The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King

by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt

  “But it will take more than saddle tricks. And are you willing to learn?”

  I wasn’t squeamish. I had taught myself to measure a man, to gauge his heft and the weight of his words. But I had the devil of a time with critters who had worked with me in the Badlands and at 300 Mulberry Street, friends, acquaintances, rivals—and enemies. The easiest of all was Sergeant Raddison of the flying squad. He’d become the squire of a far more sophisticated bicycle patrol since I’d seen him last. He had half a precinct all to himself, with two hundred wheelers and a “stable” to house his bikes. There’d been songs written about Raddison and his wheelers. He could have run for Mayor. But he volunteered to join my pony boys.

  “Raddison, I’ll be clear. Can you ride a horse? You can’t coast your way through the chaparral.”

  “Colonel, I’ve been taking lessons with the mounted patrol. I wouldn’t shame ya, would I?”

  I wanted to sign him up as a lieutenant in the First Volunteers and name him second in command of our “New York” contingent, which turned out to be Troop K. But Raddison wouldn’t hear of it. He’d never been that fond of officers. A sergeant he was, and a sergeant he would remain.

  I was disheartened by the next volunteer. I had promised that we wouldn’t accept any desperadoes or Stranglers from Dakota, and here was Red Finnegan standing in front of my desk. Red had served twelve years of hard labor inside the State Pen at Bismarck.That crop of red hair had gone all gray. He seemed brittle. He had the same shivering hand, kind of hard for a gunman.

  “Red, I can’t bring an outlaw into the First Volunteers. The War Department wouldn’t condone it.”

  “I served my time, Mr. Roseyvelt. I’m a solid citizen. I have a cattle ranch.”

  And the son of a bitch had letters of recommendation from ranchmen I remembered. He’d gone right back to the Badlands from Bismarck. He’d been on a posse or two, had broken up a band of rustlers.

  “I’ve scratched out a living as best I can.”

  I asked Red how old he was. He said it was hard to say. He couldn’t recollect much about his childhood. He was orphaned as a little boy. A one-eyed farmer had raised him in that desperate country, had beaten him with a strap. Red Finnegan ran from the farmer with nothing but his shirt. “You can call me fifty, Colonel, give or take a season.”

  I’d turned away volunteers more qualified than Red. But he had that warlike spirit I admired. And the curious honesty of men groomed in the wild. He stole my skiff, and left a glove as his signature. That was Red’s style. I signed him up with alacrity.

  “But you’re on notice, Red Finnegan. One bad play, and you’re out.”

  He started to blubber right near my recruitment officers. He wanted to kiss my hand.

  “Jesus, Colonel, you’re my second chance. I’ll make the First Volunteers proud as hell.”

  I had to whisk him out of there, with all the volunteers waiting on a line that almost stretched to the President’s palace on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Army regulars began to grumble. They didn’t have a parade of volunteers to fight the Spaniards in Cuba. They hardly had a volunteer at all. And I was sending lads back out onto the street, lads who didn’t make a perfect fit. But I was troubled when the man with iron whiskers appeared—Taggart, that paid killer, had come with two of his Pinks.

  “You aren’t welcome here, Major. I can have you and your cronies escorted from this place, or you can clear out on your own steam. I have nothing more to say. You pollute whatever venue you’re in. I suppose Pierpont Morgan will reward me with a bundle if I enlist you in the First Volunteers.”

  I’d rattled him. I could see the chiseled marks on his face. “Wait a minute. That isn’t fair, Four-Eyes.”

  Now I was the one who began to bristle. “You will address me as Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, while you’re on military grounds.”

  I hadn’t been commissioned yet, but he saluted me with a lightning whip of his hand. “You need fighters, Colonel, and I’ve been fightin’ since I was fourteen.”

  “Why aren’t you back with the Pinks?”

  “That’s the whole point,” he said. “The Pinks are a civilian army. We’ve been taught—”

  “To maim and kill, Major Taggart?”

  His steel-blue eyes softened a bit. “Ain’t that a soldier’s misfortune? We’ve wandered across a hundred territories. You wouldn’t have to train us. We’re born pony boys.”

