f a wild-cat engine or the
caboose of a freight, or, on occasion, on a hand-car. He was as young
as everybody else in that young country, utterly fearless, and, it
seemed, utterly tireless. He rode out into the night careless alike of
blinding sleet and drifting snow. At grilling speed he rode until his
horse stood with heaving sides and nose drooping; then, at some ranch,
he changed to another and rode on. Over a course of a hundred miles or
more he would ride relays at a speed that seemed incredible, and at
the end of the journey operate with a calm hand for a gun-shot wound
or a cruelly broken bone, sometimes on the box of a mess-wagon turned
upside down on the prairie.

Dr. Stickney was from Vermont, a quiet, lean man with a warm smile and
friendly eyes, a sense of humor and a zest for life. He had a
reputation for never refusing a call whatever the distance or the
weather. Sometimes he rode with a guide; more often he rode alone. He
knew the landmarks for a hundred miles in any direction. At night,
when the trail grew faint, he held his course by the stars; when an
unexpected blizzard swept down upon him and the snow hid the trail, he
sought a brush-patch in a coulee and tramped back and forth to keep
himself from freezing until the storm had spent itself. It was a life
of extraordinary devotion. Stickney took it with a laugh, blushing
when men spoke well of him; and called it the day's work.

God alone knew where the doctor happened to be on the day that "Ben
Butler" rolled over backward with Theodore Roosevelt. It is safe to
surmise that Roosevelt did not inquire. You did not send for Dr.
Stickney for a break in the point of your shoulder. You let the thing
heal by itself and went on with your job. Of course, it was not
pleasant; but there were many things that were not pleasant. It was,
in fact, Roosevelt found, excruciating. But he said nothing about
that.

By the beginning of June, the round-up had worked down to Tepee
Bottom, two or three miles south of the Maltese Cross, making its
midday camp, one hot and sultry day, in a grove of ancient cottonwoods
that stood like unlovely, weather-beaten, gnarled old men, within
hailing distance of "Deacon" Cummins's ranch-house. A messenger from
Mrs. Cummins arrived at the camp at noon inviting Roosevelt and three
or four of his friends to dinner. A "home dinner" was not to be
spurned, and they all rode over to the comfortable log cabin. The day
was blistering, a st