om God knows whence, yelling and shooting as he came galloping
through the darkness. He was evidently very drunk. He thumped loudly
on the door, and after some delay the host opened it. The stranger
showed no appreciation; on the contrary, he seized the hotel-keeper,
half in play, it seemed, and half in enmity, jammed the mouth of his
six-shooter against his stomach and began to dance about the room with
him.

In the room above, Roosevelt heard the host's agonized appeals. "Jim,
don't! Don't, Jim! It'll go off! Jim, it'll go off!"

Jim's response was not reassuring. "Yes, damn you, it'll go off! I'll
learn you! Who in hell cares if it does go off! Oh, I'll learn you!"

But the gun, after all, did not go off. The cowboy subsided, then
burst into vociferous demands for a bed. A minute later Roosevelt
heard steps in the hall, followed by a knock at his door. Roosevelt
opened it.

"I'm sorry," said the host, "but there's a man I'll have to put in
with you for the night."

"You're not as sorry as I am," Roosevelt answered coolly, "and I'm not
going to have him come in here."

The host was full of apologies. "He's drunk and he's on the shoot," he
said unhappily, "and he's got to come in."

This appeal was not of a character to weaken Roosevelt's resolution.
"I'm going to lock my door," he remarked firmly, "and put out my
light. And I'll shoot anybody who tries to break in."

The host departed. Roosevelt never knew where the unwelcome guest was
lodged that night; but he himself was left undisturbed.

On another occasion that spring, when Roosevelt was out on the prairie
hunting the lost horses, he was overtaken by darkness. Mingusville was
the only place within thirty miles or more that offered a chance of a
night's lodging, and he again rode there, knocking at the door of Mrs.
Nolan's boarding-house late in the evening. Mrs. Nolan, who greeted
him, was a tough, wiry Irishwoman of the type of Mrs. Maddox, with a
fighting jaw and a look in her eye that had been known to be as potent
as a "six-shooter" in clearing a room of undesirable occupants. She
disciplined her husband (who evidently needed it) and brought up her
daughters with a calm good sense that won them and her the respect of
the roughest of the cowpunchers who came under her roof.

Roosevelt, having stabled his horse in an empty out-building, asked
for a bed. Mrs. Nolan answered that he could have the last one that
was left, since there was only one other