Education of a Wandering Man

by Louis L'Amour

  Although I had saved a little money during the war, I knew it would not last long. To write was imperative, and not only to write but to sell.

  There was a market for western stories, and I had grown up on them. I had worked on ranches, in mines and lumber camps, and had covered a lot of the western country in one way or another. I thought I knew the West, but I had much to learn.

  To those who have not researched the field, it is difficult to grasp the extent of factual written material available. Moreover, there are photographs of cowboys themselves, of trail herd crews, saloons, western streets, ranches, line cabins, anything you might wish to see.

  Most of the gunfighters were photographed at one time or another, so good pictures are available, as well as some fine pictures of Indians, Indian villages, and war parties.

  I reread The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams, who had been over the trail with cattle; read Trail Drivers of Texas (one of the basic books), Tales of the Mustangs, and A Vaquero of the Brush Country by J. Frank Dobie. In that first year I read thirty-two books on various aspects of western history, including biographies of Bill Tilghman, Captain Bill McDonald, Dave Cook, Wild Bill Hickok, as well as The Last of the Bandit Riders by Matt Warner, who had ridden with Butch Cassidy among others, and Army Life on the Border by Gen. Randolph B. Marcy, who explored much of the West. He also wrote the best guidebook to crossing the plains by the various routes, with distances, water holes, and so on.

  There was also an excellent biography of Jeff Milton, by J. Evetts Haley, the Journal of John Udell, and The Overland Route to California by Andrew Child. These were journals of the westward trip, of which there are many.

  My intent then, as always, was to deal with existing historical situations. The old staples of the western—cowboys, rustlers, trail drives, stolen cattle, and ranch feuds—were present, but historically they had been a big part of the picture.

  No place I know had the story potential of the West, for stories are about people, and those who went west were strongly individual.

  The western pioneers were select people, selected by themselves. They chose to break the mold, to leave all they knew behind and venture into a new country, with new problems, new standards. Each one was expected to stand on his own feet. He was moving of his own volition, on his own support system. Nobody was paying his way or showing him the way; nobody had told him to go, or where to go. He simply packed what goods he could carry and headed west, looking for what chance might offer.

  Ours has been called a materialistic society. The Europeans love saying that of us, but I have never found a society that was not materialistic. If you find one, you may be sure it will be dying.

  Man seeks a means to exist; then he strives to improve that situation. At first he wants something to eat; then he tries to store food against times of famine. He tries to find warmer furs, a better cave, a more secure life. He creates better weapons with which to defend himself, to form alliances that will assist in his protection. It is a normal, natural thing and has existed forever.

  Success often means security, safety in your home, safety in your possessions. To me success has meant just two things: a good life for my family, and the money to buy books and continue the education of this wandering man, who has ceased to wander except in his memory, his thoughts, and the books he writes.

  Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

  We do not know how many civilizations have existed before us. One of the greatest, that of the Indus Valley in India, was unknown until 1928, and little was done to investigate its extent until after World War II. Now we know that about 2500 B.C. and later, there existed in India a civilization at least as extensive as that of Egypt, and that it had trade relations with Sumeria, with Ur of the Chaldees.

  It is possible there was a thin line of connection stretching all the way from the Minoan civilization of Crete to Egypt, Sumeria, Dilmun, the Indus Valley and China in 2500 B.C., give or take five hundred years. What other civilizations are yet to be discovered we do not know, but I believe several will be found, one of them in the Taklamakan Desert of Sinkiang in western China, or somewhere in that vast area that once was called Chinese Turkestan.

  We are only beginning to discover what South America holds for us, but new finds are constantly being made and the areas of civilization are being extended.

  The necessities of exploring the history and literature of the American West did not close other doors for me. Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.

  We view the devastation of Hiroshima with horror, but such things happened regularly in the ancient world. The Assyrians destroyed every major city in their region several times over, with body counts far exceeding that at Hiroshima, and Tamerlane made pyramids of the skulls of those destroyed in his westward march. The tide of civilization was turned back again and again by the march of barbarians, and unhappily some of the barbarians came from within the civilization itself.

  The study of history has taken a turn for the better in the last few years, with less concern for wars and politics than for the life of the people, their manner of living, and the world in which they lived. Fernand Braudel, Daniel Boorstin, and Henri Pirenne (to name a few) have opened the way to a better understanding of how men lived, worked, created and discovered. It is a most healthy transition.

  As I was researching the American West, I was also delving into the histories of India, China, and Southeast Asia. That Arab boy, long ago in Indonesia, had no idea what he started, but I owe him a debt. He opened a door for me that has never closed.

