ockade which only a little while before had served to keep the
Indians at a distance.

The four Eaton brothers were men of education and family, who had
suffered financial reverses and migrated from Pittsburgh, where they
lived, to "make their fortunes," as the phrase went, in the Northwest.
A wealthy Pennsylvanian named Huidekoper, a lover of good horses,
backed Howard at the Custer Trail and another Easterner named Van
Brunt started a second ranch with him, known as the "V-Eye," forty
miles down the river at the mouth of Beaver Creek; a third, named
"Chris" McGee, who was a somewhat smoky light in the murk of
Pennsylvania politics, went into partnership with Charles, at another
ranch six miles up Beaver. The Custer Trail was headquarters for them
all, and at the same time for an endless procession of Eastern friends
who came for the hunting. The Eatons kept open house. Travelers wrote
about the hospitality that even strangers were certain to find there,
and carried away with them the picture of Howard Eaton, "who sat his
horse as though he were a centaur and looked a picturesque and noble
figure with his clean-shaven cheeks, heavy drooping moustache,
sombrero, blue shirt, and neckerchief with flaming ends." About the
time Roosevelt arrived, friends who had availed themselves of the
Eaton hospitality until they were in danger of losing their
self-respect, had prevailed on the reluctant brothers to make
"dude-ranching" a business. "Eaton's dudes" became a notable factor in
the Bad Lands. You could raise a laugh about them at Bill Williams's
saloon when nothing else could wake a smile.

One of the few women up or down the river was living that June at the
Custer Trail. She was Margaret Roberts, the wife of the Eatons'
foreman, a jovial, garrulous woman, still under thirty, with hair that
curled attractively and had a shimmer of gold in it. She was utterly
fearless, and was bringing up numerous children, all girls, with a
cool disregard of wild animals and wilder men, which, it was rumored
shocked her relatives "back East." She had been brought up in Iowa,
but ten horses could not have dragged her back.

Four or five miles above the Maltese Cross lived a woman of a
different sort who was greatly agitating the countryside, especially
Mrs. Roberts. She had come to the Bad Lands with her husband and
daughter since Roosevelt's previous visit, and established a ranch on
what was known as "Tepee Bottom." Her husband, whose n