The Story of Buster Jig

Gail I. Gardner '14 will be 96 later this month, Christmas Day to be exact. He's been called the last of a special breed, the last of the legendary cowboy poets. You get to be a legend when you write what's probably the most famous of all cowboy poems, "The Sierry Petes.' Maybe you never heard it, but this fall at the Hopkins Center some visiting cowboys and musicians paid tribute to Gail and his peers with an evening of cowboy poetry and western songs.

Gail wasn't there. He's pretty much confined to Prescott, Ariz., and a wheelchair. But his spirit seemed to be in Hanover, where his father had sent him, back before the first World War. The story goes that Gail wrote his first and best known poem on a train ride between Dartmouth and Arizona, but the truth of the matter is it was a couple of years later, in 1917, when he took time off from his cOw outfit 20 miles west of Prescott and went to Washington, D.C., to enlist.

Away up high in the Sierry Petes,Where the yeller pines grow tall,Ole Sandy Bob and Buster JigHad a rodeer camp last fall.

Of course, that's only the first of 15 verses. You should know that the Sierry Petes are the Sierra Prieta mountains near Prescott and that cowboys pronounce it Sye-ree. Buster Jig is Gail himself—his father's initials were J.I.G. And a rodeer camp is a roundup camp out on the range. You can get the rest of this delightful poem—which, incidentally, is subtitled "Tying the Knots in the Devil's Tail" and a passel of other Gardner poems, by sending seven bucks to the Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 West Gurley Street, Prescott, AZ 86301. You ought to do it. He'd appreciate it.

There's a short autobiography, too. It tells how Gail married Delia in 1924 and how, after one too many spills from his horse, he took a job as postmaster and held it till 1957 when he retired.

Buster Jig flew through the airAnd lit with a hell of a thump.He knocked out all of his doggone brainsOn the butt of a cedar stump.

They tell us he's a Democrat,And too damned tough to kill,So we'll get him one of those gov'ment jobs.That'll surely fill the bill.

Quite a few years back Gail lost one eye because of radiation treatments for skin cancer. And his hearing's not what it used to be. Then there's the arthritis. But there are the memories of those cowboy years. And the poems. You could say Gail Gardner was a Dartmouth loner long before it was fashionable.