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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
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