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THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

GIFT OF

The Estate of
S. H. Cowell

SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

SUN AND SADDLE
LEATHER

INCLUDING GRASS GROWN
TRAILS AND NEW POEMS

BADGER NCLARK

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY

L. A. HUFFMAN

Tenth Edition

BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

The Illustrations are from Copyrighted Originals by
L. A. Huffman, Miles City, Montana.

Made in the United States of America

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

GIFT

Add to Lib.

TO MY FATHER,

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

105

PREFACE

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

Yet cowboys have made Badger Clark's
songs their own. So readily have they circu
lated 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 cowman 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

vii

Preface

presentation of the West is the quality of uni
versal appeal that makes his work real art.
He has tied the West to the universe.

The old cowman 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 born January i, 1883, at
Albia, Iowa. His ancestors on his father's
side were of Puritan stock and had called
themselves Americans for seven generations.
His mother's people were Pennsylvania Quak
ers. His paternal grandfather, a Vermonter,
moved West in 1857 and invested heavily in
a town site and manufacturing interests in
southern Missouri. He was an Abolitionist
and indiscreet enough to say so. The climate
of southern Missouri was particularly insa
lubrious for Abolitionists at that period, and
Mr. Clark's neighbors took such an ardent
interest in his opinions that he, with his two

viii

Preface

sons, slept away from home for two months
because they were expecting to be the guests
of honor at a tar-and-feather party and did
not care to involve the women-folk of the
family.

As the Civil War drew on, the tar-and-
feather threat was complicated with strong
possibilities of hemp and this, with malaria,
made the location so unattractive that Mr.
Clark trailed north into Iowa, arriving on
free soil with his family^ two wagon loads
of household effects, and about one hundred
and fifty dollars in money.

The father of the author, after this border
experience, naturally enlisted in the Union
army, and served in the Western forces until
disabled by wounds before Vicksburg. Re
turning north he entered the ministry of the
Methodist church and continued therein for
the rest of his active life, retiring in 1915 after
an exceptionally successful and honored
career of fifty-one years in the pulpit.

Shortly after the birth of Badger Clark the
family moved to Dakota, which was then
frontier territory, and the cowboy poet's first

Preface

taste of pioneering was at the age of six
months, when his mother, in the absence of
his father and elder brothers, carried him on
one arm while she drove a plow team and
turned enough sod to save the home from one
of the sudden prairie fires of the early days.

He grew up in, and with, the state of South
Dakota, spending his 'teen years in the Black
Hills at Deadwood. Deadwood 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. This "wide open" condi
tion of things familiarized Mr. Clark with
the free-and-easy moral atmosphere of the old
West, but at the same time had the odd effect
of making him a teetotaler in defiance of all
the older poetic traditions.

During his youth he showed no particular
literary tendencies beyond an insatiable ap
petite for books. Luckily for his health this
was balanced by an equally strong passion for

Preface

outdoor life, — hunting, fishing, camping or
anything of that sort, providing it was not suf
ficiently practical to interfere with concurrent
dreaming. During two vacations of his high
school course he went overland into western
Wyoming and spent the summer on the ranch
of an uncle at the foot of the Big Horn Moun
tains.

Having finished the high school with no
particular scholastic honors, he entered Da
kota Wesleyan University and studied there
for a year. At the end of that time he was
given an opportunity to go to Cuba in con
nection with one of the colonizing enterprises
undertaken there at the close of the Spanish
war, and lack of money and a romantic tem
perament led him to abandon his studies for
the promise of a more adventurous life under
tropic skies, — a step he afterward regretted.
The colonization project fell through and his
fellow colonists returned to the States, but he
had fallen in love with opalescent surf and
the rustle of warm trade winds in the palms,
and so, in the spirit of the lotos-eaters and

Preface

with about the same business prospects, he
stayed.

While working on a Camaguey plantation
a year later he had the misfortune to be pres
ent at a dispute between his employer and
two native neighbors over a boundary fence
in the jungle. In the course of the argument
one of the natives was shot and Clark, with
the usual fate of innocent bystanders, shortly
found himself in irons and on the way to the
carcel. During the two weeks which elapsed
before the arrival of the cash for his bail, he
spent his time in a cell with seventeen Span
ish negroes and a dog-eared copy of the
Rubaiyat handed in by an American friend on
the outside.

For six months thereafter he divided his
attention between plantation work, paludic
fever, and a practical course in Spanish legal
procedure, at the end of which time he was
tried and acquitted, and then turned his face
toward home in much the same mental and
material condition as the prodigal son of old.

The summer of his return was spent very
much to his taste, with a surveying party in

xii

Preface

the Bad Lands of South Dakota. That fall he
took up an agency for a correspondence school
but indifference to the charms of the business
game and a constitutional aversion to dunning
anybody militated against his success and he
resigned in a few months to accept the city
editorship of a small daily paper in Lead,
South Dakota. This pleased him better, but
he became too deeply interested in it and
overwork, together with the after effect of
tropical fever, led to a sentence of exile from
his beloved Black Hills for at least two years,
in obedience to which he journeyed south to
Arizona.

In the cow country near the Mexican bor
der, Badger Clark stumbled unexpectedly in
to 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.

Xlll

Preface

The cowmen who dropped in for a meal
now and then in the course of their intermin
able 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 won
dered, 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 tradi
tionally 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 perpe
trated 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

xiv

Preface

receive his first editorial check. The discov
ery that certain people in the world were
willing to pay money for such rhymes as he
could write bent the whole course of his sub
sequent life, for good or evil, and the occa
sional 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 Ridiri ',
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.

He remained in the border country for four
years and finally said good-bye to the desert
with regret. He appears to have left some
thing behind to keep his memory green, how
ever, for seven years after his departure his
High Chin Bob was discovered to be a popu
lar song among the cowboys in a certain sec
tion of the Southwest, and was printed in
Poetry as a true Western folksong of unknown
authorship.

As Badger Clark says: "Regarding the
High Chin Bob business, it is so far back and,

Preface

with my usual carelessness, I have neglected
to preserve any documentary evidence bear
ing on it, that I fear I can't give you much of
value. The thing began once when I was
with an outfit of ten men driving seven hun
dred cattle to the shipping point after the
roundup, acting as cook because the regular
incumbent had gone to town and looked upon
the wine when it is red. One night when I
was washing my pots and kettles I heard the
boys around the fire discussing a cow-puncher
over in the mountains who, the week before,
had roped a bobcat and 'drug' it to death.
The boys spent some time swapping expert
opinions on the incident, so it stuck in my
mind, incubated, and eventually hatched out
The Glory Trail.

"Nobody said anything about the poem,
good or bad, as I remember, and I reckoned
it had fallen rather flat until, some years later,
about three years ago, I think, a distant friend
sent me a copy of Poetry which featured High
Chin Bob. I found a real native folksong
which the cowboys were accustomed to carol
in their long rides over the romantic wilder-

xvi

Preface

nesses of the Southwest, a song like Melchi-
zedek, without father or mother, which prob
ably had naturally 'just growed' in the rocky
soil where it now flourished. What was my
amazement, in examining this literary curi
osity, to find that it was my Glory Trail, with
slight alterations, such as the omission of one
line in the refrain, such rubbings down and
chippings off as might happen to it in passing
from mouth to mouth. I own that the 'folk
song' version is in some points more striking,
and easy than my more labored original, and
I believe it is better known.

"Frothingham, you remember, took it for
his Songs of Men and I recently noticed that
Rupert Hughes mentions High Chin Bob in
a familiarly friendly way in his novel, Beauty,
and no doubt many a country newspaper in
the West has run the lines. When I was in
California a year or so ago I became acquaint
ed with H. H. Knibbs and I noticed that he
introduced me to everybody as the author of
High Chin Bob. So, under another name
than the one its dad bestowed at the christen-

xvn

Preface

ing, this poem has become probably the most
widely known son of its father.

"By the way, I have never heard High Chin
Bob sung, and have some curiosity as to its
homemade musical setting. If I ever meet
some one who knows it, I'll make him warble
it, if I have to use a sixshooter."

At present Badger Clark lives in Hot
Springs, South Dakota. Recently he has
learned that it is easier to talk to five hundred
people than to five, and that sometimes his fel
low citizens would rather hear him read his
own verse than read it themselves, which fur
nishes a new source of pleasure in a very quiet
life. He is thirty-eight years old and unmar
ried. He is a church member of irreproach
able daily walk and conversation but some
what uncertain orthodoxy. He never wears
a starched collar and generally appears in a
coat only when meteorological conditions or
an occasion of ceremony make it necessary.
He is six feet tall.

One who knows him intimately thus writes
of the author: "Badger Clark is loved in his
own home town but is not worshipped as a

xviii

Preface

celebrity, for which fact, doubtless, no one is
more thankful than he himself. It leaves him
free to visit the public library, take part in
local election squabbles, and be rated as a
good citizen. He can sing in the church choir
or join in the Christmas pageant as one of the
grown-up children of the congregation. He
is free to use his alert sense of humor, and in
turn is glad to be the target for the wit of
others. He can write verse on local subjects
and they will be printed in the weekly news
paper and read without his fellow townsmen
thinking the author odd."

The first edition of Sun and Saddle Leather
appeared in 1915. It was a modest little vol
ume of fifty-six pages bound in antique
boards; but to prove how easily copies were
disposed of, the publisher wrote this letter to
the author:

"Do you happen to have a spare copy of
the first edition of Sun and Saddle Leather?
Some evil-minded person has lifted the last
copy I had.

"I would be tickled to death to send you a

xix

Preface

copy of the last edition to replace, if you are
willing to make a swap."

But even the author did not have one, for
this was his answer :

"I'm sorry, but my last copy of the first edi
tion of Sun and Saddle Leather disappeared
long ago. All I have in that line is one copy
of the third edition that was so thumbed and
soiled from using it to read out of in public
that it would tempt nobody to steal it.

"I suppose that I should have preserved at
least one copy of the first edition for its his
toric interest, but, like Henry Ford, I am in
clined to think that history is 'mostly bunk/
at least any sentimental tenderness over one's
personal history. 'So sad, so fresh, the days
that are no more/ Beautiful, but bunk, bunk,
bunk. Let's rather grow tearfully enthusias
tic over the fortieth edition."

In 1917 the second edition appeared. It
was illustrated by L. A. Huffman, whose
pictures have had their place in every sub
sequent edition. Back in 1878 Mr. Huffman
began to take photographs with crude cam
eras which he made himself. These same

Preface

photographs were the first of the now famous
Huffman pictures comprising something like
six thousand historic subjects, beginning with
the Indians and buffaloes round about Fort
Keogh on the Yellowstone, where he was post
photographer in General Miles's army. Mr.
Huffman knows his West thoroughly and his
pictures help others to know it.

Having his poems run into a second edi
tion did not make Badger Clark believe that
he was straight on the road to wealth or fame
for this was how he inscribed a copy:

When my Pegasus is lopin',

Ory-eyed and on the bust,
And the cares of common livin'

Sprawl behind me in the dust,
And the breath of inspiration

Comes a driftin' down the wind,
Then a finer life than writin*

Would be mighty hard to find.

Just a-writin', a-writin',

Nothin' I like half so well
As a-slingin' ink and English—

If the stuff will only sell

When I'm writin'.

XXI

Preface

The same year appeared the first edition of
Grass Grown Trails. William S. Hart wrote :
"May these trails never be wholly obliterated!
I love the West and them, and thoroughly
appreciate anything which so beautifully il
lustrates and typifies it as this last volume of
Badger Clark's does."

In 1919 a third edition of Sun and Saddle
Leather was brought out containing addi
tional poems.

In 1920 appeared a collected edition of
Badger Clark's work, containing all the poems
in Sun and Saddle Leather, all those in Grass
Grown Trails and nine new poems hitherto
unpublished in book form.

To prove that some authors are grateful,
this is what Badger Clark wrote his publisher
when he had seen the book :

"I am now ready to die. Hitherto I have
felt that I have never done anything right
fully to prove up on my world-without-end
six-by-three homestead, but now I have
earned that spot of deep repose. And now
I am ready for the 'Sure enwinding arms of
cool-enfolding death.' I have achieved my

xxii

Preface

achievement. I have done done it, as the Tex-
anos used to say. I am the parent of a child,
a real child, a grown child — no mewling,
thirty-page infant in pasteboard swaddling
clothes, no gas-pipe-legged adolescent look
ing out at the world with scared eyes that
mutely beg: 'Please like me'; but a splendid,
rounded-out, mature specimen of progeny,
quietly elegant in garb, and bearing itself
with calm confidence, conscious of the friend
ship and commendation of a variety of people,
real people, distinguished people, people who
(be it uttered in confidence) ought to know
better. And I am its dad : bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh, heart of my heart, it stands
and nobody can even pick out its more ami
able traits and say: 'That came from the
mother's side.' 'Come, lovely and soothing
death/ you bleak, bloodless, black humbug,
you; come whenever you're ready. I've
beaten you! You can't kill me!

"Where was I? Pardon me! 'B'ar with
me, y'r honor,' as I once heard a cow country
lawyer say when he was trying to plead a case
under a burden of emotion and mixed drinks.

xxiii

Preface

But, Badger, it has taken me the best part of
fifteen years to make that book and now, as
I look at it, I sing to myself: 'By gosh! it was
worth it!' I have stood wistfully by and
watched the companions of my youth go into
real estate and insurance and the ministry and
medicine and standing in the world, wonder
ing if I wasn't after all, a variegated damfool
for trying to scale the perpendicular side
which Parnassus presents to the half-educated.
But to-night I envy no man on earth — not
Rockefeller, not Doug. Fairbanks, not even
Gamaliel Harding as he leads admiring mil
lions toward the promised land of Normalcy.
'Blessed is that man who has found his work.
Let him ask no other blessedness.' Why Car-
lyle, you dear, crusty old son-of-a-gun, you're
dead right, and when I meet you beyond the
last divide I'll humble myself before you for
having thought, sometimes, that those words
of yours were mere inspirational bunk.

