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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

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.