OUT WALNUT CREEK WAY

HUT WALNUT CREEK WAY With A FAMOUS CARTOONIST...

By JAMES E. KINTNER R. (Jim) WILLIAMS, creator of "Out Wickenburg Way," famed cartoon feature, is perhaps one of the greatest and most picturesque among the pioneers of modern Arizona.

An artist and philosopher who looks at the world with kind and understanding eyes, Jim Williams maintains one of the most widely read cartoon features in modern American journalism, and at the same time actively manages a large cattle ranch.

Out on Walnut creek, west of Prescott, Arizona, on his ranch known as the K4, Jim divides his time between cattle ranchUsing and his studio, where he draws the daily cartoons that touch the heart strings of millions of Americans or drive them into gales of mirth and laughter.

Juniper Mountain, one of the highest peaks of the Santa Marias, looks down on the range where Jim's cattle graze. Along its wooded slopes lions prowl and occasionally feast on the ranchman's calves. Mule deer graze in the alfalfa fields which Jim has developed during the past few years; wild ducks, on their migratory flight from the Arctic to the tropics, rest on the little lake which Jim fills from the waste waters of Walnut Creek.

On an old, dilapidated ranchsite, Wil-liams has constructed a beautiful but not elaborate home . . . just one of those comfortable ranch homes which makes one feel he is glad to be alive when he enters it. The home vibrates with the cartoonist's personality and great energy. In his living room are excellent bronze statues of horses which he has made, a model of an old-four-masted sailing clipper which took him three years to make. A collection of old Western sixshooters presented to him by famous men hangs by the fireplace whose screen displays in silhouette the characters of "Out Our Way" cartoons.

liams has constructed a beautiful but not elaborate home . . . just one of those comfortable ranch homes which makes one feel he is glad to be alive when he enters it. The home vibrates with the cartoonist's personality and great energy. In his living room are excellent bronze statues of horses which he has made, a model of an old-four-masted sailing clipper which took him three years to make. A collection of old Western sixshooters presented to him by famous men hangs by the fireplace whose screen displays in silhouette the characters of "Out Our Way" cartoons.

When Jim was a kid in Ohio he had a great desire to go West. His father Williams, who owns a ranch in Yavapai county and touches the heart-strings of millions with his daily cartoons depicting characters which have become household names in America.

He was a contractor who built storage plants. Jim says when he wasn't going to school he worked as water boy carrying water to his father's men. Natur ally it was his father's desire that Jim follow in his footsteps, but when Jim was fourteen years old he took old Horace Greeley's advice and hit for the wide open spaces. For several years he followed any type of work that he could find; then one evening he met a bunch of cavalrymen. These fellows were on leave from a nearby cavalry post. Jim spent the evening with them and listened to their exciting tales of their campaigns with the Indians. The next thing he knew he was in the cavalry.

While located at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he met old Geronimo, the famous Apache chief who at that time was a prisoner of the government. Jim tells an interesting story how old Geronimo one time raced him to a heavy wooden gate in the fence which surrounded the fort through which they were to pass. Just before they got to the gate, Geronimo let Jim's horse outrun him so Jim had to dismount and open the gate. After Jim opened the gate, Geronimo smiled and rode through in his guileless way.

Jim always had a natural gift for drawing and while in the army he amused his companions by drawings cartoons of unusual happenings. He also became a tattooer and painted his pictographs on many of his soldier friends.

After he left the cavalry, he still had a longing for the west and he moved into the sand-hill country of western New Mexico. Here he punched cows for an old-time outfit and it was here that he found the famous cowboy subjects now used in his "Out Our Way" cartoons. Jim says it was a tough outfit. The old foreman used to hand him a small caliber rifle in the evening, he being one of the youngest hands, and say, "Boy, it's jackrabbit or no breakfast."

It was during these days that Jim experienced that taste of the Old West. He knows how it felt to ride the wind and storm all day and come in to camp wet, cold, and hungry, fill up on biscuits and frijoles, and then crawl into a hen-skin bed to get warm. He knows, too, how it felt to get out on a cold morning, saddle up a half-broke bronc before sun-rise, and ease into a frost-covered saddle, hoping all the while that he could keep that old pony from breaking in two.

All these experiences of Jim's early days are gone forever. About the time the old cow outfits began to split up and the old cavalry troopers began disappearing, Jim began to realize, perhaps subconsciously, that if he ever were to make anything of himself he must return to

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