"Well to return to coherency, if I can, the
new Siamese-twins edition of Sun and Saddle
Leather and Grass Grown Trails is really a
source of some slight satisfaction to me. I

xxiv

Preface

have before me collections of Wilfred Wilson
Gibson, and John Masefield and they, though
thicker, don't look a bit better — mechanically.
You've done me proud. Thank you."

The present sixth edition, we hope, will
speak for itself.

Dr. W. T. Hornaday said of the book:
"Some of the Sun and Saddle Leather poems
have taken hold of me with a grip that only
imbecility ever can shake loose. I have seen
many poems and verses come out of the wild
portions of the West; but these are the best.
They are real poetry 1"

Sun and Saddle Leather and Grass Grown
Trails are Western songs, simple and ringing
and yet with an ample vision that makes them
unique among poems written in a local ver
nacular. The spirit of them is eternal, the
spirit of youth in the open, and their back
ground 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;

xxv

Preface

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 hard
ly 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 prefaces to earlier editions I made free
to quote from the poems and to attempt to
point out their peculiar excellencies. With
modesty unusual in authors, Badger Clark
wrote :

"By the way, Mr. Badger loaded most of
the odium for the biographical preface to
Sun and Saddle Leather onto you at the time

xxvi

Preface

it first appeared, and I suppose you are re
sponsible for the extended version of the late
edition. It is said that modern women are
deficient in spinning, weaving and other arts
familiar to their great grandmothers, but
when it comes to the proverbially difficult
stunt of fabricating a silk purse out of a sow's
ear, you are THERE. Thank you."

R. H.

XXVll

CONTENTS

SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

PACE

RIDIN' 39

There is some that like the city.

THE SONG OF THE LEATHER 42

When my trail stretches out to the edge of
the sky.

A BAD HALF HOUR 45

Wonder why I feel so restless.
FROM TOWN 47

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

A COWBOY'S PRAYER 5°

Oh Lordj I've never lived where churches
grow.

THE CHRISTMAS TRAIL 52

The wind is blowin cold down the mountain
tips of snow.

A BORDER AFFAIR 55

Spanish is the lovin tongue.
THE BUNK-HOUSE ORCHESTRA .... 57

Wrangle up your mouth-harps, drag your
banjo out.

XXIX

Contents

THE OUTLAW 60

When my rope takes hold on a two-year-old.

THE LEGEND OF BOASTFUL BILL .... 62
At a roundup on the Gily.

THE TIED MAVERICK 66

Lay on the iron! the tie holds fast.

A ROUNDUP LULLABY 68

Desert blue and silver in the still moonshine.

THE TRAIL o' LOVE 71

My love was swift and slender.
BACHIN' 74

Our lives are hid; our trails are strange.
THE GLORY TRAIL 77

'Way high up the Mogollons.
BACON 81

You're salty and greasy and smoky as sin.
THE LOST PARDNER 83

I ride alone and hate the boys I meet.
GOD'S RESERVES 86

One timef 'way back where the year marks
fade.

THE MARRIED MAN 89

There's an old pard of mine that sits by his
door.

THE OLD Cow MAN 92

I rode across a valley range.

XXX

Contents

THE PLAINSMEN 95

Men of the older, gentler soil.
THE WESTERNER 98

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains.
THE WIND is BLOWIN' 101

My tired hawse nickers for his own home bars.
Ox BOOT HILL 103

Up from the prairie and through the pines.

GRASS GROWN TRAILS
THE COYOTE 107

Trailing the last gleam after.
THE FREE WIND 109

/ went and worked in a drippin' mine.
THE MEDICINE MAN 112

The trail is long to the bison herd.
THE PLANO AT RED'S 114

'Twos a hole called Red's Saloon.
A RANGER 116

He never made parade of tooth or claw.
ON THE DRIVE 121

Oh, days whoop by with swingin1 lope.
SATURDAY NIGHT 123

Out from the ranch on a Saturday night.
SOUTHWESTERN JUNE 125

Lazy little hawse, it's noon.

XXXI

THE NIGHT HERDER . • • • r • • I2?
/ laughed when the dawn was a-peep'in .

HAWSE WORK • ' * I29

Stop! there's the wild bunch to right of the
trail.

HALF-BREED . - - • • • * '• I32
Fathers with eyes of ancient ire.

To HE* ..- I34

Cut loose a hundred rivers.

THE LOCOED HORSE I3

As I was ridin all alone.

THE LONG WAY . . • • • ' is8

Two miles of ridin' from the school without a
bit of trouble.

FREIGHTIN'

Forty miles from Taggart's store.

144

THE RAINS *

You've watched the ground-hog's shadow ana
the shiftin weather signs.

. 148

THE BORDER ... •

When the dreamers of old Coronado.

THE BAD LANDS . . • *'*,.,'
No fresh green things in the Bad Lands bide.

THE SPRINGTIME PLAINS . . • • • ! f

Heart of me, are you hearing?
ON THE OREGON TRAIL

We're the prairie pilgrim crew.

XXXll

Contents

THE FOREST RANGERS 159

Red is the arch of the nightmare sky.
THE YELLOW STUFF 161

By the rim rocks on the hill.
THE SHEEP-HERDER 163

All day across the sagebrush fiat.
THE OLD PROSPECTOR 167

There's a song in the canyon below me.
GOD OF THE OPEN 169

God of the open, though I am so simple.
THE PASSING OF THE TRAIL 171

There was a sunny, savage land.
LATIGO TOWN 174

You and I settled this section together.
THE BUFFALO TRAIL 176

Deeply the buffalo trod it.
THE CAMP FIRE'S SONG 177

/ reared your fathers long ago.

NEW POEMS
PLAINS BORN 183

Westward from the greener places.
THE OLD CAMP COFFEE-POT 185

Old camp-mate, black and rough to see.

MY ENEMY 187

All mornin' in the mesa's glare.

xxxiii

Contents

THE FIGHTING SWING 189

Once again the regiments marching down the
street.

THE SMOKE-BLUE PLAINS 192

Kissed me from the saddle and I still can feel
it burning.

OTHERS 194

The daybreak comes so pure and still.
JEFF HART 196

Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch to war.
BATTLE 198

Do you mind that old fight in The Rattles?
IN THE HILLS 200

The shadow crawls up canyon walls; the rim
rocks flush to pink.

XXXIV

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Badger Clark Frontispiece

FACING PACK

When my feet is in the stirrups

And my hawse is on the bust 4°

There's a time to be slow and a timt to be quick . 66

We have gathered fightin pointers from the famous

bronco steed 9°

The taut ropes sing like a banjo string

And the latigoes creak and strain . . . . Il6

I wait to hear him ridin up behind 142

There's land where yet no ditchers dig

Nor cranks experiment;
It's only lovely, free and big

And isn't worth a cent 1 68

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 194
XXXV

SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER

RIDIN'

There is some that like 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 —
/ don't envy anyone

When I'm rldln'.
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-comin' down the wind
Then a finer life than ridin'
Would be mighty hard to find.

Sun and Saddle Leather

Just a-ridin', a-ridin' —

Splittin' long cracks through the

air,

Stir r in' 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.

Just a-ridin' f a-ridinf f

Who kin envy kings and czars
When the coyotes down the valley

Are a-singiri 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

Sun and Saddle Leather

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 1

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'.

Sun and Saddle Leather

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 craw-

lin' 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 easef
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,

Sun and Saddle Leather

When I'm watchin' the chances for throwin'

my rope

And a-winkinr the sweat from my eyes,
Then the leathers they squeal with the lunge

and the swing

And I work to the lievelier 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 be
low

Sun and Saddle Leather

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 f pardner mine, go to sleep!'

Sun and Saddle Leather

A BAD HALF HOUR
Wonder why I feel so restless ;

Moon is shinin' still and bright,
Cattle all is restin' easy,

But I just kain't 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 itl

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 itl

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;

Sun and Saddle Leather

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.

Sun and Saddle Leather

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 dearf while

the east turns pale with fear
And the chaparral is tremblin all aroun
For we're wicked to the marrer; we're a mid
night dream of terror

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

Sun and Saddle Leather

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'
'Twasn'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 fer out, my buckeroos! Let the desert

hear the news.
Tell the stars the way we rubbed the

haughty down.
W e're the fiercest wolves a-prowlin and it's

just our night for howl in'
When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from
town.

Sun and Saddle Leather

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.

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 of desolation, we're the out
laws of creation —

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

Sun and Saddle Leather

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 com
plete;
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.

Sun and Saddle Leather

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

Let me be square and generous with all.
I'm careless sometimes, Lord, when Fm 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.

You know about the reasons that are hid.
You understand the things that gall and fret;

You know me better than my mother did.
Just keep an eye on all that's done and said

And right me, sometimes, when I turn

aside,
And guide me on the long, dim trail ahead

That stretches upward toward the Great
Divide.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE CHRISTMAS TRAIL

The wind is blowin' cold down the mountain

tips of snow
And 'cross the ranges layin' brown and

dead ;

It's cryin' through the valley trees that wear
the mistletoe [head.

And mournin' with the gray clouds over-
Yet it's sweet with the beat of my little
hawse's feet [blue,

And I whistle like the air was warm and
For I'm ridin' up the Christmas trail to you,

Old folks,
I'm a-ridin' up the Christmas trail to you.

Oh, mebbe it was good when the whinny of

the Spring

Had wheedled me to hoppin' of the bars,
And livin' in the shadow of a sailin' buz
zard's wing

And sleepin' underneath a roof of stars.
But the bright campfire light only dances for
a night,

Sun and Saddle Leather

While the home-fire burns forever clear

and true,
So 'round the year I circle back to you,

Old folks,
'Round the rovin' year I circle back to you.

Oh, mebbe it was good when the reckless

Summer sun

Had shot a charge of fire through my veins,
And I milled around the whiskey and the

fightin' and the fun
'Mong the other mav'ricks drifted from the

plains.
Ay, the pot bubbled hot, while you reckoned

I'd forgot,
And the devil smacked the young blood in

his stew,
Yet I'm lovin' every mile that's nearer you,

Good folks,
Lovin' every blessed mile that's nearer you.

Oh, mebbe it was good at the roundup in the

Fall

When the clouds of bawlin' dust before us
ran,

Sun and Saddle Leather

And the pride of rope and saddle was

a-drivin' of us all
To a stretch of nerve and muscle, man and

man.
But the pride sort of died when the man got

weary eyed ;

Twas a sleepy boy that rode the night-
guard through,
And he dreamed himself along a trail to you,

Old folks,

Dreamed himself along a happy trail to
you.

The coyote's Winter howl cuts the dusk be
hind the hill,

But the ranch's shinin' window I kin see,
And though I don't deserve it and, I reckon,

never will,
There'll be room beside the fire kep' for

me.
Skimp my plate 'cause I'm late. Let me hit

the old kid gait,

For tonight I'm stumblin' tired of the new
And I'm ridin' up the Christmas trail to you,

Old folks,
I'm a-ridin' up the Christmas trail to you.

Sun and Saddle Leather

A BORDER AFFAIR

Spanish is the lovin' tongue,
Soft as music, light as spray.

'Twas a girl I learnt it from,
Livin' down Sonora way.

I don't look much like a lover,

Yet I say her love words over

Often when I'm all alone—
"Mi amor, mi corazon."

Nights when she knew where I'd ride

She would listen for my spurs,
Fling the big door open wide,

Raise them laughin' eyes of her
And my heart would nigh stop beatin'
When I heard her tender greeting',

Whispered soft for me alone

"Mi amor! mi corazon!"

Moonlight in the patio,

Old Senora noddin' near,
Me and Juana talkin' low

So the Madre couldn't hear-
How those hours would go a-flyin'I
And too soon I'd hear her sighin'

Sun and Saddle Leather

In her little sorry tone —
"Adios, ml corazonf"

But one time I had to fly

For a foolish gamblin7 fight,
And we said a swift goodbye

In that black, unlucky night.
When I'd loosed her arms from clingin'
With her words the hoofs kep' ringin'

As I galloped north alone —

"Adios, mi corazon!"

Never seen her since that night,

I kain't cross the Line, you know.
She was Mex and I was white;

Like as not it's better so.
Yet IVe always sort of missed her
Since that last wild night I kissed her,

Left her heart and lost my own —

"Adios, mi corazon!"

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE BUNK-HOUSE ORCHESTRA

Wrangle up your mouth-harps, drag your

banjo out,
Tune your old guitarra till she twangs right

stout,
For the snow is on the mountains and the

wind is on the plain,
But we'll cut the chimney's moanin' with a

livelier refrain.

Shinin 'dobe fireplace, shadows on the

wall —
(See old Shorty's friv'lous toes a-twitchin'

at the call:)
It's the best grand high that there is within

the law
When seven jolly punchers tackle "Turkey

in the Straw.''

Freezy was the day's ride, lengthy was the

trail,
Ev'ry steer was haughty with a high arched

tail,

Sun and Saddle Leather

But we held 'em and we shoved 'em, for our
longin' hearts were tried

By a yearnin' for tobacker and our dear fire
side.

