SOURCE: "The Unpublished Manuscripts of Andy Adams," Colorado Magazine, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, April, 1951, pp. 97-107.

At his death in 1935, at the age of seventy-six, Andy Adams left a considerable number of manuscripts which, a few years later, were given to the State Historical Society of Colorado by his nephew Andrew T. Adams, of Denver. An examination of these unpublished writings of the author of the acknowledged masterpiece of the literature of the cattle industry, The Log of a Cowboy, reveals much concerning his range of interests, his literary ambitions, and his strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

The published works of Andy Adams include seven books, all issued by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, and a few stories and articles scattered through newspapers and magazines. The Log of a Cowboy (1903), Andy's first appearance in print although he was already forty-four, was followed by The Texas Matchmaker (1904), a novel depicting Texas ranch life. The next year another novel of the cattle trails appeared, The Outlet (1905). It supplements The Log of a Cowboy, emphasizing the business and financial aspects of the long drives to the northern markets, rather than the life of the cowboys along the way. Andy's fourth book, Cattle Brands (1906), was made up of short stories. All fifteen of these stories deal one way or another with cowboys and cattle. Reed Anthony, Cowman (1907), is told in the form of an autobiography. The Texas cattle baron in this novel resembles Charles Goodnight, but Andy explained that Reed Anthony was a composite of a number of old cattlemen. The hero makes a fortune by good management and shrewd marketing. Andy was not so lucky. His publishers accepted no more manuscripts until 1911; then they brought out a juvenile novel, Wells Brothers, The Young Cattle Kings. In a sequel, Andy's last book, The Ranch on the Beaver, the Wells boys continued their rapid development into successful cattlemen, but it did not appear until 1927.

Anyone who reads through Andy's seven published volumes will have learned in detail the essential facts concerning one of America's most historically significant and spectacular occupations. Although his storytelling technique resembles the leisurely reminiscing of an old-timer rather than the plot-ridden, speedy, stereotyped, and slick narrative methods of so-called Western fiction today, his style fits his materials perfectly. Andy's writings lack highly contrived, exciting plots, and they contain practically no love interest; but they do have authentic, humanly significant descriptions of cowboys and cattlemen, of cattle, of ranches, of trails, of cattle towns, of storytelling around the chuckwagon, of honest and dishonest cattle dealers, and of the great plains extending from the Mexican border to Canada. No better record exists of the life of the cattle kingdom during the seventies and eighties than the account that Andy Adams wove into his fiction. Modern critics have declared his Log of a Cowboy worthy of a place beside Moby Dick, the classic of the whaling industry, and alongside Two Years Before the Mast, the classic of the sailing ship era and of freighting around the Horn; they have praised his Defoe-like realism. [Robert Spiller, et al. Literary History of the United States, 1948]. But Andy Adams wrote a vast amount of material that no one wanted to publish. Did the fault lie in the manuscripts themselves or in contemporary reading taste?

The Andy Adams manuscripts in the library of the State Historical Society of Colorado contain the following: two novels, one of 264 typescript pages and one of 298 pages, a carbon copy; two articles, one of 23 pages, printed a few years ago in the Colorado Magazine, and one of two pages; five dramas, containing 69 pages, 88 pages, 125 pages, 122 pages, and 128 pages; and fourteen short stories, with the following number of pages: 7, 13, 14, 15 (2), 16 (2), 17 (3), 18, 20, and 26, with another beginning for one of the stories on 4 pages and the complete story in duplicate, but with a different title, 14 pages,—a total of 230 pages of short fiction.

In addition to these 1349 pages of manuscript several other unpublished works are known to exist or to have existed. Mrs. Jean Henry, in her unpublished thesis, lists a novel in manuscript, entitled Army Beef, now in the possession of Eugene Cunningham; Barb Wire, a novel in manuscript, in the possession of Mrs. Walter Ferguson, Tulsa Oklahoma, in 1938, which had been written first in dramatic form, according to statements in Andy Adams' letters; a novel entitled Cohen, the Outcast, known only through a mention in a letter from Andy to J. Evetts Haley, October 27, 1931; and a dramatization of Andy's second published novel, A Texas Matchmaker. Mrs. Henry was able to borrow a manuscript copy of one of the stories included in the Colorado collection, "Judgment Hour," from a Colorado Springs resident. She also reported that, according to Dr. Newton Gaines, Andy Adams had told Dr. Gaines in 1934 that he had sent several scenario manuscripts to Hollywood, but that all had been rejected.

