The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (98 page)

Now, heading toward Fort Sill two year later, huge crowds showed up to hear President Roosevelt’s speeches in Pittsburgh, Louisville, Saint Louis, and a hodgepodge of depots in between en route to Texas. A high-pitched train whistle always announced his arrival. Children—anonymous and interchangeable—stood along the tracks, waving flags and looking for a glimpse of their hero. Refusing to disappoint them, Roosevelt thrust his head out the train window, shouting hellos and farewells. Courthouse bells usually clanged on his arrival in every village. Water tanks were invariably painted red, white, and blue. Vendors set up wiener and lemonade carts, hoping to capitalize on the whir of anticipa
tion that a visit by T.R. brought to town. Usually, Roosevelt’s impromptu stages were fairground bleachers, hotel balconies, or railroad sidings. As on all of Roosevelt’s whirlwind tours, whistles blew and the atmosphere accompanying each speech was festive. Americans had acquired a new respect for Roosevelt following the 1904 election, and this respect burst forth like the plume of a fountain.

Roosevelt formed an important alliance with the great Comanche leader Quanah Parker. Together they worked to bring buffalo back to the Wichita Mountains
.
Quanah Parker.
(Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

On April 4, in Steubenville, Ohio, however, tragedy struck. The Roosevelt Special accidentally bulldozed into a man who was boarding a freight train and plowed right over him as it went west at thirty-five or forty miles per hour.
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Roosevelt grew despondent over this; he was also embarrassed. Yet he refused to dwell on the death, and his Roosevelt Special went on. He took in the varied American landscapes from the window of his train compartment: the indolent Ohio hamlets fading, the drainage ditches of Missouri receding, the dark and haunted Oklahoma prairie stretching for hundreds of miles south of Tulsa. On a map, it seemed obvious that Oklahoma had a weird language all its own: Okmulgee, Wetumka, Wapanuka. Staring out into the darkness Roosevelt sought the hills, tall pines, and thicket oaks beyond. The prairielands soothed the neurotic and agonized part of his spirit.

By the time the Roosevelt Special reached Dallas, the president, alert and curious, was in a buoyant mood. Cowboys along the tracks pointed at him in admiration. People craned their necks to see the Rough Rider who hadn’t lost his luster. In honor of his visit, Dallas had decorated the large public square near the Oriental Hotel with flags and bunting; an estimated 30,000 people came to hear the president speak about the “American century.” Even oil field scouts and get-rich-quick geologists had come to Dallas in wagons. Appealing to the chauvinism of the Lone Star state, he called Texas a “mighty and beautiful state,” a “veritable garden of the Lord.”
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Roosevelt promoted improvements for the Trinity River and irrigation projects around Dallas in general. Aridity could be conquered by forest conservation and modern engineering. More water and grass, he said, were needed in Texas. And appealing to the old Confederates’ pride, he boasted that he was half southern gray, half northern blue, but
all
Lone Star. This became a standard applause line in his stump speeches in Texas.

At Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Roosevelt inspected national troops and spoke of the Monroe Doctrine as a guiding American principle. He also called for restoring integrity to Wall Street. On every street Roosevelt was greeted as if he were a hometown boy who had made good. A major thoroughfare had been renamed Roosevelt Avenue in his honor
(only the christening of the polar explorer ship made him prouder). While on horseback in Texas, Roosevelt always made sure a lasso was coiled around the horn of his saddle, just in case a wild horse or runaway cattle entered his domain. What a showman Roosevelt was! Speaking like a cowboy, Roosevelt acted as if dusty ole San Antone were the greatest place on earth. He had learned Texans’ lingo, mores, and folkways. “In the old days in Texas I understand that there used to be a proverb that while you would not generally want a gun at all; if you did want it you wanted it quick, and you wanted it very bad,” Roosevelt said to a crowd of well-wishers. “That is just the way I feel about the navy. I feel that if we have it the chances are that we will not need it, but that if we do not have it, we might need it very bad.”
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III