Swing 'er into stop-time, don't you let 'er
droop!

(You're about as tuneful as a coyote with
the croup!)

Ay, the cold wind bit when we drifted
down the draw,

But we drifted on to comfort and to "Tur
key in the Straw."

Snarlin' when the rain whipped, cussin' at the

ford—

Ev'ry mile of twenty was a long discord,
But the night is brimmin' music and its glory

is complete
When the eye is razzle-dazzled by the flip o'

Shorty's feet!

Snappy for the dance, now, till she up and

shoots!
(Don't he beat the devil's wife for jiggin'

in 'is boots?)

Sun and Saddle Leather

Shorty got throwed high and we laughed

till he was raw,
But tonight he's done forgot it prancin

"Turkey in the Straw/'

Rainy dark or firelight, bacon rind or pie,
Livin' is a luxury that don't come high;
Oh, be happy and onruly while our years and

luck allow,
For we all must die or marry less than forty

years from nowl

Lively on the last turn! lope 'er to the

death!
(Reddy's soul is willin but he's gettin

short o' breath.)
Ay, the storm wind sings and old trouble

sucks his paw
When we have an hour of firelight set to

"Turkey in the Straw."

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE OUTLAW

When my rope takes hold on a two-year-old,

By the foot or the neck or the horn,
He kin plunge and fight till his eyes go white

But I'll throw him as sure as you're born.
Though the taut ropes sing like a banjo string

And the latigoes creak and strain,
Yet I got no fear of an outlaw steer

And I'll tumble him on the plain.

For a man is a man, but a steer is a beast,

And the man is the boss of the herd,
And each of the bunch, from the biggest

to least,

Must come down when he says the
word.

When my leg swings 'cross on an outlaw
hawse

And my spurs clinch into his hide,
He kin r'ar and pitch over hill and ditch,

But wherever he goes I'll ride.
Let 'im spin and flop like a crazy top

Or flit like a wind-whipped smoke,
But he'll know the feel of my rowelled heel

Till he's happy to own he's broke.

Sun and Saddle Leather

For a man is a man and a hawse is a brute,
And the hawse may be prince of his

clan
But he'll bow to the bit and the steel-shod

boot
And own that his boss is the man.

When the devil at rest underneath my vest

Gets up and begins to paw
And my hot tongue strains at its bridle reins,

Then I tackle the real outlaw.
When I get plumb riled and my sense goes
wild

And my temper is fractious growed,
If he'll hump his neck just a triflin' speck,

Then it's dollars to dimes I'm throwed.

For a man is a man, but he's partly a

beast.

lie kin brag till he makes you deaf ,
But the one lone brute, from the west to the

east,
That he hain't quite break is himse'f.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE LEGEND OF BOASTFUL BILL

At a roundup on the Gily,

One sweet mornin' long ago,
Ten of us was throwed right freely

By a hawse from Idaho.
And we thought he'd go a-beggin'

For a man to break his pride
Till, a-hitchin' up one leggin',

Boastful Bill cut loose and cried —

"I'm a on'ry proposition for to hurt;
I fulfill my earthly mission with a

quirt;

I kin ride the highest liver
'Tween the Gulf and Powder River,
And Til break this thing as easy as I'd
flirt."

So Bill climbed the Northern Fury

And they mangled up the air
Till a native of Missouri

Would have owned his brag was fair.
Though the plunges kep' him reelin'

And the wind it flapped his shirt,
Loud above the hawse's squealin'

We could hear our friend assert

Sun and Saddle Leather

"I'm the one to take such rakin's as a

joke.
Some one hand me up the makin's of

a smoke!
If you think my fame needs

bright'nin'

W'y I'll rope a streak of lightnin'
And I'll cinch 'im up and spur 'im till
he's broke."

Then one caper of repulsion

Broke that hawse's back in two.
Cinches snapped in the convulsion;

Skyward man and saddle flew.
Up he mounted, never laggin',

While we watched him through our

tears,
And his last thin bit of braggin'

Came a-droppin' to our ears.

"If you'd ever watched my habits very
close

You would know I've broke such rab
bits by the gross.

Sun and Saddle Leather

I have kep' my talent hidin' ;
I'm too good for earthly ridin'
And I'm off to bust the lightnin's, —
Adios!"

Years have gone since that ascension.

Boastful Bill ain't never lit,
So we reckon that he's wrenchin'

Some celestial outlaw's bit.
When the night rain beats our slickers

And the wind is swift and stout
And the lightnin' flares and flickers,

We kin sometimes hear him shout —

"I'm a bronco-twist™' wonder on the

fly;

I'm the ridin' son-oj '-thunder of the sky.
Hi! you earthlin'sf shut your win
ders

While we're rip pin' clouds to flind
ers.

If this blue-eyed darlin' kicks at you,
you die!"

Stardust on his chaps and saddle,
Scornful still of jar and jolt,

Sun and Saddle Leather

He'll come back some day, astraddle

Of a bald-faced thunderbolt.
And the thin-skinned generation

Of that dim and distant day
Sure will stare with admiration

When they hear old Boastful say —

"I was first, as old rawhiders all con
fessed.
Now I'm last of all rough riders , and

the best.

Huh, you soft and dainty floaters,
With your aeroplanes and motors —
Huh! are you the great grandchildren
of the West!"

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE TIED MAVERICK

Lay on the iron! the tie holds fast

And my wild record closes.
This maverick is down at last

Just roped and tied with roses.
And one small girl's to blame for it,
Yet I don't fight with shame for it —
Lay on the iron; I'm game for it,

Just roped and tied with roses.

I loped among the wildest band

Of saddle-hatin' winners —
Gay colts that never felt a brand

And scarred old outlaw sinners.
The wind was rein and guide to us ;
The world was pasture wide to us
And our wild name was pride to us —

High headed bronco sinners!

So, loose and light we raced and fought

And every range we tasted,
But now, since I'm corralled and caught,

I know them days were wasted.

I [uffman*Stcvcnson.

'T here's a time to be J/O-TV and a time to be quick."

See page 43

Sun and Saddle Leather

From now, the all-day gait for me,
The trail that's hard but straight for me,
For down that trail, who'll wait for me!
Ay! them old days were wasted!

But though I'm broke, I'll never be

A saddle-marked old groaner,
For never worthless bronc like me

Got such a gentle owner.
There could be colt days glad as mine
Or outlaw runs as mad as mine
Or rope-flung falls as bad as mine,
But never such an owner.

Lay on the iron, and lay it red!

I'll take it kind and clever.
Who wouldn't hold a prouder head

To wear that mark forever?
I'll never break and stray from her;
I'd starve and die away from her.
Lay on the iron — it's play from her —

And brand me hers forever!

Sun and Saddle Leather

A ROUNDUP LULLABY

Desert blue and silver in the still moonshine,
Coyote yappin' lazy on the hill,

Sleepy winks of lightnin' down the far sky

line,
Time for millin' cattle to be still.

So — of now, the lightnings far away,
The coyote's nothin' skeery;
He's sin gin' to his dearie —

Hee — ya, tammalalleday!

Settle down, you cattle, till the mornin'.

Nothin' out the hazy range that you folks

need,

Nothin' we kin see to take your eye.
Yet we got to watch you or you'd all stam
pede,
Plungin' down some royo bank to die.

So — o, now, for still the shadows stay;

The moon is slow and steady;

The sun comes when he's ready.
Hee — ya, tammalalleday!

No use runnin' out to meet the mornin'.

~68~

Sun and Saddle Leather

Cows and men are foolish when the light

grows dim,

Dreamin' of a land too far to see.
There, you dream, is wavin' grass and streams

that brim
And it often seems the same to me.

So — o, now, for dreams they never pay.
The dust it keeps us blinking
We're seven miles from drinkin.

Hee — ya, tammalalleday!

But we got to stand it till the mornin .

Mostly it's a moonlight world our trail winds
through.

Kain't see much beyond our saddle horns.
Always far away is misty silver-blue;

Always underfoot it's rocks and thorns.

So — o, now. It must be this away —
The lonesome owl a-callin'f
The mournful coyote squallinf.

Hee — ya, tammalalleday!

Mocking-birds don't sing until the

mornin .

Sun and Saddle Leather

Always seem' Vayoff dreams of silver-blue,
Always f eelin' thorns that stab and sting.

Yet stampedin' never made a dream come

true,
So I ride around myself and sing,

So — o, now, a man has got to stay,
A-likin' or a-hatin \
But ivorkin' on and ivaitin'.

Hee — ya, tamm dialled ay!

All of us are ivaitin' for the mornin'.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE TRAIL O' LOVE

My love was swift and slender

As an antelope at play,
And her eyes were gray and tender

As the east at break o' day,
And I sure was shaky hearted

And her flower face was pale
On that silver night we parted,

When I sang along the trail :

Forever — forever —

Oh, moon above the pine,
Like the matin birds in Springtime,

I will twitter while you shine.
Rich as ore with gold a-glowin' ,
Sweet as sparklin springs a-flowinf ,
Strong as redwoods ever growin,
So will be this love o' mine.

I rode across the river

And beyond the far divide,
Till the echo of "forever"

Staggered faint behind and died.

Sun and Saddle Leather

For the long trail smiled and beckoned
And the free wind blowed so sweet,

That life's gayest tune, I reckoned,
Was my hawse's ringin' feet.

Forever — forever —

Oh, stars, look down and sigh,
For a poison spring will sparkle

And the trustin drinker die.
And a rovin' bird will twitter
And a worthless rock will glitter
And a maiden's love is bitter

When the man's is proved a lie.

Last the rover's circle guidin'

Brought me where I used to be,
And I met her, gaily ridin'

With a smarter man than me.
Then I raised my dusty cover

But she didn't see nor hear,
So I hummed the old tune over,

Laughin' in my hawse's ear :

Forever — forever —

Oh, sun, look down and smile

Sun and Saddle Leather

If the snowflake specks the desert
Or the yucca blooms awhile.

Ay! what gloom the mountain covers

Where the driftin clouds shade hov
ers!

Ay! the trail o' parted loverst
Where "forever" lasts a mil el

Sun and Saddle Leather

BACHIN'

Our lives are hid; our trails are strange;

We're scattered through the West
In canyon cool, on blistered range

Or windy mountain crest.
Wherever Nature drops her ears

And bares her claws to scratch,
From Yuma to the north frontiers,

You'll likely find the bach',
You will,

The shy and sober bach' !

Our days are sun and storm and mist,

The same as any life,
Except that in our trouble list

We never count a wife.
Each has a reason why he's lone,

But keeps it 'neath his hat;
Or, if he's got to tell some one,

Confides it to his cat,
He does,

Just tells it to his cat.

Sun and Saddle Leather

We're young or old or slow or fast,

But all plumb versatyle.
The mighty bach' that fires the blast

Kin serve up beans in style.
The bach' that ropes the plungin' cows

Kin mix the biscuits true—
We earn our grub by drippin' brows

And cook it by 'em too,
We do,

We cook it by 'em too.

We like to breathe unbranded air,

Be free of foot and mind,
And go or stay, or sing or swear,

Whichever we're inclined.
An appetite, a conscience clear,

A pipe that's rich and old
Are loves that always bless and cheer

And never cry nor scold,
They don't.

They never cry nor scold.

Old Adam bached some ages back
And smoked his pipe so free,

Sun and Saddle Leather

A-loafin' in a palm-leaf shack

Beneath a mango tree.
He'd best have stuck to bachin' ways,

And scripture proves the same,
For Adam's only happy days

Was 'fore the woman came,
They was,

All 'fore the woman came.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE GLORY TRAIL

(High-Chin Bob]

'Way high up the Mogollons,

Among the mountain tops,
A lion cleaned a yearlin's bones

And licked his thankful chops,
When on the picture who should ride,

A-trippin' down a slope,
But High-Chin Bob, with sinful pride

And mav'rick hungry rope.

"Oh, glory be to me" says he,
"And fame's unfadin flowers!

All meddlin' hands are far away;

I ride my good top-hawse today

And I'm top-rope of the Lazy J —
Hi! kitty cat, you're ours!"

That lion licked his paw so brown
And dreamed soft dreams of veal —

And then the circlin' loop sung down
And roped him 'round his meal.

He yowled quick fury to the world
Till all the hills yelled back;

Sun and Saddle Leather

The top-hawse gave a snort and whirled
And Bob caught up the slack.

"Oh, glory be to me" laughs he.

"We hit the glory trail.
No human man as I have read
Darst loop a ragin lions head,
Nor ever hawse could drag one dead
Until we told the tale."

'Way high up the Mogollons

That top-hawse done his best,
Through whippin' brush and rattlin' stones,,

From canyon-floor to crest.
But ever when Bob turned and hoped

A limp remains to find,
A red-eyed lion, belly roped

But healthy, loped behind.

"Oh, glory be to me" grunts he.

"This glory trail is rough,
Yet even till the Judgment Morn
Til keep this dally 'round the horn,
For never any hero born

Could stoop to holler: ' 'Nuff/' "

Sun and Saddle Leather

Three suns had rode their circle home

Beyond the desert's rim,
And turned their star-herds loose to roam

The ranges high and dim;
Yet up and down and 'round and 'cross

Bob pounded, weak and wan,
For pride still glued him to his hawse

And glory drove him on.

"Oh, glory be to me," sighs he.

"He hain't be drug to death,
But now I know beyond a doubt
Them heroes I have read about
Was only fools that stuck it out

To end of mortal breath"

'Way high up the Mogollons

A prospect man did swear
That moon dreams melted down his bones

And hoisted up his hair:
A ribby cow-hawse thundered by,

A Iron trailed along,
A rider, ga'nt but chin on high,

Yelled out a crazy song.

