Page:Theodore Roosevelt Rough Riders.djvu/326

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The Rough Riders

The Rough Riders a valued friend from a cow ranch in the remote West accepted a pressing invitation to spend a few days at the home of another ex-trooper, a New Yorker of fastidious instincts, and arrived with an umbrella as his only baggage ; how poor Holderman and Pollock both died and were buried with military honors, all of Pollock's tribesmen coming to the burial ; how Tom Isbell joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and how, on the other hand, George Rowland scornfully refused to remain in the East at all, writing to a gallant young New Yorker who had been his bunkie: "Well, old boy, I am glad I didn't go home with you for them people to look at, because I aint a Buffalo or a rhinoceros or a giraffe, and I dont like to be Stared at, and you know we didnt do no hard fighting down there. I have been in closer places than that right here in Yunited States, that is Better men to fight than them dam Spaniards." In another letter Rowland tells of the fate of Tom Darnell, the rider, he who rode the sorrel horse of the Third Cavalry : "There aint much news to write of except poor old Tom Darnell got killed about a month ago. Tom and another fellow had a fight and he shot Tom through the heart and Tom was dead When he hit the floor. Tom was sure a good old boy, and I sure hated to hear of him going, and he had plenty of grit too. No man ever called oa him for a fight that he didn't get it."

My men were children of the dragon's blood, and if they had no outland foe to fight and no outlet for