SOMEWHERE SOUTH IN SONORA

A NOVEL BY

WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1925

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

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Prologue: Old Lights of the Rio Brava 3

I. Thirty Years Late 23

II. At Heaslep’s Ranch 29

III. The Leather-Store 35

IV. ‘Are You Doomed?’ 44

V. ‘I, Robert Leadley—’ 54

VI. The Listening Mare 64

VII. The Soft Side of a Saddle 71

VIII. Heaslep’s Again 78

IX. Initiation 87

X. ‘Water is for Horses’ 94

XI. Gas and Guns 101

XII. Flashlight and Fawnskin 106

XIII. Vallejo’s Lines 113

XIV. A Letter 119

XV. Tucson 120

XVI. Thoroughbreds Enter 131

XVII. The Art of Dying Well 138

XVIII. One Sang with Guitar 146

XIX. A Corner of the Wall 153

XX. The Two Who had not Heard 160

XXI. The Rio Moreno Bridge 167

XXII. Framed in a Dobe Gateway 173

XXIII. Fenceless Foothills of Sonora 178

XXIV. Sheath-Knife 187

XXV. Elbert Learns to Wait 196

XXVI. Silence 203

XXVII. Words 206

XXVIII. ‘Like the Virgin Speaking—’ 211

XXIX. High Country 218

XXX. Tucson Again 226

Somewhere South in Sonora