Chapter XXXIV: A Wolf-hunt with the President

CAPTAIN BILL SEES THE PRESIDENT THROUGH TEXAS AND ACCOMPANIES HIM ON THE "BEST TIME OF HIS LIFE." QUANAH PARKER TELLS STORIES TO THE HUNTERS

It was early in April, 1905, that Governor Lanham summoned Captain McDonald and informed him that a wolf-hunt had been arranged for President Roosevelt, by these two big ranchmen, Tom Waggoner and Burke Burnett, somewhere in their pastures up in Comanche County, Oklahoma, and that he, McDonald, was to accompany the President as a special body-guard, particularly through the State of Texas.

Captain Bill looked unhappy.

"Governor," he said, "you know I'm a hell-roarin' democrat, and don't care much for republican presidents in general and this one in particular. I'd rather you picked another man for the job."

"All the same, Captain, we've picked you, and you'll have to serve," said Lanham.

Captain Bill saluted.

"Just as you say, Governor," he said, "only if I'd done the picking I'd picked a man that wanted the job. There's enough of 'em."

Captain Bill proceeded to Fort Worth to join the President's party. Col. Cecil Lyon introduced the Ranger Captain to President Roosevelt, and Burke Burnett, also present, said:

"Now, Captain, you've got a very precious charge--the President of the United States. He's in your hands, don't let anything happen; don't let anybody assassinate him."

Captain Bill smiled, in his quaint fashion.

"Burke," he said, pleasantly, "if anybody gets killed on this trip I'll be the man charged with it, and the President of the United States won't be the victim, either."

Without delay the President and party took the Fort Worth and Denver train toward the Pan-handle. Once inside, out of the throng and under way President Roosevelt with his accustomed good-nature and friendly fellowship promptly struck up a conversation with his Master of Affairs.

"Look here," he said, "you were introduced to me as Captain McDonald: you're not Captain Bill McDonald of the Rangers, are you?"

Captain Bill nodded.

"That's my name, Mr. President," he said, "I've been captain of a company of Rangers for a long time."

"Is it possible? Well, I've heard a good deal about you."

Theodore Roosevelt has been accused of a good many things, but no one ever accused him of not being able to make friends, or to keep them.

Captain Bill smiled, as who wouldn't.

"Why, Mr. President," he said, "I didn't think you'd ever heard about the Rangers."

The President's teeth shone in an expansive appreciation.

"Yes, indeed I have, and I've heard all about you. I remember very well when you captured Kid Lewis and his partner, Crawford, up here at Wichita Falls, and kept the crowd from lynching them as long as you stayed there."

After that, conversation was easy, and Captain Bill's opinion of his distinguished guest improved steadily. They discussed hunting, marksmanship, the Rough Riders, the capture of bad men and all the subjects of the strenuous life of the frontier.

With the President had come a body-guard of four secret-service men, whose chief duty at this time was to protect him from the crowds who pressed upon him here and there when the train halted and he went out, as he did when there was time, to greet the people and perhaps make a brief address. Captain Bill noticed that the secret-service men did not seem quite equal to these occasions. Perhaps they were not accustomed to handling the range-bred enthusiasm of that elemental region. When the presidential party pulled into Wichita Falls the platform was thronged. The crowds made a rush as the train came to a standstill--trying to climb over one another, it would seem--to get near the President. The secret-service men were helpless--they pushed and protested, but accomplished little. Captain Bill stepped out on the platform. Hardly a man in that crowd but recognized that lean weather-beaten face, and that white hat. A good many remembered that picture from a night and a morning nine years before when, at their jail, a lone Ranger Captain had risen up in wrath and ruled the mob. Some there remembered Bill McDonald a good deal longer than that--for twenty years or more, when he had found that place a lawless settlement on an untamed frontier and brought order out of human chaos and put a governor on the wheels of law. When he spoke, now, they listened.

"Get out of the way, boys! Stay down there, you fellows; don't crowd up here!" he said, and a sudden impulse of order was the result.

Now and then he added a word of caution, but it was hardly needed. Captain Bill knew his crowd, and the crowd knew Captain Bill. The President observed and marveled. At Vernon there was another crowd--rollicking and noisy--and again the Ranger Captain held the disorder in hand. When the train started once more President Roosevelt said to his body-guard of four:

"Boys, you ought to take a few pointers from Captain McDonald in handling a crowd," and the "Boys" agreed to do it, knowing all the time, as everybody there knew, that it would need Captain Bill's twenty years' special acquaintance with that crowd to achieve his results.

At Vernon they took a train for Frederick--a little station in Comanche County, from which place they would ride a distance of twenty-five miles to the camping place, located on a creek called the Deep Red. At Frederick the President relieved his special guard of four, and sent them back to Fort Worth to wait his return.

