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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Heart's Desire, by Emerson Hough
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Heart's Desire
+
+Author: Emerson Hough
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15159]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 15159-h.htm or 15159-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/5/15159/15159-h/15159-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/5/15159/15159-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+HEART'S DESIRE
+
+The Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two
+Fortunate Lovers
+
+A Novel by EMERSON HOUGH
+
+Author of _The Mississippi Bubble_, _The Law of the Land_, _The Girl at
+the Half Way House_, etc
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"]
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1905, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1903, BY OUT WEST COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1905, BY EMERSON HOUGH.
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+Set up and electrotyped.  Published October, 1905.  Reprinted November,
+1905: January, April, 1907; November, 1908.
+Norwood Press
+J. B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas_
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas; and introducing Others_
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
+of the Man from Kansas_
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
+his Taking Off_
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
+Loneliness of Adam_
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
+the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some_
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
+Craven Adam_
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
+Legs_
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and Other Pastimes_
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie_
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by Mere Chance collided with a
+Side-tracked Star_
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
+with a Maid_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel_
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
+Horse_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PARTITION OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
+Considerations_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
+and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
+the Jew_
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work,
+and a Man's Medicine_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
+in Foreign Parts_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
+Ananias with Spurs_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much
+Better_
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"
+
+"'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the
+game.'"
+
+"A voice which sang of a face that was the fairest, and of a dark blue
+eye."
+
+"'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'"
+
+
+
+
+HEART'S DESIRE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas_
+
+"It looks a long ways acrost from here to the States," said Curly, as
+we pulled up our horses at the top of the Capitan divide.  We gazed out
+over a vast, rolling sea of red-brown earth which stretched far beyond
+and below the nearer foothills, black with their growth of stunted
+pines.  This was a favorite pausing place of all travellers between the
+county-seat and Heart's Desire; partly because it was a summit reached
+only after a long climb from either side of the divide; partly,
+perhaps, because it was a notable view-point in a land full of noble
+views.  Again, it may have been a customary tarrying point because of
+some vague feeling shared by most travellers who crossed this
+trail,--the same feeling which made Curly, hardened citizen as he was
+of the land west of the Pecos, turn a speculative eye eastward across
+the plains.  We could not see even so far as the Pecos, though it
+seemed from our lofty situation that we looked quite to the ultimate,
+searching the utter ends of all the earth.
+
+"Yours is up that-a-way;" Curly pointed to the northeast.  "Mine was
+that-a-way."  He shifted his leg in the saddle as he turned to the
+right and swept a comprehensive hand toward the east, meaning perhaps
+Texas, perhaps a series of wild frontiers west of the Lone Star state.
+I noticed the nice distinction in Curly's tenses.  He knew the man more
+recently arrived west of the Pecos, possibly later to prove a
+backslider.  As for himself, Curly knew that he would never return to
+his wild East; yet it may have been that he had just a touch of the
+home feeling which is so hard to lose, even in a homeless country, a
+man's country pure and simple, as was surely this which now stretched
+wide about us.  Somewhere off to the east, miles and miles beyond the
+red sea of sand and _grama_ grass, lay Home.
+
+"And yet," said Curly, taking up in speech my unspoken thought, "you
+can't see even halfway to Vegas up there."  No.  It was a long two
+hundred miles to Las Vegas, long indeed in a freighting wagon, and long
+enough even in the saddle and upon as good a horse as each of us now
+bestrode.  I nodded.  "And it's some more'n two whoops and a holler to
+my ole place," said he.  Curly remained indefinite; for, though
+presently he hummed something about the sun and its brightness in his
+old Kentucky home, he followed it soon thereafter with musical allusion
+to the Suwanee River.  One might have guessed either Kentucky or
+Georgia in regard to Curly, even had one not suspected Texas from the
+look of his saddle cinches.
+
+It was the day before Christmas.  Yet there was little winter in this
+sweet, thin air up on the Capitan divide.  Off to the left the Patos
+Mountains showed patches of snow, and the top of Carrizo was yet
+whiter, and even a portion of the highest peak of the Capitans carried
+a blanket of white; but all the lower levels were red-brown, calm,
+complete, unchanging, like the whole aspect of this far-away and
+finished country, whereto had come, long ago, many Spaniards in search
+of wealth and dreams; and more recently certain Anglo-Saxons, also
+dreaming, who sought in a stolen hiatus of the continental conquest
+nothing of more value than a deep and sweet oblivion.
+
+It was a Christmas-tide different enough from that of the States toward
+which Curly pointed.  We looked eastward, looked again, turned back for
+one last look before we tightened the cinches and started down the
+winding trail which led through the foothills along the flank of the
+Patos Mountains, and so at last into the town of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Lord!" said Curly, reminiscently, and quite without connection with
+any thought which had been uttered.  "Say, it was fine, wasn't it,
+Christmas?  We allus had firecrackers then.  And eat!  Why, man!"  This
+allusion to the firecrackers would have determined that Curly had come
+from the South, which alone has a midwinter Fourth of July, possibly
+because the populace is not content with only one annual smell of
+gunpowder.  "We had trees where I came from," said I.  "And eat!  Yes,
+man!"
+
+"Some different here now, ain't it?" said Curly, grinning; and I
+grinned in reply with what fortitude I could muster.  Down in Heart's
+Desire there was a little, a very little cabin, with a bunk, a few
+blankets, a small table, and a box nailed against the wall for a
+cupboard.  I knew what was in the box, and what was not in it, and I so
+advised my friend as we slipped down off the bald summit of the
+Capitans and came into the shelter of the short, black pinons.  Curly
+rode on for a little while before he made answer.
+
+"Why," said he, at length, "ain't you heard?  You're in with our rodeo
+on Christmas dinner.  McKinney, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, the
+other lawyer, and me,--we're going to have Christmas dinner at
+Andersen's 'dobe in town to-morrer.  You're in.  You mayn't like it.
