his ground.[12]

[Footnote 12: Joe Ferris was made aware of this scornful
reference to his judgment through a cowboy, Carl
Hollenberg, who overheard it, and sixteen years later
came into Joe's store one September day shouting, "That
fool, Joe Ferris, says that Roosevelt will be President
some day!" The point was that Roosevelt had that week
succeeded McKinley in the White House.]

The neighbors up and down the river were warm-hearted and friendly.
Mrs. Roberts had decided that she wanted a home of her own, and had
persuaded her husband to build her a cabin some three miles north of
the Maltese Cross, where a long green slope met a huge semi-circle of
gray buttes. The cabin was primitive, being built of logs stuck,
stockade-fashion, in the ground, and the roof was only dirt until Mrs.
Roberts planted sunflowers there and made it a garden; but for Mrs.
Roberts, with her flock of babies, it was "home," and for many a
cowboy, passing the time of day with the genial Irishwoman, it was the
nearest approach to "home" that he knew from one year's end to
another.

Shortly after Mrs. Roberts had moved to her new house, Roosevelt and
Merrifield paid her a call. Mrs. Roberts, who had the only milch cow
in the Bad Lands, had been churning, and offered Roosevelt a glass of
buttermilk. He drank it with an appreciation worthy of a rare
occasion. But as he rode off again, he turned to Merrifield with his
teeth set.

"Heavens, Merrifield!" he exclaimed, "don't you ever do that again!"

Merrifield was amazed. "Do what?"

"Put me in a position where I have to drink buttermilk. I loathe the
stuff!"

"But why did you drink it?"

"She brought it out!" he exclaimed, "And it would have hurt her
feelings if I hadn't. But look out! I don't want to have to do it
again!"

Mrs. Roberts spared him thenceforward, and there was nothing,
therefore, to spoil for Roosevelt the merriment of the Irishwoman's
talk and the stimulus of her determination and courage. There were
frequent occasions consequently when "the boys from the Maltese Cross"
foregathered in the Roberts cabin, and other occasions, notably
Sundays (when Sylvane and Merrifield and George Myers had picked up
partners in Medora) when they all called for "Lady Roberts" as
chaperon and rode up the valley together. They used to take peculiar
delight in descending upon Mrs. Cummins and ma