JO MORA'S "HORSEMEN OF THE WEST"

Receiving his discharge at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, Jim returned to Ohio, where his parents lived. Here he took up the machinist trade and worked for a company that specialized in making large cranes. "I was married by then and couldn't see any way of making a living working on a ranch so I went to work on a night shift so I could learn to draw in the daytime." When the company needed a drawing for the cover of its catalogue one of the foremen suggested that Jim could draw it. His drawing depicted a giant crane, the largest then produced, lifting the world, with the slogan ogan beneath, "Give us the runway and we will lift the world." This was the first of his drawings to be published.

Jim stayed with the trade for seven years, but during this time continued drawing and studying in his spare time. "I sent cartoons to every syndicate in the country," he recalls. "Hearst's man showed the most interest and told me if I could draw a strip-type cartoon as well as the square cartoon they would take it. However, I decided to stick with the square and in 1921 NEA finally asked me to come in and discuss going to work for them." For 31 years J. R. Wil-liams' cartoons have appeared in an ever-increasing number of newspapers. Today more than 700 papers carry them and millions of readers turn to these whimsies for their daily bit of humor.

During the 20's Jim lived in Cleveland, but he never got the Southwest out of his blood. Most every fall he took trips to Arizona for hunting and to refresh his memory of the earlier days. Then, too, his "Out Our Way" cartoon was perhaps the most popular of all, and he needed material for the cartoon situations. As Jim tells it, "A friend of mine told me about a ranch owned by Lon Harmon, who also owned the big Yolo outfit near Prescott. That country was about as wild as any, and cowboys who rode for the Yolos included top hands such as Travis Hackle, Walter and Hosey Kline and the Koontz boys. I rode with them on roundups two years and enjoyed some wonderful times. I liked to ride all day and do my drawing at night, often using an incident that had happened during the day. I decided I wanted a cow outfit in this section of Arizona so I bought out several small spreads along Walnut Creek, putting together enough patented land and Taylor grazing permits to be able to run a few hundred head."

There was plenty of wild game on the ranch and Jim enjoyed nothing more than packing in for deer hunting or following the hounds with the government animal hunters who were trying to rid the range of mountain lions and other predatory game. The ranch became a center of activity located in a rough, brushy section of mountainous terrain abounding with game, with the cowboys, cattlemen, hunters, rangers, and occasional visiting dudes providing an unending stream of inspiration for his cartoons.

For ten wonderful years Jim worked, expanding his beloved ranch, the K4, but the dream came to an end when the cartooning began to suffer from neglect. "I guess the family and the syndicate didn't share my enthusiasm for life on the ranch," recounts Jim. "They thought it was too distracting and I guess it was, for I'll admit I'd rather be ranching and hunting than tied down to the drawing board. So in 1941 I sold the K4. Somehow I can't get it out of my blood and never will."

Jo Mora's "Horsemen of the West" series of water colors represents years of painstaking research and study to achieve the greatest possible accuracy in detail. As such, each water color in the series is a historical document, bringing to life such figures as Father Kino, the grim Conquistador, and the various figures of Western life which have gone galloping through the pages of history on a horse. Eight of the originals are reproduced here in color and one, "A Breed," in black and white. We have omitted "Alta California Ranchero," "Mexican Rurale," and "Haciendero." The series is now the property of the Valley National Bank, Phoenix, and is part of the bank's splendid art collection. We are indebted to the bank for making it possible for us to publish this selection of Jo Mora's paintings. Jo Mora was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1876, where his father, Domingo Mora, a well-known Spanish sculptor, had his home and studio. Several years later the family moved to New York and Boston, where Jo and his brother Luis (the famous painter) were educated. They studied art at The Art Students' League, Chase's Art School in New York, and Cowell's Art School in Boston, and were later to study in Europe. In 1897 Mora was employed as an artist on the Boston Traveler and Boston Herald. In 1900 he left newspaper work to get out books for Dana Estes & Co. He then began his travels, gathering material for future writing and painting, going first to Mexico, traveling on horseback throughout the country in the time of Porfirio Diaz. From the Mexican frontier he rode to San Jose, California, sketching and painting the historic missions, and stopping at many of the large ranchos on the way, where he joined in ranch activities, being an excellent horseman, and naturally acquiring first hand knowledge for his Western records in painting and sculpture.

Old-time Busters Mountain Man