+Don't you mind.  The directions says to take it, and you take it.  It's
+goin' to be one of the largest events ever knowed in this here
+settlement.  Of course, there's goin' to be some canned things, and
+some sardines, and some everidge liquids.  You guess what besides that."
+
+I told him I couldn't guess.
+
+"Shore you couldn't," said Curly, dangling his bridle from the little
+finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match.  He
+had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
+_cigarrillo_.  These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
+from somewhere near the Rio Grande.
+
+"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
+paper going.  "I reckon not in a hundred years.  Champagne!  Whole
+quart!  Yes, sir.  Cost eighteen dollars.  Mac, he got it.  Billy
+Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
+the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
+railroad, which there wasn't.  But Lord! that ain't all.  It ain't the
+beginnin'.  You guess again.  No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
+scornfully.  "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next.  We got
+a _cake_!"
+
+"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
+of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
+cake.  Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
+Dutch oven--they had to know how to do that or starve.  But as to cake,
+there was none could compass it.  And I knew there was not a woman in
+all Heart's Desire.
+
+Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
+trail among the pinons.  "Heap o' things happened since you went down
+to tend co'te," said he.  "You likely didn't hear of the new family
+moved in last week.  Come from Kansas."
+
+"Then there's a girl," said I; for I was far Westerner enough to know
+that all the girls ever seen west of the Pecos came from Kansas, the
+same as all the baled hay and all the fresh butter.  Potatoes came from
+Iowa; but butter, hay, and girls came from Kansas.  I asked Curly if
+the head of the new family came from Leavenworth.
+
+"'Course he did," said Curly.  "And I'll bet a steer he'll be
+postmaster or somethin' in a few brief moments."  This in reference to
+another well-known fact in natural history as observed west of the
+Pecos; for it was matter of common knowledge among all Western men that
+the town of Leavenworth furnished early office-holders for every new
+community from the Missouri to the Pacific.
+
+Curly continued; "This feller'll do well here, I reckon, though just
+now he's broke a-plenty.  But what was he goin' to do?   His team
+breaks down and he can't get no further.  Looks like he'd just have to
+stop and be postmaster or somethin' for us here for a while.  Can't be
+Justice of the Peace; another Kansas man's got that.  As to them two
+girls--man!  The camp's got on its best clothes right this instant,
+don't you neglect to think.  Both good lookers.  Youngest's a peach.
+I'm goin' to marry _her_."  Curly turned aggressively in his saddle
+and looked me squarely in the eye, his hat pushed back from his tightly
+curling red hair.
+
+"That's all right, Curly," said I, mildly.  "You have my consent.  Have
+you asked the girl about it yet?"
+
+"Ain't had time yet," said he.  "But you watch me."
+
+"What's the name of the family?" I asked as we rode along together.
+
+"Blamed if I remember exactly," replied Curly, scratching his head,
+"but they're shore good folks.  Old man's sort o' pious, I reckon.
+Anyhow, that's what Tom Osby says.  He driv along from Hocradle caņon
+with 'em on the road from Vegas.  Said the old man helt services every
+mornin' before breakfast.  More services'n breakfast sometimes.  Tom,
+he says old Whiskers--that's our next postmaster--he sings a-plenty,
+lifts up his voice exceeding.  Say," said Curly, turning on me again
+fiercely, "that's one reason I'd marry the girl if for nothing else.
+It takes more'n a bass voice and a copy of the Holy Scriptures to make
+a Merry Christmas.  Why, man, say, when I think of what a time we all
+are going to have,--you, and me, and Mac, and Tom Osby, and Dan
+Anderson, with all them things of our'n, and all these here things on
+the side--champagne and all that,--it looks like this world ain't run
+on the square, don't it?"
+
+I assured Curly that this had long been one of my own conclusions.
+Assuredly I had not the bad manners to thank him for his invitation to
+join him in this banquet at Heart's Desire, knowing as I did Curly's
+acquaintance with the fact that young attorneys had not always
+abundance during their first year in a quasi-mining camp that was
+two-thirds cow town; such being among the possibilities of that land.
+I returned to the cake.
+
+"Where'd we git it?" said Curly.  "Why, where'd you s'pose we got it?
+Do you think Dan Anderson has took to pastry along with the statoots
+made and pervided?   As for Dan, he ain't been here so very long, but
+he's come to stay.  We're goin' to send him to Congress if we ever get
+time to organize our town, or find out what county we're in.  How'd our
+Delergate look spreadin' jelly cake?   Nope, he didn't make it.  And
+does it look any like Mac has studied bakery doin's out on the
+Carrizoso ranch?  You know Tom Osby couldn't.  As for me, if hard luck
+has ever driv me to cookin' in the past, I ain't referrin' to it now.
+I'm a straight-up cow puncher and nothin' else.  That cake?   Why, it
+come from the Kansas outfit.
+
+"Don't know which one of 'em done it, but it's a honey," he went on.
+"Say, she's a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over.  She's
+soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a
+little.  We just got it recent and we're night-herdin' it where it's
+cool.  Cost a even ten dollars.  The old lady said she'd make the price
+all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we'd
+drop about a ten in their recep_ti_cle when we come to pay for that
+cake.  This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim
+Bond left when they went away,--it's right acrost the 'royo from Dan
+Anderson's office, where we're goin' to eat to-morrer.
+
+"Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them
+narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens--no stove at all--no nothing--say,
+that's some like adoptin' yourself to circumstances, ain't it?   Why,
+man, I'd marry intoe that fam'ly if I didn't do nothing else long as I
+lived.  They ain't no Mexican money wrong side of the river.  No
+counterfeit there regardin' a happy home--cuttin' out the bass voice
+and givin' 'em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh?   Well, I
+reckon not.  Watch me fly _to_ it."
+
+The idiom of Curly's speech was at times a trifle obscure to the
+uneducated ear.  I gathered that he believed these newcomers to be of
+proper social rank, and that he was also of the opinion that a certain
+mending in their material matters might add to the happiness of the
+family.
