The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days

If you ever wanted to understand how cowboys moved a herd of thousands of cattle from Texas to a Kansas rail head, this is the book for you. The trip described in the book actually chronicles moving 3000 cattle from Mexico to Montana.While called a novel, the information in the book is based on the experiences of the author who worked the herd trails. The description of crossing the many rivers is clearly described with different methods employed for the different challenges each river presented. I especially appreciated the description of one river that required that the cowboys build a bridge which was an interesting design.

It covers food, meals, horses, recreation in the few towns they past, peaceful interaction with Indigenous show more groups, rustlers and counting the cattle after special event. While a very dangerous job, the men involved seemed to obtain much satisfaction from doing it.

One caution was the author lived during Texas Jim Crow so casual racism appears in the text and natives are sometimes refereed to as "squaws" and "bucks". show less

The title says it all: this the account of a trail drive from Texas to Montana, with all the classic elements of a Western: rustlers, con men, Indians, and a gunfight or two. But it doesn't read like a typical Western, it reads like a true account, focused on the day-to-day work of a cowboy in a cattle drive. The style is very matter-of-fact, and there's not much emotion on the page, even when people die. But I suppose that's how it was in reality. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get an idea of what cowboy life was *really* like back in the day. Trigger warning (see what I did there?): includes general racist attitudes and language toward black people and Indians.

Good book! It's hard to keep in mind that this is actually a novel, because it all sounds so factual and real. But THE LOG OF A COWBOY is fiction, if barely. Because Andy Adams's youthful narrator, Tom Quirk, is a thinly veiled version of his younger self, who did indeed make the 2,500 mile trail drive with over a thousand head of cattle from the Mexican border to the top of Montana that is depicted here. The drive took over five months, from April through August in the year 1882. The descriptions herein - of stampedes, encounters with rustlers and bears, fording streams and dangerous, even fatal, river crossings, saloon shootouts and more. The mission of getting the herd to its destination remains paramount, but campfire stories, night show more herding, and caring for the remuda of 140 horses and mules all figure into this ultra real narrative of one of the longest cattle drives of its time.

The book was first published in 1903, and I don't think it's ever been out of print. That's how GOOD it is. Multiple editions over 120 years is quite a run. My copy is a 2000 edition with a new Introduction by Thomas McGuane, a well-regarded Michigan writer who moved to Montana (Livingston) decades ago and has reinvented himself as a cowboy who specializes in cutting horses. His book, SOME HORSES, is itself a modern classic - and a hoot too.
I thoroughly enjoyed this ol' tome. Andy Adams (1859-1935) is long gone, but his stories live on. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Andy Adams (1903, 1981). The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days. Time-Life Books Inc.
Set in the late 1800s, Adam's tale is often listed as the best account of cowboy life ever written. The author condensed a dozen year's work experience in the saddle into this book about a five-month cattle drive - - delivery of three thousand head from the mouth of the Rio Grande river (near Brownsville) in southwest Texas to government buyers at the Blackfoot Indian Agency in northwest Montana. Written over a hundred years ago, the account brings vivid images of a dozen cowboys traveling with the outfit's cook / cookwagon, horse wrangler and trail boss to complete their long journey. Along the way they face rain flooded streams, show more experience night-time stampedes, encounter threatening Indians, ward off cattle rustlers, cross expanses of drought-ridden plains, and visit the rough-shod trail towns of Ogallala and Dodge City. The true-to-life story emphasizes the bond between trail mates who share campfire stories and tall-tales, get taken in a rigged horse race, and become honor-bound to back one another in cowtown gunfights. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the authentic history of the old West. One cannot mistake this book's influence on the more contemporary Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, and though offensive today can tolerate the author's name of Nigger Boy for a favorite horse. lj (Feb 2011) show less

Well-written account of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the year 1882. For the first time I understood what cowboys actually did in addition to strumming guitars and blasting away with their six-shooters - though they do some of that too.

An interesting first hand account of a cattle drive from the southeastern most tip of Texas to the Yellowstone area of Montana. Well written. Somewhat sanitized, but includes vernacular of the day.

This book was an assigned text when I took American history with Edmund Danziger (a specialist in the American West). Of all the books assigned, I liked it best for its sense of absolute authenticity. Oddly, most of the class disliked it, perhaps because it was not fictionalized enough.