Badger Clark
Badger Clark was born at Albia, Iowa, in 1883. He moved to Dakota Territory at the age of three months and now lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Clark is one of the few men who have lived to see their work become part of folk-lore; many of his songs having been adapted and paraphrased by the cowboys who have made them their own. A version of one of his poems (“The Glory Trail”), after wide circulation among the ranchers and cow-punchers, was printed as an example of anonymous folk-song in Poetry; A Magazine of Verse under the title “High-Chin Bob”—and credited to “Author Unknown.”
Sun and Saddle Leather (1915) and Grass-Grown Trails (1917) are the expression of a native singer; happy, spontaneous and seldom “literary.” There is wind in these songs; the smell of camp-smoke and the colors of prairie sunsets rise from them. Free, for the most part, from affectations, Clark achieves an unusual ease in his use of the local vernacular.
The Glory Trail 44
’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;
The top-hawse gave a snort and whirled
And Bob caught up the slack.
“Oh, glory be to me,” laughs he.
“We’ve hit the glory trail.
No human man as I have read
Darst loop a ragin’ lion’s 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
I’ll keep this dally ’round the horn,
For never any hero born
Could stoop to holler: Nuff!’”
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 kaint 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 lion trailed along,
A rider, ga’nt but chin on high,
Yelled out a crazy song.
“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!”
The Coyote 45
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.
Up to the brooding divinity
Far in that sparkling infinity
Cry our despair and delight,
Voice of the Western night!