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    The Outlet
    The Outlet
    The Outlet
    Ebook344 pages5 hours

    The Outlet

    By Andy Adams

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    First published in 1905, "The Outlet" is the fictional story of a man's experiences of the Chickasaw Nation, a federally recognized Native American nation located in Oklahoma. A fantastic example of classic Western fiction, "The Outlet" is highly recommended for all lovers of the genre. Andy Adams (1859 - 1935) was an American western fiction writer. Other notable works by this author include: "A Texas Matchmaker" (1904) and "Cattle Brands" (1906). Adams' 1903 novel "The Log of a Cowboy" is considered by many to be one of the most authentic depictions of cowboy life ever written. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction and biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClassic Western Fiction Library
    Release dateJul 19, 2017
    ISBN9781473346178

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      Book preview

      The Outlet - Andy Adams

      THE OUTLET

      By

      Andy Adams

      Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

      the British Library

      Contents

      Andy Adams

      The History of Western Fiction

      PREFACE

      CHAPTER I. OPENING THE CAMPAIGN

      CHAPTER II. ORGANIZING THE FORCES

      CHAPTER III. RECEIVING AT LOS LOBOS

      CHAPTER IV. MINGLING WITH THE EXODUS

      CHAPTER V. RED RIVER STATION

      CHAPTER VI. CAMP SUPPLY

      CHAPTER VII. WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK

      CHAPTER VIII. EN PASSANT

      CHAPTER IX. AT SHERIFF’S CREEK

      CHAPTER X. A FAMILY REUNION

      CHAPTER XI. ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK

      CHAPTER XII. MARSHALING THE FORCES

      CHAPTER XIII. JUSTICE IN THE SADDLE

      CHAPTER XIV. TURNING THE TABLES

      CHAPTER XV. TOLLESTON BUTTS IN

      CHAPTER XVI. CROSSING THE NIOBRARA

      CHAPTER XVII. WATER-BOUND

      CHAPTER XVIII. THE LITTLE MISSOURI

      CHAPTER XIX. IN QUARANTINE

      CHAPTER XX. ON THE JUST AND THE UNJUST

      CHAPTER XXI. FORT BUFORD

      CHAPTER XXII. A SOLDIER’S HONOR

      CHAPTER XXIII. KANGAROOED

      CHAPTER XXIV. THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

      Andy Adams

      Andy Adams was born in May 1959 in Indiana, America and became an influential writer of western fiction. He used his experiences of the Wild West to show Americans the realities of life in the west after being appalled at its depiction in other novels and plays.

      During his childhood, Adams attended school and also helped his father, who worked as a cattleman and farmer. At age fifteen Adams left home and travelled to Texas where he worked for approximately ten years rounding up livestock and driving them on the western trails to various locations. It was during this time that he became fascinated with cowboys and their lives. In the 1890s Adams briefly worked as a businessman, but failed in this venture. He then followed the rumours of gold to Colorado to pursue mining opportunities, but had little luck. He settled in Colorado Springs and it was during this time that he put pen to paper and began writing, drawing on his own experiences of the cattle trails.

      In 1903, his first and best-known novel, The Log of a Cowboy, was published. This novel tells of a trail drive from Brownsville to Montana and focuses on the tranquil, pastoral nature of the journey and its effect on the men making it, rather than the usual depiction of the wilderness of the Wild West. Although a fictional tale, the novel is thought to be based on Adams’s own involvement with a five month drive of over three thousand cattle along the Great Western Cattle Trail. It is said to be one of the most authentic accounts of that time in cattle country and is still influential for historians who are exploring the period.

      Adams went on to write a number of other novels, including A Texas Matchmaker (1904), The Outlet (1905), and Cattle Brands (1906). He also wrote Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings  (1911) and  The Ranch on the Beaver: A Sequel to Wells Brothers  (1927), two popular novels for children which told the story of two orphaned boys who defied everything and rose to success by establishing their own cattle ranch. His writing tended to build on the cowboy memoirist tradition and helped to shape and develop the cowboy genre.

      Adams never married and had no children. He died in September 1935 in Colorado Springs. Since his death many of his works have continued to be in a print and are thought to be accurate and honest accounts of life in the Wild West.

      The History of Western Fiction

      Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

      The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

      The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in the land to the west of that. His protagonists lived off the land, were loyal, free, skilled with weapons, and avoided civilised society as best they could. His most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, also idealised the Native American.

