1Lights! Camera! Action!
THE WOLF WAS AS BIG AS A PONY AND AS SLEEK AS A GREYHOUND. There was snow on his head and along his bony back-line and on his tail, and he looked like a specter in the Klondike cabin lit only by a single flickering lamp. His hunger had brought him into the cabin, but his cowardice held him motionless for a moment just inside the open door as he watched the astonished prospector. The wind wailed, driving a screen of snow before it into the cabin. The wilderness night was black, and bitter cold.
The man was unarmed. A table was between him and the wolf but that was his only protection. The animal waited for the man to attack. When he did not, when he made no move, the wolf moved forward.
The man retreated, reaching behind him for a weapon, but finding none. He dared not turn around to search and thereby put his back to the wolf who favored, above all else, such a target. The man kept groping behind him as he retreated, until at last his hand felt a chair. He clutched it firmly, his eyes on the wolf. Just as the man gripped the chair, the beast made his move.
The wolf leaped in a ravenous rush, forepaws outstretched to throw the man, fangs bared to rip him. The wolf soared up, all the way up, and over the table, his slavering mouth wide for the kill. But the man had the chair. As the wolf came on, he stepped adroitly to one side like a matador eluding a raging bull. Setting himself in a firm stance, he hit the wolf with the chair, swinging it in a wide arc from right to left, stopping the wolf in mid-air.
The chair shattered, the wood splintering against the beasts skull. The animal fell heavily to the floor of the cabin.
The man finished his swing and, without pausing, launched another, bringing what remained of the chair down upon the still fighting wolf. Finally only a chair leg remained in his hand.
He hit the wolf a third time, carefully keeping his back to the camera as he had been instructed.
CUT! shouted the director excitedly.
Wearing the puttees and whipcord breeches that were standard equipment in movie circles in 1910, the director dashed out from behind his protective steel screen. For this was a movie set. The cabin had no roof, the snow was shredded cotton, the wind was a huge fan. Only two small items were real: the wild wolf and the courage of Tom Mix, who had just dropped him.
Great job! Great! the director enthused, seizing the chair leg. Theyve never seen anything like this. Ill make history with this picture. A real wolf!
I dont know if hes dead, said Tom Mix, the star of the picture.
Of course hes dead! the director shouted. Hes as dead as a doornail! Well start riots with this one! Killing a live wolf with bare hands!
I used a chair, Tom Mix objected.
Chair! Did you have a gun? No!
One of the property men, thinking the wolf was dead, moved over to scrutinize the beast. At that instant the wolf recovered consciousness. It had not been killed. It sank its fangs in the leg of the property man, who pulled away and ran off scene screaming with pain.
Out of the way! shouted Tom to the director and crew, frozen with terror.
Tom darted forward and pushed the table over on top of the wolf. He tore a leg from one end of the table. As the wolf emerged from beneath the board, Tom hit him between the eyes, again and again, until at last the beast lay still.
It wasnt the last time Tom Mix was to dispose of an evil adversary. When the man who was to grow in popularity until he became the worlds greatest cowboy movie star had finished with an enemy, the wretch was dead for always!
There were other harrowing scenes to be shot that day, and it was a long time till the director dismissed his cast and crew. As Tom Mix and I drove home, Tom chatting as cheerily as if he were a different sort of person and had settled a big deal over the telephone from behind an executives desk in a luxurious office, I wondered once again whether I had been married for nearly a year to a real human being or to some fabulous demigod, and I couldnt help thinking back to the day in St. Louis when I had first laid eyes on Tom Mix.
Will Rogers grinned and extended one hand to me as he scratched his head with the other in his fashion so familiar to me and which was to be known all over the world in later years.
Olive Stokes! What in the world are you doing here?
Ill have you know that Im having an exhibition of one of my pictures at the Fair, I replied.
You can always bet on a Stokes! he exclaimed. He had been very close friends with my parents out in Oklahoma. We both carried Cherokee blood in our veins as a further bond between our families.
He turned and beckoned to a dark, slender and very handsome young man who was standing nearby practicing with a lasso.
Come here, Tom, he called.
When the young man came up, Will Rogers chuckled.
Heres how they grow them in Oklahoma, Tom. As pretty as the country itself. Olive Stokes, this is Tom Mix.
Toms dark eyes seemed to bore through me as he shook my hand and muttered, Howdy, maam.
I suppose I may have blushedfor girls did blush in those daysbut if I did, it was more because this unexpected introduction had disturbed my mood, than because I felt any immediate attraction to Wills friend. My father, whom I adored, had died just a few weeks before, and the shock of losing him had plunged me into an abyss of grief from which I was just emerging. It had changed me from a carefree and sometimes intransigent ranch child, as wild as the country of my birth, into a sober girl reaching for maturity.
As the three of us sauntered over to a bench in front of a sign reading ZACK MULHALLS WILD WEST SHOW, I found myself ignoring Tom and practically forgetting he was even therealthough I did notice how he kept playing with the rope he was holding. Later I learned that he couldnt sit still without doing something with his hands.
My trip to St. LouisI had come there to receive an award for a painting of mine that was being exhibited in the Indian Territory building at the Fairwas my first real venture into the world since that awful period of sorrow.
