The Outlet

First published in 1905, The Outlet is the second major work by the American Western novelist Andy Adams (1859–1935), following The Log of a Cowboy. The novel opens against the backdrop of the late nineteenth-century Texas cattle industry: after the Civil War, millions of cattle roamed the Texas prairies with virtually no market value, and finding an "outlet" for this surplus became the most pressing economic problem for ranchers and cattlemen. The eastward routes to Louisiana and Illinois had failed because of "Texas fever," Mexico to the south had a surplus of its own, and to the west lay desolate desert and unconquered Native tribes; the only viable option was to drive north through the Choctaw and Cherokee Indian reservations toward the Kansas border. Narrated in the first person by a trail boss, the novel recounts a complete long cattle drive from Texas to the north: the dust, water, river crossings, harsh weather, and stampedes along the way, as well as the business side of things—prices, freight costs, and buy-and-sell negotiations. Unlike the Western novels of his day, which sought dramatic excitement, Adams deliberately wrote in a near-journalistic style, aiming, as he himself stated, to make the novel indistinguishable from fact. The author drove cattle in Texas for nearly a decade beginning in 1882 and traveled the famous cattle trails north many times, which gives the work the authority of firsthand experience.