By Warren Miller 

When the cowboy poets gather next weekend at the 10th Annual Arizona Cowboy Poets Gathering, which opens Thursday evening, August 14, 1997 and runs through Saturday evening, August 16, 1997, they will be continuing a tradition that has been important in the ranching country around Prescott since before the turn of the century. Several of the best known and revered old-time cowboy poets lived and worked in this area in times past.

Charles Badger Clark, 1883-1957, who was poet laureate of South Dakota for many years, began his career as a cowboy and a poet on a small ranch in South Pass, north of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in 1905. The fact that he knew the high country of north-central Arizona is reflected in some of his poetry. "The Glory Trail," in which an intrepid lone cowboy, with his rope tied hard-and-fast (he couldn't turn it loose!), ropes a mountain lion, begins: "Way up high in the Mogollon, among the mountain tops, A lion cleaned a yearlin's bones and licked his thankful chops ..." Henry Herbert Knibbs, 1874-1945, known as a Canadian poet, also had a fondness for Arizona's high country. His "Where the Ponies Come to Drink" begins: 

Up in Northern Arizona, 
There's a ranger trail that passes 
Through a mesa like a fairy lake, 
It winds upon its strength, 
And across the trail a stream runs 
All but hidden in the grasses 
'Til it finds an emerald hollow 
Where the ponies come to drink. 

The cowboy poets cowboy poet, Bruce Kiskaddon, 1878-1950, worked ranches in the Kingman area in the 1920s. Curley Fletcher, 1892-1954, who penned "The Strawberry Roan" in 1914, wrote Arizona poems like "Yavapai Pete" when his "saddle bum" itinerant life brought him to this area. Most of the old-timers moved around a lot, working a roundup season in Montana, then riding to New Mexico or Colorado or northern California to take advantage of cow-camp hospitality and maybe stay around to draw some wages and learn the work style of a new area. An exception to this rule was Prescott's own favorite son cowboy poet, Gail I. Gardner. Gail was born in the family home on Mt. Vernon Street in 1892 and died in the same house ninety-five years later! Gail was sent east by his merchant father, J.I. Gardner (Gardner's General Store is now Murphy's Restaurant) to get a fine education at Philip Exeter Academy and then Dartmouth University. When he returned to Prescott, he announced that he wanted to punch cows! Gail worked a "greasy sack" outfit in Skull Valley with his friend, Bob Heckle, until a couple of horse wrecks took him out of the cowboy business. He began writing poetry in 1917, applying his natural wit and broad education to the telling of cow tales. His very first poem, "The Sierry Petes" or "Tyin' Knots in the Devil's Tail" was an immediate hit with all who heard it, and is still one of the best-known cowboy poems of all time. Later Gail was postmaster of Prescott for twenty-six years, but all his long life he considered himself first a cowboy. 

I was fortunate to get to know Gail about 1980, and in 1985 to help him publish a seventh edition of his collection of poems, Orejana Bull, For Cowboys Only, through the Sharlot Hall Museum Press. Gail had corresponded with many people through the years and always responded to people who wrote him asking about his poems. Often letters came addressed simply "Gail Gardner, Prescott, Arizona." Due to the fact that he was the postmaster, these letters usually got delivered! I was particularly amused by an exchange of letters he showed me that were dated 1951. A gentleman from Chicago wrote to Gail asking for a copy of his book of poems and enclosing two dollars. "I have no idea what the cost..." wrote the Chicagoan. "I would naturally be very happy to mail you any difference ..." Gail wrote back in the following manner: "A long time ago I went into a bar in San Francisco in those dear departed days when beer was a nickel for a big glass. I threw four bits on the bar and the bartender drew ten beers and set them up on the bar and I got no change. With a cheer all the hangers-on in the place grabbed a beer and I knew I had been taken. Seems like it was a Tuesday night special in the place that any customer putting a dollar or less on the bar got it all in beer with no change. Confidentially the books aren't worth a dime, but the approximate price is six bits so three books are enclosed. I know that comes to two and a quarter, but after deducting a series of trade discounts too complicated to follow it comes out exactly two dollars." He added to me, "These books were not written for profit, but solely for the amusement of cowboys, and mildly skinning a gentleman from Chicago certainly comes under the head of amusement." 

Gail Gardner and Curley Fletcher met in Prescott in the 1930s and found they had something important in common: They had both had poems pirated by "Powder River" Jack Lee, a cowboy singer from Montana. Lee had made records of Fletcher's "Strawberry Roan" and of Gardner's "Tyin' Knots in the Devil's Tail" and claimed to have written both poems. My personal collection of cowboy poetry includes a copy of Jack Lee's book, The Stampede, published about 1935, which includes Lee's version of "Tyin' Knots . . ." Curley Fletcher told Gail that "that skunk Powder River Jack" was in Phoenix with his wife, performing at a hotel. They went down together, found Lee, and roughed him up some. "But," Gail told me, "he didn't own anything but the shirt on his back, and neither of us wanted 'Pretty Kitty Lee' so we let him go." 

The classic poems of Badger Clark, Bruce Kiskaddon, Henry Herbert Knibbs, Curley Fletcher, and Gail Gardner will be mixed with contemporary cowboy poems at the Gathering. Daytime events at the Sharlot Hall Museum Friday afternoon and all day Saturday are free; evening shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Prescott College Elks Theater require tickets. For more information, call the Museum at 445-3122. 

Warren Miller is Curator of Education at the Sharlot Hall Museum.
 

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (pb160f1i56)
Reuse only by permission.
Gail 'Buster Jig' Gardner at age 19, a brush hand whose chaps had already been mended at the knee. Reproduced by Gary Lewallen from a 1912 Gardner family photo.