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SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

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"When the last free trail is a prim, fenced lane

And our graves grow weeds through forgetful Mays,

Richer and statelier then you'll reign,

Mother of men whom the world will praise.

And your sons will love you and sigh for you,

Labor and battle and die for you,

But never the fondest will understand

The way we have loved you, young, young land."

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SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

BY BADGER CLARK

Illustrations from Photographs by
L. A. HUFFMAN

THIRD EDITION

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BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS

Copyright, 1915, 1917 and 1919 by Badger Clark

All Rights Reserved

MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

TO MY FATHER,
who, in his long life, has seldom been
conscious of a man's rough exterior, or
unconscious of his obscurest virtue.

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PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Cowboys are the sternest critics of those who would represent the West. No hypocrisy, no bluff, no pose can evade them.

Yet cowboys have made Badger Clark's songs their own. So readily have they circulated that often the man who sings the song could not tell you where it started. Many of the poems have become folk songs of the West, we may say of America, for they speak of freedom and the open.

Generous has been the praise given Sun and Saddle Leather, but perhaps no criticism has summed up the work so satisfactorily as the comment of the old cow man who said, "You can break me if there's a dead poem in the book, I read the hull of it. Who in H—— is this kid Clark, anyway? I don't know how he knowed, but he knows."

That is what proves Badger Clark the real poet. He knows. Beyond his wonderful presentation of the West is the quality of universal appeal that makes his work real art. He has tied the West to the universe.

The old cow man is not the only one who has wondered who Badger Clark was. Charles Wharton Stork speaking of Sun and Saddle Leather, said, "It has splendid flavor and fine artistic handling as well. I should like to know more of the author, whether he was a cow puncher or merely got inside his psychology by imagination."

Badger Clark was brought up in the West. As a boy he lived in Deadwood, South Dakota. The town at that time was trying to live down the reputation for exuberant indecorum which she had acquired during the gold rush; but her five churches operating two hours a week could make little headway against the competition of two dance halls and twenty-six saloons running twenty-four hours a day.

Perhaps it was these early impressions that make The Piano at Red's in Mr. Clark's later volume Grass Grown Trails so vivid.

Scuffling feet and thud of fists,

Curses hot as fire—

Still the music sang of love,

Longin', lost desire,

Dreams that never could have been

Joys that couldn't stay—

While the man upon the floor

Wiped the blood away.

After Clark had grown up, in the cow country near the Mexican border, he stumbled unexpectedly into paradise. He was given charge of a small ranch and the responsibility for a bunch of cattle just large enough to amuse him, but too small to demand a full day's work once a month. The sky was persistently blue, the sunlight was richly golden, the folds of the barren mountains and the wide reaches of the range were full of many lovely colors, and his nearest neighbor was eight miles away.

The cow men who dropped in for a meal now and then in the course of their interminable riding appeared to have ridden directly out of books of adventure, with old-young faces full of sun wrinkles, careless mouths full of bad grammar, strange oaths and stranger yarns, and hearts for the most part as open and shadowless as the country they daily ranged.

In the evenings as Clark placed his boot heels on the porch railing, smote the strings of his guitar and broke the tense silence of the warm, dry twilight with song, he often wondered, as his eyes rested dreamily on the spikey yuccas that stood out sharp and black against the clear lemon color of the sunset west, why hermit life in the desert was traditionally a sad, penitential affair.

In a letter to his mother a month or two after settling in Arizona he found prose too weak to express his utter content and perpetrated his first verses. She, with natural pride, sent the verses to a magazine, the old Pacific Monthly, and a week or two later the desert dweller was astonished beyond measure to receive his first editorial check. The discovery that certain people in the world were willing to pay money for such rhymes as he could write bent the whole course of his subsequent life, for good or evil, and the occasional lyric impulse hardened into a habit which has consumed much of his time and most of his serious thought since that date. The verses written to his mother were Ridin', the first poem in his first book, Sun and Saddle Leather, and the greater part of the poems in both Sun and Saddle Leather and Grass Grown Trails were written in Arizona.

Sun and Saddle Leather and Grass Grown Trails are books of Western songs, simple and ringing and yet with an ample vision that makes them unique among poems written in a local vernacular. The spirit of them is eternal, the spirit of youth in the open, and their background is "God's Reserves," the vast reach of Western mesa and plain that will always remain free—"the way that it was when the world was new."

