the cowboy of the present." He was
not in the habit of talking of himself or of asking others to share
his negations; but there was something avuncular about Sewall that
impelled confidences. He told the backwoodsman that he did not care
what became of himself; he had nothing to live for, he said. Sewall
"went for him bow-legged," as he himself described it in later years.

"You ought not to allow yourself to feel that way," he insisted. "You
have your child to live for."

"Her aunt can take care of her a good deal better than I can,"
Roosevelt responded. "She never would know anything about me, anyway.
She would be just as well off without me."

"You won't always feel that way," said Sewall. "You will get over this
after a while. I know how such things are; but time heals them over.
You won't always feel as you do now, and you won't always be willing
to stay here and drive cattle, because, when you get to feeling
differently, you will want to get back among your friends where you
can do more and be more benefit to the world than you can driving
cattle. If you can't think of anything else to do, you can go home and
start a reform. You would make a good reformer. You always want to
make things better instead of worse."

Roosevelt laughed at that, and said no more concerning the uselessness
of his existence. An amusing angle of the whole matter was that
"starting a reform" was actually in the back of his head at the time.

The reform in question was fundamental. It concerned the creation of
an organization, ostensibly, in the absence of constituted government,
for the purpose of making and enforcing certain sorely needed laws for
the regulation of the cattle industry; but actually with the higher
aim in view of furnishing a rallying point for the scattered forces of
law and order. Montana had such an organization in the Montana Live
Stock Association and more than one ranchman with large interests in
the valley of the Little Missouri had appealed to that body for help.
But the Montana Association found that it had no authority in Dakota.
Roosevelt determined, therefore, to form a separate organization.

The need unquestionably was great. To an unusual extent the cattle
industry depended upon cooeperation. Each ranchman "claimed" a certain
range, but no mark showed the boundaries of that range and no fence
held the cattle and horses within it. On every "claim" the brands of
twenty different herds might have been fou