Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-10-04
RooseUeIt's Western Friends

IA few old timers who knew
Theodore Roosevelt in the days
when he was punching cattle
in the Bad Lands of the Little
Missouri came together at Bill
McCarty's Custer Trail Ranch
in North Dakota last June.
There had been a show round
up as a tribute to the Colonefs
memory, and the old friends
Sylvane Ferris and Will Mer-
rifield. Roosevelt's partners of
the Maltese Cross outfit;
"Three-Seven Bill" Follis, Nc
Carty and Joe Ferris who took
the dude from New York" on
his first buffalo hunt-were
sitting on the ground swapping
yarns of the times beyond re-
call. Hermann Hagedorn, in
the Outlook, describes the scene
y at the end of the day1
There was a long silence as each
of the ld-timers" stared at the
green earth about them with dis
tant, dreamy eyes. The glow had
long faded from Picket Butte and
from the long clay ranges that
were it's neighbors. The sage brush
fiat, where a few hours before had
been the milling, believing cattle,
the dashing horses and intrepid
riders. was a deserted field of dusky
lavender. The mess wagon had rat
tled off long ago. Only a car or
two, forty or fifty remained at the
edge of the fiat, waiting like pa
tient horse silently for it's master.
in the cottonwood grove, where
close together the men were sit
ting, cross legged or leaning against
the straight, slender trunks or
sprawling on the ground tearing
dreamily at the grass blade, the
dusk was taking possession. A
steer mooed away off among the
buttes southeastward.
Syfvane looked up, and there was
a sad look in his eye. Its been
very nice, boys" he said, land I've
enjoyed 1t. enjoyed every minute of
it. But I can't help remembering
that Mr.. Roosevelt promised me on
the train between Billings and
Fargo last October that5he'd be
out here himself this summer to go
with me and Joe and Merrifeld and
some of you other boys over his
old stamping ground. Wen ne
won't be here. He won't ever De
here again, and for some of us. 1
gusss, the Bad Lands will never be
the same again.
"He was like a brother to me.
We were partners and we were
friends. He's gone, and the rest OF
life will be mostly just a-remem-
bering of the old days when he was
here"
Svlvane's voice was husky. He
cle;Ied it and continued: "Wo
! tovs, we never had a better friend
and Dakota never had better
| friend, and the American people
never lad q better friend. He was
! brave and square and on the job as
President. just as he was brave and
square and on the job as q cowboy
You couldn't bully him at any time
! You couldn't make him afraid. You
| couldn't make him shirk his work
or do anything that was mean.
"Merrifield and Joe and /, we
lived with him; we slept under the
, same blanket with him, we ate out
| of the same dish. We knew him
so we could look clear through
| him, and, boys. there was nothing
| there that wasn't straight and
clean. There never was finer sci
/ OF men anywhere, taken all in all
than the boys you and 1 knew and
lived with here in the Bad Lands
! in the old days. I knew them all
I knew them as I knew my ole
clothes, and. boys. tell you thai
the finest of them all was Theodore
Roosevelt. And I can't quite ge
used to the thought that now II
the time he promised to come, and
he isn't going to be here"
His voice was low and a breath
of the dusk wind carried away th'
last of his words.
eff his ghost walks" said Bill
NcCarty, "and il knew him at all
his ghost is right with us thi'
minute"
mo" said Joe Ferris, softiy ou
docisively. NO. If it were. wee
have known it. with all us OLE
fellows here he'd have ripped ster
nifty and busted through"