About the Author:
"My father came to Arizona in 1879, my mother in 1890, and I arrived in Prescott in 1892 now they are calling me a pioneer. Sure I went to the Prescott schools, 1900- 1909, worked in my father's old-fashioned "general merchandise" store, and on his Skull Valley ranch, but I don't believe that qualifies me as a pioneer." So wrote Gardner is his autobiography. Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College, he had a brief hitch during World War I in the Signal Corps, later the Air Force, where he learned to fly. Afterward, he returned to Arizona and bought a "small cow outfit," and lived both on the ranch and in town, working as a cowboy, in the fuel and feed business, and as the postmaster of Prescott. Through is poetry and songs, Gail Gardner was a legend of the Old West; a master of an art as old as the cattled hills. Late in his life, he reflected, "Sometimes even now, I think I would like to get out and 'bust a loop at one,' but when I think of the years it forgot to rain, or some of the hard winters with six inches of snow on the oak brush, I am fairly content to settle down in the old arm chair and watch the sky stay up."
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Away up high in the Sierry Petes,/ Where the yeller pines grow tall,/ Ole Sandy Bob and Buster Jig/ Had a rodeer camp last fall.// Oh, they taken their hosses and runnin' irons/ And maybe a dog or two,/ And they 'lowed they'd brand all the long-yered calves/ That come within their view.//. . . As they was a ridin' back to camp,/ A-packin' a pretty good load,/ Who should they meet but the Devil himself,/ A-prancin' down the road.// Sez he, "You ornery cowboy skunks,/ You'd better hunt your holes,/ Fer I've come up from Hell's Rim Rock/ To gather in yer souls."//. . . They pruned him up with a de-hornin' saw,/ An' they knotted up his tail fer a joke,/ Then they rid off and left him there,/ Necked to a Black-Jack oak.// If you're ever up high in the Sierry Peters,/ An you hear one Hell of a wail,/ You'll know it's that Devil a bellerin' around,/ About them knots in his tail. (From "The Sierry Petes" or "Tying the Knots in the Devil's Tail")
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