+
+"But say," he began again shortly, "I ain't told you half about our
+dinner."
+
+"That is to say--" said I.
+
+"We're goin' to have oysters!" he replied.
+
+"Oh, Curly!" objected I, petulantly, "what's the use lying?   I'll
+agree that you may perhaps marry the girl--I don't care anything about
+that.  But as to oysters, you know there never was an oyster in Heart's
+Desire, and never will be, world without end."
+
+"Huh!" said Curly.  "Huh!"  And presently, "Is that _so_?"
+
+"You know it's so," said I.
+
+"Is that so?" reiterated he once more.  "Nice way to act, ain't it,
+when you're ast out to dinner in the best society of the place?  Tell a
+feller he's shy on facts, when all he's handin' out is just the plain,
+unfreckled truth, for onct at least.  We got oysters, four cans of 'em,
+and done had 'em for a month.  They're up there."  He jerked a thumb
+toward the top of old Carrizo Mountain.   I looked at the snow, and in
+a flash comprehended.  There, indeed, was cold storage, the only cold
+storage possible in Heart's Desire!
+
+"Tom Osby brought 'em down from Vegas the last time he come down," said
+Curly.  "They're there, sir, four cans of 'em.  You know where the
+Carrizo spring is?   Well, there's a snowbank in that caņon, about two
+hundred yards off to the left of the spring.  The oysters is in there.
+Keep?   They got to keep!
+
+"Them's the only oysters ever was knowed between the Pecos and the Rio
+Grande," he continued pridefully.  "Now I want to ask you, friend, if
+this ain't just a leetle the dashed blamedest, hottest Christmas dinner
+ever was pulled off?"
+
+"Curly," said I, "you are a continuous surprise to me."
+
+"The trouble with you is," said Curly, lighting another cigarette, "you
+look the wrong way from the top of the divide.  Never mind about home
+and mother.  Them is States institooshuns.  The only feller any good
+here is the feller that comes to stay, and likes it.  You like it?"
+
+"Yes, Curly," I replied seriously, "I do like it, and I'm going to stay
+if I can."
+
+"Well, you be mighty blamed careful if that's the way you feel about
+it," said Curly.  "I got my own eye on that girl from Kansas, and I
+serve notice right here.  No use for you or Mac or any of you to be
+a-tryin' to cut out any stock for me.  I seen it first."
+
+We dropped down and ever down as we rode on along the winding mountain
+trail.  The dark sides of the Patos Mountains edged around to the back
+of us, and the scarred flanks of big Carrizo came farther and farther
+forward along our left cheeks as we rode on.  Then the trail made a
+sharp bend to the left, zigzagged a bit to get through a series of
+broken ravines, and at last topped the low false divide which rose at
+the upper end of the valley of Heart's Desire.
+
+It was a spot lovely, lovable.  Nothing in all the West is more fit to
+linger in a man's memory than the imperious sun rising above the valley
+of Heart's Desire; nothing unless it were the royal purple of the
+sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling
+hills, which guarded it round about.  In Heart's Desire it was so calm,
+so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring.  Perhaps
+the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the
+early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands.  Perhaps again he
+named it at sunset, and did so reverently.  God knows he named it right.
+
+There was no rush nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor
+thieving there.  Heart's Desire!  It was well named, indeed; fit
+capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they
+might, that Life can be left aside when one grows weary of it;
+dreaming--ah! deep, foolish, golden dream--that somewhere there is on
+earth an Eden with no Eve and without a flaming sword!
+
+The town all lay along one deliberate, crooked street, because the
+_arroyo_ along which it straggled was crooked.  Its buildings were
+mostly of adobe, with earthen roofs, so low that when one saw a
+rainstorm coming in the rainy season (when it rained invariably once a
+day), he went forth with a shovel and shingled his roof anew, standing
+on the ground as he did so.  There were a few cabins built of logs, but
+very few.  Only one or two stores had the high board front common in
+Western villages.  Lumber was very scarce and carpenters still scarcer.
+How the family from Kansas had happened to drift into Heart's
+Desire--how a man of McKinney's intelligence had come to settle
+there--how Dan Anderson, a very good lawyer, happened to have tarried
+there--how indeed any of us happened to be there, are questions which
+may best be solved by those who have studied the West-bound, the
+dream-bound, the malcontents.  At any rate, here we were, and it was
+Christmas-time.  The very next morning would be that of Christmas Day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas; and Introducing Others_
+
+There were no stockings hung up in Heart's Desire that Christmas Eve,
+for all the population was adult, male, and stern of habit.  The great
+moon flooded the street with splendor.  Afar there came voices of
+rioting.  There were some adherents to the traditions of the South in
+regard to firecrackers at Yuletide, albeit the six-shooter furnished
+the only firecracker obtainable.  Yet upon that night the very shots
+seemed cheerful, not ominous, as was usually the case upon that long
+and crooked street, which had seen duels, affairs, affrays,--even riots
+of mounted men in the days when the desperadoes of the range came
+riding into town now and again for love of danger, or for lack of
+_aguardiente_.  It was so very white and solemn and content,--this
+street of Heart's Desire on Christmas Eve.  Far across the _arroyo_,
+as Curly had said, there gleamed red the double windows of the cabin
+which had been preempted by the man from Leavenworth.  To-night the man
+from Leavenworth sat with bowed head and beard upon his bosom.
+
+Christmas Day dawned, brilliant, glorious.  There was not a Christmas
+tree in all Heart's Desire.  There was not a child within two hundred
+miles who had ever seen a Christmas tree.  There was not a woman in all
+Heart's Desire saving those three newcomers in the cabin across the
+_arroyo_.  Yet these new-comers were acquainted with the etiquette of
+the land.  There was occasion for public announcement in such matters.
