CHAPTER IV

"RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAIL"


At the end of Mr. Roosevelt's membership in the New York Assembly,
he began his life on a ranch in North Dakota. In this way he not
only learned much about the Western people, but came to know the
ranchman's life, and to have his first chance to shoot big game.

He had married Miss Lee in 1880, the autumn of the year he left
college. Less than four years afterwards his wife died, following
the birth of a daughter. His mother died on the next day, and
Roosevelt under the sorrow of these two losses, left New York, and
spent almost all his time on his ranch, the Elkhorn, at Medora.

The people in Dakota looked on this Eastern tenderfoot with a
little amusement, and, at first, probably with some contempt. He
was, to their minds, a "college dude" from the East, and moreover
he wore eyeglasses. To some of the people whom he met, this fact,
he says, was enough to cause distrust. Eyeglasses were under
suspicion.

But, with two men who had been his guides in Maine, Bill Sewall
and Wilmot Dow, he began his life as a ranchman and a cow-puncher,
and went through all the hard work and all the fun. He took long
rides after cattle, rounded them up and helped in the branding. He
followed the herd when it stampeded in a thunderstorm. He hunted
all the game that there was in the county, and also acted as