      During the 1860s and 1870s, a new generation of Western writers appeared, such as Mark Twain (1835-1910) Roughing It (1872) and Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868). Both writers had spent time living in the west and continued to promote its appeal through their literature. Harte is often credited with developing many of the cult Western’s stock characters, such as the honest and beautiful dance hall girl, the suave conman and the honourable outlaw. These characters went on to be firm favourites in popular, mass produced Western fiction. At the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of people were undergoing the treacherous journey to the west to make a new life for themselves and the fictional stories and legends of heroes and villains who had survived in this wild landscape captured the imagination of the public.

      Western novels became popular in England and throughout America through ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and Dime Novels. These appeared in the late 1800s and were texts that could be bought cheaply (for either a penny or a dime – ten cents) as they were often cheaply printed on a large scale by publishers such as Irwin P. Beadle. Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Ann S Stephens (1810-1886) is considered by many critics to be the first dime novel. These sensationalist dime and penny novels capitalised on stories of outlaws, lawmen, cowboys, and mountain men taming the western frontier. Many were fictional, but some were based on real heroes of the west such as Buffalo Bill (the scout, bison hunter and performer), Jesse James (the American outlaw, robber, gang leader and murderer) and Billy the Kid (the American gunfighter). By 1877, these Western characters were a recurring feature of the dime novel. The hero was often a man of action who saved damsels in distress and righted the wrongs of the villains that he faced. For this hero, honour was the most important thing and it was something that the dime heroes never relinquished.

      In the 1900s, Pulp magazines helped relay these tales over to Europe where non-Americans also picked up the genre, such as the German writer, Karl May (1842-1912). Pulp magazines were a descendent of the dime novel and their content was largely aimed at a mass market. As their popularity grew, they were able to specialise and there were Pulp magazines devoted specifically to Westerns, such as Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, and Star Western. The popularity for these magazines and for Western films in the 1920s made the genre a popular phenomenon.

      The status of the genre in the early twentieth century was also enhanced by particular novels by different writers. One of the most influential Western novels was The Virginians (1902) by Owen Wister (1860-1938) which was considered to be a ground breaking literary Western. Wister dismissed the traditional idea of the solitary pioneer conquering new lands and making a new life for himself, and replaced this traditional character with the cowboy. The cowboy was a mix of cultural ideals, such as southern chivalry, western primitivism and stout independence. These were characteristics that many Americans cherished. Wister contrasted the lawlessness of the West to the order and civilisation of the East. He introduced new characters, such as savages and bandits who attacked the more civilised Eastern characters. His cowboy heroes shared many features with the medieval knights – they rode horses, carried weapons, fought duals and valued their honour above all other attributes. Zane Grey’s (1872-1939) Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was also a popular Western novel. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote over ninety books which helped shape Western fiction. He changed Wister’s cowboy into a gunslinger who was feared by criminals and held in awe by other civilians. Other popular Western writers in this period include Andy Adams (1859-1935) whose titles include The Outlet (1905) and A Texas Matchmaker (1904), Edward S Ellis (1840-1916) who wrote Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier (1860) and The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), and Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940) who wrote Chip of the Flying U (1906) and The Dry Ridge Gang (1935).

      The Western hero lived in an environment where climate, natives and the terrain could be his enemies, and it was his job to tame the wilderness around him, but in doing so he determined his own extinction. In bringing forward civilisation and settlement, they brought about their own demise and their reason for existing. Western heroes could only exist on the frontier. Rebels were popular heroes in the Western novel and these heroes were often compassionate to those less fortunate than themselves and fought for the downtrodden. They were loyal, idealistic, independent, and knew the difference between right and wrong. They fought for the good and made personal sacrifices in order that good would triumph. The hostile setting of the Wild West transformed the characters into survivors as they were forced to alter themselves in order to live in this new setting. The Old Wild West captured the attention of many as it exemplified the spirit of freedom, individualism, adventure and unspoiled nature. It depicted a world that was separate from organised, urban society and showed the life of the wilderness, frontier and its inhabitants. The Western romanticised American history and the treacherous, mysterious and otherworldly Old West.