Sun and Saddle Leather

"Oh, glory be to me!" cries he,

"And to my noble noose!
Oh, stranger, tell my pards below
I took a rampin' dream in tow.
And if I never lay him low,
I'll never turn him loose!"

Sun and Saddle Leather

BACON

You're salty and greasy and smoky as sin

But of all grub we love you the best.
You stuck to us closer than nighest of kin

And helped us win out in the West,
You froze with us up on the Laramie trail;

You sweat with us down at Tucson ;
When Injun was painted and white man was

pale

You nerved us to grip our last chance by the
tail

And load up our Colts and hang on.

YouVe sizzled by mountain and mesa and

plain

Over campfires of sagebrush and oak;
The breezes that blow from the Platte to the

main

Have carried your savory smoke.
You're friendly to miner or puncher or priest;

You're as good in December as May;
You always came in when the fresh meat had
ceased

Sun and Saddle Leather

And the rough course of empire to westward

was greased
By the bacon we fried on the way.

We've said that you weren't fit for white men

to eat

And your virtues we often forget.
We've called you by names that I darsn't

repeat,

But we love you and swear by you yet.
Here's to you, old bacon, fat, lean streak and

rin',

All the westerners join in the toast,
From mesquite and yucca to sagebrush and

pine,

From Canada down to the Mexican Line,
From Omaha out to the coast 1

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE LOST PARDNER

I ride alone and hate the boys I meet.

Today, some way, their laughin7 hurts me

so.
I hate the mockin'-birds in the mesquite —

And yet I liked 'em just a week ago.
I hate the steady sun that glares, and glares!

The bird songs make me sore.
I seem the only thing on earth that cares

'Cause Al ain't here no more!

'Twas just a stumblin' hawse, a tangled spur—

And, when I raised him up so limp and

weak,
One look before his eyes begun to blur

And then — the blood that wouldn't let 'im

speak!
And him so strong, and yet so quick he died,

And after year on year
When we had always trailed it side by side,

He went — and left me here!

Sun and Saddle Leather

We loved each other in the way men do

And never spoke about it, Al and me,
But we both knowed, and knowin' it so true

Was more than any woman's kiss could be.
We knowed — and if the way was smooth or
rough,

The weather shine or pour,
While I had him the rest seemed good
enough —

But he ain't here no more!

What is there out beyond the last divide?

Seems like that country must be cold and

dim.
He'd miss the sunny range he used to ride,

And he'd miss me, the same as I do him.
It's no use thinkin' — all I'd think or say

Could never make it clear.
Out that dim trail that only leads one way

He's gone — and left me herel

The range is empty and the trails are blind,

And I don't seem but half myself today.
I wait to hear him ridin' up behind

Sun and Saddle Leather

And feel his knee rub mine the good old

way.
He's dead — and what that means no man kin

tell.

Some call it "gone before."
Where? I don't know, but God! I know

so well
That he ain't here no morel

Sun and Saddle Leather

GOD'S RESERVES

One time, 'way back where the year marks

fade,

God said : "I see I must lose my West,
The prettiest part of the world I made,

The place where I've always come to rest,
For the White Man grows till he fights for

bread
And he begs and prays for a chance to spread.

"Yet I won't give all of my last retreat;

I'll help him to fight his long trail through,
But I'll keep some land from his field and

street
The way that it was when the world was

new.

He'll cry for it all, for that's his way,
And yet he may understand some day."

And so, from the painted Bad Lands, 'way
To the sun-beat home of the 'Pache kin,

God stripped some places to sand and clay
And dried up the beds where the streams
had been.

Sun and Saddle Leather

He marked His reserves with these plain

signs

And stationed His rangers to guard the lines.
Then the White Man came, as the East

growed old,

And blazed his trail with the wreck of war.
He riled the rivers to hunt for gold

And found the stuff he was lookin' for;
Then he trampled the Injun trails to ruts
And gnashed through the hills with railroad

cuts.

He flung out his barb-wire fences wide
And plowed up the ground where the grass

was high.
He stripped off the trees from the mountain

side
And ground out his ore where the streams

run by,

Till last came the cities, with smoke and roar,
And the White Man was feelin' at home once

more.

But Barrenness, Loneliness, suchlike things

Sun and Saddle Leather

That gall and grate on the White Man's

nerves,
Was the rangers that camped by the bitter

springs

And guarded the lines of God's reserves.
So the folks all shy from the desert land,
'Cept mebbe a few that kin understand.

There the world's the same as the day 'twas
new,

With the land as clean as the smokeless sky
And never a noise as the years have flew,

But the sound of the warm wind driftin' by;
And there, alone, with the man's world far,
There's a chance to think who you really are.

And over the reach of the desert bare,

When the sun drops low and the day wind
stills,

Sometimes you kin almost see Him there,
As He sits alone on the blue-gray hills,

A-thinkin' of things that's beyond our ken

And restin' Himself from the noise of men.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE MARRIED MAN

There's an old pard of mine that sits by his
door

And watches the evenin' skies.
He's sat there a thousand evenin's before

And I reckon he will till he dies.
El pobre! * I reckon he will till he dies,

And hear through the dim, quiet air
Far cattle that call and the crickets that cheep
And his woman a-singin' a kid to sleep

And the creak of her rockabye chair.

Once we made camp where the last light
would fail

And the east wasn't white till we'd start,
But now he is deaf to the call of the trail

And the song of the restless heart.
El pobre! the song of the restless heart

That you hear in the wind from the dawn!
He's left it, with all the good, free-footed

things,
For a slow little song that a tired woman sings

And a smoke when his dry day is gone.

* "El pobre," Spanish, "Poor fellow."

Sun and Saddle Leather

I've rode in and told him of lands that were

strange,

Where I'd drifted from glory to dread.
He'd tell me the news of his little old range

And the cute things his kid had said!
El pobre! the cute things his kid had said!

And the way six-year Billy could ride!
And the dark would creep in from the gray

chaparral
And the woman would hum, while I pitied

my pal
And thought of him like he had died.

He rides in old circles and looks at old sights

And his life is as flat as a pond.
He loves the old skyline he watches of nights

And he don't seem to care for beyond.
El pobre! he don't seem to dream of beyond,

Nor the room he could find, there, for joy.
"Ain't you ever oneasy?" says I one day.
But he only just smiled in a pityin' way

While he braided a quirt for his boy.

He preaches that I orter fold up my wings
And that even wild geese find a nest.

Sun and Saddle Leather

That "woman" and "wimmen" are different

things

And a saddle nap isn't a rest.
El pobre! he's more for the shade and the rest

And he's less for the wind and the fight,
Yet out in strange hills, when the blue shad
ows rise
And I'm tired from the wind and the sun in

my eyes,
I wonder, sometimes, if he's right.

I've courted the wind and I've followed her

free
From the snows that the low stars have

kissed

To the heave and the dip of the wavy old sea,

Yet I reckon there's somethin' I've missed.

El pobre! Yes, mebbe there's somethin' I've

missed,

And it mebbe is more than I've won —
Just a door that's my own, while the cool

shadows creep,

And a woman a-singin' my kid to sleep
When I'm tired from the wind and the sun.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE OLD COW MAN

I rode across a valley range

I hadn't seen for years.
The trail was all so spoilt and strange

It nearly fetched the tears.
I had to let ten fences down

(The fussy lanes ran wrong)
And each new line would make me frown

And hum a mournin' song.

Oh, it's squeak/ squeak/ squeak/

Hear 'em sir et chin' of the wire/
The nester brand is on the land;

I reckon I'll retire,
While progress toots her brassy horn

And makes her motor buzz,
I thank the Lord I wasn't born

No later than I was.

'Twas good to live when all the sod,

Without no fence nor fuss,
Belonged in pardnership to God,

The Government and us.

Sun and Saddle Leather

With skyline bounds from east to west

And room to go and come,
I loved my fellow man the best

When he was scattered some.

Oh, it's squeak! squeak! squeak/

Close and closer cramps the wire.
There's hardly play to back away

And call a man a liar.
Their house has locks on every door;

Their land is in a crate.
These ain't the plains of God no more,

They're only real estate.

There's land where yet no ditchers dig

Nor cranks experiment;
It's only lovely, free and big

And isn't worth a cent.
I pray that them who come to spoil

May wait till I am dead
Before they foul that blessed soil

With fence and cabbage head.

Yet it's squeak! squeak! squeak!
Far and farther crawls the wire.

Sun and Saddle Leather

To crowd and pinch another Inch

Is all their heart's desire.
The world is overstocked with men

And some will see the day
When each must keep his little pen,

But I'll be jar away.

When my old soul hunts range and rest

Beyond the last divide,
Just plant me in some stretch of West

That's sunny, lone and wide.
Let cattle rub my tombstone down

And coyotes mourn their kin,
Let hawses paw and tromp the moun'

But don't you fence it in !

Oh, it's squeak! squeak/ squeak!

And they pen the land with wire.
They figure fence and copper cents

Where we laughed 'round the fire.
Job cussed his birthday, night and morn,

In his old land of Uz,
But I'm just glad I wasn't born

no later than I was!

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE PLAINSMEN

Men of the older, gentler soil,

Loving the things that their fathers

wrought —
Worn old fields of their fathers' toil,

Scarred old hills where their fathers

fought —

Loving their land for each ancient trace,
Like a mother dear for her wrinkled face,
Such as they never can understand
The way we have loved you, young, young
land!

Born of a free, world-wandering race,
Little we yearned o'er an oft-turned sod.

What did we care for the fathers7 place,
Having ours fresh from the hand of God?

Who feared the strangeness or wiles of you

When from the unreckoned miles of you,
Thrilling the wind with a sweet command,
Youth unto youth called, young, young
land?

Sun and Saddle Leather

North, where the hurrying seasons changed
Over great gray plains where the trails lay
long,

Free as the sweeping Chinook we ranged,
Setting our days to a saddle song.

Through the icy challenge you flung to us,

Through your shy Spring kisses that clung

to us,

Following far as the rainbow spanned,
Fiercely we wooed you, young, young land !

South, where the sullen black mountains

guard

Limitless, shimmering lands of the sun,
Over blinding trails where the hoofs rang

hard,

Laughing or cursing, we rode and won.
Drunk with the virgin white fire of you,
Hotter than thirst was desire of you;

Straight in our faces you burned your

brand,

Marking your chosen ones, young, young
land.

Sun and Saddle Leather

When did we long for the sheltered gloom

Of the older game with its cautious odds?
Gloried we always in sun and room,

Spending our strength like the younger

gods.

By the wild sweet ardor that ran in us,
By the pain that tested the man in us,

By the shadowy springs and the glaring
sand,

You were our true-love, young, young land.

When the last free trail is a prime, fenced lane
And our graves grow weeds through for
getful 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.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE WESTERNER

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,

And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,

For I choose to make my own.
I lay proud claim to their blood and name,

But I lean on no dead kin;
My name is mine, for the praise or scorn,
And the world began when I was born

And the world is mine to win.

They built high towns on their old log sills,

Where the great, slow rivers gleamed,
But with new, live rock from the savage hills

I'll build as they only dreamed.
The smoke scarce dies where the trail camp
lies,

Till the rails glint down the pass;
The desert springs into fruit and wheat
And I lay the stones of a solid street

Over yesterday's untrod grass.

Sun and Saddle Leather

I waste no thought on my neighbor's birth

Or the way he makes his prayer.
I grant him a white man's room on earth

If his game is only square.
While he plays it straight I'll call him mate;

If he cheats I drop him flat.
Old class and rank are a wornout lie,
For all clean men are as good as I,

And a king is only that.

I dream no dreams of a nurse-maid state

That will spoon me out my food.
A stout heart sings in the fray with fate

And the shock and sweat are good.
From noon to noon all the earthly boon

That I ask my God to spare
Is a little daily bread in store,
With the room to fight the strong for more,

And the weak shall get their share.

The sunrise plains are a tender haze

And the sunset seas are gray,
But I stand here, where the bright skies blaze

Over me and the big today.

Sun and Saddle Leather

What good to me is a vague "maybe"
Or a mournful "might have been,"
For the sun wheels swift from morn to morn
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.

100

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE WIND IS BLOWIN'

My tired hawse nickers for his own home
bars;

A hoof clicks out a spark.
The dim creek flickers to the lonesome stars;

The trail twists down the dark.
The ridge pines whimper to the pines below.
The wind is blowin' and I want you so.

The birch has yellowed since I saw you last,
The Fall haze blued the creeks,

The big pine bellowed as the snow swished

past,
But still, above the peaks,

The same stars twinkle that we used to know.

The wind is blowin' and I want you so.

The stars up yonder wait the end of time

But earth fires soon go black.
I trip and wander on the trail I climb —

A fool who will look back
To glimpse a fire dead a year ago.
The wind is blowin' and I want you so.

101

Sun and Saddle Leather

Who says the lover kills the man in me?

Beneath the day's hot blue
This thing hunts cover and my heart fights
free

To laugh an hour or two.
But now it wavers like a wounded doe.
The wind is blowin' and I want you so.

1 02

Sun and Saddle Leather

ON BOOT HILL

Up from the prairie and through the pines,
Over your straggling headboard lines

Winds of the West go by.
You must love them, you booted dead,
More than the dreamers who died in bed—
You old-timers who took your lead

Under the open sky!