  But I was mean to the Major. “With that drag-foot of yours? We don’t enlist cripples. It’s against the law.”

  He smiled under that thick mustache. “I wouldn’t drag my foot on the back of a pony, sir. And ask anyone at our national office. I’m a miracle to behold with a carbine or a Colt.”

  I could have had that killer under my command, my own private Pinkerton. I’d abuse him, like a baby deprived of toys. I wanted to strip him of his varnish, mustache and all. But I couldn’t bear to have him in our ranks.

  “Taggart, didn’t I warn you on the steps of Police Headquarters that you wouldn’t have another chance to grin? Get out of my sight.”

  The son of a bitch was used to having his way with most people. “I’ll sit down with the President and Pierpont Morgan. Four-Eyes, we’ll see who wins.”

  He’d come into our dungeon with carbines and campaign hats, and left without a slot in the First Volunteers. It wasn’t his drag-foot. I’d sworn in one or two cowboys with a twisted leg. We had our own surgeons, our own doctors’ reports. We didn’t rely on the regulars.

  Taggart and his two killers had unsettled me. I should have torn the roots out of their hair, robbed them of whatever dignity they had. Instead, I’d let them walk out in campaign hats they had no right to wear.

  WE SHUTTERED SAGAMORE HILL, locked the icehouse, left the orchards bare, and moved with the bunnies to a little house across from the British Embassy. My wife had been feverish for months. An abscess was found in her abdomen and had to be removed, while I was still stuck in that damn cellar, enlisting volunteers. The surgeon’s ether had made her delirious, and I had to rush from my palatial cavern to N Street several times a day. Colonel Wood was her physician as well as mine, but he had to leave for San Antonio—that was the training ground he had selected for the Rough Riders. So I was put in charge of all local recruits, the Cowboy Colonel with his Brooks Brothers tunic and a saber that caught between his legs.

  “Sinbad the Sailor,” Edie said, recovering from the ether, “my poor darling Sinbad.”

  She was pale as a ghost under her gown.

  “I can tell Leonard to find himself another lieutenant colonel. . . . I’m not indispensable, you know.”

  “But Sinbads are scarce,” she warbled, teasing me a little. “Dearest, I would die if you didn’t go.”

  Bamie was in the dining room, her darkened face in the shadows. She’d married her beau, Lieutenant Commander William Sheffield Cowles, in 1895, and had come to stay with us while her husband was at sea. I didn’t mind a bit of nepotism in behalf of my big sister and her husband. I’d abetted Commander Cowles’ career, given him a lethal toy to play with, a cruiser rather than a gunboat. Bamie was beholden to me. She checked her sharp tongue, but there was a rift after Ellie’s death that could not be mended no matter how hard I tried. She blamed herself as much as she blamed me. She should have been more of an advocate for Ellie, should have persisted, like those two charlatans Howe & Hummel. We did not talk about Ellie, not ever, not now.

  “Edith is ill,” I said.

  “We will manage, Teedie—a war cannot wait.”

  “But I do not have to leave for San Antone. My troopers can exist without me.”

  Her face, a bit sallow, rose out of the shadows, with that crisp, biting smile. Father had trained her well. That corrosive willpower had been there, even as a little girl, when she had to fight servants and tradesmen, while Mittie had one of her punishing headaches and Father was “abroad,” as Mr. Lincoln’s Allotment Commissioner, wandering about in his winter cape.

  “
Teedie, you are the regiment. It is a sham without your services. So do not pretend. Modesty is not your strongest suit.”

  “So I’m a cardplayer now—a gambler,” I said.

  “As you have always been. You wrapped that poor Secretary of the Navy around your little finger. He did not have your sense of politics—Mr. Secretary Long.”

  “He preferred his garden,” I said, “to his secretariat.”

  “And you encouraged him, lulled him to sleep.”

  She could have been my quarterback. She’d memorized all my maneuvers.

  “That precious old dear,” I said. “He couldn’t really run the Navy.”

  “So you ran it behind his back, and while he was tinkering with his rosebushes, you had every warship painted battle-gray.”

  “Was I supposed to stand idle?”