      PREFACE

      At the close of the civil war the need for a market for the surplus cattle of Texas was as urgent as it was general. There had been numerous experiments in seeking an outlet, and there is authority for the statement that in 1857 Texas cattle were driven to Illinois. Eleven years later forty thousand head were sent to the mouth of Red River in Louisiana, shipped by boat to Cairo, Illinois, and thence inland by rail. Fever resulted, and the experiment was never repeated. To the west of Texas stretched a forbidding desert, while on the other hand, nearly every drive to Louisiana resulted in financial disaster to the drover. The republic of Mexico, on the south, afforded no relief, as it was likewise overrun with a surplus of its own breeding. Immediately before and just after the war, a slight trade had sprung up in cattle between eastern points on Red River and Baxter Springs, in the southeast corner of Kansas. The route was perfectly feasible, being short and entirely within the reservations of the Choctaws and Cherokees, civilized Indians. This was the only route to the north; for farther to the westward was the home of the buffalo and the unconquered, nomadic tribes. A writer on that day, Mr. Emerson Hough, an acceptable authority, says: The civil war stopped almost all plans to market the range cattle, and the close of that war found the vast grazing lands of Texas fairly covered with millions of cattle which had no actual or determinate value. They were sorted and branded and herded after a fashion, but neither they nor their increase could be converted into anything but more cattle. The demand for a market became imperative.

      This was the situation at the close of the ‘50’s and meanwhile there had been no cessation in trying to find an outlet for the constantly increasing herds. Civilization was sweeping westward by leaps and bounds, and during the latter part of the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, a market for a very small percentage of the surplus was established at Abilene, Ellsworth, and Wichita, being confined almost exclusively to the state of Kansas. But this outlet, slight as it was, developed the fact that the transplanted Texas steer, after a winter in the north, took on flesh like a native, and by being double-wintered became a marketable beef. It should be understood in this connection that Texas, owing to climatic conditions, did not mature an animal into marketable form, ready for the butcher’s block. Yet it was an exceptional country for breeding, the percentage of increase in good years reaching the phenomenal figures of ninety-five calves to the hundred cows. At this time all eyes were turned to the new Northwest, which was then looked upon as the country that would at last afford the proper market. Railroads were pushing into the domain of the buffalo and Indian; the rush of emigration was westward, and the Texan was clamoring for an outlet for his cattle. It was written in the stars that the Indian and buffalo would have to stand aside.

      Philanthropists may deplore the destruction of the American bison, yet it was inevitable. Possibly it is not commonly known that the general government had under consideration the sending of its own troops to destroy the buffalo. Yet it is a fact, for the army in the West fully realized the futility of subjugating the Indians while they could draw subsistence from the bison. The well-mounted aborigines hung on the flanks of the great buffalo herds, migrating with them, spurning all treaty obligations, and when opportunity offered murdering the advance guard of civilization with the fiendish atrocity of carnivorous animals. But while the government hesitated, the hide-hunters and the railroads solved the problem, and the Indian’s base of supplies was destroyed.

      Then began the great exodus of Texas cattle. The red men were easily confined on reservations, and the vacated country in the Northwest became cattle ranges. The government was in the market for large quantities of beef with which to feed its army and Indian wards. The maximum year’s drive was reached in 1884, when nearly eight hundred thousand cattle, in something over three hundred herds, bound for the new Northwest, crossed Red River, the northern boundary of Texas. Some slight idea of this exodus can be gained when one considers that in the above year about four thousand men and over thirty thousand horses were required on the trail, while the value of the drive ran into millions. The history of the world can show no pastoral movement in comparison. The Northwest had furnished the market—the outlet for Texas.

      CHAPTER I.

      OPENING THE CAMPAIGN

      Well, gentlemen, if that is the best rate you can offer us, then we’ll drive the cattle. My boys have all been over the trail before, and your figures are no inducement to ship as far as Red River. We are fully aware of the nature of the country, but we can deliver the herds at their destination for less than you ask us for shipping them one third of the distance. No; we’ll drive all the way.

