It was a bright moonlit night in the Avis Community ten miles north of Jacksboro, and the weather was hot. The year was 1920. My sister, Elma, always remembered that August 6th was "Mad Wolf Day". Ethel Laird called Mom from the Nat Davis Ranch where they were living, and told her a wolf' was at their place chasing horses, killing chickens, biting their cows and hogs, and it chased their dog up onto the front porch where a terrible fight had just taken place around the cot where a young boy, Eddie Walton, was sleeping. Her husband, Pearl Laird, had to be away that night for some reason and had asked Eddie to stay at the ranch with Ethel so she and their little girl would not have to be there alone. Eddie pulled the covers up over his head, and when the animals moved their fight to the yard he got himself inside the house as fast as he could. The wolf ran back up onto the porch, reared upon the screen door with its front paws, and looked in at them. Ethel said "its old ears were standing straight up". That is when they saw the wolf at close range and were able to determine what it was.
The Jesse F. Finch family was living in the Store Building on the abandoned refinery site at Avis. That was us. My dad had bought the Avis Townsite and Store Building and in 1918 we moved into it. Mom got on the Party Line and started alerting everybody. Time was around 10:00 o'clock in the evening.
News spread quickly, except for those who had no phone. Pop and some more men, including his brother, Uncle Clarence Finch, John and Charley Campbell, formed a hunting party and set forth in Pop's Model T. armed with guns, keeping an eye out for the wolf and going to the places without phones to warn them.
By the time they reached Bill Stinehouse he already knew about it, because it had been to his place but had gone on just before they arrived. Bill had even "run out on the porch and kicked it off his dog". John Campbell went on with the men and Charley stayed to watch for it in case it came back. It did. Charley was on top of Bill's house when he heard a commotion in the chicken house. Then he watched it go to the hog pen, bite the hogs, and to the cow-lot and bite the cows before going back to the chicken house and starting its rounds again. Once it stopped briefly in a moonlit clearing and Charley had an excellent chance to shoot it from his vantage point, but a nephew of his had been playing with the gun that day and he removed the firing pin.
Between its two visits to the Stinehouse place, the wolf had gone to Alex McAnear's. Jim McAnear, his son, was sitting on the edge of their front porch, gun across his knees, expecting it to come around one corner of the house, but heard a noise, looked, and it was coming around the other. Jim barely made it inside, whirled and shot at it through the screen door but missed, and it trotted on through the breezeway, out the other side, and went on.
One lady on the Party line was hard of hearing. She would listen in and if she missed something that was said, which was often, she'd shout, "What Was That? I Can't Hear You Shake Up Your Box".
Peter Carroll Stevens, wife Desdemona and daughter, Floy Dell, were our closest neighbors. They came from Byers, Texas and had moved into the Office Building just north of us at Avis. The wolf didn't go to their place, but the stork did. The Stevens had two older daughters, Curtis and Ivy, and both had married Hughes men. They were visiting from Byers this night, and one of these girls was expecting a baby. Around midnight, Mom went over there to assist with the delivery. My 12-year-old big brother, Virgil, was scared out of his wits, begged her not to go. He helped her through the strong barbwire fence between our place and theirs, not knowing whether the wolf was right on his heels or not. Then he had to rush back to protect his 3 little sisters, Elma, Oleta and LaRue. Said he "couldn't hold both doors at the same time". The front and back doors were 52 feet apart, and neither had a lock on it. The Hughes infant was a boy, and they named him Roy Dellwyn.
As the men went from place to place, some in cars and some afoot, others formed their own posse. By now, Alex McAnear and W.L. Walton were along when Pop's group went to Will Franklin's house. At first, Will thought they were "pulling his leg" and wouldn't believe that a mad wolf was on the loose, biting everybody's livestock. Ridiculous!!! Just before daylight, however, he changed his tune. He and his wile, Alice, were raising a Registered Poland China pig, taking the best of care of it, even to keeping it in a pen to itself. The pen was made of small tree logs and the way the logs crossed at the corners left an opening big enough for the pig to stick her head out to see what was going on, and the wolf nearly tore her nose off. Then it went into the pasture where the milk cows were grazing and bit them. It also bit dogs, chickens, "scarecrows" - anything that moved - before traveling on. Will loaded his gun and joined the hunting parties. So did Ira Bird and Uncle Frank Reeves, both of the Burton Springs area.