It was on April 8th that they arrived at Frederick where a good share of the hunting party, and an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. The hunting party set out immediately for the camp, arriving about nightfall.

Whoever chose the camping place made a good selection. The Deep Red--a branch of Red River--is a fine running stream, with plenty of timber and good grass. From all about the howling of their game--the small gray wolves, or coyotes, which infest that country. The surroundings were ideal.

There were about fifteen in the hunting party, which included their hosts, Tom Waggoner and Burke Burnett; also young Tom Burnett, who was in charge of the horses--himself a daring horseman--Lieut.-General S.M.B. Young (known to the Indians as "War Bonnet"); Lieutenant Fortescue (formerly of the Rough Riders); Dr. Alexander Lambert of New York; Col. Cecil Lyon of Texas; Sloan Simpson, Postmaster of Dallas; John R. Abernethy of Tesca, Oklahoma (later, by the President's appointment, United States Marshal); certain ranchmen and cowboys--by no means forgetting Chief Quanah Parker, of whom we have heard before in these chapters, now specially invited by the President's request. Chief Quanah was then about sixty--tall, straight as an arrow and a fine rider.

It was a pretty extensive camp, altogether. There were a hundred horses and a "chuck" wagon--a regular "cow outfit";--a buggy for Burke Burnett and General Young; two hacks, one of which belonged to Chief Quanah, and other vehicles. Then there was a pack of forty greyhounds, some stag-hounds, and about a half-dozen long-eared deer or fox-hounds, for special work.

The excitement and joy of the tents and blazing campfires, and the howling of the wolves, made everybody eager for morning and an early start. So when supper was over and the guard set for the night, the Great National Hunter and his friends and protectors lay down to rest, the campfires still throwing a wide circle of light, on the fading edges of which the coyotes gathered and looking up howled their anguish to the stars.

It was a little more than daylight, next morning, a bright cool morning, when the hunting party was up and away. The hunters were mounted, all except General Young and Burke Burnett, who were in the habit of following the chase in their buggy. The dogs to be used for the morning run mingled with the riders, the others being confined in the chuck wagon in a large cage, to be kept fresh, and used in the afternoon, when the first detachment should be run down. At the head of the party rode Tom Burnett and "Bony" Moore and behind these came President Roosevelt of the United States, and Captain Bill McDonald of Texas.

It was no trouble to find a wolf in that locality. One was soon started up and the hounds were away, with the party of horsemen and Burke Burnett's buggy following pell-mell in a general helter-skelter, for which the President set the pace. As the Ranger Captain saw the Chief Executive of the nation go careering over ditches and washouts and through prairie-dog cities, his admiration grew literally by leaps and bounds. He wished, however, he hadn't promised to bring the President home intact. Bill McDonald was considered something of a rider, himself, but he was not entirely happy in this Tam O'Shanter performance. Still he stayed in the game.

"It looked mighty scary to me," he said afterward, "but I wouldn't quit. The others followed, but some of them would go slower."

It was great excitement, great sport and great fun--a wild race across the prairie--a final bringing of the wolf to bay with the "worry" and "death" by the dogs, and general rejoicing by all.

But when the next wolf--or it may have been the third one--was cornered there was a genuine exhibition. It was not killed by the dogs, it was taken alive, by one man. John Abernethy was that man, and he took that wolf with his hands. This was the manner of it. Whenever the dogs ran upon the wolf, the wolf would turn and snap savagely, and if those teeth of his happened to touch any part of the dog they left their mark, and sometimes that part of the dog remained with the wolf. This made the dogs careful--and shy.

But Abernethy was not careful--at least he was not shy. He ran up close to that cornered wolf and fell upon him, and when the wolf snapped at him, just as he had snapped at those dogs, Abernethy by a quick movement of his hand caught the wolf by the lower jaw and held him fast, and in such a way, that jerk and writhe and twist as he might he could not get free. Then Abernethy, who was about thirty years old and a muscular man, quick of movement and fearless, holding fast to the wolf's jaw, carried that wolf to his horse, mounted and rode away, still carrying his captive, alive.

Well, of course, President Roosevelt admired that beyond any feature of the expedition. He had Abernethy do it again and again, and Abernethy never made a failure. Sometimes he tied the wolf's jaws together with a handkerchief; just held him and tied him in a deft workman-like way and made off with him hanging on his saddle. It looked easy enough, to see Abernethy seize the wolf, and presently a young fellow in the group of hunters decided that it _was_ easy. But when he tried it, he only got a knife-like slit across his hand and abandoned the contract. Then the President wanted to try it, himself, as of course he would, but there are some things which even a President cannot be permitted to attempt.

However, he was not to be kept altogether out of danger, and in the characteristic incident which follows, those who will, may, perhaps, find some allegorical significance.

