In October 1958, Larry McMurtry had completed drafts of two full novels, Horseman, Pass By and a manuscript he called Memories of the Old Tribe, later to be revised and titled Leaving Cheyenne. Both novels were elegies for the cattleman’s lost way of life, Horseman culminating in the death of an old cowboy after his cows are slaughtered following an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease, and Leaving Cheyenne tracing the lifelong friendship of a Quixote-Sancho pair, both in love with the same woman, both struggling to find their place in a changing world. It was while finishing the draft of Horseman, Pass By that he’d begun sketching the new story, and then he just kept writing each day, five pages every morning, a habit he would continue for most of the rest of his life (on the ranch he’d gotten used to rising early). The fresh pages accumulated to seed his second novel.
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