, arriving there a few days later for a camping trip through
the Yellowstone, asked eagerly for his old friend. Bill Jones was down
in the world. He had had to give up his work as sheriff in Medora
because he began to lose his nerve and would break down and weep like
a child when he was called upon to make an arrest. He was driving a
team in Gardiner outside the Park, and during the days preceding
Roosevelt's arrival took so many drinks while he was telling of his
intimacy with the man who had become President of the United States,
that he had to be carried into the sagebrush before Roosevelt actually
arrived. Roosevelt left word to keep Bill Jones sober against his
return, and when Roosevelt emerged from the Park, they met for the
last time. It was a sad interview, for what was left of Hell-Roaring
Bill Jones was only a sodden, evil-looking shell.

[Illustration: Joe and Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield. Overlooking the
site of the Maltese Cross Ranch (1919).]

[Illustration: Rough Riders Hotel, 1919. Known as the "Metropolitan"
during the Eighties.]

"Bill Jones did not live long after that," said Howard Eaton. "The
last I saw of him was two or three miles from Old Faithful. He said,
'I'm going to the trees.' We went out to look for him, but couldn't
find a trace. This was in March. He wandered way up one of those
ravines and the supposition is that he froze to death. Some fellow
found him up there in June, lying at the edge of a creek. The coyotes
had carried off one of his arms, and they planted him right there. And
that was the end of old Bill Jones."

Years passed, and bitter days came to Roosevelt, but though other
friends failed him, the men of the Bad Lands remained faithful.

In 1912, four of them were delegates to the Progressive
Convention--Sylvane Ferris from North Dakota, where he was president
of a bank; Joe Ferris, George Myers, and Merrifield from Montana. Even
"Dutch Wannigan," living as a hermit in the wilderness forty miles
west of Lake MacDonald, became an ardent Progressive. "I can't afford
to go to Helena," he wrote in answer to an appeal from Merrifield to
attend the State Progressive Convention, "but if you think there'll be
a row, I'll try to make it." Packard and Dantz gave their pens to the
cause.

George Myers was the last of the "cowboy bunch" to see him. They met
in Billings in October, 1918. The town was filled with the crowds who
had come from near and far to see the man who, everybo