Project Gutenberg's Jim Waring of Sonora-Town, by Knibbs, Henry Herbert

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Title: Jim Waring of Sonora-Town Tang of Life

Author: Knibbs, Henry Herbert

Release Date: April 28, 2004 [EBook #12189]

Language: English

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Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Gene Smethers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

JIM WARING

OF SONORA-TOWN

OR, TANG OF LIFE

BY

HENRY HERBERT KNIBBS

AUTHOR OF OVERLAND RED, ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

E. BOYD SMITH

August 1918

To

Robert Frothingham

[Illustration: Waring of Sonora-Town]

Waring of Sonora-Town

_The heat acrost the desert was a-swimmin' in the sun,
  When Waring of Sonora-Town,
  Jim Waring of Sonora-Town,
From Salvador come ridin' down, a-rollin' of his gun.

He was singin' low and easy to his pony's steady feet,
  But his eye was live and driftin'
  Round the scenery and siftin'
All the crawlin' shadows shiftin' in the tremblin' gray mesquite.

Eyes was watchin' from a hollow where a outlaw Chola lay;
  Two black, snaky eyes a-yearnin'
  For Jim's hoss to make the turnin',
Then to send a bullet burnin' through his back—the Chola way.

And Jim Waring's gaze, a-rovin' round the desert as he rode,
  Settled quick—without him seemin'
  To get wise and quit his dreamin'—
On a shiny ring a-gleamin' where no ring had ever growed.

The lightnin' don't give warnin'; just a lick and she is through;
  Waring set his gun to smokin'
  Playful like, like he was jokin',
And—a Chola lay a-chokin' … and a buzzard cut the blue._

Contents

I. The Cañon

II. José Vaca

III. Donovan's Hand

IV. The Silver Crucifix

V. The Tang of Life

VI. Arizona

VII. The Return of Waring

VIII. Lorry

IX. High-Chin Bob

X. East and West

XI. Spring Lamb

XII. Bud Shoop and Bondsman

XIII. The Horse Trade

XIV. Bondsman's Decision

XV. John and Demijohn

XVI. Play

XVII. Down the Wind

XVIII. A Piece of Paper

XIX. The Fight in the Open

XX. City Folks

XXI. A Slim Whip of a Girl

XXII. A Tune for Uncle Bud

XXIII. Like One Who Sleeps

XXIV. The Genial Bud

XXV. The Little Fires

XXVI. Idle Noon

XXVII. Waco

XXVIII. A Squared Account

XXIX. Bud's Conscience

XXX. In the Hills

XXXI. In the Pines

XXXII. Politics

XXXIII. The Fires of Home

XXXIV. Young Life

XXXV. The High Trail

Illustrations

Waring of Sonora-Town

A huddled shape near a boulder

"I came over—to tell you—that it was Pat's gun"

They made coffee and ate the sandwiches she had prepared

From drawings by E. Boyd Smith

TANG OF LIFE

Chapter I

The Cañon

Waring picketed his horse in a dim angle of the Agua Fria Cañon, spread his saddle-blanket to dry in the afternoon sun, and, climbing to a narrow ledge, surveyed the cañon from end to end with a pair of high-power glasses. He knew the men he sought would ride south. He was reasonably certain that they would not ride through the cañon in daylight. The natural trail through the Agua Fria was along the western wall; a trail that he had avoided, working his toilsome way down the eastern side through a labyrinth of brush and rock that had concealed him from view. A few hundred yards below his hasty camp a sandy arroyo crossed the cañon's mouth.

He had planned to intercept the men where the trail crossed this arroyo, or, should the trail show pony tracks, to follow them into the desert beyond, where, sooner or later, he would overtake them. They had a start of twelve hours, but Waring reasoned that they would not do much riding in daylight. The trail at the northern end of the cañon had shown no fresh tracks that morning. His problem was simple. The answer would be definite. He returned to the shelter of the brush, dropped the glasses into a saddle-pocket, and stretched himself wearily.

A few yards below him, on a brush-dotted level, his horse, Dexter, slowly circled his picket and nibbled at the scant bunch-grass. The western sun trailed long shadows across the cañon; shadows that drifted imperceptibly farther and farther, spreading, commingling, softening the broken outlines of ledge and brush until the walled solitude was brimmed with dusk, save where a red shaft cleft the fast-fading twilight, burning like a great spotlight on a picketed horse and a man asleep, his head pillowed on a saddle.

As the dusk drew down, the horse ceased grazing, sniffed the coming night, and nickered softly. Waring rose and led the horse to water, and, returning, emptied half the grain in the morral on a blanket. Dex munched contentedly. When the horse had finished eating the grain, Waring picketed him in a fresh spot and climbed back to the ledge, where he sat watching the western wall of the cañon, occasionally glancing up as some dim star burned through the deepening dusk and bloomed to a silvery maturity.

Presently a faint pallor overspread the cañon till it lay like a ghostly sea dotted with strange islands of brush and rock; islands that seemed to waver and shift in a sort of vague restlessness, as though trying to evade the ever-brightening tide of moonlight that burned away their shrouds of dusk and fixed them in still, tangible shapes upon the cañon floor.

Across the cañon the farther trail ran past a broad, blank wall of rock. No horseman could cross that open space unseen. Waring, seated upon the ledge, leaned back against the wall, watching the angling shadows shorten as the moon drew overhead. Toward morning he became drowsy. As the white radiance paled to gray, he rose and paced back and forth upon the narrow ledge to keep himself awake. In a few minutes the moon would disappear behind the farther rim of the world; the cañon would sink back into its own night, all its moonlit imageries melting, vanishing. In the hour before dawn