+
+At eleven o'clock in the morning the man from Leavenworth and the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas came out upon the street.  They were
+ostensibly bound to get the mail, although there had been no mail stage
+for three days, and could be none for four days more, even had the man
+from Leavenworth entertained the slightest thought of getting any mail
+at this purely accidental residence into which the fate of a tired team
+had thrown him.  Yet there must be the proper notification that he and
+his family had concluded to abide in Heart's Desire; that he was now a
+citizen; that he was now entitled by the length of his beard to be
+called "'Squire," and to be accepted into all the councils of the town.
+This walk along the street was notice to the pure democracy of that
+land that all might now leave cards at the cabin across the _arroyo_.
+One need hardly doubt that the populace of Heart's Desire was lined up
+along the street to say good morning and to receive befittingly this
+tacit pledge of its newest citizen.  Moreover, as to the Littlest Girl,
+all Heart's Desire puffed out its chest.  Once more, indeed, the camp
+was entitled to hold up its head.  There were Women in the town!
+_Ergo_ Home; _ergo_ Civilization; _ergo_ Society; and ergo all the
+rest.  Heretofore Heart's Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized
+section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has
+no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in
+his aeon of the world no real content or peace.
+
+"I reckon the old man is goin' to take a look at the post-office to see
+how he likes the place," said Curly, reflectively, as he gazed after
+the gentleman whom he had frankly elected as his father-in-law.  "He'll
+get it, all right.  Never saw a man from Leavenworth who wasn't a good
+shot at a postoffice.  But say, about that Littlest Girl--well, I
+wonder!"
+
+Curly was very restless until dinner-time, which, for one reason or
+another, was postponed until about four of the afternoon.  We met at
+Dan Anderson's law office, which was also his residence, a room about a
+dozen feet by twenty in size.  The bunks were cleaned up, the blankets
+put out of the way, and the centre of the room given over to a table,
+small and home-made, but very full of good cheer for that time and
+place.  At the fireplace, McKinney, flushed and red, was broiling some
+really good loin steaks.  McKinney also allowed his imagination to soar
+to the height of biscuits.  Coffee was there assuredly, as one might
+tell by the welcome odor now ascending.  Upon the table there was
+something masked under an ancient copy of a newspaper.  Outside the
+door of the adobe, in the deepest shade obtainable, sat two soap boxes
+full of snow, or at least partly full, for Tom Osby had done his best.
+In one of these boxes appeared the proof of Curly's truthfulness--three
+cans of oysters, delicacies hitherto unheard of in that land!  In the
+other box was an object almost as unfamiliar as an oyster can,--an
+oblong, smooth, and now partially frost-covered object with tinfoil
+about its upper end.  A certain tense excitement obtained.
+
+"I wonder if she'll get _frappe_ enough," said Dan Anderson.  He was a
+Princeton man once upon a time.
+
+"It don't make no difference about the frappy part," said Curly, "just
+so she gets _cold_ enough.  I reckon I savvy wine some.  I never was
+up the trail, not none!  No, I reckon not!  Huh?"
+
+We agreed on Curly's worldliness cheerfully; indeed, agreed cheerfully
+that all the world was a good place and all its inhabitants were
+everything that could be asked.  Life was young and fresh and strong.
+The spell of Heart's Desire was upon us all that Christmas Day.
+
+"Now," said Curly, dropping easily into the somewhat vague position of
+host, when McKinney had finally placed his platter of screeching hot
+steaks upon the table.  "Now, then, grub pi-i-i-i-le!"  He sang the
+summons loud and clear, as it has sounded on many a frosty morning or
+sultry noon in many a corner of the range.  "Set up, fellers," said
+Curly.  "It's bridles off now, and cinches down, and the trusties next
+to the mirror."  (By this speech Curly probably meant that the time was
+one of ease and safety, wherein one might place his six-shooter back of
+the bar, in sign that he was in search of no man, and that none was in
+search of him.  It was not good form to eat in a private family in
+Heart's Desire with one's gun at one's belt.)
+
+We sat down and McKinney uncovered the cake which had been made by the
+wife of the man from Leavenworth.  It appeared somewhat imposing.
+Curly wanted to cut into it at the first course, but Dan Anderson
+rebelled and coaxed him off upon the subject of oysters.  There was
+abundance for all.  The cake itself would have weighed perhaps five or
+six pounds.  There was a part of a can of oysters for each man, any
+quantity of wholesome steaks and coffee, with condensed milk if one
+cared for it, and at least enough champagne for any one who cared for
+precisely that sort of champagne.
+
+It was nightfall before we were willing to leave the little pine table.
+Meantime we had talked of many things; of the new strike on the
+Homestake, of the vein of coal lately found in the Patos, of Apache
+rumors below Tularosa, and other matters interesting to citizens of
+that land.  We mentioned an impending visit of Eastern Capital bent
+upon investigating our mineral wealth.  We spoke of the vague rumor
+that a railroad was heading north from El Paso, and might come close to
+Heart's Desire if all went well; and, generous in the enthusiasm of the
+hour, we builded upon that fancy, ending by a toast to Dan Anderson as
+our first delegate to Congress.  Dan bowed gravely, not knowing the
+future any more than ourselves.  Nor should it be denied that there was
+talk of the new inhabitants across the arroyo.  The morning promenade
+of the man from Leavenworth had been productive of results; add to
+these the results of so noble a feast as this Christmas dinner of ours,
+and it was foregone that our hearts must expand to include in welcome
+all humanity west of the Pecos.
+
+
+After all, no man is better than the prettiest woman in his
+environment.  As to these girls from Kansas, it is to be said that
+there had never before been a real woman in Heart's Desire.  You, who
+have always lived where there is law, and society, and women, and
+home,--you cannot know what it is to see all these things gradually or
+swiftly dawning upon your personal horizon.  Yet this was the way of
+Heart's Desire, where women and law and property were not.
+
+It was perhaps the moon, or perhaps youth, or perhaps this state of
+life to which I have referred.  Assuredly the street was again flooded
+with a grand, white moonlight, bright almost as a Northern day, when we
+looked out of the little window.
