schemes are bigger than he is.

Medora was a town whose glory had departed. A pall was on all things,
and the _Cowboy_ was no longer present to dispel it with the cheerful
optimism of old. For, one night, when the cold was most bitter, and
the wind was high, a fire had started in the old cantonment building
where Packard lived with his newly wedded wife, and printed the pages
that had for three years brought gayety to the inhabitants of Medora,
and stability to its infant institutions. The files were burned up,
the presses destroyed; the _Cowboy_ was a memory. It was as though the
soul of Medora had gone out of its racked body. The remains lay rigid
and voiceless.

One by one its leading citizens deserted it. Roosevelt came and went,
making his long stays no longer in the West, but in the East, where
"home" was now. Packard went, then Fisher, then Van Driesche.

[J. C. Maunders,] of Medora [runs an item in the Dickinson
_Press_], is talking of moving two or three of his buildings
from there to Dickinson.

It was followed by other items full of mournful import.

[J. C. Maunders,] [Joseph Morrill,] and John W. Goodall, of
Medora, were here Thursday and closed contracts for several
lots. They will build.

Two weeks later, the exodus began. The telling of it has a Shaksperean
flavor:

Medora is coming to Dickinson. On Thursday a train came in
from the west with a number of flat-cars on which were
loaded the buildings of [J. C. Maunders,] who recently
bought lots here.

Thus it was that the Pyramid Park Hotel, where Roosevelt had spent his
first night in Little Missouri, four years previous, came to Dickinson
to become a most respectable one-family dwelling. Mrs. McGeeney's
hotel followed it two weeks later.

In August came the final blow:

D. O. Sweet and family have moved from Medora to Dickinson.
Mr. Sweet desired to reside where there was some life and
prospect of growth.

Alas, for earthly greatness, when a son of the town that was to rival
Omaha should desert her with such a valedictory!

XXVII

The range is empty and the trails are blind,
And I don't seem but half myself to-day.
I wait to hear him ridin' up behind
And feel his knee rub mine the good old way.
He's dead--and what that means no man kin tell.
Some call it "gone before."
Where? I don't know, but, God! I know so well
That he ain't here no