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.