ica; "a man of many orders" as
Sewall curtly described him in a letter home. He rode over to where
Sewall was endeavoring in a helpless way to make the mare go in a
general northerly direction.

Sewall saw him coming, and wondered why he thought it necessary to
come at such extraordinary speed.

The Captain drew rein sharply at Sewall's side. "Why in hell don't you
ride in and do something?" he roared.

Sewall knew exactly why he didn't. He had known it for some time, and
he was nettled with himself, for he had not been accustomed "to take a
back seat for any one" when feats that demanded physical strength and
skill were to be done. Robins was very close to him, and Sewall's
first impulse was to take him by the hair. But it occurred to him that
the seafaring man was smaller than he, and that thought went out of
his head.

"I know I'm not doing anything," he said at last gruffly. "I don't
know anything about what I'm trying to do and I think I've got a horse
as green as I am. But don't you ever speak to me in such a manner as
that again as long as you live."

There was a good deal that was impressive about Sewall, his shoulders,
his teeth that were like tombstones, his vigorous, brown beard, his
eyes that had a way of blazing. The Captain did not pursue the
discussion.

"That Sewall is a kind of quick-tempered fellow," he remarked to Dow.

"I don't think he is," said the younger man quietly.

"He snapped me up."

"You must have said something to him, for he ain't in the habit of
doing such things."

The Captain dropped the subject for the time being.

Roosevelt, after two days at Lang's, returned to the Maltese Cross and
then rode northward to look after the men from Maine.

Captain Robins's report was altogether favorable. "You've got two good
men here, Mr. Roosevelt," said he. "That Sewall don't calculate to
bear anything. I spoke to him the other day, and he snapped me up so
short I did not know what to make of it. But," he added, "I don't
blame him. I did not speak to him as I ought."

This was what Bill himself would have called "handsome." Roosevelt
carried the gruff apology to Sewall, and there was harmony after that
between the lumberjack and the seafaring man, punching cattle
together in the Bad Lands.

The cattle which Captain Robins and his two tenderfeet from Maine had
driven down the river from the Maltese Cross were intended to be the
nucleus of the Elkhorn herd. They were young grade sho