I’ve been acquainted with Leon Flick since he was in school, going to junior and high school rodeos. He wasn’t much more than a kid when he went to work for Phil Lynch running the JJ outfit in Warner Valley.

I never worked with Leon except branding calves or maybe helping some outfit ship, but I noticed that he seemd to wind up in the right place more often than not, which is about all any of us try to accomplish on our better days. I did work close enough to Leon that our horse tracks crossed occasionally, and whenever his name came up around the fire at night it seemed like whatever you heard was never anything a man would have to hide from. The immediate conclusion you drew was that his peers considered him a cowboy. That is about as good a compliment as one man a-horseback ever pays to one another.
 

The next time we ran into one another, he had moved back to the Warner Valley area and was working in double harness with his better half, Billie. Billie is not only a likable attractive young lady, but is also about as good a hand around livestock as anyone going down the road. If you are out somewhere and get yourself into a jackpot, you can be sure that there is help close at hand if she is anywhere nearby. The two work together most of the time and are so much in demand around their part of the world that they have a tough time getting enough time off to do their grocery shopping.

When Leon cracked out at his first poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada, the stuff he was writing about was so authentic and well-written that he was almost immediately accepted as one of the better cowboy poets in the movement. He and I have spent many hours since then traveling down the road to poetry gatherings throughout the West.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time praising Leon’s poetry because it will be pretty obvious what it’s like when you read this book. You will find not only some excellent verse but several anecdotes that will amuse and entertain you, especially if you have a little buckaroo in your soul. It will be clear that he writes about things he has lived and that are dear to his heart. Leon Flick loves his chosen profession! Leon Flick is a cowboy!

—Sunny Hancock