sevelt arrived.
They were backwoodswomen, self-reliant, fearless, high-hearted; true
mates to their stalwart men. Mrs. Sewall had brought her
three-year-old daughter with her. Before Roosevelt knew what was
happening, they had turned the new house into a new home.

And now for them all began a season of deep and quiet contentment that
was to remain in the memories of all of them as a kind of idyl. It was
a life of elemental toil, hardship, and danger, and of strong,
elemental pleasures--rest after labor, food after hunger, warmth and
shelter after bitter cold. In that life there was no room for
distinctions of social position or wealth. They respected one another
and cared for one another because and only because each knew that the
others were brave and loyal and steadfast.

[Illustration: Elkhorn ranch-house. Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt.]

[Illustration: Site of Elkhorn, 1919.]

Life on the ranch proved a more joyous thing than ever after the women
had taken charge. They demanded certain necessities at once. They
demanded chickens, which Roosevelt supplied, to the delight of the
bobcats, who promptly started to feast on them; they demanded at
least one cow. No one had thought of a cow. No one in the length and
breadth of that cattle country, except Mrs. Roberts, seemed to think
it worth while to keep a cow for the milk that was in her, and all the
cows were wild as antelope. Roosevelt and Sewall and Dow among them
roped one on the range and threw her, and sat on her, and milked her
upside down, which was not altogether satisfactory, but was, for the
time being, the best thing they could do.

Meals became an altogether different matter from what they had been at
the Maltese Cross where men were kings of the kitchen. "Eating was a
sort of happy-go-lucky business at the Maltese Cross," remarked Bill
Sewall subsequently. "You were happy if you got something, an' you
were lucky too." There was now a new charm in shooting game, with
women at home to cook it. And Mrs. Sewall baked bread that was not at
all like the bread Bill baked. Soon she was even baking cake, which
was an unheard-of luxury in the Bad Lands. Then, after a while, the
buffalo berries and wild plums began to disappear from the bushes
roundabout and appear on the table as jam.

"However big you build the house, it won't be big enough for two
women," pessimists had remarked. But their forebodings were not
realized. At Elkhorn no cross word was heard