AMS in pencil, signed on the reverse of the first page, "Zane Grey," titled at the head, "Rocky Riffle on the Rogue River," 107 pages, no date but circa mid-1920s. Grey's original handwritten draft of a nonfiction work based on a trip taken in 1924, originally published in Field and Stream in 1926; the tale is also published in his 1928 book Tales of Fresh-Water Fishing. The piece begins, "That old adage 'the third time is the charm' worked truthfully for me in my 1924 trip to Oregon. It was a wonderful fishing experience, beginning disastrously for me, wearing on through the most miserable and inexplicable bad luck, and winding up gloriously." Engaging in a friendly fishing competition with his brother, R. C., Grey experiences one setback after another before he finally hits his groove: "My fish, feeling the hard strain again, started off on his determined down-stream course. I let him go, but gradually tightened my hold of the line as it dipped through my left hand. I had to hold him or lose him. How he fought! He even ceased tugging until he had most of my line out. Then began the slow work of drawing him back foot by foot. It took so long that dusk had fallen by the time we got our first glimpse of his color…The time came when he rose to the surface, and I saw clearly a bigger steelhead than I had landed. The luck of it! I felt sure of him. I had no torturing doubts or fears. And I gave him the strain of the rod until he was beaten." On the reverse of the first page, Grey writes and signs a note to Frank McGlynn of the Friars Club in New York City, consenting to the production of a play; on the back of page 60, he draws a small sketch of a woman's face. In overall fine condition.
