dude," politician
and would-be hunter, named Theodore Roosevelt, in the Bad Lands of
Dakota.

The time was three o'clock of a cool, September morning, and the
place, in the language of the Bad Lands, was "dark as the inside of a
caow." If the traveler from afar had desired illumination and a
reception committee, he should have set his arrival not for September
7th, but for September 6th. Twenty-four hours previous, it happened,
the citizens of Little Missouri had, in honor of a distinguished party
which was on its way westward to celebrate the completion of the road,
amply anticipated any passion for entertainment which the passengers
on the Overland might have possessed. As the engine came to a stop, a
deafening yell pierced the night, punctuated with pistol-shots.
Cautious investigation revealed figures dancing wildly around a
bonfire; and the passengers remembered the worst they had ever heard
about Indians. The flames shot upward, setting the shadows
fantastically leaping up the precipitous bluffs and among the weird
petrifactions of a devil's nightmare that rimmed the circle of flaring
light. A man with a gun in his hand climbed aboard the train and made
his way to the dining-car, yelling for "cow-grease," and demanding, at
the least, a ham-bone. It took the burliest of his comrades to
transport the obstreperous one back to solid earth just as the train
moved out.

There was nothing so theatrical awaiting Theodore Roosevelt. The
"depot" was deserted. Roosevelt dragged his belongings through the
sagebrush toward a huge black building looming northeastward through
the night, and hammered on the door until the proprietor appeared,
muttering curses.

The face that Roosevelt saw, in the light of a smoky lantern, was not
one to inspire confidence in a tenderfoot on a dark night. The
features were those of a man who might have been drinking, with
inconsiderable interruptions, for a very long time. He was short and
stout and choleric, with a wiry moustache under a red nose; and seemed
to be distinctly under the impression that Roosevelt had done
something for which he should apologize.

He led the way upstairs. Fourteen beds were scattered about the loft
which was the second story of the Pyramid Park Hotel, and which,
Roosevelt heard subsequently, was known as the "bull-pen." One was
unoccupied. He accepted it without a murmur.

What the thirteen hardened characters who were his roommates said next
morning, when th