Sun and Saddle Leather.
by Badger Clark.
PREFACE
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 compet.i.tion 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 _Gra.s.s 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 _Gra.s.s Grown Trails_ were written in Arizona.
_Sun and Saddle Leather_ and _Gra.s.s 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 "G.o.d"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 ill.u.s.trator 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 _Gra.s.s 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 Pa.s.sing 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 demiG.o.ds who ranged And laughed and loved so free Have topped the last divide, or changed To men like you and me.
SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER
RIDIN"
There is some that likes the city-- Gra.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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.
_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 h.e.l.l,_ _And a-ridin"._
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_When my feet is in the stirrups And my hawse is on the bust._"]
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. .h.i.t 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._"