+
+Dan Anderson was the first to speak, after a silence which had fallen
+amidst the dense tobacco smoke.  "It cost us less than fifteen dollars
+a plate," said he.  "I've paid more for worse--yes, a lot worse.  But
+by the way, Mac, where's that other can of oysters?  I thought you said
+there were four."
+
+"That's what I said," broke in Tom Osby.  "I done told Mac I ought to
+bring 'em all down, but he said only three."
+
+"Well," said McKinney, always a conservative and level-headed man, "I
+allowed that if they would keep a month, they would keep a little
+longer.  Now you all know there's goin' to be a stage in next week, and
+likely it'll bring the president of the New Jersey Gold Mills, who's
+been due here a couple of weeks.  Now here we are, hollerin' all the
+time for Eastern Capital.  What's the right thing for us to do when we
+get any Eastern Capital into our town?  This here man comes from
+Philadelphy, which I reckon is right near the place where oysters
+grows.  What are you goin' to _do_?  He's used to oysters; like enough
+he eats 'em every day in the year, because he's shore rich.  First
+thing he hollers for when he gets here is _oysters_.  Looks like you
+all didn't have no public spirit.  Are we goin' to give this here
+Eastern man the things he's used to, kinder gentle him along like, you
+know, and so get all the closeter and easier to him, or are we goin' to
+throw him down cold, and leave him dissatisfied the first day he
+strikes our camp?  It shore looks to me like there ain't but one way to
+answer that."
+
+"And that there one answer," said Tom Osby, "is now a-reclinin' in the
+snowbank up on Carrizy."
+
+"I reckon that's so, all right, Mac," assented Curly, reflectively.  "I
+_could_ have et one more oyster or so, but I can quit if it's for the
+good of the country."
+
+"Well, I'm feeling just a little bit guilty as it is," said Dan
+Anderson, who was in fairly good post-prandial condition.  "Here we
+are, eating like lords.  Now who knows what that poor family from
+Kansas is having for Christmas dinner?  Mac, I appoint you a committee
+of one to see how they are getting along.  Pass the hat.  Make it about
+ten for the cake.  Come on, now, let's find out about these folks."
+
+Curly was distinctly unhappy all the time McKinney was away.  It was
+half an hour before the latter came back, but the look on his face
+betrayed him.  Dan Anderson made him confess that he still had the ten
+dollars in his pocket, that he had been afraid to knock at the door,
+and that he had learned nothing whatever of the household from Kansas.
+McKinney admitted that his nerve had failed, and that he dared not
+knock, but he said that he had summoned courage enough to look in at
+the window.  The family had either finished its dinner long ago, had
+not eaten, or did not intend to eat at all.  "The table looked some
+shy," declared McKinney.  Beyond this he was incoherent, distressed,
+and plainly nervous.  Silence fell upon the entire group, and for some
+time each man in Dan Andersen's salon was wrapped in thought.  Perhaps
+each one cast a furtive look from the tail of his eye at his neighbors.
+Of all present, Curly seemed the happiest.  "Didn't see the Littlest
+Girl?" he asked.  McKinney shook his head.
+
+"Well, I guess I'll be gettin' up to see about my wagon before long,"
+said Tom Osby, rising and knocking his pipe upon his boot-heel.  "I've
+got a few cans of stuff up here in my load that I don't really need.
+In the mornin', you know--well, so long, boys."
+
+"I heard that Jim Peterson killed a deer the other day," suggested Dan
+Anderson.  "I believe I'll just step over and see if I can't get a
+quarter of venison for those folks."
+
+"Shore," said McKinney, "I'll go along.  No, I won't; I'll take a
+_pasear_ acrost the street and have a look at a little stuff I brung
+up from the ranch yesterday."
+
+"No Christmas," said Curly, staring ahead of himself into the tobacco
+smoke, and indulging in a rare soliloquy.  "No Christmas dinner--and
+this here is in Ameriky!"
+
+It is difficult to tell just how it occurred; but presently, had any
+one of us turned to look about him, he must have found himself alone.
+The moonlight streamed brilliantly over the long street of Heart's
+Desire. . . .  The scarred sides of old Carrizo looked so close that
+one might almost have touched them with one's hand. . . .
+
+It was about three miles from the street, up over the foot-hills, along
+the fiat caņon which debouched below the spring where lay the snowbank.
+There were different routes which one could take. . . .
+
+I knew the place very well from Curly's description, and found it easy
+to follow up the trickle of water which came down the caņon from the
+spring.  Having found the spring, it was easy to locate the spot in the
+snowbank where the oysters had been cached.  I was not conscious of
+tarrying upon the way, yet, even so, there had been feet more swift
+than mine.  As I came up to the spring, I heard voices and saw two
+forms sitting at the edge of the snowbank.
+
+"Here's another one!" called out Dan Anderson as I appeared; and
+forthwith they broke into peals of unrighteous laughter.  "You're a
+little slow; you're number three; Mac was first."
+
+"I thought I heard an elk as I came up," said I, as I sat down beside
+the others and tried to look unconcerned, although plainly out of
+breath.
+
+"Elk!" snorted McKinney, as he arose and walked to the other edge of
+the snowbank.  "Here's your elk tracks."  McKinney, foreman on
+Carrizoso, was an old range-rider, and he was right.  Here was the
+track, plunging through the snow, and here was a deep hole where an
+elk, or something, had digged hurriedly, deeply, and, as it proved,
+effectively.
+
+"Elk!" said McKinney again, savagely.  "Damn that cow puncher!  He took
+to his horse, 'course he did, and not one of us thought of ridin'.
+Who'd ever think a man would ride up here at all, let alone at night?
+Come on, fellers, we might as well go home."
+
+"Well, I'm pleased to have met you, gentlemen," said Anderson, lighting
+a philosophic pipe, "and I don't mind walking back with you.  It's a
+trifle lonesome in the hills after dark.  Why didn't you tell me you
+were coming up?"  He grinned with what seemed to us bad taste.
