Cimarron Scribbler S.A.S.S. #24599 |
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McKenna returned to Denver early in December 1881 and remained there throughout the winter and spring, during which he penned his first fulllength novel, Outlaw Waterloo, an extravagant potboiler based (very loosely) on the Tombstone episode. His was one of scores published at about the same time. But his presence at the official inquiry and personal acquaintance with many of the principals gave the novel an authenticity enjoyed by few of its competitors, and it sold widely. Encouraged by his success, McKenna thereafter largely abandoned reporting in favor of a literary career, in the course of which he ultimately would publish eleven novels and more than fifty short stories. His growing family responsibilities inevitably curtailed his travels, as did Anderson's, but both continued on occasion to break free of family and workaday burdens, participating in later years in events ranging from the Oklahoma Land Rush to the Modoc War. |
In 1893, with warehouses in Denver and Kansas City and his mercantile enterprises continuing to expand, Anderson decided to shift his headquarters to the Oklahoma Territory, recently opened to settlement. Although the McKennas were reluctant to leave Denver, the two families by now were so close that to separate would have been intolerable, and accordingly, the following year the McKennas joined the Andersons in the territorial capital of Guthrie. |
Guthrie, O.T., May 1893 |
Following attainment of statehood in 1907, both families moved to Oklahoma City, where Anderson surrendered active direction of Anderson Mercantile to his sons. A few years later, weary of the capital's bustle, the McKennas relocated a final time to Lawton, where James Francis, Jr., the Cimarron Scribbler, died in 1925 at age 76, having witnessed much of the taming of the West and contributed no little to its enduring mythology. dD |
