entails. However, both in Kentucky, and
especially in Texas, I was received with a warmth and heartiness
that surprised me, while the Rough Riders' reunion at San Antonio was
delightful in every way.

Then came the five days wolf hunting in Oklahoma, and this was unalloyed
pleasure, except for my uneasiness about Auntie Bye and poor little
Sheffield. General Young, Dr. Lambert and Roly Fortescue were each in
his own way just the nicest companions imaginable, my Texas hosts were
too kind and friendly and open-hearted for anything. I want to have
the whole party up at Washington next winter. The party got seventeen
wolves, three coons, and any number of rattlesnakes. I was in at the
death of eleven wolves. The other six wolves were killed by members of
the party who were off with bunches of dogs in some place where I was
not. I never took part in a run which ended in the death of a wolf
without getting through the run in time to see the death. It was
tremendous galloping over cut banks, prairie dog towns, flats, creek
bottoms, everything. One run was nine miles long and I was the only man
in at the finish except the professional wolf hunter Abernethy, who is
a really wonderful fellow, catching the wolves alive by thrusting his
gloved hands down between their jaws so that they cannot bite. He caught
one wolf alive, tied up this wolf, and then held it on the saddle,
followed his dogs in a seven-mile run and helped kill another wolf. He
has a pretty wife and five cunning children of whom he is very proud,
and introduced them to me, and I liked him much. We were in the saddle
eight or nine hours every day, and I am rather glad to have thirty-six
hours' rest on the cars before starting on my Colorado bear hunt.

ABERNETHY THE WOLF HUNTER

Colorado Springs, Colorado, April 20, 1905.

DEAR TED:

I do wish you could have been along on this trip. It has been great
fun. In Oklahoma our party got all told seventeen coyotes with the
greyhounds. I was in at the death of eleven, the only ones started by
the dogs with which I happened to be. In one run the three Easterners
covered themselves with glory, as Dr. Lambert, Roly Fortescue and I were
the only ones who got through excepting Abernethy, the wolf hunter. It
happened because it was a nine-mile run and all the cowboys rode their
horses to a standstill in the first three or four miles, after which I
came bounding along, like Kermit in the paper chase, and got to the end
in