ority, he contended, and, under the American
Constitution, held in their hands the power to overcome the dishonest
minority. It was the solemn duty of every American citizen, he
declared, not only to vote, but to fight, if need be, for good
government.

It was two in the morning before Gregor Lang and Theodore Roosevelt
reluctantly retired to their bunks.

Roosevelt was up and about at dawn. It was still raining. Joe Ferris
suggested mildly that they wait for better weather before plunging
again into the sea of gumbo mud, but Roosevelt, who had not come to
Dakota to twiddle his thumbs, insisted that they resume their hunt.
They went and found nothing. The rain continued for a week.

"He nearly killed poor Joe," Lincoln remarked afterwards. "He would
not stop for anything."

Every morning Joe entered his protest and Roosevelt overruled it, and
every evening Joe rolled, nigh dead, into his buffalo robe and
Roosevelt talked cattle and politics with Gregor Lang until one and
two in the morning. Joe and the Highlander sawed wood, but the boy
Lincoln in his bunk lay with wide eyes.

"It was in listening to those talks after supper in the old shack on
the Cannonball," he said, a long time after, "that I first came to
understand that the Lord made the earth for all of us and not for a
chosen few."

Roosevelt, too, received inspiration from these nocturnal discussions,
but it was an inspiration of another sort.

"Mr. Lang," he said suddenly one evening, "I am thinking seriously of
going into the cattle business. Would you advise me to go into it?"

Gregor Lang was cautious. "I don't like to advise you in a matter of
that kind," he answered. "I myself am prepared to follow it out to the
end. I have every faith in it. If it's a question of my faith, I have
full faith. As a business proposition, it is the best there is."

They said no more about the matter that night.

The weather cleared at last. Joe Ferris, who had started on the hunt
with misgivings, had no misgivings whatever now. He confided in
Lincoln, not without a touch of pride in his new acquaintance, that
this was a new variety of tenderfoot, altogether a "plumb good sort."

They started out with new zest under the clear sky. They had, in
their week's hunting, come across the fresh tracks of numerous
buffalo, but had in no case secured a shot. The last great herd had,
in fact, been exterminated six months before, and though the Ferrises
and Merrifield had k