a saint, was a great figure
in the Bad Lands. Like Roosevelt he was under thirty.

The doctor, in after years, told of that morning's visit. "He did not
seem worn out or unduly tired," he said. "He had just come from the
jail, having deposited his prisoners at last, and had had no sleep for
forty-eight hours, and he was all teeth and eyes; but even so he
seemed a man unusually wide awake. You could see he was thrilled by
the adventures he had been through. He did not seem to think he had
done anything particularly commendable, but he was, in his own phrase,
'pleased as Punch' at the idea of having participated in a real
adventure. He was just like a boy.

"We talked of many things that day while I was repairing his blistered
feet. He impressed me and he puzzled me, and when I went home to
lunch, an hour later, I told my wife that I had met the most peculiar,
and at the same time the most wonderful, man I had ever come to know.
I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not
understand why he was out there on the frontier. I had heard his name
and I had read something of his work in the New York Legislature and
in the Republican Convention, two years previous, and it seemed to me
that he belonged, not here on the frontier, but in the East, in the
turmoil of large affairs."

I got the three horse-thieves in fine style [Roosevelt wrote
to Lodge]. My two Maine men and I ran down the river three
days in our boat, and then came on their camp by surprise.
As they knew there was no other boat on the river but the
one they had taken, and as they had not thought of our
building another, they were completely taken unawares, one
with his rifle on the ground, and the others with theirs on
their shoulders; so there was no fight, nor any need of
pluck on our part. We simply crept noiselessly up and
rising, when only a few yards distant, covered them with the
cocked rifles while I told them to throw up their hands.
They saw that we had the drop on them completely, and I
guess they also saw that we surely meant shooting if they
hesitated, and so their hands went up at once. We kept them
with us nearly a week, being caught in an ice-jam; then we
came to a ranch where I got a wagon, and I sent my two men
on downstream with the boat, while I took the three captives
overland a two days' journey to a town where I could give