with him, for he wanted the backwoodsman to accompany him on the
trip to the Big Horn Mountains. Dow remained with the seafaring man,
looking crestfallen and unhappy.

During the days that he was waiting for Sylvane to return, Roosevelt
touched Medora and its feverish life no more than absolute necessity
demanded, greeting his acquaintances in friendly fashion, but tending
strictly to business. It seems, however, that he had already made a
deep impression on his neighbors up and down the river. The territory
was shortly to be admitted to statehood and there were voices
demanding that Theodore Roosevelt be Dakota's first representative in
Congress.

In commenting upon the rumor that Theodore Roosevelt had
come to Dakota for the purpose of going to Congress [said
the Bismarck _Weekly Tribune_ in an editorial on August
8th], the Mandan _Pioneer_ takes occasion to remark that
young Roosevelt's record as a public man is above reproach
and that he is "a vigorous young Republican of the new
school." Such favorable comment from a Mandan paper tends to
substantiate the rumor that the young political Hercules has
already got the West Missouri section solid.

"If he concludes to run," remarked the _Pioneer_, "he will give our
politicians a complete turning over."

What sirens were singing to Roosevelt of political honors in the new
Western country, and to what extent he listened to them, are questions
to which neither his correspondence nor the newspapers of the time
provide an answer. It is not unreasonable to believe that the
possibility of becoming a political power in the Northwest allured
him. His political position in the East was, at the moment, hopeless.
Before the convention, he had antagonized the "regular" Republicans by
his leadership of the Independents in New York, which had resulted in
the complete defeat of the "organization" in the struggle over the
"Big Four" at Utica; after the convention, he had antagonized the
Independents by refusing to "bolt the ticket." He consequently had no
political standing, either within the party, or without. The
Independents wept tears over him, denouncing him as a traitor; and the
"regulars," even while they were calling for his assistance in the
campaign, were whetting their knives to dirk him in the back.

If the temptation ever came to him to cut what remained of his
political ties in the East and start afresh in Dakota, no evid