In a letter to J. Frank Dobie, February 9, 1927, according to Mrs. Henry, Andy stated that he had sold two articles to the Breeder's Gazette: "Westward Ho!" and "The Cow Coroner." One of his short stories, entitled "The First Christmas at the 4D Ranch," appeared in the Denver Post, Sunday, December 18, 1904. It is probable that other stories were published, but it seems that their location is unknown today. Many of his letters to friends have appeared in articles about him; many more, no doubt, remain unpublished. It is probable that little more from the pen of Andy Adams will be discovered, and that the materials are now available for a definitive study of his writing career. The remainder of this article will, however, attempt only a description and an evaluation of the manuscripts in the Colorado collection.

Probably the most interesting and readable of the manuscripts is Dividends, "Dedicated to the Memory of Winfield Scott Stratton, Founder of the Myron Stratton Home. (A Miner's Home located at Colorado Springs, Colorado.)" The first of twenty-four chapters of the 264 page novel opens as follows: "It was pay-day in camp. O'Keefe's ore haulers stood in a row on the foot-rail of the Alamo bar." Tom Bragdon, the shift boss of the graveyard relief, entered the Alamo bar, looking for the drunken but essential blacksmith Jack Moss, to get him to go back to work in the Revenue mine, operated by Billy Owens, on a lease that would expire within a month. The blacksmith must sharpen and temper the drills or the work could not go forward and precious ore would be lost by the operator. But Jack Moss is on a spree. He is finally won over by Bragdon, who promises to go partners with him, rent a cabin, take in the blacksmith's young daughter, Susie, and hire a house-keeper to look after the girl so that the county officers will not take her away from Moss. The blacksmith is discouraged and bitter, but not hopeless." 'If I had someone to believe in me,' he muttered to himself, 'one who would hold out a hand to a sinking man, I believe I could brace up and pay dividends.'" The chapter ends as follows: "The invitation to drink was forgotten, and the two men passed out of the place. The whirl of the roulette ball mingled with scraps of vulgar songs from the wine rooms; without end, the din arose and fell, for night and day were one at the Alamo bar."

As might be expected, the rest of the story depicts the struggle of Moss to regain respectability, to gain a fortune on Bull Mountain in Cripple Creek, to educate his daughter, to build a hospital and home for miners in Colorado Springs, and to encourage the courtship of his daughter by the young doctor who becomes superintendent of the hospital. The plot and the romantic episodes are not remarkable, but there are many scenes and episodes in the work that testify to Andy Adams' skill in observing and recording the details of an occupation in which men fight against nature and, at times, against each other in order to win a livelihood and a fortune if possible.

It may be recalled that Andy left Texas and came to Colorado at the time of the Cripple Creek gold rush, about 1891. In one of his few autobiographical sketches he told that he had spent some little time and his accumulated savings on Cripple Creek mining ventures. These investments did not pay off in cash dividends, but they did yield authentic materials for a mining novel. Accidents in the mine, crooked deals in mining claims, the dreary work of the toilers underground, their sordid amusements, the periods of enforced idleness and poverty, the feverish prospecting for new veins of rich ore, and the big deals when a real discovery had been made, all are here presented realistically. The Stratton story and the Cripple Creek setting are sound foundations for a novel; but Andy's fictional treatment seems a bit old-fashioned and sentimental. Although the work is dated, it is better than many a novel that was popular in America between 1900 and 1914. Since stories of Western mining are none too numerous, it is to be regretted that Dividends was never published.

The novel Lo, The Poor Indian was designed to show Indian life on the plains as it centered in horses. It does reflect Adams' extensive knowledge of horses, but its Indians are mere stereotypes. Quite conventional also are the episodes, such as Lone Horse being adopted by "an old Ogalalla Brule squaw" after his tribe had been "surprised at daybreak one morning in the early '40's of the last century, and murdered in merciless, savage cruelty," and Lone Horse establishing his manhood by stealing a horse herd from an enemy tribe. The story ends when Lone Horse wins White Feather, in spite of the opposition of her father, Strike-Ax. Our hero is chosen to be chief of the fall hunt and the father is then powerless to prevent the marriage. This work is of little value.

