Born in Whitley County, Indiana, Adams was raised on a cattle farm. He had little formal education and left home at the age of fifteen. After briefly working in a lumber camp near Newport, Arkansas, Adams worked as a cowboy in San Antonio, Texas, and in 1890 he moved to Rockport, Texas, where he started a feed and seed business. Four years later he followed the mining boom to Cripple Creek, Colorado, and later to Goldfield, Nevada, before settling in Colorado Springs. Adams began writing in 1898 after viewing what he considered to be an inaccurate portrayal of cattlemen in Harry 0. Hoyt's play Texas Steer. Although his own first play was unsuccessful, he soon sold his first story, "The Passing of Peg-Leg," to Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. Following the publication of his first novel, The Log of a Cowboy, in 1903, he published several more novels and short story collections. Adams...