The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [389]
VII
In September 1905 George Herbert Locke, an editor at Ginn and Company of Boston, sent Roosevelt a complimentary copy of William Joseph Long’s new Northern Trails; Some Studies of Animal Life in the Far North. It was disingenuous of Locke, who knew that Roosevelt considered Long a nature faker and a prig with epicurean tastes. But controversy sells books. Roosevelt read Northern Trails and was infuriated by Long’s inaccurate description of wolves. Feeling empowered by his field observations in the Goat Pasture, Roosevelt sent a private letter to Locke, lambasting Long as a fraud. “There are statements made in the story which from my own knowledge of animals I am confident are utterly inaccurate,” he wrote. “To anyone who knows the relative prowess of a single big wolf and of a lynx, or has seen the ease with which a good fighting dog who knows his business will kill a lynx without himself getting harmed, the whole account of the way two wolves kill a lynx is absurd. Then again, take the account of the killing of the caribou by the white wolf, by a quick snap where the heart lays. The whole account is full of inaccuracies which it is hard to understand in any observer who knows anything about wolves or deer.” 89
Sounding like a fact-checking schoolmaster, Roosevelt listed more than a dozen errors Long had made pertaining to wolves alone. Besides having mastered zoological books on wolves, Roosevelt had listened carefully to Catch ’Em Alive Jack in the Big Pasture. This combination led Roosevelt to believe he was the world’s foremost authority on wolves. At least, he said, London in Call of the Wild and Kipling in the Jungle Books made it clear that they were writing fiction. By contrast, Long, had again written in his preface, audaciously, that “every incident is minutely true to fact.” Balderdash! was Roosevelt’s response. “Wolves normally kill any large animal by biting at the flanks or haunches,” Roosevelt fumed. “Occasionally, but much more rarely, they seize by the throat. I have known them in the hurly-burly of the fight to seize in many different ways, but never under any circumstances have I known them to seize in the way described by Mr. Long.”
Roosevelt sent a copy of this letter to Catch ’Em Alive Abernathy. These two outdoorsman, both astonishingly indifferent to risk, now operated in tandem when it came to wolf studies: the president and the backwoodsman formed a united front. When they were together, they exchanged knowing looks, implying that they shared frontier values which could not be understood by easterners. Roosevelt claimed that Abernathy was an American original. In the fall of 1905 Roosevelt insisted that Catch ’Em Alive, scuffed boots, plain manners, and all, visit the White House as his guest of honor. Roosevelt was eager to show Abernathy off to his Ivy League friends. He treated Abernathy, in fact, like a trophy from the Wild West. Roosevelt held dinners in Abernathy’s honor and invited, among others, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and John Jacob Astor. “Although I made no pretensions as a conversationalist—and do not now for that matter—I did not need much initiative in a talk with the aging author of Innocents Abroad,” Abernathy recalled of meeting Twain. “He had plenty to say and was quite willing to do most of the talking.”90
On arriving at the White House for the first time, Abernathy was escorted into a cabinet meeting. Only one chair was available, so he took it. The president was not yet there, and the clock ticked on. The cabinet members, including Elihu Root, eyed Abernathy with suspicion. He was wearing a six-shooter and seemed ready to fan the hammer. Suddenly Roosevelt burst into the room, eyes flashing at Abernathy