  She laughed with a bitter taste. “Men and their war toys,” she whispered. “I would have gone to Cuba with a white flag. . . . Teedie, you’ll miss your train.”

  She touched my cheek with a certain tenderness, yet she was not feeling tender today. She curtsied once, and went into Edith’s room, shutting the door behind her. That was not the end of her little sojourn. She ventured out again, stood high on her special shoes, thrust her arms around me with a flailing gesture, and said, “Theodore, I’ll kill you if you don’t come back alive.”

  QUIETLY RAMPANT, WAITING FOR the real war to begin. We were a regiment without regimentals. We did not have enough drinking water, and we had to bathe in the silver quiet of the San Antonio River. The quartermaster general could not provide enough horses and uniforms for the Rough Riders. Worthless trinkets and bits of machinery arrived by express, and our rifles sat among the lost cargo in some forgotten freight train. But we did have a mascot, a six-month-old mountain lion named Josephine, who pawed at us like a princess. We fed her whatever scraps we could spare. She trained with us in the mesquite, running after the tails of our blue flannel shirts, swam with us, and when she disappeared at night, I figured that she slept in a far corner of the State Fair grounds—three miles from the heart of San Antonio and the Menger Hotel—that had become our headquarters and campsite. Without dog tents, my boys had to sleep in the Fair’s abandoned exhibition hall and grandstand. But I’d had a wall tent delivered from Abercrombie & Fitch, and when the morning bugler woke me after my second night in camp, I found Josephine snuggled beside me on my cot, whisker to whisker. There was no confusion in her enormous gray eyes. The little mountain lion was in love with me. I could have had her banished from camp. But the bravos from Arizona who had arrived here with her would have been disheartened. I allowed her no other liberties than an occasional lick of my face . . . and the dead field mice she brought into our hearth. She was a huntress, after all.

  Attrition was our problem, not Josephine, that relentless loss of bravos. Boys would sneak out of camp after taps, catch the electric trolley to San Antone, with its chocolate-colored roof, and some of them never came back. Half our boys were loners, after all, buckaroos, and might have enjoyed a cattle drive, but not the mortifying monotony of regimental drills. If they did return, it was after a squall in a downtown saloon, where they smashed half the mirrors and stripped the bar of all its zinc. A court-martial wouldn’t have been appropriate. I would have had to abandon them to the guardhouse at Fort Sam Houston. And Fort Sam was filled with Army regulars and officers who couldn’t have appreciated cowboy cavaliers. Some of these bravos I kept, and others I sent home with a ten-dollar bill from the Rough Riders’ “treasury,” meaning my own pocket.

  Still, we were losing men at an alarming rate. They wanted to fight, not run along the riverbank, ride on a chocolate trolley, and bivouac in a converted State Fair. I worried that the regiment would drift away. Perhaps the Secretary of War and his generals were right, and cowboy cavaliers couldn’t be broken in, like the wildest broncos. And that’s when Major Taggart showed up with a cadre of Pinks, sporting the blue neckerchiefs with white polka dots that I had taken to wearing and had become the official Rough Rider rag.

  “I didn’t send for you, Major,” I said in front of my own troopers, with blue ice in my voice. “You aren’t welcome in this camp.”

  He had the demonic look of a Pinkerton home from a kill.

  “But you need us now, Colonel.”

  “Did you hear that from a passing crow?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “a crow called the Secretary of War. . . . We’re trained, sir. We won’t desert you or let you down.”

  I was caught between a lovesick mountain lion and the damages I had to pay for the havoc my bravos had visited upon the saloons of San Antone. I weakened a bit. I was bleeding boys every day.

  “One false move, and you’re gone. You won’t have your Pinkerton ranks, none of you. Is that clear, Private Taggart? You’ll report to the regimental commander tomorrow, and be sworn in—but not until you pass your physical.”

  He saluted me with that same old arrogance of a Pink, and went off to find a billet in the exhibition hall.

  And now Bellows, my body-servant, was acting up. He wore a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves. He’d been a Buffalo Soldier, had served in the old Ninth Cavalry, had decimated the Comanche in the Indian Wars. I’d come to rely on him, on his way with horses, on his judgment of men. I felt a little lost without him. He’d broken in my mount, Little Texas.

