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
Deputy Sheriff and helped clear the place of horse-thieves and
"bad men."
In one of his adventures Roosevelt showed that he had taken to
heart the celebrated advice which, in Hamlet, Polonius gives to
his son:
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Mulvaney, in one of Kipling's stories, proved that he knew
something about Shakespeare, for he put this advice into his own
language so as to express the meaning perfectly:
"Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if
you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint."
Roosevelt tried to keep out of the fight,--but this is the way it
happened.
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