The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [373]
“Coyote” was the Spanish name to distinguish these wolves from the larger gray wolves that lived in the same Mexico-Texas-Oklahoma range. (In writing about Oklahoma, Roosevelt often used the terms “coyote,” “prairie wolf,” and “gray wolf” interchangeably. “Thus was born Catch ’Em Alive Jack,” the historian Jon T. Coleman writes in a foreword to Abernathy’s autobiography, “the alter ego that would carry Abernathy from Texas to the White House.” 20
Roosevelt first learned of Abernathy’s bold, enterprising feats from a doctor friend, Sloan Simpson of Fort Worth, in January 1903.21 In his customary way, he grunted in disbelief and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Abernathy was brought to Roosevelt’s attention again by Colonel Lyon, over Christmas 1904. Apparently, Lyon had witnessed Catch ’Em Alive Jack hand-trap a few coyotes and immediately told the president about the crazy stunt. A vague plan was begun—that he’d go wolf coursing with Abernathy in Texas or Oklahoma soon and make the Wichita Forest Reserve the site of the buffalo preserve inspired by Baynes, Hornaday, and Lacey. Before long Roosevelt would give Abernathy the highest praise he could, saying that the plainsman had “a perfect knowledge of the coyote.”22
II
As the “Roosevelt Special” pulled out of New York on April 3, 1905, the president was in a fun-loving mood, even though he was grappling with the Moroccan crisis (involving Germany, Spain, and France, whose military and economic interests in Morocco were threatened when its emperor called for Moroccan independence and anticolonial integrity). About foreign affairs in general, Roosevelt joked to the press that he had left the 300-pound William Howard Taft “sitting on the lid keeping [it] down.” Reporters covering Roosevelt’s trip asked why he had chosen dusty Texas and the Twin Territories, of all places, for a holiday. “I don’t exactly say that I need a rest,” Roosevelt said, “but I am going to take one in the open, under God’s blue heaven.”23
Excitedly, Roosevelt talked of meeting with Rough Riders at a reunion in San Antonio, riding with Quanah in the Big Pasture, and coursing for wolves with Catch ’Em Alive Jack in the Wichitas near Sheridan’s old Fort Sill. The prospect of being caked with cracked mud seemed idyllic to Roosevelt. Other easterners might seek comfort, but he spoke in favor of burrs and smelling the blossom-spray of spring on the prairie. One of his favorite Rough Riders—“Little” (five-foot-two) Billy McGinty of Ripley, Oklahoma—would be around for casual laughs. As a horseman, Roosevelt said, McGinty had no peer. And holidaying in the dry plains had obvious benefits for Roosevelt’s heath. Asthmatic wheezing was unheard along the 1,290-mile Red River of the South: this was open-lung country. Unbeknownst to reporters at the time, Roosevelt, as noted, was also planning to see if the Wichita Forest and Game Preserve would be a suitable place to reintroduce bison. In fact, predator control was a major reason why he wanted to hunt wolves. The zoologist William Temple Hornaday at the Bronx Zoo had informed Roosevelt that he was ready—more than ready—to send his hand-fed bison herd by railroad from the Bronx to Oklahoma. All he needed was Roosevelt’s go-ahead. Roosevelt, in a sense, was serving as Hornaday’s advance scout.
Although this is unprovable, at his inauguration in March 1905 Roosevelt probably told Quanah Parker (the last of the Quahadi Comanche chiefs) about the buffalo repatriation that the New York Zoological Society was overseeing; after all, Congress had (through the Lacey Act) authorized the president to create a big game reserve in the Wichitas, just two months earlier.*