  “Have I been unfair to you, Sergeant?”

  “That’s the thrust of it, sir. I’m not a proper sergeant. I’m your valet.”

  “But I haven’t deprived you of your stripes,” I said. “Your rank is secure.”

  He was a handsome devil, over six feet tall. “Your own officers see a valet. It don’t matter what stripes I wear.”

  “But you’ll fight beside me—in Cuba.”

  He laughed, and revealed the gold teeth that some wandering dentist had presented him with in Cheyenne country. “You mean, I’ll carry your sword.”

  “Fight, fight,” I said. “I do not require a sword carrier, Sergeant Bellows.”

  “But there’s an opening in my former regiment, sir. And I’d rather go to Cuba with the Ninth.”

  I panicked, that’s how dependent I’d become on Bellows. He instructed me how to behave like an officer with one or two bits of pantomime and a wink of the eye. He’d groomed Little Texas, sharpened my saber on the wheel.

  “I’ll stay, sir, until the regiment is battle-ready. But I’ll require your signature—and your blessing—to rejoin the colored cavalry.”

  “And you shall have it,” I insisted, slapping my own leg with a glove. And Bellows did serve as a kind of shadow drill master. He was a far better soldier than the bravos we had mustered in San Antone. He helped me shape the regiment, often with a whisper in my ear. “Don’t relent, Colonel. And don’t tug on your mustache. It distracts the men.” He was beside me at every maneuver, at every rush of an imaginary foe. We seized every hill, created pandemonium and showers of sand. I was also startled by Taggart and his Pinks. They fell into line, answered every bugle call. I loved the sweat of it, with my bone-white galluses riding below my kneecaps. Finally we all had our mounts, and we rode in fours across the plains. I had a schooner of beer with some of my bravos, and was summoned to the commander’s tent.

  “TR,” he said, “you are neither their confessor—nor their friend. If you cannot separate yourself, they will ride past and never follow you into battle. You will be left stranded on some forlorn hill, clutching your own flag.”

  I had never seen such anger in Leonard Wood; his jaws were quivering. These cowboy soldiers demanded a special kind of familiarity and trust, but I wouldn’t disobey my commander, even if I had picked him myself.

  I saluted Leonard. “Sir, it won’t happen again. No more beer parties with my troopers. I’ll give up the luxury of being comrades. They’ll have to feel my thunder, Leonard.”

  Yet our rifles still hadn’t arrived. And we had to trudge through the mesquite with broom handles, like trick soldiers out o
n a picnic. On one such excursion, with Troop L, we happened upon a company of scouts from Fort Sam—Army regulars in irregular costumes, who must have wandered off the mark, or they wouldn’t have trespassed on our training ground. I did not like it. They wore Apache headbands, ponchos, bullet pouches, leggings made of rags, and they hopped about on bare feet. But they were equipped with carbines, and we were a bunch of hawkeyes with broom handles. Their captain was also dressed in tatters. You could barely see his eyes under the war paint.

  “Well, if it ain’t Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. You, sir, are supposed to be our savior. And you’re nothing but a four-eyed runt with broken suspenders.”

  I was readying to rip him off at the neck. But Bellows stopped me in my tracks. “There’s something poisonous about this chance meeting. They’d bury us, Colonel, if they could. They’re itching for a fight.”

  “Tell that boy to quit buzzing in your ear,” the captain said. “Roosevelt, are you our savior or are you not? I suggest that you all strip down and do a little war dance with your assholes in the air. Well, I’m waitin’. Show us some of that moral fiber that the Rough Riders are made of.”

  “Captain,” I said, “we will not strip.”

  “That’s dandy. Then let the boy do it.”

  Bellows smiled and tilted his slouch hat.

  “That ain’t satisfyin’ at all,” the captain said. He and his bravos cocked their carbines. And that’s when Private Taggart and his Pinks pranced out of the wind and dust. They hadn’t been assigned to a troop. And they must have followed us into the mesquite country along the riverbank. They hadn’t surrendered their carbines to our munitions officer.