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saddle blanket.
    And in the morning the dude saddled up himself, not asking any questions, remembering precisely the instructions Joe had given him yesterday.
    So then it was a relief to see that at least this dude meant to carry his own pack. Maybe he wasn’t the worst after all.
    â€œWhat do you think, Mr. Ferris—shall we cross paths with the buffalo tomorrow?”
    â€œNever can tell, Mr. Roosevelt.”
    May be it would be best to reserve judgment a bit longer and see how the dude measured up on the trail.
    Joe unhitched the wagon horse, clapped his old McClellan split-tree on it, endured the saddlesores and was moved to take pity on his guest. “Beg your pardon, sir, but they don’t post on a Western saddle.”
    â€œThat will suit me well enough,” Roosevelt replied. But he kept a poor seat after that and never seemed to learn the trick of riding loose, sticking to the saddle, swaying with the natural movement of the horse. In general he bounced.
    â€œWhere are the buffalo, Mr. Ferris?”
    â€œWhatever’s to be found, I’ll find for you, Mr. Roosevelt.”
    Ten days Joe guided his client around the familiar country of the Killdeer Mountain district. They saw no buffalo but nevertheless the expedition seemed to meet the satisfaction of the dude, who kept exclaiming with great enthusiasm over the abundance of game.
    Most hunters would have thought it a bad hunt. The animals seemed to have scattered out of pure perversion. Joe Ferris rode more miles and raised more saddlesores than he ever had before. The insides of his knees were scraped raw. But Roosevelt loved it. They took pronghorn, mule deer, whitetail, an elk with a magnificent rack, a bighorn sheep.
    Once in a while Joe tried to get a word in about his natural abilities with bookkeeping figures. He laid hints like rabbit snares, hoping the dude would step into them.
    Roosevelt was more polite than most—his inquiries indicated he was listening to what Joe had to say; sometimes he even seemed interested in Joe’s ideas about the great successes in Commerce that awaited a man who knew the country, knew the people, had vision and—most important—had capital to invest. “This country’s going to need a good mercantile store and a solid bank. Why, a man like me for instance—all it would take to set me on my way would be a little seed investment. The man who staked me could just sit back and watch me do all the hard work, and bring in a handsome return, yes sir.”
    â€œI certainly admire your confidence and ambition, old fellow.” Roosevelt beamed infuriatingly at him.
    There was no progress. Day after day, conversation was all the encouragement Joe got out of his employer. And the conversation invariably returned to the same exchange:
    â€œBuffalo today, Mr. Ferris?”
    â€œWe’ll see, Mr. Roosevelt.”
    The dude coughed and wheezed and vomited with alarming frequency but he kept surprising Joe. He proved an accomplished skinner. He claimed to be an expert taxidermist and Joe had no reason to doubt his word. During the first ten days of the hunt they filled their bellies with game meat and Roosevelt burdened the wagon with a more than satisfactory load of trophy heads and pelts, along with a number of birds he shot—sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge, ring-necked pheasant—with the intention of mounting them and making drawings for an ornithology book he said he would write one day “in the tradition of the great John James Audubon, who in the interests of science and art killed more birds than any man in history.”
    That seemed an accomplishment of dubious worth. And anyhow if a man could not spell any better than Roosevelt, he didn’t appear to have much future as a writer. But Joe curbed his tongue.
    Again to his surprise the sick young dude proved to be an adept hunter. On the stalk he owned patience and endurance. He understood the