How Few Remain

From breakfast, the troopers went to tend their horses. Along with beans and other provender for men, those wagons brought in hay by the ton, and oats to go with it. No one within a couple of miles downwind of the ranch could have had the slightest doubt that a great many horses were dwelling there. Flies got bad when the weather warmed up, but they hadn't started buzzing yet.

Philander Snow came up to Roosevelt; to Roosevelt 's disappointment, he still showed no interest in joining the Regiment. Working in the fields and with the livestock-what the troopers hadn't eaten of it-contented him. Pausing now to spit, he observed, "One thing's plain as day, boss-you ain't go

"That's a fact, Phil," Roosevelt allowed. "A regiment's worth of horses leaves a lot on the ground, don't they?" A regiment's worth of cavalrymen left a lot on the ground, too. They'd already had to dig a couple of new sets of slit trenches. Roosevelt didn't want those too close to the creek or the well. That way lay sickness; the Roman legionaries had known as much. If typhoid-or, worse, cholera- broke out, he'd be down to half a regiment in nothing flat.

The first wagon of the day came rattling up from Helena a little past eight in the morning. Roosevelt 's quartermaster sergeant, a ski

"Good," Roosevelt answered, and tossed him a ten-cent tip. Since the supply wagons had started coming up from Helena every day, he was far less cut off from the world than he had been before. Now, instead of waiting a week or two between looks at a newspaper, he got word of what was going on as fast as the telegraph brought it into town and the typesetters turned it into words on paper.

What Roosevelt read now made him paw the ground like one stallion challenging another over a mare. He felt that full of rage, too. " Richardson!" he roared. "Get your damn bugle, Richardson!" He fumed until the trumpeter came dashing up, horn in hand, then snapped, "Blow Assembly."

"All right, Colonel," Richardson answered. "What's up and gone south on us now?" Roosevelt glared at him till he raised the bugle to his lips and blasted out the call.

Men came ru

"Reckon you're go

Roosevelt ignored the distraction, which, for a man of his temperament, wasn't easy. But fury still consumed him. "They have had the gall, the nerve, to declare a blockade against the coasts and harbors of the United States of America -against our coasts and harbors, gentlemen, saying we have not got the right to conduct our own commerce." He squeezed the Gazette in his fist and waved it about, as if it were the criminal rather than the messenger. "Shall this great nation let such an insult stand?"

"No!" shouted the cavalry troopers, who were about as far from any coast as men in the United States could be.

"You're right, boys!" Roosevelt agreed. "We won't let it stand. By jingo, we can't let it stand. These vile foreign dogs will see they're barking at the wrong hound if they think they can impose themselves on the United States that way. We'll lick 'em back to their ke

By the time he was done whipping up the men, they were ready to ride for the Canadian border and shoot everybody they could catch who followed Queen Victoria instead of President Blaine. By the time he was done whipping himself up, he was ready to lead them over the border. He needed a distinct effort of will to remember his Regiment was still Unauthorized. If they went over the border, it wouldn't be war; it would be a filibustering expedition, and the enemy would be within his rights to treat them as bandits. He sighed. He hated having to remember such fine distinctions.

"Let's ride," he shouted. "To horse and let's ride! We ca

It wasn't what he'd pla

Almost as fast as he would have liked, Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment was mounted and pounding north along the road in a long, sinewy column of fours. They thundered past wagons and buggies and lone horsemen who stared and stared at the power Roosevelt had assembled and now controlled. Those stares left him happier than the whiskey that flowed like water in the Montana mining towns. Anyone could get a drink of whiskey. Only a few men, special men, great men, attracted the awe the Regiment gained for him.

"Heavens above, this is bully!" he cried in a great voice. Just then, he would gladly have kept riding all the way to Canada. He would gladly have kept riding all the way through Canada. With the men he had at his back, he was sure he could do it.

Prudence prevailed, though. Montana Territory was as yet thinly settled; finding open land on which the Regiment could practice its evolutions was only a matter of riding out past the little farms and herds of livestock that clung close to ru

But, because Roosevelt had read the latest tactical manuals, the Unauthorized Regiment also practiced fighting as dragoons: mounted infantry. With some of their number left behind to hold horses, the rest tramped in skirmish lines through the grass and brush. The troops' captains had to rotate the job of horse-holder through their units, because everyone wanted to go forward and no one was keen to be left behind.

As the afternoon wore along, Roosevelt came to another of his snap decisions. "We'll sleep here in the open tonight, men," he a

Some of the men-the lazy ones who hadn't bothered packing hardtack and salt pork in their knapsacks, unless Roosevelt missed his guess-grumbled at that, but their comrades' jeers squelched them. The soldiers (so Roosevelt insisted on thinking of them, though they remained Unauthorized despite telegrams to the War Department in Philadelphia) were getting the idea that they had to be prepared when they took the field.

"You never know what may happen," Roosevelt said. "You simply never know." He was looking north, toward Canada.