summer of 1883, who, if asked
whether he knew anything about business or live stock or the laws of
sidereal space, would not have claimed that he knew all that it was
necessary for any man to know. The Marquis had no difficulty in
finding the desired twenty-four. Each signed a solemn contract with
him and let the sheep wander where they listed, eating mutton with
relish and complaining to the Marquis of the depredations of the
coyotes.

One who was more honest than the rest went to Herman Haupt at the end
of August and drew his attention to the fact that many of the wethers
and ewes were so old that they had no teeth to nibble with and were
bound to die of starvation. Haupt rode from ranch to ranch examining
the herds and came to the conclusion that six thousand out of twelve
were too old to survive under the best conditions, and telegraphed the
Marquis to that effect, advising that they be slaughtered at once.

The answer of the Marquis was prompt. "Don't kill any sheep," it ran.
Haupt shrugged his shoulders. By the time Roosevelt left Little
Missouri the end of September, the sheep were already beginning, one
by one, to perish. But by this time the Marquis was absorbed in a new
undertaking and was making arrangements to ship untold quantities of
buffalo-meat and other game on his refrigerator cars to Eastern
markets, unaware that a certain young man with spectacles had just
shot one of the last buffalo that the inhabitants of Little Missouri
were ever destined to se