h in all conscience to
keep him occupied in his duties as Chief of Police. But for the
Marquis it was bad business. He had, as it was, few enough honest men
at his side.

XIII

Oh, we're up in the morning ere breaking of day,
The chuck-wagon's busy, the flapjacks in play;
The herd is astir o'er hillside and vale,
With the night riders rounding them into the trail.
Oh, come take up your cinches, come shake out your reins;
Come, wake your old bronco and break for the plains;
Come, roust out your steers from the long chaparral,
For the outfit is off to the railroad corral.

_The Railroad Corral_

Roosevelt returned to the Bad Lands on the 16th of November and was
greeted with enthusiasm by Merrifield and Sylvane. The next day he
started for the new ranch. He had intended to get under way by noon,
but Sylvane and Merrifield wanted to drive a small beef herd, which
they were shipping to Chicago, to the shipping corrals near the
Cantonment, and it was mid-afternoon before he was able to put spurs
to his smart little cowpony and start on the long ride to Elkhorn. The
day was bitterly cold, with the mercury well down toward zero, and the
pony, fresh and impatient, went along at a good rate. Roosevelt had
not gone many miles before he became conscious that darkness was
falling. The trail followed along the bottom for a half-dozen miles
and then turned off into the bad lands, leading up and down through
the ravines and over the ridge crests of a rough and broken country.
He crossed a wide plateau where the wind blew savagely, sweeping the
powdery snow into his face, then dipped again into the valley where
the trail led along the bottoms between the rows of high bluffs,
continually crossing and recrossing the river. The ice was too thin to
bear the horse, for the cold had come suddenly and had not yet frozen
it solid, and again and again, as the pony cautiously advanced, the
white surface would suddenly break and let horse and rider down into
the chilling water.

Roosevelt had made up his mind that he could under no circumstances
reach the new ranch that night and had determined to spend the night
with Robins, the seafaring man, whose hut was three or four miles
nearer. But the sun set while he was still several miles from his
goal, and the darkness, which had been closing round him where he rode
in the narrow valley, crept over the tops of the high bl