cars.

Ours were all alive when we got to Medora. How they ever
lived through, I don't see. John Bean would liked to have
bought me by the cord, and if he had been around Medora,
think I could have sold myself for dressing.

Roosevelt met them at Medora and set out with them to drive the cattle
north to Elkhorn Ranch. It was customary to drive cattle along the
river bottom, but there had been a series of freshets that spring
which had turned the Little Missouri into a raging torrent and its
bottom into a mass of treacherous quicksands. The river valley would
consequently have been dangerous even for mature stock. For the young
cattle the dangers of the crossings were too great even for a none too
prudent man to hazard. Accordingly Roosevelt decided to drive the
animals down along the divide west of Medora between the Little
Missouri and the Beaver.

Owing to a variety of causes, the preparations for the trip had been
inadequate. He had only five men to help him; Sewall and Dow and Rowe
and two others. Of these, only one was a cowpuncher of experience.
Roosevelt placed him in charge. It was not long, however, before he
discovered that this man, who was a first-rate cowhand, was wholly
incapable of acting as head. Cattle and cowpunchers, chuck-wagon and
saddle-band, in some fashion which nobody could explain became so
snarled up with each other that, after disentangling the situation, he
was forced to relegate his expert to the ranks and take command
himself.

His course lay, for the most part, through the Bad Lands, which
enormously increased the difficulty of driving the cattle. A herd
always travels strung out in lines, and a thousand head thus going
almost in single file had a way of stretching out an appreciable
distance, with the strong, speedy animals in the van and the weak and
sluggish ones inevitably in the rear. Roosevelt put two of his men at
the head of the column, two more at the back, and himself with another
man rode constantly up and down the flanks. In the tangled mass of
rugged hills and winding defiles through which the trail led, it was
no easy task for six men to keep the cattle from breaking off in
different directions or prevent the strong beasts that formed the
vanguard from entirely outstripping the laggards. The spare
saddle-ponies also made trouble, for several of them were practically
unbroken.

Slowly and with infinite difficulty they drove the herd northward. To