Every poem carries a breath of plains, wind-flavored with a tang of camp smoke; and, varied as they are in tune and tone, they do not contain a single note that is labored or unnatural. They are of native Western stock, as indigenous to the soil as the agile cow ponies whose hoofs evidently beat the time for their swinging measures; and it is this quality, as well as their appealing music, that has already given them such wide popularity, East and West.

That they were born in the saddle and written for love rather than for publication is a conviction that the reader of them can hardly escape. From the impish merriment of From Town to the deep but fearless piety of The Cowboy's Prayer, these songs ring true; and are as healthy as the big, bright country whence they came.

In 1917, about the time our first edition of Sun and Saddle Leather began to run low, we fortunately discovered L. A. Huffman, of Miles City, Montana, the illustrator who in 1878 began taking photographs from the saddle with crude cameras he made over to meet his needs. These same views were the first of the now famous "Huffman Pictures," beginning with the Indians and buffaloes round about Ft. Keogh on the Yellowstone where he was post photographer for General Miles' army during those stirring territorial days. The Huffman Studio is still one of the show places of Miles City, and the sales headquarters also for Montana and adjacent states for both of Mr. Clark's books, Sun and Saddle Leather and Grass Grown Trails. In a recent letter Mr. Huffman says, "I have just come back from a trip to 'Powder River' and along the Wyoming-Montana border. It's all too true! Clark saw and wrote it none too soon in The Passing of the Trail."

The trail's a lane, the trail's a lane.

Dead is the branding fire.

The prairies wild are tame and mild

All close-corralled with wire.

The sunburnt demigods who ranged

And laughed and loved so free

Have topped the last divide, or changed

To men like you and me.

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CONTENTS

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

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RIDIN'

There is some that likes the city—

Grass that's curried smooth and green,

Theaytres and stranglin' collars,

Wagons run by gasoline—

But for me it's hawse and saddle

Every day without a change,

And a desert sun a-blazin'

On a hundred miles of range.

Just a-ridin', a-ridin'—

Desert ripplin' in the sun,

Mountains blue along the skyline—

I don't envy anyone

When I'm ridin'.

When my feet is in the stirrups

And my hawse is on the bust,

With his hoofs a-flashin' lightnin'

From a cloud of golden dust,

And the bawlin' of the cattle

Is a-coming' down the wind

Then a finer life than ridin'

Would be mighty hard to find.

Just a-ridin, a-ridin'—

Splittin' long cracks through the air,

Stirrin' up a baby cyclone,

Rippin' up the prickly pear

As I'm ridin'.

I don't need no art exhibits

When the sunset does her best,

Paintin' everlastin' glory

On the mountains to the west

And your opery looks foolish

When the night-bird starts his tune

And the desert's silver mounted

By the touches of the moon.

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"When my feet is in the stirrups

And my hawse is on the bust."

Just a-ridin', a-ridin',

Who kin envy kings and czars

When the coyotes down the valley

Are a-singin' to the stars,

If he's ridin'?

When my earthly trail is ended

And my final bacon curled

And the last great roundup's finished

At the Home Ranch of the world

I don't want no harps nor haloes,

Robes nor other dressed up things—

Let me ride the starry ranges

On a pinto hawse with wings!

Just a-ridin', a-ridin'—

Nothin' I'd like half so well

As a-roundin' up the sinners

That have wandered out of Hell,

And a-ridin'.

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THE SONG OF THE LEATHER

When my trail stretches out to the edge of the sky

Through the desert so empty and bright,

When I'm watchin' the miles as they go crawlin' by

And a-hopin' I'll get there by night,

Then my hawse never speaks through the long sunny day,

But my saddle he sings in his creaky old way:

"Easy—easy—easy—

For a temperit pace ain't a crime.

Let your mount hit it steady, but give him his ease,

For the sun hammers hard and there's never a breeze.

We kin get there in plenty of time."

When I'm after some critter that's hit the high lope,

And a-spurrin' my hawse till he flies,

When I'm watchin' the chances for throwin' my rope

And a-winkin' the sweat from my eyes,

Then the leathers they squeal with the lunge and the swing

And I work to the livelier tune that they sing:

"Reach 'im! reach 'im! reach 'im!

If you lather your hawse to the heel!

There's a time to be slow and a time to be quick;

Never mind if it's rough and the bushes are thick—

Pull your hat down and fling in the steel!"

When I've rustled all day till I'm achin' for rest

And I'm ordered a night-guard to ride,

With the tired little moon hangin' low in the west

And my sleepiness fightin' my pride,

Then I nod and I blink at the dark herd below

And the saddle he sings as my hawse paces slow:

"Sleepy—sleepy—sleepy—

We was ordered a close watch to keep,

But I'll sing you a song in a drowsy old key;

All the world is a-snoozin' so why shouldn't we?

