d him to Medora was to the
effect that he had made himself the confidant of deserters only to
betray them for thirty dollars a head. The figure was unfortunate. It
stuck in the memory with its echoes of Judas.

The law-abiding element did not receive any noticeable support from
Joe Morrill. He was a "gun-toting" swashbuckler, not of the "bad man"
type at all, but, as Packard pointed out, altogether too noisy in
denouncing the wicked when they were not present and too effusive in
greeting them when they were. He gravitated naturally toward Maunders
and Bill Williams and Jess Hogue, and if law and order derived any
benefits from that association, history has neglected to record them.
Thievery went on as before.

Roosevelt, no doubt, realized that the hope of the righteous lay not
in Joe Morrill or in any other individual whom the Federal authorities
might impose on the Bad Lands, but only in an organization which was
the expression of a real desire for cooeperation. He set about promptly
to form such an organization.

After two days of house-building at Elkhorn, Roosevelt, who was
evidently restless, was again under way, riding south through a
snowstorm all day to the Maltese Cross, bringing Sewall and Dow with
him.

It was late at night when we reached Merrifield's [he wrote
"Bamie" on November 23d], and the thermometer was twenty
degrees below zero. As you may imagine, my fur coat and
buffalo bag have come in very handily.

I am now trying to get up a stockman's association, and in a
day or two, unless the weather is too bad, I shall start up
the river with Sewall to see about it.

At one ranch after another, Roosevelt, riding south through the biting
cold with his philosophic backwoodsman, stopped during the week that
followed, to persuade fifteen or twenty stockmen along the valley of
the Little Missouri of the benefits of cooeperation. It was an arduous
journey, taking him well south of Lang's; but it was evidently
successful.

Theodore Roosevelt, who used to be a great reformer in the
New York Legislature, but who is now a cowboy, pure and
simple [remarked the Bismarck _Weekly Tribune_ in an
editorial on December 12th], calls a meeting of the stockmen
of the West Dakota region to meet at Medora, December 19th,
to discuss topics of interest, become better acquainted, and
provide for a more efficient organization. Mr. Roosevelt
likes