As the party rode along--this was during a quiet recess between wolves--they came upon a big rattlesnake, about five feet long, and thicker than a man's wrist, coiled up, on a prairie-dog hill. When the President saw it, he got down from his horse and taking his quirt (a small rawhide riding whip about two feet long) he went up to the big rattler and struck him. The snake was coiled, and sprang, but Roosevelt stepped aside and quickly struck him again and again, then stamped his head into the earth. There were plenty of rattlesnakes around there, for the country was one great prairie-dog colony, and when they came upon another, the President, like Abernethy, repeated his special performance. The others did not like it--it looked too risky--and that night when the President was not in the vicinity, Cecil Lyon and Captain McDonald quietly removed the quirt which had been left hanging on the Presidential saddle, and said nothing of the matter at all. But the President was a good deal disturbed when he wanted to use the quirt next day, and wondered and grumbled about it, until finally Captain Bill confessed the fact and reasons of its disappearance.

"We were afraid you'd get snake-bit, Mr. President," he said, "and we're having too much fun to have it stopped by an accident like that."

Theodore Roosevelt saw the joke and laughed. Then he led them away on a race that if not as dangerous as coquetting with rattlesnakes was at least more boisterously exciting.

They got four or five wolves that first day and the next, most of them also taken alive by Abernethy, and these they carried to camp and lariated out. It was a good start for a menagerie, and they added to it daily.

It was on the second day that Chief Quanah's family arrived--his favorite wife, Too-nicey, and the two others whose names are not remembered, but may have been Some-nicey and Quite-nice-enough, together with a small boy and a papoose; and these in their hack followed the hunt with the others. It was a genuine jubilee when a coyote was started up and was followed by that boisterous company; the buggy of "War Bonnet," and Burnett hitting only the high places; Too-nicey and her matrimonial alliance bouncing along in the hack, with the dog-wagon, wildly excited--a regular canine explosion--bringing up the rear. Then, what excitement when the wolf was finally run down and killed or captured; what rejoicing by everybody--including Too-nicey, Quite-nicey, and Pretty-nicey, or whatever their names might be.

"They gathered about the big fire, cowboy fashion."]

But now it developed that the three Nicey's could serve a good purpose on a hunt like that as well as for mere decoration. They had eyes--marvelous eyes--that could see a wolf far across the prairie when the eyes of white men could not distinguish even a sign. There was no need of a glass when the wives of Quanah sat in their hack and scanned the horizon. Certainly that was an unusual hunting party, and very likely a unique experience, for all concerned.

But perhaps the best part of the hunting was the evening, after all. Then it was that they gathered about the big fire, cowboy fashion, with Chief Quanah Parker in their midst, talking to them--repeating the traditions of his father and his tribe--the tale of his mother's capture, the story of his own life and battles--his views and his religion of later years.

In a former chapter we have told of the massacre of Fort Parker and the capture of the little girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was adopted by the tribe, married a chief, and in time became Chief Quanah's mother. Gathered about the campfire on Deep Red Creek, in a wide circle of loneliness, with "Tom" Burnett, who understands the Indian language "better than the Indians themselves," acting as interpreter and the President of the United States listening, the son of that little captured girl told that story, now, and he supplemented it with the story of his father--a sequel that will not be out of place here.

The tribe had loved the little captive white girl, the story runs, and the little girl had learned to love her captors. She had learned their speech and forgot her own; then, by and by when she was no longer a little girl, a great chief named Nacona had wooed her and made her his wife. Nacona was a mighty warrior and made frequent raids on the white settlements and carried off much property--cattle and horses.

But finally his last raid came. Captain Sul. Ross (later Governor Ross), stationed at Fort Griffin with a troop of Rangers--sixty trained Indian fighters--was watching for an opportunity to fall upon Nacona, unawares. The opportunity came when Nacona, with his braves and many of their squaws and children, were camped one day at the mouth of Talking John Creek in Hardeman County. There was good hunting on Talking John Creek, and Nacona and his braves, fresh from a raid on the white settlements below, had stopped there for a few days to rest and recuperate before taking up the final homeward march. They felt secure and had no thought that Rangers were anywhere in the vicinity.

Then suddenly there was a clatter of horses' feet, a crack of carbines, and Captain Ross with his sixty fighting devils were upon them. There was no time for preparation. Most of the Indians fled wildly, leaving their squaws and their captured plunder. Nacona's wife, who had been the little captured Parker girl, was in the camp with him; also their two children, Quanah, and his little sister, Prairie Flower.

With the first charge of the Rangers, Nacona seized his rifle, leaped upon his horse and rushed after his braves, in the hope of gathering them for battle. That his wife and children would not be harmed by the white men he knew. He knew also, that the case was desperate, and he realized this more fully when he found that his braves were hopelessly scattered, and in full flight.