A third novel in manuscript, entitled Army Beef, was turned over in 1926 to Eugene Cunningham, a Western writer, now living in California, for reworking with a view to possible publication. This work is unavailable for examination; Mr. Cunningham, on October 20, 1950, wrote that he still hopes to do something with the story. According to an earlier letter from Mr. Cunningham, quoted in Mrs. Henry's thesis, "the novel is epic in scope, dealing with the delivery of Strip cattle to northern army posts—hence the title. A girl accompanies the herd belonging to her widowed mother and herself.… This is in the original script as great as The Log of a Cowboy, considering The Log in any way. It is in many respects a much better book and one potentially of interest to a far wider audience." Until more evidence is available one may question Mr. Cunningham's enthusiasm for Army Beef Andy Adams never did very well with "the girl interest." He criticized Emerson Hough for sending a girl along with a trail outfit, in North of 36; one wonders if he succeeded any better when he attempted it.

Among the fourteen short stories in the Colorado manuscript collection is a thirty-page tale entitled "A Romance in Oil." About 1920 Andy went back to Kentucky for two years and worked as a paymaster in the oil fields, in response to an old friend's offer at a time when Andy's finances were running low. Again he accumulated vocational lore that could be used fictionally. His story is, however, too romantic, too stilted, and too leisurely in style for modern taste. The narrator saves a widow from being victimized by oil lease speculators in the Sequatchie oil field in Texas. The charming widow falls into her rescuer's arms, on the last page. Again one wishes that the story were better, for the information about wildcatting, gushers, and unscrupulous oil promoters all seems authentic. There is, even today, a dearth of good fiction concerning this occupation.

Six of the stories concern a fox-hunting social group living on the Kentucky-Virginia border. No doubt Andy studied the customs of the hunt while he was back in Kentucky, and he did love horses; but his heroines and his love plots are the wish fulfillments of a lonely and aging bachelor, not plausible likenesses of reality. The titles are "A Chicken or a Horse," "End of the Chase," "An Interrupted Fox Hunt," "Out-foxed," "All in the Day's Hunt," and "The Girl, the Horse, and the Hounds." In rejecting the last of these, the associate editor of McCall's Magazine wrote to "Dear Mr. Adams," on October 20, 1933, "Thank you so much for letting us see your story, 'The Girl, the Horse, and the Hounds.' We are only sorry that it does not fit our needs at present, and we must therefore return it." Again Andy had discovered a promising field for fiction and had accumulated realistic background data, but he had failed to create convincing characters and adequate plot.

The remaining eight short stories can be described briefly. "A Forthcoming Book" tells how the narrator is signalled to by a prisoner in a jail, who reveals that he is writing a book, a mystery story of the ax-murder of a prospector by the man he had sheltered. The situation is not very convincing. Mixed Brands is a delightful collection of half-adozen campfire cowboy yarns such as those included in Andy's published books. They are held together only by the setting or story-telling framework. "Transplanting a Texan" is another bachelor's dream, recounting how the cowboy, Allen Quick, gave a cow won at poker to the young daughter of a stage station keeper. Six years later the girl is grown and the returning cowboy makes love to her, marrying her a few years afterwards, when he is ready to leave the trail. "Benefit Day" tells of a Colorado Springs father who loves baseball, but opposes the courtship of his daughter by a professional ball player. When our hero saves the game for the home town team by knocking out a home run, all ends well. Needless to say, this story does not even faintly suggest the popular and the literary appeals to be found later in the baseball fiction created by Ring Lardner. "The Residue Under the Will" is all about the money left by the proprietor of the Northwest Printing Company, but the reader does not get interested. "Judgment Hour" is somewhat better, although this story of a newspaper reporter in Colorado Springs has nothing more subtle about it than the O'Henry-like ending in which it is revealed that the reporter is himself the mysterious husband of the romantic heiress who had eloped and from whom, the editor thought, the reporter had failed to get an interview.

