He knew well enough
the chance that the "outfit" of a wealthy Easterner like Roosevelt
would stand with a Gladstone jury, when it was a question of depriving
a poor man of his cow.

Western Starr suggested that he arrange for a change of venue.

Sylvane approved. The change of venue cost ten dollars, but was
granted. The date of the trial was set. Sylvane traveled to Dickinson
and waited all day with his attorney for the trial to be called. No
one appeared, not even the judge.

Starr's fee was twenty dollars. Sylvane's railroad fare was five more.
The total bill was thirty-five.

Roosevelt paid the bill. If he remarked that, taking lost time into
consideration, it would have been cheaper, in the first place, to pay
the Russian the forty dollars he demanded, there is no record of it.
But the remark would not have been characteristic. The chances are
that he thought Sylvane's encounter with the law worth every cent that
it cost.

XVIII

Somewhere on some faded page
I read about a Golden Age,
But gods and Caledonian hunts
Were nothing to what I knew once.
Here on these hills was hunting! Here
Antelope sprang and wary deer.
Here there were heroes! On these plains
Were drops afire from dragons' veins!
Here there was challenge, here defying,
Here was true living, here great dying!
Stormy winds and stormy souls,
Earthly wills with starry goals,
Battle--thunder--hoofs in flight--
Centaurs charging down the night!

Here there were feasts of song and story
And words of love and dreams of glory!
Here there were friends! Ah, night will fall
And clouds or the stars will cover all,
But I, when I go as a ghost again
To the gaunt, grim buttes, to the friendly plain
I know that for all that time can do
To scatter the faithful, estrange the true--
Quietly, in the lavender sage,
Will be waiting the friends of my golden age.

From _Medora Nights_

The wild riding, the mishaps, the feverish activity, the smell of the
cattle, the dust, the tumult, the physical weariness, the comradeship,
the closeness to life and death--to Roosevelt it was all magical and
enticing. He loved the crisp morning air, the fantastic landscape, the
limitless spaces, half blue and half gold. His spirit was sensitive to
beauty, especially the beauty that lay open for all in the warm light
of dawn and dusk under the wide vault of heaven; and the experie