  I often say that a writer owes a debt of authenticity to his readers. Because of his profession he may go to the fountains of knowledge and drink as deeply as he wishes. This is not given to all people who are concerned with making a living and providing services, and writers are the go-betweens. Readers wish to believe the printed word, God help them, and I believe when we deal with history or anything factual, it should be with care. We may be the only source they have for such information. Once the real-life situation is established, we can take off in any direction we wish. If a story is to be fantasy—and I love it—that should be obvious from word one.

  A writer of stories, such as I have been and am, is expected to entertain. I have my corner in the marketplace where, like the storytellers of the Arabian Nights or the minstrels and bards of bygone years, I tell my stories. To entertain, for me, is not enough. I have drunk deep of those fountains and I would share what I have learned. There is, woven into the texture of what I hope are entertaining tales, a good bit of how people lived, what they thought, and how they survived in desert, mountain, and city. Nietzsche said it best when he wrote (as I recall), “I have a song to sing and will sing it, although I am alone in an empty house and must sing to my own ears.”

  It is not enough to have learned, for living is sharing and I must offer what I have for whatever it is worth.

  I shall do an autobiography, perhaps as fiction—which I write best—but it will be true. The early years were harder than anyone can imagine and what I have written here in some of the early chapters just skims the surface of what was happening. It is never easy to be hungry, never easy to be alone, never easy to believe in oneself when nobody else does.

  The rough times were made smoother by the realization that it was all grist for the mill, and that someday I would be writing, with knowledge, of what I was experiencing then. I had that advantage over many others who traveled the same road.

  As I continued studying the West, I came to know the country I had seen through other eyes, to view it as women in covered wagons saw it, as children did, and as did the husbands and fathers, daring yet frightened men, awestruck at
what they had done yet determined to carry it through.

  A journey is time suspended. All decisions await arrival, and one travels on, day after day, accepting each as it comes. At the end is the harsh reality of decision and doing. Reading through the old journals, one begins to read between the lines and sense the doubt, the hope, the fear of what lies ahead.

  To read one diary is something. In reading fifty, you become a part of their world and cannot escape. The people on the march become your friends, and you know how they feel. The diaries are not only of the westward march; many are of life on lonely claims, isolated from all but a few scattered neighbors.

  Somewhere about this time or a bit later I read Washington Irving’s A Tour on the Prairies, Will Hale’s Twenty-four Years a Cowboy and Ranchman, and James Cook’s Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. Following that, I read Daniel Jones’s Forty Years Among Wild Indians, The History of Kanauj by Dr. R. S. Tripathi, Beast and Man in India by Lockwood Kipling (the father of Rudyard, who wrote a number of books himself), and Ruins of Desert Cathay in two thick volumes by Sir Aurel Stein.

  Particularly fascinating to me was the study of the discoveries made by Stein along the ruins of the Great Wall of China at its farthest westward extension, the fragments of poetry written on bamboo by lonely soldiers, many of whom were sent to duty in the far west of China as boys and returned only as old men no longer fit to serve.

  It was never a part of my nature to focus on one area to the detriment of others. I wished to understand it all, and to have a clear picture in my mind of what was happening in all parts of the world. And wherever I could, I listened to the stories along caravan trails, in bars, coffee-or teahouses, and wherever they might be heard.

  My friend the bandit, whom I mentioned earlier, discovered very quickly where my interests lay and made it his business to find and bring to me people with stories to tell. Always he sat by, that gifted man of many languages, ready to translate or to fill in gaps, even to explain some aspect of geography pertaining to the story’s locale.

  When the icy winds sweep down from the peaks of that most mysterious of mountain ranges, the Kuen-lun, the camel-dung fires blaze up briefly, then smolder and smoke, and the dust of thousands of years stirs along what once was the Silk Road from China to the West. The voices around the fire grow still and men listen into the night for the passing of ghost caravans traveling to ghost cities lost in the Taklamakan.

  It is a time for stories, a time for listening.

  THOSE WHO HAVE never ventured away from the security of their cities, their diplomatic corps, or their business relationships must understand that there is a half-world out there, a place that lies beyond the pale of the law or fringing it: a world of people who move about, cross borders, lose themselves in crowds; a half-world that knows where illegal papers can be obtained, visas, licenses, whatever is necessary.

  One comes to it easily if one mingles with that sort of people, those who live on the fringe. There are ways to pass borders, to avoid checkpoints, and to exist away from the eyes of officials. I am sure it is not as easy as it once was, but I am equally sure it goes on still.

  Occasionally word comes to me from one of the old crowd, but their ranks are thinning. In every large seaport city there were places one might go to meet people of like interests. Some men dealt in guns and munitions, some in information, and others were smugglers of goods or of people. Still others merely wished to avoid the eyes of officials in going wherever it was they wished to go, and some had no means of obtaining the proper papers and so used other means.

