The artist whose cowboys were based mostly on himself. (Will James)

The artist whose cowboys were based mostly on himself In a stand of pines on a country road south of Reno, Nevada, sits an empty log cabin with sagging corrals. Since many of the neighboring houses here in the Washoe Valley are new and expensive, the old cabin and corrals look strangely out of place. A few years ago the cabin was the headquarters of an ecology camp, and before that it was the clubhouse of a dude ranch for divorcees. But in its main room a tarnished bronze plaque above the fireplace tells you that this was originally the home of Will James, the famous cowboy writer and artist, who lived here with his wife, Alice, for several years in the mid-1920s. It was here, the plaque says, that James wrote and illustrated Smoky, a classic yarn about an indomitable horse that became a favorite of children and adults alike. Flanking the plaque are a studio portrait of James--handsome, hawk-faced beneath a creamy stetson--and a shot of James and Alice taken on the steps outside, shortly after they moved here. He was 32 and relatively unknown; she was 20.

Rediscovered after years of neglect

It isn't much of a memorial to an author who was as well known in his day as Will Rogers and Tom Mix but, looked at from a different perspective, it's not an altogether inappropriate one, either. A couple of generations of Americans have grown up knowing little, if anything, about Will James. Most of the 24 books he wrote are out of print. His sketches and paintings have been ignored for years. Yet even so, two of his books, Smoky and Lone Cowboy, are widely regarded as enduring contributions to Western literature. Not long ago, a major exhibition of his artwork was enthusiastically received in seven Western cities and last year two new James biographies were published. If it is true that James has been largely forgotten since his death more than 45 years ago, it is also true that he is currently being rediscovered.

James' popularity has always been based to a significant extent on the perception that he really was what he wrote about and drew. This was no Owen Wister out from Philadelphia, or Zane Grey, a New York dentist. This was the genuine article. How genuine he really was, though, only James himself could say. He misrepresented his origins and made up stories about his early years. He kept his closest friends and even his wife in the dark about where he came from. His parents and siblings knew next to nothing about the life he led after he left home. James' public image as a laconic cowpoke was legitimate to the extent that it was based on his considerable experience as one. It was also a persona he embellished and assiduously cultivated until eventually he came to resemble a character he despised, the dime-store phony. There was no question, though, about James' talent. He was a hugely gifted but deeply troubled man who struggled with his demons to the very end.

He burst upon the publishing scene like the lone horseman of Western legend who drifts into town trailing dust and mystery. Will James was not his given name, only the last in a series of pseudonyms. He was born Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault in the Quebec town of St. Nazaire d'Acton in 1892. His parents and siblings called him Ernest, and his surviving brother, Auguste, recalled that Ernest "knew how to draw as soon as he could hold a pencil." He had perfect coordination, Auguste Dufault said, and "his mind could photograph any thing, action or movement and that photograph was the model on which he would draw." At the age of 4, the boy spent hours studying the farm animals in his rural neighborhood and then, lying on the kitchen …