His time he used to pass

Writing sonnets, on the grass—

(I might say something good on pen and sward!) While the cat sat near at hand, Trying hard to understand

The poems he occasionally roared.

(I myself possess a feline,
But when poetry I roar

He is sure to make a bee-line
For the door.)

The poet, cent by cent,

All his patrimony spent

(I might tell how he went from verse to worse!) Till the cat was sure she could,

By advising, do him good.

So addressed him in a manner that was terse: "We are bound toward the scuppers,

And the time has come to act,

Or we'll both be on our uppers
For a fact!"

On her boot she fixed her eye,

But the boot made no reply

(I might say: "Couldn't speak to save its sole!") And the foolish bard, instead

Of responding, only read

A verse that wasn't bad upon the whole.

And it pleased the cat so greatly,

Though she knew not what it meant,

That I'll quote approximately

How it went:

"If I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree"

(I might put in: "I think I'd just as leaf!")

"Let them smile, as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough"

Well, he'd plagiarized it bodily, in brief! But that cat of simple breeding Couldn't read the lines between,

So she took it to a leading

Magazine.

She was jarred and very sore

When they showed her to the door.

(I might hit off the door that was a jar!) To the spot she swift returned

Where the poet sighed and yearned,

And she told him that he'd gone a little far.
"Your performance with this rhyme has
Made me absolutely sick,"

She remarked. "I think the time has
Come to kick!"

I could fill up half the page
With descriptions of her rage—

(I might say that she went a bit too fur!) When he smiled and murmured: "Shoo!" "There is one thing I can do!"

She answered with a wrathful kind of purr. "You may shoo me, an' it suit you,

But I feel my conscience bid

Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!"
(Which she did.)

The Moral of the plot

(Though I say it, as should not!)
Is: An editor is difficult to suit.
But again there're other times
When the man who fashions rhymes

Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot!

Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874. After a desultory schooling, he attended Harvard for three years when he was thirty-four. "Somebody said I took honors in English," says Knibbs, "but I never saw them." He wrote his first book, Lost Farm Camp, a novel, as a class exercise.

Half a dozen volumes followed, Overland Red (1914) and Tang of Life (1917) being the most popular. In 1911 Knibbs settled in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since. Temescal, in many ways his best tale, appeared in 1925.

In Riders of the Stars (1916) and Songs of the Trail (1920) Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike County Ballads. High-hearted verse this is, with more than an occasional flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination. Knibbs, far more accurately than Service, sings the rough-edged, hornyhanded ballad of the pioneer; he is the singer of the ranch, the temporary camp, the uncertain trail. He can express courage without heroics.

THE VALLEY THAT GOD FORGOT

Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue,
Davison sought the faces of the long-lost friends he knew:
They were there, in the distance dreaming
Their dreams that were worn and old;

They were there, to his frenzied seeming,
Still burrowing down for gold.

Davison's face was leather; his mouth was a swollen blot,

His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God

Forgot;

Wild as a dog gone loco,

Or sullen or meek, by turns,
He mumbled a "Poco! Poco!"
And whispered of pools and ferns.

Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never

found

Save in deep caverns winding miles through the underground:

Cool, far, shadowy places

Edged by the mirrored trees,
When-Davison saw the faces!
And fear let loose his knees.

There was Shorty who owed him money, and Billing who bossed the crowd;

And Steve whom the boys called "Sunny," and Collins who talked so loud:

Miguel with the handsome daughter,
And the rustler, Ed McCray;

Five-and they begged for water,

And offered him gold, in pay.

Gold? It was never cheaper. And Davison shook his head: "The price of a drink is steeper out here than in town," he said.

He laughed as they mouthed and muttered
Through lips that were cracked and dried;
The pulse in his ear-drum fluttered:
"I'm through with the game!" he cried.

"I'm through!" And he knelt and fumbled the cap of his dry canteen

Then, rising, he swayed and stumbled into a black ravine: His ghostly comrades followed,

For Davison's end was near,

And a shallow grave they hollowed,
When up from it, cool and clear

Bubbled the water-hidden a pick-stroke beneath the sand; Davison, phantom-ridden, scooped with a shaking hand

Davison swears they made it,

The Well where we drank to-day.
Davison's game? He played it

And won-so the town-folk say:

Called it The Morning-Glory-near those abandoned stamps,

And Davison's crazy story was told in a hundred camps: Time and the times have tamed it,

His yarn-and this desert spot,

But I'm strong for the man who named it,
The Valley That God Forgot.

ROLL A ROCK DOWN

Oh, out in the West where the riders are ready,
They sing an old song and they tell an old tale,
And its moral is plain: Take it easy, go steady,
While riding a horse on the Malibu Trail.

It's a high, rocky trail with its switch-backs and doubles,
It has no beginning and never an end:

It's risky and rough and it's plumb full of troubles,
From Shifty-that's shale-up to Powder Cut Bend.

Old-timers will tell you the rangers who made it,
Sang "Roll A Rock Down," with a stiff upper lip,
And cussed all creation, but managed to grade it;
With a thousand-foot drop if a pony should slip.

Oh, the day it was wet and the sky it was cloudy,
The trail was as slick as an oil-rigger's pants,
When Ranger McCabe on his pony, Old Rowdy,
Came ridin' where walkin' was takin' a chance.