Leathery knights of the dim old trail,
Lawful fighters or scamps from jail,

Dimly your virtues shine.
Yet who am I that I judge your wars,
Deeds that my daintier soul abhors,
Wide-open sins of the wide outdoors,

Manlier sins than mine.

Dear old mavericks, customs mend.
I would not glory to make an end

Marked like a homemade sieve.
But with a touch of your own old pride
Grant me to travel the trail I ride.
Gamely and gaily, the way you died,

Give me the nerve to live.

103

Sun and Saddle Leather

Ay, and for you I will dare assume
Some Valhalla of sun and room

Over the last divide.
There, in eternally fenceless West,
Rest to your souls, if they care to rest,
Or else fresh horses beyond the crest

And a star-speckled range to ride.

104

GRASS GROWN TRAILS

Grass Grown Trails

THE COYOTE

Trailing the last gleam after,
In the valleys emptied of light,

Ripples a whimsical laughter
Under the wings of the night.

Mocking the faded west airily,

Meeting the little bats merrily,
Over the mesas it shrills
To the red moon on the hills.

Mournfully rising and waning,

Far through the moon-silvered land

Wails a weird voice of complaining
Over the thorns and the sand.

Out of blue silences eerily.

On to the black mountains wearily,
Till the dim desert is crossed,
Wanders the cry, and is lost.

Here by the fire's ruddy streamers,
Tired with our hopes and our fears,

We inarticulate dreamers

Hark to the song of our years.

107

Sun and Saddle Leather

Up to the brooding divinity
Far in that sparkling infinity
Cry our despair and delight,
Voice of the Western night!

1 08

Grass Grown Trails

THE FREE WIND

I went and worked in a drippin' mine

'Mong the rock and the oozin' wood,
For the dark seemed lit with a dollar sign

And they told me money's good.
So I jumped and sweat for a flat-foot boss

Till my pocket bulged with pay,
But my heart it fought like a led bronc hawse

Till I flung my drill away.

For the wind, the wind, the good free wind,

She sang from the pine divide
That the sky <was blue and the young years few

And the world was big and wide!
From the poor, bare hills all gashed with scars

I rode till the range was crossed;
Then I watched the gold of sunset bars
And my camp-sparks glintin' toward the stars

And laughed at the pay I'd lost.

I went and walked in the city way
Down a glitterin' canyon street,

For the thousand lights looked good and gay
And they said life there was sweet.

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Sun and Saddle Leather

So the wimmen laughed while night reeled by
And the wine ran red and gold,

But their laugh was the starved wolf's huntin'

cry
And their eyes were hard and old.

And the 'wind, the wind, the clean free 'wind,

She laughed through the April rains:
"Come out and live by the wine I give

In the smell of the greenin' plains!"
And I looked back once to the smoky towers

Where my face had bleached so pale,
Then loped through the lash of drivin show
ers
To the uncut sod and the prairie flowers

And the old wide life of the trail.

I went and camped in the valley trees

Where the thick leaves whispered rest,
For love lived there 'mong the honey bees,

And they told me love was best.
There the twilight lanes were cool and dim

And the orchards pink with May,
Yet my eyes they'd lift to the valley's rim

Where the desert reached away.

Grass Grown Trails

And the wind, the 'wind, the wild free wind,

She called from the web love spun
To the unbought sand of the lone trail land

And the sweet hot kiss o' the sun!
Oh, I looked back twice to the valley lass,
Then I set my spurs and sung,
For the sun sailed up above the pass
And the morninf wind was in the grass
And my hawse and me was young.

1 1 1

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE MEDICINE MAN

"The trail is long to the bison herd,

The prairie rotten with rain,
And look! the wings of the thunder bird

Blacken the hills again.
A medicine man the gods may balk —
Go fight for us with the thunder hawk!"

The medicine man flung out his arms.

"I am weary of woman talk
And cook-fire witching and childish charms!

I fight you the thunder hawk!"
Then he took his arrows and climbed the butte
While the warriors watched him, scared and
mute.

A wind from the wings began to blow
And the arrows of rain to shoot,

As the medicine man raised high his bow,
Standing alone on the butte,

And the day went dark to the cowering band

As the arrow leaped from his steady hand.

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Grass Grown Trails

For the thunder hawk swooped down to fight
And who in his way could stand?

The flash of his eye was blinding bright
And his wing-clap stunned the land.

The braves yelled terror and loosed the rain

And scattered far on the drowning plain.

So, after the thunder hawk swept by,
They found him, scorched and slain,

Yet (fighting with gods, who fears to die?)
He smiled with a light disdain.

That smile was glory to all his clan

But none dared touch the medicine man.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE PIANO AT RED'S

'Twas a hole called Red's Saloon

In La Vaca town;
'Twas an old piano there,

Blistered, marred and brown,
And a man more battered still,

Takin's drinks for fees,
Played all night from memory

On the yellow keys.

While the glasses clinked and clashed

On the sloppy bar,
That piano's dreamy voice

Took you out and far,
Ridin' old, forgotten trails

Underneath the moon,
Till you heard a drunken yell

Back in Red's Saloon.

Whirr of wheel and slap of cards,

Talk of loss and gain,
Mixed with hum of honey bees

Down a sunny lane.

114

Grass Grown Trails

Glimpses of your mother's face,

Touch of girlish lips
Often made you lose your count

As you stacked your chips.

Scufflin' 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.

Then, some way, it followed you,

Slept upon your breast,
Trailed you out across the range,

Never let you rest;
And for days and days you'd hum

Just one scrap of tune —
Funny place for music, though,

Back in Red's Saloon 1

Sun and Saddle Leather

A RANGER

He never made parade of tooth or claw;
He was plain as us that nursed the bawlin'

herds.
Though he had a rather meanin'-lookin' jaw,

He was shy of exercisin' it with words.
As a circuit-ridin' preacher of the law,

All his preachin' was the sort that hit the

nail;
He was just a common ranger, just a ridin'

pilgrim stranger,
And he labored with the sinners of the trail.

Once a Yaqui knifed a woman, jealous mad,
Then hit southward with the old, old kill
er's plan,

And nobody missed the woman very bad,
While they'd just a little rather missed the

man.
But the ranger crossed his trail and sniffed it

glad,

And then loped away to bring him back
again,

Grass Grown Trails

For he stood for peace and order on the

lonely, sunny border

And his business was to hunt for sinful
menl

So the trail it led him southward all the day,
Through the shinin' country of the thorn

and snake,
Where the heat had drove the lizards from

their play
To the shade of rock and bush and yucca

stake.
And the mountains heaved and rippled far

away
And the desert broiled as on the devil's

prong
But he didn't mind the devil if his head kep'

clear and level

And the hoofs beat out their quick and
steady song.

Came the yellow west, and on far-off rise
Something black crawled up and dropped
beyond the rim,

117

Sun and Saddle Leather

And he reached his rifle out and rubbed his

eyes
While he cussed the southern hills for

growin' dim.

Down a hazy 'royo came the coyote cries,
Like they laughed at him because he'd lost

his mark,
And the smile that brands a fighter pulled his

mouth a little tighter

As he set his spurs and rode on through the
dark.

Came the moonlight on a trail that wriggled

higher
Through the mountains that look into

Mexico,
And the shadows strung his nerves like banjo

wire

And the miles and minutes dragged un
earthly slow.

Then a black mesquite spit out a thread of fire
And the canyon walls flung thunder back
again,

118

Grass Grown Trails

And he caught himself and fumbled at his

rifle while he grumbled
That his bridle arm had weight enough for
ten.

Though his rifle pointed wavy-like and slack
And he grabbed for leather at his hawse's

shy,

Yet he sent a soft-nosed exhortation back
That convinced the sinner — just above the

eye.
So the sinner sprawled among the shadows

black
While the ranger drifted north beneath the

moon,
Wabblin' crazy in his saddle, workin' hard to

stay astraddle

While the hoofs beat out a slow and sorry
tune.

When the sheriff got up early out of bed,
How he stared and vowed his soul a total
loss,

119

Sun and Saddle Leather

As he saw the droopy thing all blotched with

red
That came ridin' in aboard a tremblin1

hawse.

But "I got 'im" was the most the ranger said
And you couldn't hire him, now, to tell the

tale;

He was just a quiet ranger, just a ridin' pil
grim stranger
And he labored with the sinners of the traiL

1 20

Grass Grown Trails

ON THE DRIVE

Oh, days whoop by with swingin' lope

And days slip by a-sleepin',
And days must drag, with lazy rope,

Along the trail a-creepin\
Heeya-a! you cattle; drift away!
Heeyow! the slow hoofs sift away
And sunny dust clouds lift away,

Along the trail a-creepin'.

My pard may sing of sighin' love

And I of roarin' battle,
But all the time we sweat and shove

And follow up the cattle.
Heeya-a! the bawlin' crowd of you!
Heeyow the draggin' cloud of you!
We're glad and gay and proud of you,

We men that follow cattle!

But all the world's a movin' herd
Where men drift on together,

And some may spur and some are spurred,
But most are horns and leather!

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Sun and Saddle Leather

Heeya-a! the rider sings along,
Heeyow! the reined hawse swings along
And drifts and drags and flings along
The mob of horns and leather.

The outlaws fight to break away;

The weak and lame are crawlin',
But only dead ones quit the play,

The dust-cloud and the bawlin'.
Heeya-a! it's grief and strife to us;
Heeyow! it's child and wife to us;
By leap or limp, it's life to us;

The dust-cloud and the bawlin'.

Some dream ahead to pastures green,
Some stare ahead to slaughter,

But, anyway, night drops between
And brings us rest and water.

Heeya-a! you cattle, drift away!

Heeyow! the dust-clouds lift away;

The glarin' miles will shift away
And leave us rest and water.

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Grass Grown Trails

SATURDAY NIGHT

Out from the ranch on a Saturday night,
Ridin' a hawse that's a shootin' star,

Close on the flanks of the flyin' daylight,
Racin' with dark for the J L Bar.

Fox-trot and canter will do for the day;

It's a gallop, my love, when I'm ridin' your
way.

Up the arroyo the trippin' hoofs beat,
Flingin' the hinderin' gravel wide;
Now your light glimmers across the mes-

quite,

Glimpsed from the top of a rocky divide;
Down through a draw where the shadows are

gray
I'm comin', my darlin', I'm ridin' your way.

West, where the sky is a-blushin' afar,
Matchin' your cheeks as the daylight dies,

West, where the shine of a glitterin' star
Hints of the light I will find in your eyes,

123

Sun and Saddle Leather

Night-birds are passin' the signal to say:
"He's comin', my lady, he's ridin' your
way."

Hoof-beats are measurin' seconds so fast,
Clickin' them off with an easy rhyme;

Minutes will grow into months at the last,
Mebbe to bring us a marryin' time.

Life would be singin' and work would be play

If every night I was ridin' your way.

124

Grass Grown Trails

SOUTHWESTERN JUNE

Lazy little hawse, it's noon

And weVe wasted saddle leather,

But the mornin's slip so soon
When we drift around together
In this lazy, shinin' weather,

Sunny, easy-goin' June.

Who kin study shamblin' herds,
How they calve or die or wander,

When the bridegroom mockin'-birds,
Singin' here and there and yonder,
Trill that June's too bright to ponder

And life's just too fine for words 1

Down the desert's hazy blue

See the tall gray whirlwinds f arin',

Slow, contented sort of crew
Trailin' 'cross the sunny barren,
Headed nowhere and not carin'

Just the same as me and you.

From a world of unfenced room

Just a breath of breeze is strayin',
Triflin' with the yucca bloom

125

Sun and Saddle Leather

Till its waxy bells are swayin',
On my cheek warm kisses layin'
Soft as touch of ostrich plume.

When the July lightnin' gleams

This brown range will start to workin',

Hills be green and tricklin' streams
Down each deep arroyo lurkin' ;
Now the sleepy land is shirking

Drowzin', smilin' in her dreams.

Steppin' little hawse, it's noon.
Turquoise blue the far hills glimmer;

"Sun — sun — sun," the mockers croon
Where the yellow range lands shimmer,
And our sparklin' spirits simmer

For we're young yet, and it's June!

126

Grass Grown Trails

THE NIGHT HERDER

I laughed when the dawn was a-peepin'
And swore in the blaze of the noon,

But down from the stars is a-creepin'
A softer, oneasier tune.
Away, and away, and away,
The whisperin' night seems to say

Though the trail-weary cattle are sleepin'
And the desert dreams under the moon.

By day, if the roarin' herd scatters,

My heart it is steady and set,
But now, when they're quiet, it patters

Like the ball in a spinnin' roulette.

Away, and away, and away

To the rim where the heat lightnin's play —
Out there is the one trail that matters

To the valley I never forget.

There's a pass where the black shadows
shiver,

Then a desert all silvery blue,
A divide, and the breaks by the river,

Then a light in the valley — and you!

127

Sun and Saddle Leather

Away, and away, and away —
'Tis a month till I see you by day,
But under the moon it's forever
And the weary trail winds the world
through.

The coyotes are laughin' out yonder,

A happy owl whoops on the hill —
Oh, wild, lucky things that kin wander

As far and as free as they willl

Away, and away, and away,

And I that am wilder than they
Must loll in my saddle and ponder

Or sing for the cows to be still I

I see the dark river waves wrinkle ;

The valley trees droop in a swoon ;
You're dreamin' where valley bells tinkle

And half-asleep mockin'-birds croon.

Away, and away, and away —

Do your dainty dreams ever stray
To a camp where the desert stars twinkle

And a lone rider sings to the moon?

