H. H. Knibbs
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.
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.
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.
“Oh, Roll A Rock Down!” picks and shovels was clangin’,
And Rowdy a-steppin’ that careful and light,
When the edge it gave way and McCabe was left hangin’
Clean over the rim—with no bottom in sight.
I shook out a loop—bein’ crowded for throwin’;
I flipped a fair noose for a rope that was wet:
It caught just as Mac lost his holt and was goin’,
And burned through my fingers: it’s burnin’ them yet.
For Ranger McCabe never knuckled to danger;
My pardner in camp, on the trail, or in town:
And he slid into glory, a true forest-ranger,
With: “Hell! I’m a-goin’! Just roll a rock down.”
So, roll a rock down where a ranger is sleepin’
Aside of his horse below Powder Cut Bend:
I ride and I look where the shadows are creepin’,
And roll a rock down—for McCabe was my friend.
I’ve sung you my song and I’ve told you my story,
And all that I ask when I’m done with the show,
Is, roll a rock down when I slide into glory,
And say that I went like a ranger should go.
The Trail-Makers
North and west along the coast among the misty islands,
Sullen in the grip of night and smiling in the day:
Nunivak and Akutan, with Nome against the highlands,
On we drove with plated prow agleam with frozen spray.
Loud we sang adventuring and lustily we jested;
Quarreled, fought, and then forgot the taunt, the blow, the jeers;
Named a friend and clasped a hand—a compact sealed, attested;
Shared tobacco, yarns, and drink, and planned surpassing years.
Then—the snow that locked the trail where famine’s shadow followed
Out across the blinding white and through the stabbing cold,
Past tents along the tundra over faces blotched and hollowed;
Toothless mouths that babbled foolish songs of hidden gold.
Wisdom, lacking sinews for the toil, gave over trying;
Fools, with thews of iron, blundered on and won the fight;
Weaklings drifted homeward; else they tarried—worse than dying—
With the painted lips and wastrels on the edges of the night.
Berries of the saskatoon were ripening and falling;
Flowers decked the barren with its timber scant and low;
All along the river-trail were many voices calling,
And e’en the whimpering Malemutes they heard—and whined to go.
Eyelids seared with fire and ice and frosted parka-edges;
Firelight like a spray of blood on faces lean and brown;
Shifting shadows of the pines across our loaded sledges,
And far behind the fading trail, the lights and lures of town.
So we played the bitter game nor asked for praise or pity:
Wind and wolf they found the bones that blazed out lonely trails....
Where a dozen shacks were set, to-day there blooms a city;
Now where once was empty blue, there pass a thousand sails.
Scarce a peak that does not mark the grave of those who perished
Nameless, lost to lips of men who followed, gleaning fame
From the soundless triumph of adventurers who cherished
Naught above the glory of a chance to play the game.
Half the toil—and we had won to wealth in other station;
Rusted out as useless ere our worth was tried and known.
But the Hand that made us caught us up and hewed a nation
From the frozen fastness that so long was His alone.
Loud we sang adventuring and lustily we jested;
Quarreled, fought, and then forgot the taunt, the blow, the jeers;
Sinned and slaved and vanished—we, the giant-men who wrested
Truth from out a dream wherein we planned surpassing years.