. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands . nmen who lived by crooked gamblingand thievery of every sort. The best of those whohad come that summer to seek adventure andfortune on the banks of the Little Missouri weremen who cared little for their personal safety,courting danger wherever it beckoned, careless oflife and limb, reticent of speech and swift of action,light-hearted and altogether human. They werethe adventurous and unfettered spirits of hundredsof communities whom the restrictions of respectablesociety had galled. Here they were, elbowing eachother in a little corner of sagebrush country where
. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands . nmen who lived by crooked gamblingand thievery of every sort. The best of those whohad come that summer to seek adventure andfortune on the banks of the Little Missouri weremen who cared little for their personal safety,courting danger wherever it beckoned, careless oflife and limb, reticent of speech and swift of action,light-hearted and altogether human. They werethe adventurous and unfettered spirits of hundredsof communities whom the restrictions of respectablesociety had galled. Here they were, elbowing eachother in a little corner of sagebrush country wherethere was little to do and much whiskey to drink;and the hand of the law was light and far away. Somewhere, hundreds of miles to the south, therewas a United States marshal; somewhere a hundredand fifty miles to the east there was a sheriff. NeitherMedora nor Little Missouri had any representative n c?^ ^.;i >-?? imml^ ^ ^o^ i V^^P |k.: ^Mm ^^^pii EpP^i He !;- f ? ^-<;:r;- ? ^v-T-ji. -^^ P^^^^l ROOSEVELT IN IJ. MEDORA IN THE WINTER OF 18The office and company-store of the Marquis de Mores ? JAKE MAUNDERS 49 of the law whatsoever, no government or even ashadow of government. The feuds that arose weresettled by the parties involved in the ancient mannerof Cain. Of the heterogeneous aggregation of desperatemen that made up the population of the frontiersettlement, Jake Maunders, the man who had lentRoosevelt a hammer and a buffalo-gun, was, by allodds, the most prominent and the least trustworthy. He had been one of the first to settle at LittleMissouri, and for a while had lived in the open asa hunter. But the influx of tourists and floaters had indicated to him a less arduous form of guided tenderfeet, charging exorbitant rates;he gambled (cautiously); whenever a hunter left theBad Lands, abandoning his shack, Maundersclaimed it with the surrounding country, and, whena settler took up land near by, demanded five hun-dred dollars for his rights. A man whom he ow
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