Chapter II: Foreword: A Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Captain McDonald

The White House, Washington.

December 19, 1908.

MY DEAR CAPTAIN: I am glad you are to publish your memorials. I shall always look back with pleasure to our wolf-hunt in Oklahoma. Yours has been a most interesting life. You are one of the few men now living who served in that warfare against crime and on behalf of order, which has well-nigh passed away with the old frontier conditions which called it into being. For a number of years you were deputy sheriff, or deputy marshal, or representative of the cattlemen's associations, employed by them to put a stop to cattle stealing and robbery under arms, and you served for twenty years in that unique body, the Texas Rangers. It is a career which henceforth it will be difficult to parallel.

With all good wishes, believe me,

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

CAPTAIN BILL McDONALD, TEXAS RANGER