Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Lewis Taylor (for "The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters") also wrote a novel entitled "A Roaring in the Wind," which features the vicious outlaw Slade as a character.
Taylor even quotes from Twain's description of a meeting Sam and Orion had with Slade while on the stage coach journey from Missouri to Nevada, which appears in "Roughing It."
Could A Roaring in the Wind have been inspired by Taylor reading "Roughing It"?
I always considered The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters to be Twainesque - Jaimie was quite Huckish.
- B. Clay Shannon