By the time daylight came, more hunting parties were forming. Men locked their horses securely in their barns to protect them from the wolf, and conducted their search on foot. Several were in the Pudden Valley - Post Oak area, such as Dee Campsey, Dick Campsey, Frank Scarber, Lite Cannon, Riley Scarber, Volley Scarber and Raymond Cooper. To know the wolf's whereabouts at any specific time would be almost impossible, but it was thought to be at Rupert Graves' place some time after it left Will Franklin's.
The wolf must have hung out on the Knox Ranch for a period of time because later some black muley cows over there went mad.
Its reign of terror ended that afternoon at Ed Brown's place. Charley Waldrop was the one who killed the wolf. He started out that day with his brothers, Cecil, Sam and Truett, and they were soon joined by Lon Campsey, his brother, Shan Campsey, and there may have been others. The hunters split up and they were all in the woods looking for the wolf when Charley, Lon and Shan decided to go see if Ed Brown knew anything about it.. Charley was armed with a 12-guage single barrel shotgun while Lon and Shan were both carrying fully loaded .22 target rifles, each gun holding 14 rounds in the magazine with one more in the firing chamber, cocked and ready for action.
Ed said, yes, he had seen it a short while back. He had watched it drag an old settin' hen off the nest and carry her down the creek a-ways where it ate her. He could show them "right where it happened". They went to the place, viewed the remains and scattered feathers, and while doing so, Charley's dog disappeared off down Crooked Creek and came face to-face with it. By this time the 3 boys had spread out, with Charley in the center, Lon about 300 yards west of Charley with Shah about the same distance to the east of him. The wolf gave chase and suddenly, here came the dog running for dear life with the wolf close behind. They dashed under a fence toward where Charley was standing and it frightened him so, he yanked his gun up, fired into wolf, dog and all, killing the wolf at, point blank range, without a scratch on his dog. And that was the only shell in Charley's gun.
They cut the wolf's head off and Pop took it into Jacksboro, shipped it to Austin for analysis. Results were positive -- the wolf had hydrophobia. Nowadays it is more often referred to as rabies.
Within twenty-one days animals started going mad. Up until then, people had refused to destroy them. Some even went on using the milk from their milk cows.
The prized pig belonging to Will and Alice Franklin had to be killed immediately. The wolf did Will Franklin a big favor, in one respect. It seems that in the pasture where he kept his milk cows there was a huge tree stump he had been trying to dig out of the ground, to no avail. It simply would not budge. When their cow, "Old Broad", went mad she would run and butt the stump, back off and do it again. Over and over, until she and the stump were both "out".
Pop happened to be at the McAnear place when their cow came in from Crooked Creek, wild-eyed, bawling. He and Alex had to climb up on top of the McAnear house to get out of her way. Her calf went mad, too.
Charley Waldrop refused to kill his dog until one day it fell down in a fit and he had no choice but to shoot it.
As the animals went mad, cows could be heard in the distance, running and bawling. Hogs went berserk and chickens walked around as if they were walking on tight-wires, their necks all stretched out. They would fall, flounce around and get up, only to fall again. All dogs that came in contact with the wolf had to be destroyed. Bill Stinehouse had one hog that tried to tear the pen up while the other just stood there, sway-backed, trembling. These stricken animals were extremely difficult to kill. My sister, Oleta, remembered watching as Pop fired 8 rounds from his .22 into a cow's head in a cow-lot on the Laird place before it finally fell.
It was common to hear shots ring out day and night from various directions. Squealing, bawling, squawking, yipping, yapping, howling ... then silence.
And the Party Line carrying the latest tragedy to the neighbors, with the hard-of-hearing lady shouting: "What Was That? I Can't, Hear You. Shake Up Your Box".