128

Grass Grown Trails

HAWSE WORK

Stop! there's the wild bunch to right of the

trail,

Heads up and ears up and ready to sail,
Led by a mare with the green in her eyes,
Mean as the devil and nearly as wise.
Circle 'em, boys, and the pass is the place;
Settle your heels for a rowelin' race.

Oh, hawse work! the sweep and the drift
of it!

Hawse work! the leap and the lift of it!
Who wants to fly in the empty blue sky

When he kin ride on the hawse work!

Hi! and they're off in a whirlwind. So!
Straight in the line we don't want 'em to go;
Light-footed, wild-hearted, look at 'em flit!
Head 'em, now! rowel, and turn loose the bit!
Wheel and the rip and the rush and the beat,
Rattlin' rocks and the whippin' mesquitel

Oh, hawse work! the swing and the swell

of it!
Hawse work! the sing and the yell of it!

129

Sun and Saddle Leather

Holler goodbye to the dull and the dry;
Leave 'em behind on the hawse work.

Shorty is down with his hawse in a heap ;
Might have pulled in for a gully so deep.
Reddy he rides like he's tired of his life;
Ought to be thinkin' he's got a wife —
Shrinkin' and thinkin' of bones that may

crunch?
No! Yipl we've headed the mare and her

bunch!

Oh, hawse work! the rip and the tear of it!

Hawse work! the dip and the dare of it!
Life flutters high when you're lookin' to
die;

That is the fun of the hawse work.

Hi! and you're foolish for once, old lass,
Streakin' it straight for the trap in the pass.
Into the canyon the hoof-thunder drums —
Where is that holdup? Hump! there he

comes,

Crow-hoppin' down from the bluff — too late!
Damn! and they're gone for a tour of the

State!

130

Grass Grown Trails

Oh, hawse work, the rant and the fuss of it!

Hawse work! the pant and the cuss of it!
Yet when I sigh and the world is a lie

Give me a day on the hawse work!

Sun and Saddle Leather

HALF-BREED

Fathers with eyes of ancient ire,

Old eagles shorn of flight,
Forget the breed of my blue-eyed sire
While I sit this hour by the council fire,

All red in the fire's red light.

Chant me the day of the war-steed's prance

And the signal fires on the buttes,
Of the Cheyenne scalps on the lifted lance,
Of the women raped from the Pawnee dance
And the wild death trail of the Utes.

Sing me the song of the buffalo run
To the edge of the canyon snare,

With the roaring plunge when the meat was
won

And the flash of knives in the low red sun
And the good blood smell in the air.

Chant me the might of the Manitou —

But the old song drags and dies.
Old things have drifted the sunset through
Till the very God of the land comes new

From the rim where the young stars rise!

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Grass Grown Trails

Fathers, red men, the red flame falls,

And over the dim dawn lands
My white soul hunts me again and calls
To the lanes 0f law and the shadow of walls

And a woman with soft white hands.

133

Sun and Saddle Leather

TO HER

Cut loose a hundred rivers,

Roaring across my trail,
Swift as the lightning quivers,

Loud as a mountain gale.
I build me a boat of slivers;

I weave me a sail of fur,
And ducks may founder and die
But I

Cross that river to herl

Bunch the deserts together,
Hang three suns in the vault;

Scorch the lizards to leather,
Strangle the springs with salt.

I fly with a buzzard feather,
I dig me wells with a spur,

And snakes may famish and fry
But I

Cross that desert to her!

Murder my sleep with revel;
Make me ride through the bogs

134

Grass Grown Trails

Knee to knee with the devil,
Just ahead of the dogs.

I harrow the Bad Lands level,
I teach the tiger to purr,

For saints may wallow and lie

But I
Go clean-hearted to her!

135

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE LOCOED HORSE

As I was ridin' all alone

And winkin' in the noontime glare,
I seen a hawse all hide and bone

Walk 'round a willow dead and bare —
Walk 'round and 'round, with limp and
groan,

And hunt the shade that wasn't there.
And then says I : "That sorry steed
Has been and et the loco weed."

Near by a spreadin' live oak laid
Its wide, cool shadow on the ground,

But then he knowed that willow's shade
Was just a little further 'round

And reckoned, each slow step he made,
That in the next it would be found.

There, like a coon, his thoughts were treed

Since he had et the loco weed.

The water trail went windin' by,

The sweet brown grass furred every slope
And he was ga'nt and starved and dry,

Grass Grown Trails

Yet, on his ghostly picket rope
Led 'round and 'round, he still must try

That hopeless circle of his hope.
He didn't think of drink or feed
Since he had et the loco weed.

A playful wild bunch topped the hill
And stared with eyes all impish bright

And whinnered to him sweet and shrill,
Then flung their heads and loped from
sight,

Yet from that everlastin' mill

They couldn't make him stray a mite.

He never seen their gay stampede

For he had et the loco weed.

When next that range I had to ride

Beneath his willow tree he lay,
Just wornout hoofs and faded hide

And big black birds that flopped away;
But yet I reckon that he died

Still hopeful — happy — who kin say?
Sometimes I think I mostly need
To eat some sort of loco weed.

137

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE LONG WAY

Two miles of ridin' from the school, without

a bit of trouble —
The main road hit her father's ranch as

straight as you could fall.
I led her by a shorter cut that made the dis
tance double

And guided her along a trail that wasn't
there at all.

The long <way, the long way, but ridin' it to
gether
I never cared a feather for the length and

never shall f
With happy hoofs that shuffled to the singin

saddle leather

And laughin' wind that ruffled sunny miles
of chaparral.

The trail of our meanderin' would tire a wolf

to follow;

The range was hardly wide enough for us
to go around.

Grass Grown Trails

I dared to hope she liked it, bare hill and

thorny hollow,

And prayed that all her likin' wasn't wast
ed on the ground.

The long <way, the long way, and down the

wind we drifted,
And soon the sand was sifted in our tracks

and they were gone,
I dreamed of no forgettin' while to me her

face was lifted,

Nor knowed the sun was settin', for her
eyes were full of dawn.

Perhaps I hoped that we were lost without a

trail to guide us.
It shocked me like a bullet when the dogs

began to bark,
And suddenly, from nowhere, the ranch was

there beside us,

She reined away and left me, and the world
was in the dark.

139

Sun and Saddle Leather

The long way, the long way, of all my old

Septembers,
Gone gray like campfire embers when the

midnight coyote shrills,
One hour stays golden mellow — do you reckon

she remembers

That sunset fadin' yellow through the
notches of the hills?

140

Grass Grown Trails

FREIGHTIN'

Forty miles from Taggart's store,

Fifty yet to grind,
Heavin' six strung out before,

Trailer snubbed behind;
Half a world of glarin' sand

Prayin' for a tree,
Nothin' movin' 'cross the land

But the sun and me.

Chuck an' luck! luck an' chuck!

Grunts the workin 'wheels;
Lazy gust swirls up the dust

From the hawses' heels.
I've been young and raced and sungf

But I've learnt my load.
Slow, slow, on we go

Out the stretchin' road.

Where the sky-line waves and breaks

Shines a misty beach
And the blue of ripplin' lakes —

Lakes no man kin reach.

141

Sun and Saddle Leather

Just beyond my leaders' bits

Winds the life I know,
Ruts and 'royos, hills and pits

In a daylong row.

Chuck an' luck! luck an chuck!

Life's more miss than hit.
Luck's the thing I dream and sing;

Chuck is all I git!
'Neath the sky I crawl and fry

Like the horny toad.
Slow, slow, on we go

Out the stretchin road.

When I reach that sparklin' line

Where the ripples run,
There'll be just this road of mine

And the dust and sun.
Mebbe on my last far hill,

Where the dream-mist clears,
I'll be freighting f reightin' still

Down the road of years.

Chuck an' luck! luck an' chuck!
Sky-lines mostly lie,

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Grass Grown Trails

Yet they beat the limp mesquite

That goes trailin' by.
Luck enough to move my stuff —

More I've never knowed.
Slow, slow, on we go

Out the stretchin' road.

Slim and far our shadow swings;

Sun is on his knees.
Some one's campin' at the springs —

Smell it down the breeze.
Chuck time, boys, and sleep besides,

When we've chomped our hay.
Durn your dusty, trusty hides!

You've sho' earned your pay.

Chuck an luck! luck an chuck!

Grunts the weary wheels;
Dreams untold and sunset gold,

Cussin' sweat and meals.
If you kin, Lord, let me win,

But I'll move my load.
Slow, slow, on we go

Out the stretchinf road.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE RAINS
YouVe watched the ground-hog's shadow and

the shiftin' weather signs
Till the Northern prairie starred itse'f with

flowers ;
YouVe seen the snow a-meltin' up among the

Northern pines
And the mountain creeks a-roarin' with the

showers.
YouVe blessed the stranger sunlight when the

Winter days were done
And the Summer creepin' down the budded

lanes.
Did you ever see a Springtime in the home

range of the sun,

When the desert land is waitin' for the
Rains?

The April days are sun and sun ; the last thin

cloud is fled.

It's gold above the eastern mountain crest,
Then blaze upon the yellow range all day

from overhead
And then a stripe of gold across the west.

144

Grass Grown Trails

The dry wind mourns among the hills, a-hunt-

in' trees and grass,

Then down the desert flats it rises higher
And sweeps a rollin' dust-storm up and flings

it through the pass

And fills the evenin' west with smoulderin'
fire.

It's sun and sun without a change the lazy

length o' May

And all the little sun things own the land.
The horned toad basks and swells himse'f;

the bright swifts dart and play;
The rattler hunts or dozes in the sand.
The wind comes off the desert like it brushed

a bed of coals;
The sickly range grass withers down and

fails;
The bony cattle bawl around the dryin' water

holes,

Then stagger off along the stony trails.
The days crawl on to Summer suns that

slower blaze and wheel;
The mesas heave and quiver in the noon.

Sun and Saddle Leather

The mountains they are ashes and the sky is

shinin' steel,
Though the mockin'-birds are singin' that

it's June.
And here and there among the hills, a-stand-

in' white and tall,
The droopin' plumes of yucca flowers

gleam,
The buzzards circle, circle where the starvin'

cattle fall
And the whole hot land seems dyin' in a

dream.
But last across the sky-line comes a thing

that's strange and new,
A little cloud of saddle blanket size.
It blackens 'long the mountains and bulges up

the blue
And shuts the weary sun-glare from our

eyes.
Then the lightnin's gash the heavens and the

thunder jars the world
And the gray of fallin' water wraps the
plains,

146

Grass Grown Trails

And 'cross the burnin' ranges, down the

wind, the word is whirled:
"Here's another year of livin', and the

Rains I"
YouVe seen your fat fields ripplin' with the

treasure that they hoard;
Have you seen a mountain stretch and rub

its eyes?
Or bare hills lift their streamin' faces up and

thank the Lord,
Fairly tremblin' with their gladness and

surprise?
Have you heard the 'royos singin' and the new

breeze hummin' gay,
As the greenin' ranges shed their dusty

stains —
Just a whole dead world sprung back to life

and laughin' in a day!
Did you ever see the comin' of the Rains?

'47

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE BORDER

When the dreamers of old Coronado,

From the hills where the heat ripples run,
Made a dust to the far Colorado

And wagged their steel caps in the sun,
They prayed like the saint and the martyr

And swore like the devils below,
For a man is both angel and Tartar

In the land where the dry rivers flow.

Ay, the Border, the sun smitten Border,

That fences the Land of the Free,
Where the desert glares grim like a warder

And the Rio gleams on to the sea;
Where ruins, like dreamy old sages,
Hint tales of dead empires and ages,
Where a young race is rearing the stages
Of ambitious empires to be.

Came the padres to soften the savage
And show him the heavenly goal ;

Came Spaniards to piously ravage
And winnow his flesh from his soul;

148

Grass Grown Trails

Then miner and riotous herder,

Over-riding white breed of the North,

Brought progress, and new sorts of murder,
And a kind of perpetual Fourth.

Ay, the Border, the whimsical Border,

Deep purples and dazzling gold,
Soft hearts full of mirthful disorder,
Hard faces, sun wrinkled and old,
Warm kisses 'neath patio roses,
Cold lead as the luck-god disposes,
Clean valor fame never discloses,
Black trespasses laughingly told!

Then out from the peaceful old places

Walked the Law, grave, strong and serene,
And the harsh elbow-rub of the races

Was padded, with writs in between.
Then stilled was the strife and the racket

That neighborly love might advance —
With a knife in the sleeve of its jacket

And a gun in the band of its pants.

Ay, the Border, the bright, placid Border!
It sleeps, like a snake in the sun,

149

Sun and Saddle Leather

Like a "hole" tamped and primed in due or
der,

Like a shining and full throated gun.
But the dust-devil dances and staggers
And the yucca flower daintily swaggers
At her birth from a cluster of daggers,

And ever the heat ripples run.

Fierce, hot, is the Border's bright daytime,

Calm, sweet, the vast night on its plains;
White hell on the mesas, its Maytime,

A green-and-gold heaven, its Rains.
It is grimmer than slumber's dark brother,

'Tis as gay as the mocking-bird likes;
It loves like a lioness mother

And strikes as the rattlesnake strikes.

Ay, the Border, bewildering Border,

Our youngest, and oldest, domains,
Where the face of the Angel Recorder

Knits hard between chuckles and pains,
Vast peace, the clear sky's earthly double,
Witch cauldron forever a-bubble,
Home of mystery, splendor and trouble
And a people with sun in their veins.

