He shot again and got her. However, there were three dead elephants instead of one when we stopped them, for Kermit and I had to shoot, too, to head off the others. The rule in elephant hunting is to get as close as you can before shooting, and in whatever Roosevelt was doing he came out in the open and went straight to the point.
Kermit's baby elephant, now mounted in the group, was taken that day, also. After we had turned them, I saw a calf I wanted, asked Kermit to shoot him, and he did so.
While Tarlton and Kermit returned for the camp equipment and the supplies required in caring for the elephants, Colonel Roosevelt and I sat together resting in the shade of an acacia. We were alone in the heart of Africa and he talked to me of his wife and children at home. He had not seen any one from the United States, excepting the members of his own party, for a good many months, while I was fresh from the States, fresh from Oyster Bay. In those three hours I got a new vision and a new view of Theodore Roosevelt. It was then that I learned to love him. It was then that I realized that I could follow him anywhere; even if I doubted, I would follow him because I knew his sincerity, his integrity, and the bigness of the man. Since his death those qualities that I caught a glimpse of in Africa under the acacia tree—those qualities that made Theodore Roosevelt what he was—I have seen more fully and completely as they are reflected in his children and his children's children.