From San Antonio it was on to Fort Worth and Wichita Falls, where many of the largest cattle ranches in the world were situated. Two “old style Texas cattlemen,” as T.R. described them—Burk Burnett and Guy Waggoner—were going to lead the presidential wolf hunt to the Big Pasture.
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Between them, these two pro-Roosevelt ranchers practically owned Fort Worth. Burnett, in particular—who had been a trail boss on the 1,200-mile cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail to Kansas in 1867—was a legend along the Red River of the South. He was known for his financial acumen and hard deals, and his “Four Sixes” brand dominated the North Texas range for decades. He was also a meticulous caretaker of his cattle empire; there was no such thing as a collapsed corral fence on his property. Moving his ranch operations to Wichita Falls—as well as his Longhorns, Durhams, and Herefords—he produced the best cattle strains in Texas. A grin-and-bear-it type, a man of deliberate action who never knew regret, Burnett wasn’t enamored of grammar books, dictionaries, or the history of European civilization. Like Roosevelt he was an advocate of direct action.

A close friend of Quanah, Burnett leased 300,000 acres from the Indian Territory to graze cattle. Often, Burnett slept on the wraparound front porch of Quanah’s Star House (which Burnett had purchased for Quanah), preferring Indian company to the drifters working in Fort Worth’s stockyards district. But for all his Texan down-homeness and honesty, Burnett was extremely rich. His feeder steers were selling at a fair market price, and he had a lot of them. At the time Burnett organized the wolf hunt for Roosevelt he had more than 20,000 head of branded cattle on a spread totaling 206,000 acres.
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In anticipation of President Roosevelt’s arrival, Catch ’em Alive Jack Abernathy scouted for the most desirable places to camp in the Big Pasture and found an ideal spot along Deep Red Creek in Oklahoma. Some chauvinistic Texans criticized Abernathy for not holding the hunt on Lone Star soil, but the objections passed. Both Burnett and Waggoner did supply Texan “daredevil” riders—their hired ranchhands with the best equestrian skills—to impress the president. (Guy Waggoner, in fact, was an expert rider himself. He became head of the Texas racing commission and eventually moved to New Mexico, where betting on horse races was legal.) Ranchers from some ten or fifteen counties tried to wangle a slot on the hunt party. Every man under fifty wanted to be an extra in the Roosevelt extravaganza.

Roosevelt’s longtime physician friend Alexander Lambert was designated as the official photographer for the hunt; no reporters would be allowed to witness it, because there was a strong possibility of an embarrassing moment for the president. Lambert was perhaps Roosevelt’s most intimate friend. He specialized in diagostics, internal medicine, and drug addiction and was also the president’s personal physician.
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His loyalty to the president and to the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality was so great that he left no diaries or reflections about their times together. With his thick goatee, large ears, and an ever-present doctor’s bag, he was a fixture on all of Roosevelt’s hunts. A professor of clinical medicine
at the Cornell University medical school and director of the fourth division at Bellevue Hospital, he was one of the best doctors of his generation. Besides enjoying his company immensely Roosevelt was beholden to Lambert for his sophisticated knowledge of how mosquitoes carried yellow fever.
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Roosevelt’s hunt in the Great Pasture of the Indian Territories (near Oklahoma) attracted the eager participation of the richest ranchers in Texas
.
The great pasture hunt. (
Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
)