      The speaker was Don Lovell, a trail drover, and the parties addressed were the general freight agents of three railroad lines operating in Texas. A conference had been agreed upon, and we had come in by train from the ranch in Medina County to attend the meeting in San Antonio. The railroad representatives were shrewd, affable gentlemen, and presented an array of facts hard to overcome. They were well aware of the obstacles to be encountered in the arid, western portion of the state, and magnified every possibility into a stern reality. Unrolling a large state map upon the table, around which the principals were sitting, the agent of the Denver and Fort Worth traced the trail from Buffalo Gap to Doan’s Crossing on Red River. Producing what was declared to be a report of the immigration agent of his line, he showed by statistics that whole counties through which the old trail ran had recently been settled up by Scandinavian immigrants. The representative of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, when opportunity offered, enumerated every disaster which had happened to any herd to the westward of his line in the past five years. The factor of the International was equally well posted.

      Now, Mr. Lovell, said he, dumping a bundle of papers on the table, if you will kindly glance over these documents, I think I can convince you that it is only a question of a few years until all trail cattle will ship the greater portion of the way. Here is a tabulated statement up to and including the year ‘83. From twenty counties tributary to our line and south of this city, you will notice that in ‘80 we practically handled no cattle intended for the trail. Passing on to the next season’s drive, you see we secured a little over ten per cent. of the cattle and nearly thirty per cent. of the horse stock. Last year, or for ‘83, drovers took advantage of our low rates for Red River points, and the percentage ran up to twenty-four and a fraction, or practically speaking, one fourth of the total drive. We are able to offer the same low rates this year, and all arrangements are completed with our connecting lines to give live-stock trains carrying trail cattle a passenger schedule. Now, if you care to look over this correspondence, you will notice that we have inquiries which will tax our carrying capacity to its utmost. The ‘Laurel Leaf’ and ‘Running W’ people alone have asked for a rate on thirty thousand head.

      But the drover brushed the correspondence aside, and asked for the possible feed bills. A blanket rate had been given on the entire shipment from that city, or any point south, to Wichita Falls, with one rest and feed. Making a memorandum of the items, Lovell arose from the table and came over to where Jim Flood and I were searching for Fort Buford on a large wall map. We were both laboring under the impression that it was in Montana, but after our employer pointed it out to us at the mouth of the Yellowstone in Dakota, all three of us adjourned to an ante-room. Flood was the best posted trail foreman in Don Lovell’s employ, and taking seats at the table, we soon reduced the proposed shipping expense to a pro-rata sum per head. The result was not to be considered, and on returning to the main office, our employer, as already expressed, declined the proffered rate.

      Then the freight men doubled on him, asking if he had taken into consideration a saving in wages. In a two days’ run they would lay down the cattle farther on their way than we could possibly drive in six weeks, even if the country was open, not to say anything about the wear and tear of horseflesh. But Don Lovell had not been a trail drover for nearly fifteen years without understanding his business as well as the freight agents did theirs. After going over a large lot of other important data, our employer arose to take his leave, when the agent of the local line expressed a hope that Mr. Lovell would reconsider his decision before spring opened, and send his drive a portion of the way by rail.

      Well, I’m glad I met you, gentlemen, said the cowman at parting, but this is purely a business proposition, and you and I look at it from different viewpoints. At the rate you offer, it will cost me one dollar and seventy-five cents to lay a steer down on Red River. Hold on; mine are all large beeves; and I must mount my men just the same as if they trailed all the way. Saddle horses were worth nothing in the North last year, and I kept mine and bought enough others around Dodge to make up a thousand head, and sent them back over the trail to my ranch. Now, it will take six carloads of horses for each herd, and I propose to charge the freight on them against the cattle. I may have to winter my remudas in the North, or drive them home again, and if I put two dollars a head freight in them, they won’t bring a cent more on that account. With the cattle it’s different; they are all under contract, but the horses must be charged as general expense, and if nothing is realized out of them, the herd must pay the fiddler. My largest delivery is a sub-contract for Fort Buford, calling for five million pounds of beef on foot. It will take three herds or ten thousand cattle to fill it. I was anxious to give those Buford beeves an early start, and that was the main reason in my consenting to this conference. I have three other earlier deliveries at Indian agencies, but they are not as far north by several hundred miles, and it’s immaterial whether we ship or not. But the Buford contract sets the day of delivery for September 15, and it’s going to take close figuring to make a cent. The main contractors are all right, but I’m the one that’s got to scratch his head and figure close and see that there’s no leakages. Your freight bill alone would be a nice profit. It may cost us a little for water getting out of Texas, but with the present outlet for cattle, it’s bad policy to harass the herds. Water is about the best crop some of those settlers along the trail have to sell, and they ought to treat us right.