+
+When we got down across the foot-hills and into the broad white street
+of Heart's Desire, we espied a dark figure slowly approaching.  It
+proved to be Tom Osby, who later declared that he had found himself
+unable to sleep.  He had things in his pockets.  By common consent we
+now turned our footsteps across the _arroyo_, toward the cabin where
+dwelt the family from Kansas.
+
+The house of the man from Leavenworth was lighted as though for some
+function.  There were no curtains at the windows, and even had there
+been, the shock of this spectacle which went on before our eyes would
+have been sufficient to set aside all laws and conventions.  With hands
+in pockets we stood and gazed blankly in at the open window.  There was
+a sound of revelry by night.  The narrow Mexican fireplace again held
+abundance of snapping, sparkling, crooked pinon wood.  The table was
+spread.  At its head sat the next postmaster; near him a lately
+sorrowful but now smiling lady, his wife, the woman from Kansas.  The
+elder daughter was busy at the fire.  At the right of the man from
+Leavenworth sat none less than Curly, the same whose cow pony, with
+bridle thrown down over its head, now stood nodding in the bright flood
+of the moonlight of Heart's Desire.  At the side of Curly was the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas, and she was looking into his eyes.
+
+It was thus that the social compact was first set on in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.
+
+A vast steaming fragrance arose from the bowl which stood at the head
+of the table.  In the home of the girl from Kansas there was light,
+warmth, comfort, joy.  It was Christmas, after all.
+
+"By the great jumpin' Jehossophat!" said Tom Osby, "them's _our_
+oysters!"
+
+"And to think," mused Dan Anderson, softly, as we turned away,--"we
+_fried_ ours!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
+of the Man from Kansas_
+
+A great many abdomens have been injured in the pastime known as the
+"double roll."  Especially has this been the case with persons not
+native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof.  Even
+those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast
+landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man
+seized with a purpose of attaining speed and efficiency with firearms,
+did not always reach that smoothness and precision in the execution of
+this personal manoeuvre which alone could render it safe to themselves
+or impressive to the beholder.  The owner of this accomplishment was
+never apt to find himself much crowded with company, in the way either
+of participants or spectators.  Yet the art was a simple and harmless
+one, pertaining more especially to youth, enthusiasm, and the fresh air
+of high altitudes, which did ever evoke saltpetreish manifestations.
+
+The evolution of the "double roll" is executed by taking a
+six-shooter--let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the
+East--upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the
+trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn
+about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant
+discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it
+shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is
+pointed away from the operator's person and not toward it.
+
+It is best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty
+weapon.  Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is
+all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way,
+and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the
+weight of the heavy gun being commonly sufficient to pull back the
+trigger and so discharge the piece.  When the ambitious soul has
+learned to do this "roll" with one empty gun, he may try it with two
+empty guns.  If he finds it possible thus to content himself, it will
+perhaps be all the better for him.  To stand upright, with a gun in
+each hand, even an empty gun, and so revolve the same while its own
+cylinder is revolving, is not wholly easy, though when one has finally
+gotten both hemispheres of his brain into accord with his forefingers,
+he will ever thereafter be able to understand fully the double
+revolution of the earth upon its axis and around the sun; provided
+always that he is able to perform the "double roll" without hitch or
+break, pulling right and left forefinger alternately and rapidly until
+he has heard what in his tentative case must be a series of six double
+clicks.
+
+This performance with an empty six-shooter is but a pale and spiritless
+form of the sport of high altitudes.  Instead there should be twelve
+reports, so closely sequent as to sound as one string of explosion.
+Thus executed the game is a fine one, the finer for being risky.  So to
+stand erect, with an eight-inch Colt in either hand, each arm at full
+length, one gun shooting joyously down the centre of the street of your
+chosen town, the other shooting as cheerfully up the same street--to do
+this actually, with bark of powder and attending puffs of dust
+cut--this is indeed delightsome when the heart is full of red blood,
+and the chest swells with charged wine o' life, and the eyes gleam and
+the muscles harden for very search of some endeavor immediate and
+difficult!  It is the more delightsome when this moment of man-frenzy
+finds one in such a town as was this of Heart's Desire; where, indeed,
+a man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted
+wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so
+of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of
+the joy of living.  To own this little world, to live free of touch or
+taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of
+the free sky--to live in Heart's Desire and be a man--ah! would that
+were possible for all of us to-day!  Were it so, then assuredly we
+should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain,
+perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll."
+
+Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous
+appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee
+simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had
+prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a
+salary of forty-five dollars a month.  He had already, less than two
+months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his
+friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the
+happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town
+and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.
+
+Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom,
+as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more
+persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the
+public that all was well.  Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear
+to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly,
+pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow
+advance--ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the
+bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,--a grunting, fat, conceited
+pig,--arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's
+fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn--tell me,
+if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the
+"double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if
+while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek
+pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over
+its back, what, as a man, would you do?  What, as a man, _could_ you
+do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a
+court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been
+known?  Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this
+matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that
+the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig--but then,
+the matter is absurd!  There is but one answer.  It was right--indeed,
+it was inevitable--that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the
+first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second
+place he felt like it.
+
+And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose
+the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook
+that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened
+its very continuance.  Ah, well! perhaps the time had come.  Perhaps
+the sun was now to set over all the valleys of Heart's Desire.  Perhaps
+this was the beginning of the end.  The law, they say, must have its
+course.  It had its course in Heart's Desire.
