Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1920 — SWORE BY ‘TEDDY' [ARTICLE]

SWORE BY ‘TEDDY'

Yellowstone Park Rangers With Roosevelt to a Man. Colonel's Characteristic Greeting of Down-and-Outer, Whom .He Had Known In Happier Days, Is Still Remembered. Of the few out-of-season visits paid to the Yellowstone, that of Colonel Roosevelt, who, when president, spent 24 days of the late winter of 1908 there, has the most prominent page in the annals*of the Spread-Eagle rangers. He found the scouts, then serving as chaperons for luckless cavalry troop- , ers and doing their own work besides, i to be men after his own heart, and did hot hesitate to say so. Before he had been in the park a week every ranger was swearing - I “Anybody jtbe whereabouts of 'Jone William Jones?” was one of the "colonel's eaHy inquiries. J Jim _ Mcßride, the preesnt chief ranger, who was then assistant chief z of the park:scouts under the late Buffalo Jones, knew ,a Bill Jones, wood chopper aqd ne’er-do-well, chiefly re-, markable for an insatiable thirst and a' knack Of mlhlStering fcQt in a bonedry park. He was aboUtihe last man In theßockies fgrwhom a president of the United States would be expected to Inquire. “Bill put me Into office once,” said Roosevelt. “I want to see him, drunk or sober.” He further explained that the derelict had been sheriff duriij&Jiia, own days as a ranchman and had made him a deputy In a horsethief posse. “It took three days to find that old homed toad and bring Mm in,*" said Mcßride,- in recalling thes ineident, “but just to listen in at the colonel’s

hearty greeting of that down-and-out-vsm ’paj^iai ©m: £a n h o m “ ‘Well, Ted; you got a right swell job since I seen 'you last,’ Jonos remarked when they had exchanged how’d’ye-do’s; ‘but that needn’t stand between friends—l got something on my hip.’ : “Colonel Roosevelt didn’t partake, but he did spend the best part of an hour swapping yarns of the days when Bill was a ‘white man’ and sheriff of his county. The woodchopper tried to buck up after his talk with the president, but it wasn’t to befdone. The next winter we found him dead in the brush over on Bear creek. “The colonel was enthusiastic over the sport ‘of ski running, and was I something of a performer on the slabs I himself, for a novice. He strapped his .feet jnto them as often as opportunity offered. One morning on a slide near the Canon hotel he broke one ski and came a heavy cropper. government has fallen at last!’ he cried with a molar showing grin, as I coasted down to help untangle a living president and a pair pf dead sticks. “He, was looking at the wreck he had made of the hickory slabs when Chpt. John Pitcher, of the First cavalry then in command of the park, arrived. “ ‘Haye you plenty of these?’- Teddy said. " ‘.‘Only a few pairs, and they are the property of the interior department,” replied the officer. “In less than- tbreeweeka^herecame' a rtsh ' shipment of a hundred pairs. “Next afternoon the president challenged me to a race on snow shoes from Canyon to Mammoth, a distance of thirty-one miles. Those with him decided that the trip would be an unwise strain upon him, and began to argue against his attempting It. He got me to one side after a while and whispered: “ ‘We’ll let them talk, Mcßride. Just you stick around until midnight. They'V* be ’ aslW theft, and we’ll hit the trail!’ ~ ‘‘lt took Harry WL Child and Captain Pitcher two to talk him out of thaU He , wasn’t at all pleased at : having to veto his own plan for a secret departure.”—Ethel and James DOrrance in Munsey’S Magazine. MP"; — ‘ -