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By Root 4220 0

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.42 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.43

After Roosevelt’s brief speech about Oklahoma’s statehood, the Monroe Doctrine and Indian rights, his hunt party went to the Big Pasture. Roosevelt was genuinely enamored of the open range of scrub weeds and tall grasses. About fifteen tents were set up as base camp at Deep Red Creek, a little tributary of the Red River of the South, eighteen miles from Frederick. Roosevelt shared his tent with Lambert. Chuck-wagon food was readily available. A calf with the Four Sixes brand had been slaughtered, and a famished Roosevelt ate from a hindquarter. The first night, the coyotes came up closer to camp to do their howling than Roosevelt had expected. This was the land of broken treaties where cowboys slept in their hat crown; Roosevelt felt right at home as the moon set on the prairie. As a gesture to the Comanche who didn’t speak English, the president used pidgin, and a fumbling sign language. That first evening at camp, however, the president was travel-fatigued and went to bed early. Roosevelt matter-of-factly told Abernathy, Burnett and Waggoner and the cowboys that he was spent.

IV

On Sunday morning Roosevelt woke at the crack of dawn. It was going to be a fine day for an outing. There was a breathless hush to Oklahoma’s light winds of April, which was invigorating. Air wafting up from Old Mexico, warm, sea-scented, almost tropical, filled his nostrils, and he felt at one with the land. Most of his early observations were of the prarieland, shaded by the occasional ash, pine, elm, or black walnut. Intrigued by the Big Pasture and Wichita Mountains ecosystems, Roosevelt inventoried his surroundings: rustling cottonwoods, black-tailed jackrabbits, white-tailed deer, wild turkey, stunted mesquite, tiny swifts, pecan groves, and grasshopper swarms. Around Deep Red Creek alone there were more than fifty mammals and 800 plant species.44 It didn’t take him long to notice that Didelphis marsupialis—the ubiquitous Virginia opossums—were everywhere; pretty soon they’d be waddling down Fifth Avenue in New York. Some animals—like opossums—simply knew how to adapt and survive in the face of mankind’s intrusion. And Roosevelt’s note-books were quickly filled up with bird sightings. “Cardinals and mockingbirds—the most individual and delightful of all birds in voice and manner—sang in the woods,” he wrote; “and the beautiful, many-tinted fork-tailed fly-catchers were to be seen now and then, perched in trees or soaring in curious zigzags, chattering loudly.” 45

Mostly, that first sunshiny day was spent shooting rabbits for supper. As they sat around the fire that Sunday night, sharing wild game, Abernathy was amazed to hear the president talk like a zoologist who had paddled the Red River from the Texas Panhandle to the Mississippi River. It was all firewood and snuff stories, told with the sophistication of a Harvard man. Somehow Roosevelt made even the barest incident interesting. “I was amazed at the President’s knowledge of wild animals, snakes, and even the smallest of reptiles and insects,” Abernathy recalled in a memoir. “He told of the vinegaroon, the most deadly of the poisonous creatures in Texas and Old Mexico; many of those old time hunters present had never even heard of such a reptile.”46 Clearly, Roosevelt wasn’t just a stiff-kneed politician. He came