Produced by Roberta Staehlin, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: "_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._"] SUN AND SADDLE LEATHER BY BADGER CLARK Illustrations from Photographs by L. A. HUFFMAN THIRD EDITION [Illustration] BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS Copyright, 1915, 1917 and 1919 by Badger Clark All Rights Reserved MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. TO MY FATHER, _who, in his long life, has seldom been conscious of a man's rough exterior, or unconscious of his obscurest virtue._ PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Cowboys are the sternest critics of those who would represent the West. No hypocrisy, no bluff, no pose can evade them. Yet cowboys have made Badger Clark's songs their own. So readily have they circulated that often the man who sings the song could not tell you where it started. Many of the poems have become folk songs of the West, we may say of America, for they speak of freedom and the open. Generous has been the praise given _Sun and Saddle Leather_, but perhaps no criticism has summed up the work so satisfactorily as the comment of the old cow man who said, "You can break me if there's a dead poem in the book, I read the hull of it. Who in H---- is this kid Clark, anyway? I don't know how he knowed, but he _knows_." That is what proves Badger Clark the real poet. He knows. Beyond his wonderful presentation of the West is the quality of universal appeal that makes his work real art. He has tied the West to the universe. The old cow man is not the only one who has wondered who Badger Clark was. Charles Wharton Stork speaking of _Sun and Saddle Leather_, said, "It has splendid flavor and fine artistic handling as well. I should like to know more of the author, whether he was a cow puncher or merely got inside his psychology by imagination." Badger Clark was brought up in the West. As a boy he lived in Deadwood, South Dakota. The town at that time was trying to live down the reputation for exuberant indecorum which she had acquired during the gold rush; but her five churches operating two hours a week could make little headway against the competition of two dance halls and twenty-six saloons running twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps it was these early impressions that make _The Piano at Red's_ in Mr. Clark's later volume _Grass Grown Trails_ so vivid.