Captain Bill McDonald, Texas Ranger: A Story of Frontier Reform

by Albert Bigelow Paine

"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.