+
+But not without protest, not without struggle.  There were two factions
+from the start.  Strange to say, that most bitterly opposed to Curly
+was headed by no less a person than his own intended father-in-law, the
+man from Leavenworth.  It was his pig.  The rest of us had lived at
+Heart's Desire for a considerable time, but there had hitherto seemed
+no need for law.  Order we already had in so far as order is really
+needed; though the importance of order, or indeed the importance of
+law, is a matter very much overrated.  No man at Heart's Desire ever
+dreamed of locking his door.  His horse might doze saddled in the
+street if he liked.  No man spoke in rudeness or coarseness to his
+neighbor, as do men in the cities where they have law.  No man did
+injustice to his neighbor, for fair play and an even chance were gods
+in the eyes of all, eikons above each pinon-burning hearth in all that
+valley of content.  The speech of man was grave and gentle, the
+movements of man were easy and unhurried; neither did any man work by
+rule, or by clock, or by order.  There was no such thing as want or
+hunger; for did temporary poverty encompass one, was there not always
+the house of Uncle Jim Brothers, and could not one there hang up his
+gun behind the door and so obtain credit for an indefinite length of
+time, entitling him to eat at table with his peers?  Had there been
+such a thing as families in Heart's Desire, be sure such a thing as a
+woman or child engaged in any work had been utterly unknown.  It was a
+land of men, big, grave, sufficient men, each with a gun upon his hip,
+and sometimes two, guaranty of peace and calm and content.  And any man
+who has ever lived in a Land Before the Law knows that this is the only
+fit way of life.  Alas! that this scheme, this great, happy simple,
+perfect scheme of society should be subverted.  And, be it remembered,
+this was by reason of nothing more than a pig, an artless, lissom pig,
+it is true; an infrequent, somewhat prized, a little petted and perhaps
+spoiled pig, it is true; yet, after all, no fit cause of elemental
+strife.
+
+But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil,
+bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization,
+seeds of discontent.  He wailed aloud that the pride of the community,
+meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of
+the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught
+left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the
+mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of
+his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large
+designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking
+off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and
+one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his
+neighbor.
+
+Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed
+black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but
+the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the
+town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population,
+began to attract attention.  It began to play upon the nicely attuned
+instrument of Public Spirit.  What, indeed, asked the community
+gravely, was to separate Heart's Desire in the eye of Eastern Capital,
+from any other camp in the far Southwest?  Once the town could claim a
+pig, which no other camp of that district could do.  Now it could do so
+no more forever.  This began to put a different look upon the face of
+things.
+
+"It seems like the ole man took it some hard," said Curly, lighting a
+_cigarrillo_.  "He don't seem to remember that I was due to be a
+member of the family right soon, same as the pig.  I don't like to
+think I'm shy when it comes to comparison with a shoat.  Gimme time,
+and I reckon I could take the place of the pig in my new dad's
+affections.  But I say deliberate that pigs has got no call to be in a
+cow country, not none, unless salted.  Say, can't we salt this one?
+Then, who's the worse _off_ for it?  What's all this furse about,
+anyway?"
+
+"That's right, Curly," said Dan Anderson, who stood with hands in
+pockets and pipe in mouth, leaning against the door-jamb in front of
+his "law office."  "You have enunciated a great principle of law in
+that statement.  They have got to prove damages.  Moreover, you have
+got a counter-claim.  It's laceratin' to be compared to a shoat."
+
+"And me just goin' to be married," said Curly.
+
+"Sure, it ain't right."
+
+"Andersen," said I, moving up to the group, "did you ever hear of such
+things as champerty and maintenance?  The first thing you know, you'll
+get disbarred for stirring up litigation."
+
+"Keep away from my client," said Dan Anderson, grinning.  "You're
+jealous of my professional success, that's all.  Neither of us has had
+a case yet, and now that it looks like I was going to get one, you're
+jealous.  Do you want to pass up the first lawsuit ever held in the
+county?  Come now, I'm bored to death.  Let's have some fun."
+
+Curly began to shift uneasily on his feet.  His hat went still farther
+back on his red, kinky curls.
+
+"Law!" said he.  "Law!  You don't mean--"  For the first time in his
+life Curly grew pale.  "Why, I'll clean out the hull bunch!" he said,
+the red surging back in his face and his hand instinctively going to
+his gun.
+
+"No, you won't," said Dan Anderson.  "Do you want to bust up your
+marriage with the girl from Kansas?"
+
+"Sho'!" said Curly, and fell thoughtful.  "This looks bad," said he;
+"mighty bad."  He sat down and began to think.  I do not doubt that Dan
+Anderson at that moment was a disgrace to his profession, though later
+he honored it.  He winked at me.
+
+"Don't you tamper with my client," said he; and then resumed to Curly;
+"What you need is a lawyer.  You've got to have legal advice.  It
+happens that the full bar of Heart's Desire is now present talking to
+you.  Take your pick.  I've got a mighty good idea which is the best
+lawyer of this bar, but I wouldn't tell you for the world that I'm the
+one.  Take your pick.  Here's the whole legal works of the town, us
+two.  Try the Learned Counsel on my right."
+
+"Law!" said Curly.  "Why--law--lawyers!  Then who--say, now, I'll
+_pay_ for the pig.  I didn't mean nothing, no way."
+
+Then Dan Anderson rose to certain heights.  "You can't settle it that
+way," said he.  "That's too easy.  Oh, you can pay for the _pig_ easy
+enough; but how about the majesty of the law?  Where is the peace and
+dignity of the commonwealth to come in?  This is criminal.  Nope, you
+choose.  You need a lawyer."
+
+"You--you-all got me _locoed_," said Curly, nervously.  "Law!  Why, I
+don't want no law.  There ain't never been no co'te set here.  Down to
+the county-seat, over to Lincoln, that's all right; but here--why, they
+don't _want_ no law here.  Besides, I can't choose between you two
+fellers.  I like you both.  You're both white men.  Ef you could rope
+and shoot better, I could git either one of you a job cowpunchin' any
+day, and that's a heap better'n practisin' law.  I couldn't make no
+choice between you fellers.  Say, I'll have you _both_."  This with a
+sudden illumination of countenance.