One other story remains, "Nature in the Raw," which is repeated in another typescript under the title "The Barren Mare," and for which there is another four-page beginning, entitled, "The Quality of Mercy." Attached to the first manuscript is a newspaper clipping of an old Lucky Strike cigarette advertisement, showing two horses battling, "as portrayed by the famous animal painter, Paul Bransom," with the caption "Nature in the Raw is seldom Mild." The story opens with the trial in a Texas court of "the case of Ann Helm, spinster, charged with abducting a child." She pleads "guilty;" but the judge, a friend of her family, tries to find out why she still refuses to give up the child. It appears that she had early observed that barren mares are unwelcome in the manada of a stallion. A pet colt that Ann had reared was thus driven out to wander alone; when wolves chased her, she rushed back into the manada only to be killed by the hooves of the hostile mares. Having been denied motherhood, Ann kidnapped the neglected child of the man to whom she was once "betrothed." She tells the judge that her betrothed, "after galloping away with a company of Texas cavalry confederates, and with never a word of explanation, returned years afterward with a wife and five children. At his death recently, the tenth one, the youngest, fell to me. At least, I have it safely in hiding." It is assumed that the sympathetic judge will see to it that the barren mare is allowed to adopt the tenth colt of another. Perhaps Jack London could have made something of the idea that inspired this story, but again Andy's efforts were unsuccessful.

In an early interview Andy said that he had no thought of becoming an author until he saw in Colorado Springs, about 1900, a performance of the unrealistic but popular cowboy play A Texas Steer, by Charles H. Hoyt. If people would pay for such a false picture, surely they would welcome stories from one who had lived the life of the cowboy himself and would endeavor to give them the truth. Although Andy tried his hand at many plays and even attempted to dramatize one or two of his novels, his dramatic efforts never reached the stage nor print. The five complete play manuscripts in the Colorado collection provide ample evidence to justify the conclusion that Andy just did not know how to write a play.

Graybeal's Guest is a four-act, romantic play with scenes in the camp of some Texas rangers sent out to catch border criminals, and on a Texas ranch where a mysterious young female from the East is visiting while trying to locate the grave of her brother. When it is discovered that she is not a spy on the side of the criminals, the drama can be concluded with her marriage to a young officer in the Texas rangers. Augustus Thomas did make successful melodramas out of such materials; not being a man of the theatre, Andy Adams could only try. His Dr. Clinksales, however, has a plot that would require even more expert handling. Dr. Clinksales had been expelled from the Maryland Medical Association after a patient of his had died as the result of an accident following surgery. The Doctor rises from his degradation as a professional gambler in the Turf gambling house at Pecos City, Texas, when he falls in love with a visiting girl from the East. He begins by practicing medicine in Cheyenne, without a license, and is so successful that he moves on to New York. Professional jealousy leads to the unearthing of his past. He fights against what he considers the unethical code of the association's "professional ethics." The heroine realizes that he is right, and rushes into his arms.

The Saving Salt, another four-act drama, presents life on a Texas ranch where the second wife of Marion Reeves, cattleman, is so discontented with the monotony of ranch life that she wants Reeves to sell out. She encourages two fast-talking, slick promoters who wish to buy the ranch and cut it up into small homesteads, in spite of the lack of water. She also tries to marry off Reeves' daughter to one of the slickers, because she considers Julia's cowboy lover, Mason, to be too crude. Of course the villains are outwitted by Reeves and Mason just in time to save the ranch and to prevent Julia's wedding to the wrong man. In spite of the melodramatic plot and some stereotyped situations, the play is readable. Some of the dialogue contains realistic cowboy language. But one could not expect The Saving Salt to satisfy a modern theatre audience unless it were transformed into a sort of Texas version of Oklahoma.

Rio Grande is a four-act drama based upon the Garza Revolution in 1893. A raiding band from Mexico has kidnapped Mary Ringgold's father and is holding him for ransom. His sister Margaret has the money, but only Mary knows the way to Padre Guiteriz's old hermitage, where the prisoner is dying. She leads the men to the meeting place. Fortunately the Texas rangers help out, recover the ransom money, and provide a husband for Mary.

The remaining drama, Agua Duice, is prefaced with the following statement by the author:

Theme: The first law of nature—self defense and the protection of one's property.