Grass Grown Trails

THE BAD LANDS

No fresh green things in the Bad Lands bide;

It is all stark red and gray,
And strewn with bones that had lived and
died

Ere the first man saw the day.
When the sharp crests dream in the sunset
gleam

And the bat through the canyon veers,
You will sometimes catch, if you listen long,
The tones of the Bad Lands' mystic song,

A song of a million years.

The place is as dry as a crater cup,

Yet you hear, as the stars shine free,
trrom the barren gulches sounding up,

The lap of a spawning sea,
V breeze that cries where the great ferns rise

From the pools on a new-made shore,
With the whip and whir of batlike wings
And the snarl of slimy, fighting things

And the tread of the dinosaur.

Sun and Saddle Leather

Then the sea voice ebbs through untold morns,

And the jungle voices reign —
The hunting howl and the clash of horns

And the screech of rage and pain.
Harsh and grim is the old earth hymn

In that far brute paradise,
And as ages drift the rough strains fall
To a single note more grim than all,

The crack of the glacial ice.

So the song runs on, with shift and change,

Through the years that have no name,
And the late notes soar to a higher range,

But the theme is still the same.
Man's battle-cry and the guns' reply

Blend in with the old, old rhyme
That was traced in the score of the strata

marks

While millenniums winked like campfire
sparks

Down the winds of unguessed time.

There's a finer fight than of tooth and claw,
More clean than of blade and gun,

Grass Grown Trails

But, fair or foul, by the Great Bard's law
Twill be fight till the song is done.

Not mine to sigh for the song's deep "why,"
Which only the Great Bard hears.

My soul steps out to the martial swing

Of the brave old song that the Bad Lands

sing,
The song of a million years.

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE SPRINGTIME PLAINS

Heart of me, are you hearing
The drum of hoofs in the rains?
Over the Springtime plains I ride
Knee to knee with Spring
And glad as the summering sun that comes
Galloping north through the zodiac!
Heart of me, let's forget
The plains death white and still,
When lonely love through the stillness called
Like a smothered stream that sings of Summer
Under the snow on a Winter night.
Now the frost is blown from the sky
And the plains are living again.
Lark lovers sing on the sunrise trail,
Wild horses call to me out of the noon,
Watching me pass with impish eyes,
Gray coyotes laugh in the quiet dusk
And the plains are glad all day with me.
Heart of me, all the way
My heart and the hoofs keep time,
And the wide, sweet winds from the greening
world

154

Grass Grown Trails

Shout in my ears a glory song,
For nearer, nearer, mile and mile,
Over the quivering rim of the plains,
Is the valley that Spring and I love best
And the waiting eyes of you!

'55

Sun and Saddle Leather

ON THE OREGON TRAIL

We're the prairie pilgrim crew,

Sailin' with the sun,
Lookin' West to meet a great reward,
Trailin' toward a land that's new

Like our fathers done,
Trustin' in our rifles and the Lord.

A-llset! Go ahead!
Out the prairie trail.
Leave the woods and settlements behind.
Trail and settle, work and fight
Till the rollin earth is white, —
That's the law and gospel of our kind.

Desert suns and throats o' dust,

But we never stop;

Wimmin-folks are knittin' as they ride.
We're a breed that, when we must,

Fight until we drop,
But our work and git-thar is our pride.

A-ll set! Go ahead!
Up the sandy Platte.
Leave the circle smokin' in the dawn,

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Grass Grown Trails

So the comin' hosts will know,
'Mongst the trails of buffalo
Where their darin brother whites have gone.

Night so black 'twould blind a fox,

Yells and feathered sleet,
Aim the best you kin and trust to luck.
Arrows whang the wagon box

But all hell kain't beat
Rifles from Missoury and Kentuck.

A-ll set! Go ahead!
Leave the dead to sleep
Till the desert sees the Judgment Day.
Mourn the good boys laid so lowf
But we'll mourn them on the go —
Pawnee! Ogalalla! Cl'ar the way!

Far across the glarin' plain

See the mountain peaks
Glimmer 'long the edge like flecks o' foam.
Shove! you oxen, till your chain

Stretches out and squeaks;
Somewhere out beyond that range is Home!

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Sun and Saddle Leather

A-ll set! Go ahead!
Trail in' toward the West
Till the sunset's shinin' flag is furled.
Ay, our flag's the Western skies,
Flag that drew our fathers' eyes,
Flag that leads the white man 'round the
world.

Grass Grown Trails

THE FOREST RANGERS

Red is the arch of the nightmare sky,
Red are the mountains beneath,

Bright where a million red imps leap high,
Dancing and snapping their teeth.

A keen fight! a clean fight!

Shoulder your shovels and follow
Up, while they stop in the pines at the top,

Shooting their sparks in showers.
Up, with your hats ducking under the smoke

of it,

Next to the scorch of it, into the choke of it!
Fight for the ranch in the hollow.
Fight! for it is not ours.

Why are we fighting from dark to day,

From summit to canyon wall?
Twice for the Service, and once the pay —
Most, the hot fun of it all I

A stand fight! a grand fight!
Into the smother we wallow,

'59

Sun and Saddle Leather

Stopping their march where the ridge pines

parch

Over the shriveling flowers.
Stick! with the smoke streaming out of the

coats of you,
Sweat in the eyes of you, fire in the throats

of you!

Fight for the ranch in the hollow.
Fight! for it is not ours.

1 60

Grass Grown Trails

THE YELLOW STUFF

By the rim rocks on the hill

The canyon side is rifted
Where Grasping Gabe, with pick and drill,

Once mucked and shot and drifted.
His hairy arms were never still;

His eyes were never lifted.

The yellow stuff/ The yellow stuff/

All day his steel would tinkle
And when the blast roared out at last

He scanned each rocky wrinkle.
That tunnel's face was life to him,
And joy and kids and wife to him

Its thread of yellow twinkle.

By the rim rocks where he wrought

A wall that looked eternal
Caved in one day and Gabe was caught

Snug as a walnut kernel,
Shut up with hunger, thirst and thought

In dark that was infernal.

161

Sun and Saddle Leather

The yellow stuff! The yellow stuff!

Then Gabe forgot its uses,
And all the gold the hills could hold

Looked like a pair of deuces.
No joy was dust and ore to him;
The gold outside was more to him

That slanted through the spruces.

By the rim rocks, far away

From helpers or beholders,
Gabe worked a lifetime in a day,

Then shoved out head and shoulders
And cried and kissed the light that lay

Upon the sunny boulders.

The yellow stuff! The yellow stuff!

He blessed the sunset shining f
Too high in grade to be assayed

And pure beyond refining.
What scum his work had doled to himf
When God would give such gold to him

Without a lick of mining!

162

Grass Grown Trails

THE SHEEP-HERDER

All day across the sagebrush flat

Beneath the sun of June,
My sheep they loaf and feed and blat

Their never changin' tune.
And then at night time, when they lay

As quiet as a stone,
I hear the gray wolf far away;

"Alo-one!" he says, "Alo-one!"

A-al m-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!

The tune the woollies sing;
It's rasped my ears, it seems, for years,

Though really just since spring.
And nothin' , far as I kin see

Around the circle's sweep,
But sky and plains, my dreams and me

And them infernal sheep.

I've got one book — it's poetry —

A bunch of pretty wrongs
An Eastern lunger gave to me;

He said 'twas "shepherd songs."

163

Sun and Saddle Leather

But though that poet sure is deep
And has sweet things to say,

He never seen a herd of sheep,
Or smelt them, anyway.

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!

My 'woollies greasy gray,
An awful change has hit the range

Since that old poet's day.
For you're just silly f on'ry brutes

And I look like distress
And my pipe ain't the kind that toots

And there's no {( shepherdess."

Yet 'way down home in Kansas State,

Bliss Township, Section Five,
There's one that promised me to wait,

The sweetest girl alive.
That's why I salt my wages down

And mend my clothes with strings,
While others blow their pay in town

For booze and other things.

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!
My Minnie, don't be sad;

164

Grass Grown Trails

Next year we'll lease that splendid piece

That corners on your dad.
We'll drive to "literary," dear,

The way we used to do
And turn my lonesome workin' here

To happiness for you.

Suppose, down near that rattlers' den,

While I sit here and dream,
I'd see a bunch of ugly men

And hear a woman scream.
Suppose I'd let my rifle shout

And drop the men in rows,
And then the woman should turn out —

My Minnie! — just suppose.

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!

The tune would then be gay;
There is, I mind, a parson kind

Just forty miles away.
Why Eden would come back again

With sage and sheep corrals.
And I could swing a singin pen

To write her "pastorals."

165

Sun and Saddle Leather

I pack a rifle on my arm

And jump at flies that buzz;
There's nothin' here to do me harm

I sometimes wish there was.
If through that brush above the pool

A red should creep — and creep —
Wah! cut down on 'im! Stop, you fooll

That's nothin' but a sheep.

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! — Hell I

Oh, sky and plain and bluff!
Unless my mail comes up the trail

I'm locoed, sure enough.
What's that? — a dust-whiff near the butte

Right where my last trail ran,
A movin' speak, a — wagon ! Hoot!

Thank God! here comes a man.

166

Grass Grown Trails

THE OLD PROSPECTOR

There's a song in the canyon below me

And a song in the pines overhead,
As the sunlight crawls down from the snow-
line

And rustles the deer from his bed.
With mountains of green all around me

And mountains of white up above
And mountains of blue down the sky-line,

I follow the trail that I love.

My hands they are hard from the shovel,

My leg is rheumatic by streaks
And my face it is wrinkled from squintin'

At the glint of the sun on the peaks.
You pity the prospector sometimes

As if he was out of your grade.
Why, you are all prospectors, bless you!

I'm only a branch of the trade.
You prospect for wealth and for wisdom,

You prospect for love and for fame;
Our work don't just match as to details,

But the principle's mostly the same.

167

Sun and Saddle Leather

While I swing a pick in the mountains
You slave in the dust and the heat

And scratch with your pens for a color
And assay the float of the street.

You wail that your wisdom is salted,

That fame never pays for the mill,
That wealth hasn't half enough value

To pay you for climbin' the hill.
You even say love's El Dorado,

A pipe dream that never endures —
Well, my luck ain't all that I want it,

But I never envied you yours.
You're welcome to what the town gives you.

To prizes of laurel and rose,
But leave me the song in the pine tops,

The breath of a wind from the snows.
With mountains of green all around me

And mountains of white up above
And mountains of blue down the sky-line,

I'll follow the trail that I love.

1 68

Grass Grown Trails

GOD OF THE OPEN

God of the open, though I am so simple

Out in the wind I can travel with you,
Noons when the hot mesas ripple and dimple,

Nights when the stars glitter cool in the

blue.
Too far you stand for the reach of my hand,

Yet I can feel your big heart as it beats
Friendly and warm in the sun or the storm.

Are you the same as the God of the streets?

Yours is the sunny blue roof I ride under;
Mountain and plain are the house you have

made.
Sometimes it roars with the wind and the

thunder

But in your house I am never afraid.
He? Oh, they give him the license to live,

Aim, in their ledgers, to pay him his due,
Gather by herds to present him with words —
Words I What are words when my heart
talks with you?

169

Sun and Saddle Leather

God of the open, forgive an old ranger
Penned among walls where he never sees

through.
Well do I know, though their God seems a

stranger,

Earth has no room for another like you.
Shut out the roll of the wheels from my soul;

Send me a wind that is singing and sweet
Into this place where the smoke dims your

face.
Help me see you in the God of the street.

170

Grass Grown Trails

THE PASSING OF THE TRAIL

There was a sunny, savage land

Beneath the eagle's wings,
And there, across the thorns and sand,

Wild rovers rode as kings.
Is it a yarn from long ago

And far across the sea?
Could that land be the land we know?

Those roving riders we?

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

How comes it, pard of mine?
Within a day it slipped away

And hardly left a sign.
Now history a tale has gained

To please the younger ears —
A race of kings that rosef and reigned f

And passed in fifty years!

Dream back beyond the cramping lanes
To glories that have been —

The camp smoke on the sunset plains,
The riders loping in:

171

Sun and Saddle Leather

Loose rein and rowelled heel to spare,

The wind our only guide,
For youth was in the saddle there

With half a world to ride.

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 lived so free
Have topped the last divide, or changed

To men like you and me.

Where, in the valley fields and fruits,

Now hums a lively street,
We milled a mob of fighting brutes

Among the grim mesquite.
It looks a far and fearful way —

The trail from Now to Then —
But time is telescoped to-day,

A hundred years in ten.

The trail's a lane, the trail's a lane.
Our brows are scarcely seamed,

172

Grass Grown Trails

But we may scan a mighty span
Methuselah ne'er dreamed.

Yet, pardner, we are dull and old,
With paltry hopes and fears,

Beside those rovers gay and bold
Far riding down the years!

173

Sun and Saddle Leather

LATIGO TOWN

You and I settled this section together;
Youthful and mettled and wild were we

then.
You were the gladdest town out in the

weather ;

I was the maddest young scamp among
men.

Latigo Town, ay, Latigo Town,
Child of the mesa sun-flooded and brown,
That hour of gracious romance and good

leather,
Splendid, audacious, comes never again.

Many a rover as brash as a sparrow,
Loping in over the amethyst plains,

Reined for your spinning roulette and your

faro,
Light-hearted sinning and fiddled refrains.

Latigo Town, ay, Latigo Town,
We made a past you are still living down,
Keen for a tussle, with salt in our marrow,
Steel in our muscles and sun in our veins!