Go to sleep, pardner mine, go to sleep."

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"There's a time to be slow and a time to be quick."

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A BAD HALF HOUR

Wonder why I feel so restless;

Moon is shinin' still and bright,

Cattle all is restin' easy,

But I just kaint sleep tonight.

Ain't no cactus in my blankets,

Don't know why they feel so hard—

'Less it's Warblin' Jim a-singin'

"Annie Laurie" out on guard.

"Annie Laurie"—wish he'd quit it!

Couldn't sleep now if I tried.

Makes the night seem big and lonesome,

And my throat feels sore inside.

How my Annie used to sing it!

And it sounded good and gay

Nights I drove her home from dances

When the east was turnin' gray.

Yes, "her brow was like the snowdrift"

And her eyes like quiet streams,

"And her face"—I still kin see it

Much too frequent in my dreams;

And her hand was soft and trembly

That night underneath the tree,

When I couldn't help but tell her

She was "all the world to me."

But her folks said I was "shif'less,"

"Wild," "unsettled,"—they was right,

For I leaned to punchin' cattle

And I'm at it still tonight.

And she married young Doc Wilkins—

Oh my Lord! but that was hard!

Wish that fool would quit his singin'

"Annie Laurie" out on guard!

Oh, I just kaint stand it thinkin'

Of the things that happened then.

Good old times, and all apast me!

Never seem to come again—

My turn? Sure. I'll come a-runnin'.

Warm me up some coffee, pard—

But I'll stop that Jim from singin'

"Annie Laurie" out on guard.

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FROM TOWN

We're the children of the open and we hate the haunts o' men,

But we had to come to town to get the mail.

And we're ridin' home at daybreak—'cause the air is cooler then—

All 'cept one of us that stopped behind in jail.

Shorty's nose won't bear paradin', Bill's off eye is darkly fadin',

All our toilets show a touch of disarray,

For we found that city life is a constant round of strife

And we ain't the breed for shyin' from a fray.

Chant your warwhoop, pardners dear, while the east turns pale with fear

And the chaparral is tremblin' all aroun'

For we're wicked to the marrer; we're a midnight dream of terror

When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from town!

We acquired our hasty temper from our friend, the centipede.

From the rattlesnake we learnt to guard our rights.

We have gathered fightin' pointers from the famous bronco steed

And the bobcat teached us reppertee that bites.

So when some high-collared herrin' jeered the garb that I was wearin'

'Twas't long till we had got where talkin' ends,

And he et his illbred chat, with a sauce of derby hat,

While my merry pardners entertained his friends.

Sing 'er out, my buckeroos! Let the desert hear the news.

Tell the stars the way we rubbed the haughty down.

We're the fiercest wolves a-prowlin' and it's just our night for howlin'

When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from town.

Since the days that Lot and Abram split the Jordan range in halves,

Just to fix it so their punchers wouldn't fight,

Since old Jacob skinned his dad-in-law for six years' crop of calves

And then hit the trail for Canaan in the night,

There has been a taste for battle 'mong the men that follow cattle

And a love of doin' things that's wild and strange,

And the warmth of Laban's words when he missed his speckled herds

Still is useful in the language of the range.

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"We have gathered fightin' pointers from the famous bronco steed."

Sing 'er out, my bold coyotes! leather fists and leather throats,

For we wear the brand of Ishm'el like a crown.

We're the sons o' desolation, we're the outlaws of creation—

Ee—yow! a-ridin' up the rocky trail from town!

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A COWBOY'S PRAYER

(Written for Mother)

Oh Lord. I've never lived where churches grow.

I love creation better as it stood

That day You finished it so long ago

And looked upon Your work and called it good.

I know that others find You in the light

That's sifted down through tinted window panes,

And yet I seem to feel You near tonight

In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.

I thank You, Lord, that I am placed so well,

That You have made my freedom so complete;

That I'm no slave of whistle, clock or bell,

Nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street.

Just let me live my life as I've begun

And give me work that's open to the sky;

Make me a pardner of the wind and sun,

And I won't ask a life that's soft or high.

Let me be easy on the man that's down;

Let me be square and generous with all.

I'm careless sometimes, Lord, when I'm in town,

But never let 'em say I'm mean or small!

Make me as big and open as the plains,

As honest as the hawse between my knees,

Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains,

Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze!

Forgive me, Lord, if sometimes I forget.