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.
Scuffling feet and thud of fists,
Curses hot as fire—
Still the music sang of love,
Longin', lost desire,
Dreams that never could have been
Joys that couldn't stay—