orm hung in the humid air, and none of them
remembered, not even Roosevelt, that "gentlemen" did not go to dinner
parties in their shirt-sleeves, at least not in the world to which
Mrs. Cummins liked to believe she belonged. Roosevelt was in his shirt
and trousers, cowboy fashion.

As the men prepared to sit down to dinner, Mrs. Cummins was obviously
perturbed. She left the room, returning a minute later with a coat
over her arm.

"Mr. Roosevelt," she said, "I know you won't like to come to dinner
without a coat. I have got one of Mr. Cummins's that will fit you. I
am sure you will feel more comfortable."

What Roosevelt's emotions were at being thus singled out and
proclaimed a "dude" among the men he wanted, above all things, to
consider him their peer, Roosevelt concealed at the moment and later
only fitfully revealed. He accepted the coat with as good grace as he
could muster, to the suppressed delight of his friends.

But Mrs. Cummins was not yet done with her guest of honor. She had
evidently been hurt, poor lady, by his failure to observe the
amenities of social intercourse, for during the dinner she said to
him, "I don't see why men and women of culture come out here and let
the people pull them down. What they should do is to raise the people
out here to their level."

What Roosevelt answered is lost to history; but Lincoln Lang, who was
with him when he rode back to camp that afternoon, reported that
Roosevelt's comments on the dinner party were "blistering." "He told
my mother afterwards," said Lang in later times, "that Mrs. Cummins
was out of place in the Bad Lands"; which was Mrs. Cummins's tragedy
in a nutshell.

They moved the camp that same afternoon a mile or two north to a wide
bottom that lay at the base of the peak known as Chimney Butte, north
of Garner Creek and west of the Little Missouri. As evening
approached, heavy black clouds began to roll up in the west, bringing
rain. The rain became a downpour, through which flashes of lightning
and rumblings of thunder came with increasing violence. The cattle
were very restless and uneasy, running up and down and trying here and
there to break out of the herd. The guards were doubled in
anticipation of trouble.

At midnight, fearing a stampede, the night-herders, of whom Lincoln
Lang happened to be one, sent a call of "all hands out." Roosevelt
leaped on the pony he always kept picketed near him. Suddenly there
was a terrific peal of thunder.