Roosevelt spent the coldest months in New York, working steadily on his new book which was to be called "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman." On the 8th of March he wrote Lodge, "I have just sent my last roll of manuscript to the printers"; adding, "in a fortnight I shall go out West." But he postponed his departure, held possibly by the lure of the hunting-field; for on the 29th he rode with the Meadowbrook hounds and was "in at the death." It was presumably in the first days of April that he arrived at Medora. If tradition may be trusted, he came in all the glory of what were known as "store clothes." The Pittsburgh _Despatch_, which sent out a reporter to the train to interview him as he passed through that city, westward-bound, refers to "the high expanse of white linen which enclosed his neck to the ears," which sounds like a slight exaggeration. Tradition does insist, however, that he wore a derby hat when he arrived, which was considered highly venturesome. Derby hats as a rule were knocked off on sight and then bombarded with six-shooters beyond recognition. Roosevelt informed his fellow citizens early in his career as a cowpuncher that he intended to wear any hat he pleased. Evidently it was deemed expedient to suspend the rule in his case, for he was not molested.
After a brief sojourn at the Maltese Cross, Roosevelt made his way north to Elkhorn Ranch. The house was nearing completion. It was a one-story log structure, with a covered porch on the side facing the river; a spacious house of many rooms divided by a corridor running straight through from north to south. Roosevelt's bedroom, on the southeast corner, adjoined a large room containing a fireplace, which was to be Roosevelt's study by day and the general living-room by night. The fireplace, which had been built by an itinerant Swedish mason whom Sewall looked upon with disapproval as a dollar-chaser, had been designed under the influence of a Dakota winter and was enormous. Will Dow, who was somewhat of a blacksmith, had made a pair of andirons out of a steel rail, which he had discovered floating down the river loosely attached to a beam of yellow pine.[10]
[Footnote 10: The andirons are still doing service at the ranch of Howard Eaton and his brothers in Wolf, Wyoming.]