On April 5, as arranged, Roosevelt’s train arrived in the hamlet of Frederick, Oklahoma. Armed lawmen had the crowd of curiosity seekers under proper control. There was little chance of trouble. A grandstand had been built for the once-in-a-lifetime visit, with patriotic props in place. Wild cheers erupted when the president disembarked from his railroad car, waving his Stetson. About 5,000 to 6,000 people constituted the welcome committee. They came from Fort Sill–Lawton and west from Altus, from north of Hobart and south from Wichita Falls, Texas. Ranchers, farmers, and merchants had dropped whatever they were doing to come hear Roosevelt speak in the middle of nowhere. About twenty deputies patrolled Frederick, making sure that no troublemakers would disrupt the picture-perfect day. In particular, they kept a close eye on Indians. “The next time I come to Oklahoma,” Roosevelt said at the outset, to a roar of approval, “I trust I will come to a State.”
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Abernathy was sitting on his horse, Sam Bass, soaking in Roosevelt’s oratory. Accompanying Roosevelt were Colonel Lyon, Burnett, Waggoner, the former Rough Rider Bill Fortesque, Lieutenant General S. B. M. Young, Quanah (with three wives and a baby), Dr. Lambert, and the Rough Rider physician Sloan Simpson.
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There were also a few Texas Rangers. The hunt was going to be like a caravan in the Sahara. The main worry for local planners was Roosevelt’s notorious reckless riding (in October 1904 he had been thrown from his horse and received a serious injury).
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In the open space of the Twin Territories, T.R. was bound to let loose, galloping his horse’s hooves into prairie dog homes with disastrous results.

According to the
Frederick Enterprise
, President Roosevelt spoke boldly about building the Panama Canal and pleaded to be left alone by curiosity seekers while he was on his hunt. “Now I want four days’ play,” Roosevelt said. “I hear you have plenty of jack rabbits and coyotes here. I like my citizens, but don’t like them on a coyote hunt. Give me a fair deal to have as much fun as even a President is entitled to.”
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The
Washington Post
ran a huge front-page headline: “President in Wild.” The reporter wrote that the elusive jackrabbits and coy wolves had better watch out: “The distinguished party of hunters will have plenty of elbow room. The whole Territory is theirs for the asking, but the programme is to confine the hunt
to the tract of land thirty-six miles square leased by Capt. Burnett from the Kiowa and Comanche tribes.”
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The scenes of Roosevelt’s first acquaintance with Abernathy in Frederick became legendary in The
Washington Post
, the
New York Times
, and elsewhere—the two men shared a boyish predilection for nineteenth-century romance and adventure, and an abiding love of wild things. When Roosevelt spied Abernathy on horseback in Frederick, a wide smile crossed his face. “You look like a man who could catch a wolf,” Roosevelt said, shaking Abernathy’s hand. “I want to congratulate you, for I know you are going to do what Colonel Lyon says you can do.” Given his interest in coyotes (or gray wolves), Roosevelt was utterly fascinated by Abernathy’s techniques for catching them. Would the wolves do a somersault when tackled? Did every bite hurt and require stitches? But mostly Roosevelt was baffled by why the wolves became so submissive. “I can’t quite understand just all about this yet,” Roosevelt said to Abernathy.

“Well, Mr. President,” Abernathy responded, “you must remember that a wolf never misses its aim when it snaps. When I strike at a wolf with my right hand, I know it is going into the wolf’s mouth. I believe I could shut my eyes and do what you see me do, for I have caught two wolves in my life in inky darkness. However, I prefer not to shut my eyes.”
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What Roosevelt came to understand was that Abernathy simply out dominated the wolves. In all coyote or wolf packs a dominant member was genetically predisposed to force the others to submit; usually the conquered animals would roll on their backs as if to say “No more.” Abernathy had learned to use this law of the Plains. When he wrestled the wolves into submission, they came to see him as the pack leader and thus became rather docile.
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Abernathy had negated Roosevelt’s preconceived ideas about gray wolves; the heads and nose pads were considerably larger than those of coyotes, and the fur was much longer. Zoology wasn’t a fixed science, and Oklahoma had the president rethinking these wolves as a subspecies. Also, because the coyotes around Fort Sill had bred with domestic dogs, the canids in the Big Pasture–Wichitas tended to be larger (with varied coloration differences). There was also a red wolf around southwestern Oklahoma—in between the gray wolf and the coyote in size.
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