      After the conference was over, we scattered about the city, on various errands, expecting to take the night train home. It was then the middle of February, and five of the six herds were already purchased. In spite of the large numbers of cattle which the trail had absorbed in previous years, there was still an abundance of all ages, anxious for a market. The demand in the North had constantly been for young cattle, leaving the matured steers at home. Had Mr. Lovell’s contracts that year called for forty thousand five and six year old beeves, instead of twenty, there would have been the same inexhaustible supply from which to pick and choose. But with only one herd yet to secure, and ample offerings on every hand, there was no necessity for a hurry. Many of the herds driven the year before found no sale, and were compelled to winter in the North at the drover’s risk. In the early spring of ‘84, there was a decided lull over the enthusiasm of the two previous years, during the former of which the trail afforded an outlet for nearly seven hundred thousand Texas cattle.

      In regard to horses we were well outfitted. During the summer of ‘83, Don Lovell had driven four herds, two on Indian contract and two of younger cattle on speculation. Of the latter, one was sold in Dodge for delivery on the Purgatory River in southern Colorado, while the other went to Ogalalla, and was disposed of and received at that point. In both cases there was no chance to sell the saddle horses, and they returned to Dodge and were sent to pasture down the river in the settlements. My brother, Bob Quirk, had driven one of the other herds to an agency in the Indian Territory. After making the delivery, early in August, on his employer’s orders, he had brought his remuda and outfit into Dodge, the horses being also sent to pasture and the men home to Texas. I had made the trip that year to the Pine Ridge Agency in Dakota with thirty-five hundred beeves, under Flood as foreman. Don Lovell was present at the delivery, and as there was no hope of effecting a sale of the saddle stock among the Indians, after delivering the outfit at the nearest railroad, I was given two men and the cook, and started back over the trail for Dodge with the remuda. The wagon was a drawback, but on reaching Ogalalla, an emigrant outfit offered me a fair price for the mules and commissary, and I sold them. Lashing our rations and blankets on two pack-horses, we turned our backs on the Platte and crossed the Arkansaw at Dodge on the seventh day.

      But instead of the remainder of the trip home by rail, as we fondly expected, the programme had changed. Lovell and Flood had arrived in Dodge some ten days before, and looking over the situation, had come to the conclusion it was useless even to offer our remudas. As remnants of that year’s drive, there had concentrated in and around that market something like ten thousand saddle horses. Many of these were from central and north Texas, larger and better stock than ours, even though care had been used in selecting the latter. So on their arrival, instead of making any effort to dispose of our own, the drover and his foreman had sized up the congested condition of the market, and turned buyers. They had bought two whole remudas, and picked over five or six others until their purchases amounted to over five hundred head. Consequently on our reaching Dodge with the Pine Ridge horses, I was informed that they were going to send all the saddle stock back over the trail to the ranch and that I was to have charge of the herd. Had the trip been in the spring and the other way, I certainly would have felt elated over my promotion. Our beef herd that year had been put up in Dimmit County, and from there to the Pine Ridge Agency and back to the ranch would certainly be a summer’s work to gratify an ordinary ambition.

      In the mean time and before our arrival, Flood had brought up all the stock and wagons from the settlement, and established a camp on Mulberry Creek, south of Dodge on the trail. He had picked up two Texans who were anxious to see their homes once more, and the next day at noon we started. The herd numbered a thousand and sixty head, twenty of which were work-mules. The commissary which was to accompany us was laden principally with harness; and waving Flood farewell, we turned homeward, leaving behind unsold of that year’s drive only two wagons. Lovell had instructed us never to ride the same horse twice, and wherever good grass and water were encountered, to kill as much time as possible. My employer was enthusiastic over the idea, and well he might be, for a finer lot of saddle horses were not in the possession of any trail drover, while those purchased in Dodge could have been resold in San Antonio at a nice profit. Many of the horses had run idle several months and were in fine condition. With the allowance of four men and a cook, a draft-book for personal expenses, and over a thousand horses from which to choose a mount, I felt like an embryo foreman, even if it was a back track and the drag end of the season. Turning everything scot free at night, we reached the ranch in old Medina in six weeks, actually traveling about forty days.

      But now, with the opening of the trail season almost at hand, the trials of past years were forgotten in the enthusiasm of the present.

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