Nacona prepared to meet his death. The mounted Rangers were already close upon him and he would die like the great chief that he was. Beneath a large mesquite tree he dismounted and seating himself began chanting the death song. Captain Ross and a detachment of Rangers rode up. Nacona still chanted on. Then suddenly it may have occurred to him that they meant to take him alive. They would imprison him, perhaps hang him. He would die fighting.

Rousing as from a dream, he ceased his chant and throwing his rifle to his shoulder, fired. The bullet missed, but it brought a quick answering shot from a Ranger at Captain Ross's side, and the chief dropped forward, his face in the grass.

So died Nacona, bravely, as a chief should die, and was buried where he fell. In time his grave became a landmark. And Nacona's wife, who had been Cynthia Ann Parker--no longer of the white race, but an Indian in language and habits and affiliations--was brought by her new captors, once more to dwell among her own kind, bringing with her the boy Quanah, and his little sister, Prairie Flower. The mother was never satisfied with civilization and always longed to return to the tribe. Little Prairie Flower--homesick and delicate--pined away and soon followed Nacona to the Spirit Land. The boy Quanah was sent back to his father's people, for he was a chief in his own right. In time he became a great leader of the Comanche Tribe, and, unlike his father, a friend of his mother's race. He surrounded himself with the comforts and many of the luxuries of white men; his home to-day is truly a white man's home, with handsome furnishings, a piano and pictures; his voice has been heard in the white man's councils, and a white man's city was named in his honor. But the language of white men he has never learned.[15]

Altogether that wolf hunt was a great success. Seventeen wolves completed the result of the five days of hunting, most of them taken alive and lariated out around the camp--a lively and musical collection that delighted all parties concerned, except possibly the wolves themselves. As for President Roosevelt he enjoyed this vigorous isolated vacation continuously. But it was not easy to preserve the isolation of that camp. Every day visitors came riding or driving across the country, from somewhere, to seek an audience with the nation's Chief Executive. There were men who wanted office for themselves; men who wanted office for other people; men who wanted every sort of Presidential assistance under the sun; men who came merely out of curiosity and for the purpose of relating how they had visited "Teddy" in his hunting camp and taken a hand in the sport. A guard of soldiers from Fort Sill was supposed to picket the reservation, but would-be visitors eluded the men and somehow got through the lines. They did not get past Captain Bill, who met them and serenely but surely turned them back. If they had business, Washington was the place to transact it, he said. The President was here only for pleasure. Some went willingly enough--others protested, but all went. The President's days in the field, and those rare evenings about the campfire were not to be marred by business or any mere social diversions.

And when it was all over Theodore Roosevelt, in his enthusiasm pronounced it all "Bully!" and repeated it, and said he had never had a better time in his life, which was probably a correct statement.

And when they all rode back to Frederick he led the way again, and they set out with a whoop and a run and yell, regular cowboy style, and as they came into town where there was a great crowd waiting, the people went fairly wild, as of course they would. Then the President had to talk to the crowd again--he had said a few words on his arrival--and tell them what a good time he had had, and what a great country this was in general, and that part in particular, and how much he thanked them for letting him come there, and how he was going on to Colorado for a bear hunt, but how he never expected to have any better time than he had had right there in Comanche, on the Deep Red wolf-hunt with Tom Waggoner and Burke Burnett, and Bill McDonald and John Abernethy, and Quanah Parker and Too-nicey, Some-nicey and Plenty-nice-enough--

No, he didn't say all that either, but he said the right thing for the occasion, just as he always does, and especially on an occasion like that, where he is happy and full of life and the wild freedom of the open. And every man within sound of his voice was his friend forever, from that moment, regardless of his politics, and no man of all there, was a warmer admirer and friend than Captain Bill McDonald of Texas, who was a "hell-roaring" democrat and hadn't wanted to go.

He did not accompany the President to Colorado, though the arrangement would have just suited both sides. But after all, he was a Ranger, and there was other kind of game--game on which it is always open season--waiting to be brought home. He accompanied the President's party a distance on their journey; then he said:

"Well, Mr. President, I'm getting out of my jurisdiction. I guess I'll leave you, now."

"But Captain, you are coming to see me in Washington, some day," said the President as he grasped his hand.

"I don't know, Mr. President. I don't know how to put on a plug hat and one of these spike-tailed coats, and pigeon-toed shoes."

"Well, don't try. Come exactly as you are, and there are a few of those spike-tailed fellows around the Capitol that I'll let you take a shot at. Now remember, you're coming--just as you are!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: The story as told by Chief Quanah not having been preserved, most of the details here given are drawn from an article by Fred. Harvey.]