nguage beggared
description.

"With some of these fellows around here," Dr. Stickney, the Bad Lands'
surgeon, once remarked, "profanity ceases to be a habit and becomes an
art."

"That's right," assented Sylvane. "Some strangers will get the hang of
it, but others never do. There was 'Deacon' Cummins, for instance.
He'd say such a thing as 'damned calf.' You could tell he didn't know
anything about it."

The practical jokes, moreover, which the cowboys played on each other
were not such as to make life easy for the timid. "The boys played all
kinds of tricks," remarked Merrifield long after; "sometimes they'd
stick things under the horses' tails and play tricks of that kind an'
there'd be a lot of hilarity to see the fellow get h'isted into the
air; but they never bothered Mr. Roosevelt. He commanded everybody's
respect."

They did play one joke on him, however, but it did not turn out at all
as they expected.

Roosevelt's hunting proclivities were well known, for he never missed
an opportunity, even on the round-up, to wander up some of the
countless coulees with a rifle on his shoulder after deer, or to ride
away over the prairies after antelope; and the cowpunchers decided
that it would be rather good fun to send him on a wild-goose chase. So
they told him with great seriousness of a dozen antelope they had seen
five or six miles back, suggesting that he had better go and get one.

He "bit," as they knew he would, and, in spite of the fact that he had
had a hard day on the round-up, saddled a horse and rode off in the
direction which they had indicated. The cowboys speculated as to the
language he would use when he came back.

He was gone several hours, and he had two antelope across his
saddle-bow when he rode back into camp.

"I found them all right," he cried, "just a quarter-mile from where
you said."

There was a shout from the cowboys. By general consent the joke was
declared as not to be on the "four-eyed tenderfoot."

Most of the men sooner or later accepted Roosevelt as an equal, in
spite of his toothbrush and his habit of shaving; but there was one
man, a surly Texan, who insisted on "picking on" Roosevelt as a dude.
Roosevelt laughed. But the man continued, in season and out of season,
to make him the butt of his gibes.

It occurred to the object of all this attention that the Texan was
evidently under the impression that the "dude" was also a coward.
Roosevelt decided that, for the sake of