.

The lure of politics, moreover, was calling him. And yet, during those
last weeks at Elkhorn, he was not at all sure that he wished to
reenter the turmoil. He rode out into the prairie one day for a last
"session" with Bill Sewall shortly before the three weeks were up. He
told Sewall he had an idea he ought to go into law.

"You'd be a good lawyer," said Bill, "but I think you ought to go into
politics. Good men like you ought to go into politics. If you do, and
if you live, I think you'll be President."

Roosevelt laughed. "That's looking a long way ahead."

"It may look a long way ahead to you," Sewall declared stoutly, "but
it isn't as far ahead as it's been for some of the men who got there."

"I'm going home now," said Roosevelt, "to see about a job my friends
want me to take. I don't think I want it. It will get me into a row.
And I want to write."

An Easterner, whose name has slipped from the record, hearing possibly
that Roosevelt was making changes in the management of his herds,
offered to buy all of Roosevelt's cattle. Roosevelt refused. The man
offered to buy Merrifield's share, then Sylvane's. Both rejected the
offer. The herd had increased greatly in value since they had
established it. The coming spring, they said, they would begin to get
great returns....

"September 25, 1886," runs an item in Bill Sewall's account-book,
"squared accounts with Theodore Roosevelt." On the same day Roosevelt
made a contract with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris by which he agreed,
as the contract runs, "to place all his cattle branded with the
Maltese cross and all his she-stock and bulls branded with the elkhorn
and triangle, some twenty-odd hundred head in all, valued at sixty
thousand dollars," in charge of Ferris and Merrifield on shares for
the term of four years; the men of the Maltese Cross agreeing on their
part to take charge of the Elkhorn steer brand which was Roosevelt's
exclusive property.

Then, knowing that his cattle were in good hands, Roosevelt once more
turned his face to the East, conscious in his heart, no doubt, that,
however soon he might return, or however often, the Dakota idyl was
ended.

XXV

I may not see a hundred
Before I see the Styx,
But coal or ember, I'll remember
Eighteen-eighty-six.

The stiff heaps in the coulee,
The dead eyes in the camp,
And the wind about, blowing fortunes out
As a woman blows out a lamp.