I first reached the Little Missouri on a Northern Pacific train about three in the morning of a cool September day in 1883.  Aside from the station, the only building was a ramshackle structure called the Pyramid Park Hotel.  I dragged my duffle-bag thither, and hammered at the door until the frowsy proprietor appeared, muttering oaths.  He ushered me upstairs, where I was given one of the fourteen beds in the room which by itself constituted the entire upper floor.  Next day I walked over to the abandoned army post, and, after some hours among the gray log shacks, a ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte ranch, where he was living with his brother and their partner.

The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for the horses near by, and a chicken-house jabbed against the rear of the ranch house.  Inside there was only one room, with a table, three or four chairs, a cooking-stove, and three bunks.  The owners were Sylvane and Joe Ferris and William J. Merrifield.  Later all three of them held my commissions while I was President.  Merrifield was Marshal of Montana, and as Presidential elector cast the vote of that State for me in 1904; Sylvane Ferris was Land Officer in North Dakota, and Joe Ferris Postmaster at Medora.  There was a fourth man, George Meyer, who also worked for me later.  That evening we all played old sledge round the table, and at one period the game was interrupted by a frightful squawking outside which told us that a bobcat had made a raid on the chicken-house.

After a buffalo hunt with my original friend, Joe Ferris, I entered into partnership with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, and we started a cow ranch, with the maltese cross brand—­always known as “maltee cross,” by the way, as the general impression along the Little Missouri was that “maltese” must be a plural.  Twenty-nine years later my four friends of that night were delegates to the First Progressive National Convention at Chicago.  They were among my most constant companions for the few years next succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the game of old sledge.  I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them and many others like them on the round-up; and I brought out from Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two backwoods friends Sewall and Dow.  My brands for the lower ranch were the elkhorn and triangle.

I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days.  It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision—­in short, the virtues that ought to come from life in the open country.  I enjoyed the life to the full.  After the first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, low ranch house of hewn logs, with a veranda, and with, in addition to the other rooms, a bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room