Story of Proposition: Two half brothers, John and Marion Blair comprise the firm of Blair Brothers, ranchmen and trail drivers. The latter was a high roller, the former a conservative, shrewd business man. John, the elder one, has married late in life, and had an only daughter. In Marion's family were three girls. Marion died and his two oldest daughters married adventures, who believed that the holdings of Blair Brothers was an equal partnership. Shielding themselves behind the widow, a suit, in behalf of the heirs of Marion Blair, was instituted by these two fortune hunters, claiming a half interest in the Agua Dulce land and cattle. The trial resulted in a non-suit and the two son-in-laws and their attorneys attack John Blair at a cow camp and are killed in the fight that follows. The fall of the action is a reconciliation between John Blair and Marion's widow, and the working out of the necessary love threads. Pronounced, Ah-wa Doolce. (Sweet water.)

At the end of the fourth and last act of Agua Duice is the notation "Copyrighted, March 16th, '06." It is evident from this dating and from evidence in his letters that Andy Adams worked at playwriting throughout his literary career, but that he had no success in this field. His plays are little more than amateur attempts at sentimental romance and at melodrama. In them we miss the realistic characters, the detailed pictures of everyday life on ranch and trail, and the leisurely—but pleasant—storytelling style usually found in Andy's cowboy fiction.

Andy's own attitude towards his limited success in getting his manuscripts published is indicated in the following letter, the original of which was donated, together with several others, to the Pioneer Museum in Colorado Springs, by Houghton Mifflin and Company.

Columbia, Nevada, Aug. 15, '07.

Andy Adams,
Western Correspondent,
Syndicate Work A Specialty,
Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Houghton Mifflin & Co.,
Boston, Mass.

Dear Sirs:-

I was glad to have your favor of the 7th instant. My experience of getting anything out of stories serially is not encouraging. In the first place I am a poor peddler, and further the eastern viewpoint of the West is a hard one to meet. Eastern writers, with little or no knowledge of their subject, can satisfy the short story market better than Western ones. Seemingly the standard is set, lurid and distorted, and unless one can drop into that vein, he or she will find their wares a drug on the market.

However, I am thankful for your inquiry to look at my proposed group of stories, and later I may give them a revision and send them on for a reading. In the meantime, I will await the September statement on ReedAnthony, Cowman. If a valid book like it is not wanted, there is surely a lesson in it to me, and to further inflict a public with stuff for which there is no demand, would be inexcusable.

Very truly yours,
(Signed) ANDY ADAMS

The non-fiction prose of Andy Adams is slight in quantity and in significance. It was a by-product of his fame as the author of The Log of a Cowboy and similar works. A twopage article, "Barb Wire," describing the conditions at the time when fencing the range caused cattlemen to cut the wires to permit their cattle to get to the old watering places, and a twenty-three-page address entitled "The Cattle on a Thousand Hills" are in the Colorado collection. The former probably contains the germ of the idea developed into Andy's drama Barb Wire and the novelized version of it, both now lost. The latter was printed in The Colorado Magazine, XV, 5 (September, 1938), pp. 168-180, soon after Andy T. Adams gave his late uncle's manuscripts to the State Historical Society (acknowledged on page 37 of the January, 1938, issue of the same magazine). It is a sympathetic sketch of the history of cattle from ancient times and a glowing tribute to the pastoral way of life, ending with a dozen lines of verse, including these: "And cattle gathered from a thousand hills / Have kept the trail with men." It is probable that a few other sketches by Andy appeared in the Breeder's Gazette and other periodicals, but none has been tracked down except his evaluation of cowboy writings by other authors, published under the title "Western Interpreters," in the Southwest Review, X, 1 (October, 1924, pp. 70-74.)

From the preceding description of Andy's unpublished manuscripts his limitation as a writer should be evident. He was unable to contrive an original plot, he did not understand feminine character, he rarely penetrated below the surface in depicting motivation and emotion, and he lacked interest in all philosophy except practical rules for material success in life and a simple code for ethical behavior in personal relationships. His keen eye for the details of occupational lore, his ear for the strong and vivid language of men at work, his joy in outdoor activity, and his skill in telling a plotless narrative at a leisurely and effortless pace characterize many of the pages of his manuscripts, as they do his printed books. But the self-taught fiction writer, Andy Adams, ventured into too many fields for which his limited personal experience, his limited reading, and his limited writing skills proved inadequate.

In spite of his many failures Andy Adams remains the champion in one significant field; he put into seven books of fiction more of the life of the open range, the ranch, and the cattle trail than any other writer has been able to capture. His The Log of a Cowboy is, in fact, the best book yet written about the West's most popular folk character.