Abilene Writers Guild Abilene, Texas, U.S.A. "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." (Lowell) P.O. Box 2562—Abilene, Texas 79604 Monthly meetings are the fourth Thursday at 7:00 P.M. Meeting at the Center for Contemporary Arts, 220 Cypress St.

Are you ready to eat cactus to give your writing that real touch?

For us diehard devotees, assembling the components of a novel about the Old West is like whipping up a good batch of biscuits. In biscuits, things like flour and salt are basic. You can add bits of cheese and sausage if you like, but they're optional.

The same is true of a western novel. There are lots of extra goodies you can toss in; but unless you're writing about the timeless West, a big dollop of historical research is imperative. A colorful tale without it is a saddle without a horse.

When I began writing for Doubleday, I didn't know that much about anything western. I had never lived on a ranch and was new to West Texas. What I did have, though, was two big advantages: a nose for history and a heart that led me to learn everything I could about the Old West. That has led to a system of research I still use today: I experience personally the things I'm going to write about whenever possible, and I read everything I can find on the subject.

Let's start with the Personal Experience category. Most people who know me are aware that I don't mind enduring some discomfort if it's necessary for good research. Like, there was the time when I was writing BUFFALO GOLD and needed to have my protagonist fall into an icy buffalo wallow at night and come out sopping wet facing a north wind. What did it feel like to be that cold? I wondered. How did one's body react?

There was only one way to find out. I didn't have a buffalo wallow handy, but I had a water hose in the backyard and the night was bitterly cold and windy. I dressed in a light cotton wrap and went outside, where I soaked myself, even my hair, with the hose and stood in the wind as long as I could stand it. Then, racing inside, I shiveringly scribbled a few notes, after which I went into Phase Two.

I wanted to know how the heart reacts when you're wet and cold. I learned the answer to this by standing indoors with my fingers pressed to the throbbing areas of my throat, then stepping outside to see whether my pulse speeded up or slowed down when the wind hit.

I knew my pulse would surely slow down to nothing if I were actually freezing to death; but I was surprised to discover that initially the heart kicks in full force‹POUND-POUND-POUND!-in an effort to compensate for the loss of heat. Each time, as I stepped back indoors, the beats would slow down again. Needless to say, the buffalo wallow scene was some of the easiest writing I ever did.

Later, when I was writing PHANTOM HILL, I hit another situation where I wasn't sure what would happen. In my reading research, I'd learned that sometimes when people were without water in a desolate place, they would relieve their suffering by slicing open cactus pads, which they chewed and placed on their lips for moisture.

That should be a breeze, I thought. I don't even have to go to anywhere. My neighbor across the street had a patch of cacti in her yard. I quit drinking water until I got pretty uncomfortable; then, armed with gloves to protect me against cactus spines and a paring knife, I approached my neighbor and asked permission to eat some of her cactus.

She was a sweet lady and didn't say anything like, "You're crazy," but she did have a look in her eyes that said, "I've got to see this."

Together we approached the cactus and after I had filleted a choice serving, anticipating relief from thirst, I got a big surprise. Trust me, cactus may have its uses, but food is not one of them. It's miserably sour and sort of slimy. I wrote the thirst scene with sympathy oozing from my pores.

I've done other hands-on research that was equally useful and not nearly so unpleasant. One that I enjoyed most was watching an old Taylor County pioneer shoe a horse. Another was attending the annual Old Settlers Reunion at Buffalo Gap, near Abilene, Texas. The oldtimers there loved to talk about the past and related some things that sounded a bit like "stretchers," but maybe not. One old cowboy told me cattle will turn their backs on a blizzard and keep moving away till they come to a fence, where they'll stand till they either freeze to death or the weather lets up. Another time, a lady gave me instructions on how to make good lye soap, and another talked about how to cure a deerskin so it's nice and soft.

The reading I've done in my research isn't nearly as colorful as the personal experience stuff, and sometimes it can involve hours of digging through dusty volumes before you find what you're looking for. I remember spending two days in the library at the University of Oklahoma trying to learn what kind of uniforms cavalrymen wore during a certain period of history--just prior to or just after the Civil War; I've forgotten which. There were many pictures of men in uniforms, but none for the cavalry in that period. Imagine my chagrin when I finally learned about dragoons, a unit of cavalry that was originally mounted infantry. What I needed to be looking for was a dragoon's uniform.

The bottom line is, you have to care about what you're doing, and you have to keep at it in order to do good research. It's a way of keeping something wonderful and fascinating alive, and we need to do that for the generations to come.

It does take effort, but I've never regretted a minute I've spent resurrecting history. Not even the cavalry uniform incident. After all, how many people do you know who can tell you what a dragoon wore?