Grass Grown Trails

Rowels that jingled and rigs that were tat
tered,
Yet how we tingled to dreams that were

high!

Slim was the treasure we gathered and scat
tered,
But can you measure the wind and the sky?

Latigo Town, ay, Latigo Town,
Freedom and youth were a robe and a

crown.

Then we were bosses of riches that mattered,
Laughing at losses of things you can buy.

Town that was fiery and careless and Spanish,
Boy that was wiry and wayward and glad —

Over the border to limbo they vanish;

Progress and order decreed they were bad.

Latigo Town, ay, Latigo Town,
Pursy with culture and civic renown,
Never censorious progress can banish

Dreams of the glorious youth that we had!

'75

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE BUFFALO TRAIL

Deeply the buffalo trod it

Beating it barren as brass;
Now the soft rain-fingers sod it,

Green to the crest of the pass.
Backward it slopes into history;
Forward it lifts into mystery.

Here is but wind in the grass.

Backward the millions assemble,
Bannered with dust overhead,
Setting the prairie a-tremble

Under the might of their tread.
Forward the sky-line is glistening
And to the reach of our listening

Drifts not a sound from the dead.

Quick, or swift seasons fade it!

Look on his works while they show.
This is the bison. He made it.

Thus say the old ones who know.
This is the bison — a-pondering
Vague as the prairie wind wandering
Over the green or the snow.

176

Grass Grown Trails

THE CAMP FIRE'S SONG

I reared your fathers long ago —

Big, savage children — from the breast,

But in the circle of my glow

You sit to-night a haughty guest,

For far beyond their artless day

Your lofty trail has stretched away.
So wise I so wise!

But still the child is in your eyes.

Your fathers feared the club and claw,
Their days were full of fight and flight;

Behind you stands your mighty law
To guard your lonely sleep to-night,

Or, if some lawless brute run free,

A rifle gleams across your knee.
So strong! so wise!

But still the fear is in your eyes.

They filled their little tents with spoil,
Then vaguely longed for greater things;

Your shining cities spurn the soil

And through your valleys plenty sings;

177

Sun and Saddle Leather

You span the seas they endless deemed
And rule a world they never dreamed.

So great! so wise!
But still their longing in your eyes.

They made them gods of flood and fire;

With simple awe they watched the stars;
You bend all powers to your desire;

The river gods must draw your cars,
The drudging fire gods drive your fleets,
The lightning slaves about your streets.

So proud! so wise!
Yet their old wonder in your eyes!

They dreamed a god might in them dwell
Who lived beyond the silenced heart;

You know your mortal self so well —
A wondrous thing in every part,

But earthbound as this gaunt mesquite

Or firelit dust about your feet.
So hard! so wise!

But still the god is in your eyes.

Poor little primal thing am I,

Great stranger, yet I mock your lore;

Grass Grown Trails

Your thickest volumes often lie

And these still stars could tell you more,

The wind that sighs across the sand

Or I, but could you understand?
So wise! so wise!

A puzzled child within your eyes.

179

NEW POEMS

Ne<w Poems

PLAINS BORN

Westward from the greener places

Where the rivers glint and twine
Stretch the gold-and-purple spaces

Of the country that is mine;
And to lilac Rockies lifting

Toward the deeper blue above,
There is neither flaw nor shifting

In the title of my love.

My own! my own!
Many a silent, sunny zone,

With the soft cloud shadows drifting
On the desert and the sown!

I would have no wall or warder

Mar my goodly heritage,
From the yuccas of the border

To the snowy northern sage —
Glad of every wind that passes

Down the mesa and the plain,
Singing freedom in the grasses

And my pony's rippling mane.

Sun and Saddle Leather

My own! my own!

There is freedom here alone,

Under midnight's starry masses
Or the day king on his throne/

Faith must blunder on in blinkers

Through a city's swirling rout,
For the milling herd of thinkers

Blurs the way of wisdom out;
But where stainless sky is bending

Over never-furrowed sod
There's an open trail ascending

To the presence of a Godl

My own! my own!

Where the troubled eyes are shown

Heaven and earth forever blending
Round the blue rim of the known!

184

New Poems

THE OLD CAMP COFFEE-POT

Written for Eben W. Martin

Old camp-mate, black and rough to see,
A hard-worked aid and ally you
In all my single-handed wars
With naked nature's savagery.
Your scars are marks of service true,
Dear loving-cup of out-o'-doors,
And history in every spot
Has battered you, old coffee-pot.

Oh, black Pandora-box of dreams!
Though dry of drink for mortal needs,
Out of your spout what fancies flow!
The flash of trout in sunny streams,
The swoop of ducks among the reeds,
The buck that paws the reddened snow —
What suns and storms, what dust and mire,
What gay, tanned faces round the fire!

So, vividly as clouds that blaze
Above a sunset's rainy red,
Scene after scene, you bring to me
The camps and trails of other days.

Sun and Saddle Leather

And as a shell, long dry and dead,
Holds echoes of its native sea,
So dear old murmurs, half forgot,
Rise from your depths, old coffee-pot.

I hear the stir of horses' hoofs,
The solemn challenge of the owl,
The wind song on the piny height,
The lilt of rain on canvas roofs,
The far-off coyote's hungry howl,
And all the camp sounds of the night.
They rise — a thousand things like these —
From you, old well of memories.

Our fires are dead on hill and plain
And old camp faces lost and gone,
But yet we two are left, old friend.
And as the summers bloom and wane
May I meet you at dusk and dawn
By many fires before the end,
And drink to you in nectar hot
From your black throat, old coffee-pot.

1 86

New Poems

MY ENEMY

All mornin' in the mesa's glare
After his crouchin' back I clattered,

And quick shots cut the heavy air
And on the rocks the hot lead spattered.

A dollar crimped, a word too free —
My enemy! My enemy!

He reined beside a rattlers' den
And faced me there to fix the winnin'.

And I wished that he would turn again,
For it was hard to kill him grinnin'.

His hands were empty, I could see.
My enemy! My enemy!

He pointed up; he pointed back.
I looked, and half forgot my hatin'.

A coyote sneaked along our track,
A buzzard hung above us, waitin'.

"Are us four all akin?" says he.
My enemy! My enemy!

The coyote crossed the desert's rim,
The buzzard circled up and faded.

Sun and Saddle Leather

I halved my only smoke with him
And when dark found us limp and jaded,
He sat and kep' the fire for me,
My enemy! My enemy!!

188

New Poems

THE FIGHTING SWING

Once again the regiments marching down the

street,
Shoulders, legs and rifle barrels swinging

all in time.
Let the slack civilian plod; ours the gayer

feet,

Dancing to the music of the oldest earthly
rhyme.

Left! Right! Trim and tight, hear the ca
dence fall.
(So the legion Caesar loved shook the

plains of Gaul.)
Fighting bloods of all the earth in our pulses

ring.

Step, lads, true to the dads! Back to the
fighting swing!

We have kissed goodbye to care, left the fret

and stew.

Now the crows may steal the corn; now
the milk may spill.

189

Sun and Saddle Leather

All the worries in the world simmer down to

two —

One is how to dodge the shells ; one is how
to kill.

Left/ Right/ Glints of light — down the lines

they run.
(So the Janizary spears caught the desert

sun.)
Once again the fighting steel has its ancient

fling-
Flash! sway! battle array. Back to the
fighting swing!

Every eye is hard and straight; every head

is high.
Groping, wrangling days are done; let the

leaders lead.

Regulations how to live, orders when to die —
Life and death in primer print any man
can read.

Left! Right! Eat and fight! Dreams are
blown to bits.

190

New Poems

(Here's the Old Guard back to life, bound

for Austerlitz.)
Drop the soft and quit the sweet; loose the

arms that cling.

Blood, dustf grapple and thrust — back to
the fighting swing!

191

Sun and Saddle Leather

THE SMOKE-BLUE PLAINS

Kissed me from the saddle and I still can

feel it burning,
But he must have felt it cold, for ice was

in my veins.
I shall always see him as he waved above the

turning,
Riding down the canyon to the smoke-blue

plains.
Oh, the smoke-blue plains! how I used to

watch them sleeping,
Thinking peace had dimmed them with the

shadow of her wings ;
Now their gentle haze will seem a smoke of

death a-creeping,

Drifted from the battles in the country of
the kings.

Joked me to the last, and in a voice without a

quaver —
Man o' mine! — but underneath the tan his

cheek was pale.
Never did the nation breed a kinder or a

braver

Since our fathers landed from the long sea
trail.

192

New Poems

Oh, the long sea trail he must leave me here

and follow —
He that never saw a ship — to dare its

chances blind,
Out the deadly reaches where the sinking

steamers wallow.

Back to trampled countries that his fathers
left behind.

Down beyond the plains among the fighting

and the dying,

God must watch his reckless foot and fol
low where it lights ;
Guard the places where his blessed tousled

head is lying —
Head my shoulder pillowed through the

warm, safe nights!
Oh, the warm, safe nights, and the pines

above the shingles!
Can I stand their crooning and the patter

of the rains?
Oh, the sunny quiet, and a bridle bit that

jingles,

Coming up the canyon from the smoke-
blue plains!

193

Sun and Saddle Leather

OTHERS

The daybreak comes so pure and still.

He said that I was pure as dawn,
That day we climbed to Signal Hill,

Back there before the war came on.
God keep me pure as he is brave,

And fit to take his name.
I let him go and fight to save

Some other girl from shame.

Across the gulch it glimmers white,

The little house we plotted for.
We would be sitting there tonight

If he had never gone to war —
The firelight and the cricket's cheep,

My arm around his neck —
I let him go and fight to keep

Some other home from wreck.

And every day I ride to town

The wide lands talk to me of him —

The slopes with pine trees marching down,
The spread-out prairies, blue and dim.

194 '

(P) Iluffmaii-StevfiiMin.

"If lien the last free trail is a prim, fenced lane

And our graves grow weeds through forgetful May*,

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,

Bui never the fondest will understand

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

See page 97

New Poems

He loved it for the freedom's sake

Almost as he loved me.
I let him go and fight to make

Some other country free.

195

Sun and Saddle Leather

JEFF HART

Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch to war
When the low sun yellowed the pines.

He waved to his folks in the cabin door
And yelled to the men at the mines.

The gulch kept watch till he dropped from

sight-
Neighbors and girl and kin.

Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch one night;
Next morning the world came in.

His dad went back to the clinking drills

And his mother cooked for the men;
The pines branched black on the eastern hills,

Then black to the west again.
But never again, by dusk or dawn,

Were the days in the gulch the same,
For back up the trail Jeff Hart had gone

The trample of millions came.

Then never a clatter of dynamite
But echoed the guns of the Aisne,

And the coyote's wail in the woods at night
Was bitter with Belgium's pain.

196

New Poems

We heard the snarl of a savage sea

In the pines when the wind went through,

And the strangers Jeff Hart fought to free
Grew folks to the folks he knew.

Jeff Hart has drifted for good and all,

To the ghostly bugles blown,
But the far French valley that saw him fall

Blood kin to the gulch is grown;
And his foreign folks are ours by right —

The friends that he died to win.
Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch one night;

Next morning the world came in.

197

Sun and Saddle Leather

BATTLE
Do you mind that old fight in The Rattles,

Whether sheep or cattle men should rule?
Was it that, or was it like most battles —

Just a drink too many, or a fool?
Anyhow, we all were feelin' funny,

Strong with lopin' weeks of wind and sun,
Gay, for every hand was full of money,

Safe, for every sinner packed a gun.
Hi! My! We know it, you and I —

JTwas safer in the days we packed a gun.

Seems to me that Hell bulged up from under

Through the floor, volcano-like, and

broke —
Spits of leaded lightnin' with its thunder,

Swearin' imps a-whirlin' through the

smoke —
Dodgin', shootin' fast as they were able,

Glass and flyin' splinters in a spray —
I was jammed behind a poker table,

So I had to pull and blaze away.
Hi! My! Who of us thought to die?

All we knowed was pull and blaze away.

198

New Poems

So we had a rippin' roarin' revel

With the red firewater of the kill,
Dancin' to the pipin' of the devil —

Then the time arrived to pay the bill.
Bud and Pecos, one across the other,

Dead below the bluish powder swirls.
Bud, that sent his money to his mother I

Pecos, with the pigtailed little girls 1
Hil My! I always wonder why

The bill must go to mother and the girls 1

199

Sun and Saddle Leather

IN THE HILLS

The shadow crawls up canyon walls ; the rim

rocks flush to pink
A sleepy night hawk lurches up among the

pines to soar,
And we can hear a thirsty deer tiptoeing

down to drink
Among the glimmering birches on the hazy

canyon floor.
Sister, sister, it seems a staring pity —

Somewhere there is a city, and one time
there was a war.

Around the bend the thickets end in field and

garden spot,
And little ranches lifting smokes that make

the twilight sweet.
Beneath the smokes the women folks are

watching pan and pot,
While joking men are drifting in to smell

the sizzling meat.

Sister, sister, and is it truth or lying
That somewhere folks are dying for the
want of things to eat?

200

New Poems

Along the hill the winds are still, and still,

blue shadows rise,
And quiet bats are winging out, but down

the canyon floor
The swift creek purls in dusky swirls that

mind me of your eyes
And keeps the stillness singing here for

ever, evermore.

Sister, sister, and is it true, I wonder —
Somewhere the loud streets thunder, and
one time there was a war.

20 1

,or

Tfwnfe!

LD 2lA-60m-4,'64
(E4555slO)476B

General Library
University of California

YCJ06I84

GENERAL LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY

B0005M50C)S

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