Theodore Roosevelt - Cowboy in Dakota

Cowboy in Dakota

Roosevelt built a second ranch, which he named Elk Horn, thirty-five miles (56 km) north of the boomtown of Medora, North Dakota. On the banks of the Little Missouri, Roosevelt learned to ride western style, rope, and hunt. He rebuilt his life and began writing about frontier life for Eastern magazines, as well publishing three books:

• Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885 ISBN 1-58734-042-9
• Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail, New York: The Century Co., 1888 ISBN 1-58734-044-5
• The Wilderness Hunter, New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893 ISBN 0-8398-1765-7

As a deputy sheriff, Roosevelt hunted down three outlaws who stole his riverboat and were escaping north with it up the Little Missouri. Capturing them, he decided against hanging them (apparently yielding to established law procedures in place of vigilante justice), and sending his foreman back by boat, he took the thieves back overland for trial in Dickinson, guarding them forty hours without sleep and reading Tolstoy to keep himself awake. When he ran out of his own books, he read a dime store western that one of the thieves was carrying. While searching for a group of relentless horse thieves, Roosevelt met Seth Bullock, the famous sheriff of Deadwood, South Dakota. The two would remain friends for life.