COWBOY-ARTIST: Charles M. Russell

Born the fourth son of a wealthy St. Louis family, Charles Russell was, even as a child, a rebel. Despite his parent's assiduous efforts to launch him into a lucrative and comfortable career, he clung to the notion that he would go west, and as a chronic truant devoted himself to his dreams and the drawings which, without instruction, he perpetually made. His career in the west which began when he was not quite sixteen was one of hardship, since he had no real talent for farm labor. But with the help of a devoted wife, and out of the vision which was uniquely his, he won a place in the history of that region as its foremost graphic interpreter. This biography tells as much of the period and locale as it does of Russell's unusual personality, and takes, at the same time, a healthy shot at the tendency in teen-age books to depict every character as a paragon of adjustment and conformity.