Aug, 13, 2009 - Some legendary characters are born, some are created, and others are born to do legendary things simply by being themselves, which seems to be the case with Jack Abernathy and his two sons.
Jack Abernathy's contribution to Texas legend centered on his talent for catching wolves barehanded. In the early days of the 20th Century, when wolves could still be found, catching the animals bare-handed was actually a useful and even lucrative skill.
The wider world might never have known of Abernathy's peculiar talent if not for President Theodore Roosevelt, who saw Jack Abernathy in action and probably said, "Bully!" Roosevelt's admiration brought the Texas cowboy a certain level of fame, along with an appointment as Marshal of the Oklahoma Territory.
The story of Jack Abernathy and his well-traveled son starts with their father and his unique one-on-one confrontations with wolves, which he learned quite by accident when he was a 15-year old cowboy in the cattle country of North Texas. One day, two greyhounds of which he was particularly fond jumped a wolf. The wolf took exception and killed one of the dogs and was in the process of dispatching the second one when young Jack caught up to the scene.
He rushed to save his dog, fully expecting the wolf to run away. Instead, it lunged for his throat, teeth bared. Abernathy stuck up a hand to ward off the attack and at the same time stuck his hand in the wolf's mouth, confounding the animal because it couldn't bite as long as Abernathy held its lower jaw open. Abernathy's brother rode up on the spectacle and calmly asked, "Well, what have you got there, Jack?"
"I've got something I can't get loose from," he answered truthfully, because man and animal were in a standoff, neither one capable of either fighting or retreating.
His brother offered to shoot the wolf, but Jack, having taken the matter this far, wanted to take the wolf alive. He used a cord to tie a running hitch knot around the wolf's jaws, jerked his hand out and pulled the cord to tie the wolf's mouth shut. Then he slung the animal over his saddle and hauled it back to camp for the other cowboys to see.
Abernathy might have caught a few more wolves in this manner before getting married and becoming a musician, piano salesman and father. In time, he returned to cowboying and catching wolves. He found that he could sell live wolves and coyotes to zoos and circuses for $50 each, which was very good money in those days.
Teddy Roosevelt had just been sworn in for his second term of office when he saw Abernathy in action at an exhibition in Oklahoma. "It was as remarkable a feat of its kind that I have ever seen," he later wrote.
Roosevelt appointed Abernathy as U.S. Marshal of Oklahoma Territory at a salary of $5,000 a year. He wrote to Abernathy, "I guess you had better not catch live wolves as a part of a public exhibition while you are Marshal. If on a private hunt you catch them, that would be all right, but it would look too much as if you were going into show business if you took part in a public celebration."
They don't write Presidential papers like that anymore.
In 1909, when Abernathy's oldest son Louie was nine and the youngest boy Temple was five, they decided they wanted to ride horseback from their home in Guthrie, Okla. to Santa Fe, NM, a distance of some 800 miles through rugged and isolated country still thick with various outlaw bands.
Jack Abernathy gave the boys his blessing and sent them on their way. Word of the unlikely journey by the pint-sized travelers spread and they were treated as celebrities when they arrived in Santa Fe.
A year later, the two boys saddled up and rode from Oklahoma to visit their father and Roosevelt in New York. The two boys, now ages 10 and 6, made the return trip via automobile, completing one of the country's first road trips at a time when there were very few roads.
The next year, they rode horseback from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific as part of a promotion that would pay them $10,000 if they made it in 60 days or less. The trip took 63 days and they not only missed out on the money, but they had to pay their own expenses too.
When the boys were ages 12 and 8, respectively, they rode an Indian motorcycle from Oklahoma to New York. At some point, both boys settled down and became productive and respected citizens of their communities, and both lived to ripe old ages.
As for Jack Abernathy, he worked in motion pictures for a while then went into the oil business as a wildcatter. He died in 1941, at age 65, in Long Beach, Calif., a long way from those Texas prairies and the wolves that helped make him, and later his sons, famous.