  It was Oriental Slim in San Pedro who first put me in touch, and advised me where to go in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tientsin, and Saigon. Later I knew such places in a dozen other cities and went to them to meet people, to soak up atmosphere, and just to hear what was happening along the outside routes.

  Slim had fought in several armies but had settled down to shacking up with native girls of whatever country he was in, and staying drunk much of the time. When I met him, he was on one of his extended periods of sobriety, and as I was never a drinker, we had many long talks.

  My first contact in Shanghai came in a sailors’ joint called, if I remember correctly, the Olympic, having nothing to do with the Games—although games of other kinds were played there.

  It was a perhaps-accidental meeting with a Scotsman, a former British-India Army officer named Haig. He had left the service and become a Buddhist, but I always suspected he was with British Intelligence.

  We talked, and he knew of Slim. He introduced me to a young couple, brother and sister, who were half-castes. They had an independent income from somewhere—not a lot of money, but security. She painted, Chinese-style; he wrote very elegant poetry which he rarely tried to publish.

  Through them, and at several parties, I became acquainted with a small group of would-be artists and writers, mostly half-castes. Markets for what they wrote not existing, they simply wrote for their mutual pleasure—although the sister who painted occasionally sold something of hers. Indeed, a few years ago I came upon a painting of hers in a home I was visiting, but the owners had no idea who the artist was, and I did not enlighten them. They had come upon a charming piece of work and bought it for no other reason.

  I knew the young half-castes for a few days only, and since have heard they were in Nanking when the Japanese came. It is hardly to be expected that they escaped. Haig would have, and Slim if sober, but the artists were flowers that bloomed in the spring and can scarcely have escaped the first freeze.

  Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitués, every one known to the others. A neighborhood bar or café can be a comforting place to go, to talk with friends or acquaintances, people unknown just a few blocks away. Often, driving down a street, I notice such places and am tempted to drop in, listen, and enter briefly another small world people have created for themselves.

  In some neighborhoods it is not a good idea at all, and better you should keep driving.

  Many people have the idea that a writer of stories should live in the area of which he writes, but if he knows his subject matter, he carries it with him wherever he goes. Much of my life has been spent in deserts and mountains; much of what I have seen I remember. Sitting here now, I can close my eyes and see the desert in all its many aspects. There is no need to see it again, although I often shall, nor is there need to go to the mountains, for the mountains are with me always. I have walked the high country; I have breathed its air, bedded down under its trees, watched the white clouds drift and the storm clouds gather. Far away I have seen dust-devils do their weird dance and I have heard the pelting rain on the trees above me.

  I remember the decks of ships where I have walked, the feel of the wheel in my hands, the drip of water from yellow oilskins, and I have heard the crash of great trees coming down in the forest. One does not have to live among these things to remember them, and I do. They were and are a part of me.

  Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees.

  Even now, after so many years, I can close my eyes and feel that old E. K. Wood Lumber Dock where the steam schooners lay in their slips, waiting to discharge their cargo of timber from Grays Harbor or somewhere to the north. I can feel the dampness of fog on my face, see the lights of loading ships across the channel on the old Luckenbach dock, and hear the deep-throated blast of a whistle on a steamer outward bound for the far places.

  One does not forget the dark, lonely nights, or the odd little memories that linger for no specific reason.

  The worlds of which I write are no longer out there. They are here, ever present in my mind. Seated at my typewriter, I can in one moment move to the mountains of Pakistan or India, to vast invading armies with their forests of spears, all bright and golden in the noonday sun. I have read the history; I know the land. I know how it
feels to be a fighting man entering combat, so I can ride with those men, fight beside them, fall to the field and lie wounded or die with them.

  A writer is bound by no earthly ties; what he is and what he sees he creates in his mind, or his subconscious creates it for him. Thanks to the lands I have seen and the books I have read, I know what it was like. The world of which I write is my world always. It is a claim I have staked and continue to stake, and each writer has his own way of telling a story.

  When at the typewriter I am no longer where I sit but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have, each drug taking a little more from what they have of mind, leaving them a little less. Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed.

  My reading continued, as always, in many areas: The Ethno-Botany of the Cahuilla Indians by David Prescott Barrows, Pioneer Days in Arizona by Frank Lockwood, My Sixty Years on the Plains by William T. Hamilton, The Vedic Age by Majumdar and Pulsalker, The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet, Rome Beyond Imperial Frontiers by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and many another.

  I had taken to dropping in at the Brown Derby on Vine Street in Hollywood. Cobb, who operated the place, had connections among the Crow Indians in Wyoming and Montana and we often talked about that country. There was a group of us who gathered at the corner of the bar to talk about motion pictures, writing, the West, and whatever came to mind. One night I told a story of some happenings during World War II, and a few months later it appeared in a motion picture called Red Ball Express with my role, much exaggerated, played by Jeff Chandler.