A week or so ago, I finished my second reading of The Log of a Cowboy, A Narrative of the Old Trail Days, by Andy Adams. I enjoyed it so well, both times, that I thought I’d write a review. Maybe somebody else will be inspired to read and enjoy it like I did.

First off, I will mention that this is a fictional novel. I had to keep reminding myself of that throughout the book, because it feels like an authentic documentary. The author, Andy Adams, indeed lived the life about which he wrote, but the story is, in fact, a novel. Adams undoubtedly brought together a series of events he actually  experienced or had intimate knowledge of and linked them together, creating a fictional story that gives the reader the experience of reading the actual journal of a cowboy on a cattle drive of epic proportions in the year 1882. It is noteworthy that the copyright date on the novel is 1903 (by Andy Adams).

Adam’s story documents the life and times of Tom Quirk (a fictional character), as he leaves home in south Texas and grows to manhood as a cowboy. He tells of his quick transition from the life of a store-keeper’s apprentice to his life on the range as follows: “My mercantile career had ended [after two full days], and forthwith I took to the range as a preacher’s son takes to vice. By the time I was twenty there was no better cowhand in the entire country.”

Quirk is hired by Jim Flood, on the recommendation of one of his older brothers, to help take a herd of over 3,100 cows and steers from Old Mexico to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in northwest Montana to fulfill a government contract, a full five-month drive.  Quirk takes us along for the ride, from gathering the cattle bought from a rancher in Mexico, with young Quirk acting as interpreter, to delivery of the cattle at their destination in Montana.

They cross dangerous rivers and dry plains, deal with hostile Indians and outlaw herd-cutters. Quirk discusses the fine details about the necessary paperwork each foreman  for a herd needed to prove his authority and pay expenses.  Quirk tells all about his fellow cowboys, their personality characteristics, and in particular, the cowboy humor and pranks they played upon each other. He discusses cattle management and the various styles of different bosses and cowboys. He tells of stampedes and storms, long days and cold nights. While much of this information could seem dull and mundane, it is all told in the language, inflection, and perspective of the cowboy, which kept my attention throughout the story.

For example, the following excerpts relates Quirk’s discovery and disbursement of sixteen turkey eggs, a delicacy for a cowboy on a drive:

“The rest of us had no lack of occupation, as a result of a chance find of mine that morning. Honeyman had stood my guard the night before, and in return, I had got up when he was called to help rustle the horses. We had every horse under hand before the sun peeped over the eastern horizon, and when returning to camp with the remuda, as I rode through a bunch of sumach bush, I found a wild turkey’s nest with sixteen fresh eggs in it. Honeyman rode up, when I dismounted, and putting them in my hat, handed them up to Billy until I could mount, for they were beauties and as precious to us as gold. There was an egg for each man with one left over, and McCann threw a heap of swagger in to the inquiry, “Gentlemen, how will you have your eggs this morning?” just as though it was an everyday affair. They were issued to us fried, and I naturally felt that the odd egg,  by rights, ought to fall to me, but the opposing majority was formidable, – fourteen to one, – so I yielded. A number of ways were suggested to allot the odd egg, but the gambling fever in us being rabid, raffling or playing cards for it seemed to be the proper caper.”

It was decided that a card game would determine who got the extra egg, the chips being dried beans issued equally to each participant. The details of this game and the wild tales told by the participants as they whiled away the night, switching places as each took his turn on night guard or simply ran out of beans, was the setting for an entire humorous chapter.

Later in the drive, a mishap occurred in which the left rear wheel of the chuck wagon hit a rock and was “dished,”  demolishing it beyond repair. Quirk’s description of the temporary repair bespeaks the author’s (Adams) personal knowledge and experience of such occurrences on the trail:

When we reached the scene, McCann had recovered the felloe, but every spoke in the hub was hopelessly ruined. Flood took in the situation at a glance. He ordered the wagon unloaded and the reach lengthened, took the axe, and, with the The Rebel, went back about a mile to a thicket of lodge poles which we had passed higher up the creek. While the rest of us unloaded the wagon, McCann, who was swearing by both note and rhyme, unearthed his saddle from amongst the other plunder and cinched it on his nigh wheeler. We had the wagon unloaded and had reloaded some of the heaviest plunder in the front end of the wagon box, by the time our foreman and Priest returned, dragging from their pommels a thirty-foot pole as perfect as the mast of a yacht. We knocked off all the spokes not already broken at the hub of the ruined wheel, and after jacking up the hind axle, attached the “crutch.” By cutting a half notch in the larger end of the pole, so that it fitted over the front axle, lashing it there securely, and allowing the other end to trail behind on the ground, we devised a support on which the hub of the broken wheel rested, almost at its normal height. There was sufficient spring to the pole to obviate any jolt or jar, while the rearrangement we had effected in distributing the load would relieve it of any serious burden. We took a rope from the coupling pole of the wagon and loosely noosed it over the crutch, which allowed leeway in turning, but prevented the hub from slipping off the support on a short turn to the left. Then we lashed the tire and felloe to the front end of the wagon, and with the loss of but a couple of hours our commissary was again on the move.

All-in-all, the book held my attention and interest throughout the story…during both readings. I found myself smiling and even chuckling out loud as I read certain passages. Adam’s descriptions of dangerous and difficult river crossings, quick sands, and stampedes were so vivid that I could easily imagine myself working alongside Tom Quirk and his companions and hearing their cowboy banter.

While I am a great fan of Louis L’Amour westerns, if you really want to know what life was like on the cattle drive during the heyday of the post-civil war cattle drives from Texas, this is the book you want to read.

Click on the image to link to the book on Amazon.com.