+
+"That would be unconstitutional," said Dan Anderson, solemnly, "and
+against public policy as well.  That would be cornering the whole legal
+supply of the community, Curly, and it wouldn't leave anybody for the
+prosecution."
+
+"Sho'!" said Curly.  Then suddenly he added: "There's the old man.
+Don't you never doubt he'd prosecute joyful.  And there never was a man
+from Kansas didn't know some law.  Why, onct, down on the Brazos--"
+
+"He can't act as attorney-at-law," said Anderson.  "He's never been
+admitted to the bar.  Say, you flip a dollar."
+
+The thought of chance-taking appealed to Curly.  He flipped the dollar.
+
+"Heads, me," said Dan Anderson; and so it fell.  That young man smiled
+blithely.  "We'll skin 'em, Curly," said he.  "You'll be as free as air
+in less'n a week."
+
+"Now," said Dan Anderson to me, "it's all right thus far.  Next we have
+got to get a Justice of the Peace, and then we've got to get the
+prisoner arrested."
+
+"'Rested!" said Curly.  "Who?  Me?"
+
+"Of course," drawled his newly constituted attorney.  "Didn't you kill
+the pig?  You just hang around for a little, for when we need you, we
+don't want to have to hunt all over the country."
+
+"All right," said Curly, dubiously.
+
+"Where's Blackman?" said Dan Anderson, again addressing me.  "We have
+got to have a judge, or we can't have any trial.  Come on and let's
+hunt him up.  Curly, don't you run away, mind.  You trust to me, and
+I'll get you clear, and get you married, both."
+
+"All right," said Curly again, "I'll just sornter down to the Lone
+Star, and when you-all want me I'll be in there, either takin' a drink
+or playin' a few kyards."
+
+"Let's get Blackman now," said Curly's lawyer.  Blackman was the duly
+constituted Justice of the Peace in and for Heart's Desire.  Nobody
+knew precisely when or how he had been elected, and perhaps indeed he
+never was elected at all.  There must be a beginning for all things.
+The one thing certain as to Blackman was that he had once been a
+Justice of the Peace back in Kansas, which fact he had not been slow to
+announce upon his arrival in Heart's Desire.  Perhaps from this arose
+the local custom of calling him Judge, and perhaps from his wearing the
+latter title arose the supposition that he really was a judge.  The
+records are quite silent as to the origin of his tenure of office.  The
+office itself, as has been intimated, had hitherto been one purely
+without care.  At every little shooting scrape or other playfulness of
+the male population Blackman, Justice of the Peace, became inflated
+with importance and looked monstrous grave.  But nothing ever came of
+these little alarms, so that gradually the inflations grew less and
+less extensive.  They might perhaps have ceased altogether had it not
+been for this malignant zeal of Dan Anderson, formerly of Princeton,
+and now come, hit or miss, to grow up with the country.
+
+Blackman was ever ready enough for a lawsuit, forsooth pined for one.
+Yet what could he do?  He could not go forth and with his own hands
+arrest chance persons and hale them before his own court for trial.
+The sheriff, when he was in town, simply laughed at him, and told his
+deputies not to mix up with anything except circuit-court matters,
+murders, and more especially horse stealings.  Constable there was
+none; and policeman--it is to wonder just a trifle what would have
+happened to any such thing as a policeman or town marshal in the valley
+of Heart's Desire!  In short, there was neither judicial nor executive
+arm of the law in action.  One may, therefore, realize the hindrances
+which Dan Anderson met in getting up his lawsuit.  Yet he went forward
+in the attempt patiently, driven simply by ennui.  He did not dream
+that he was doing something epochal.
+
+Blackman, Justice of the Peace, was sitting in the office of the
+_Golden Age_ when we found him, reading the exchanges and offering
+gratuitous advice to the editor.  He was a shortish man, thick in body,
+with sparse hair and hay-colored, ragged mustache.  His face was
+florid, his pale eyes protruded.  He was a wise-looking man,
+excellently well suited in appearance for the office which he filled.
+We explained to him our errand.  Gradually, as the sense of his own new
+importance dawned upon him, he began to swell, apparently until he
+assumed a bulk thrice that which he formerly possessed.  His spine
+straightened rigidly; a solemn light came into his eye; a cough that
+fairly choked with wisdom echoed from his throat.  It was a great day
+for Blackman, J. P.
+
+"Do I know this man, this cow puncher?" said he.  "Of course I know
+him, damn him, and I know what he done, too.  Such a high-handed act
+never ought to be tolerated, sir!  Destroyin' property--why,
+a-destroyin' of life _and_ property, for he killed the pig--and this
+new family of citizens dependin' in part on the pig fer their
+sustenances this comin' season; to say nothin' of his nigh shootin' me
+up as I was crossin' the street from the post-office!  Try him!  Why,
+of _course_ we ought to try him.  What show have we got if we go on
+this lawless way?  What injucement can we offer Eastern Capital to
+settle in our midst if, instead of bein' quiet and law-abidin', we go
+on a-rarin' and a-pitchin' and a-runnin' wide open, every man for
+hisself?  What are we here for, you, and you, and me, if it ain't to
+set in trile over such britches of the peace?"
+
+"You're in," said Dan Anderson, succinctly.  "Get over to your 'dobe.
+We'll hold this trial right away.  I reckon all the boys'll know about
+it by this time.  I'll go over and get the prisoner.  But, hold on!  He
+ain't arrested yet.  Who'll serve the warrant?  Ben Stillson (the
+sheriff) is down on the Hondo, and his deputy, Poe, is out of town.
+There ain't a soul here to serve a paper.  Looks like the court was
+some rusty, don't it?"
+
+"Warrant!" said the Justice, "warrant!  You don't need no warrant.
+Wasn't he seen a-doin' the act?"
+
+"Oh, but it wasn't a real first-class felony," demurred Dan, with some
+shade of conscience left.
+
+"Well, I'll arrest him myself," said the Justice.  "He's got to be
+brought to trile."
+
+"Well, now," I ventured to suggest, "that doesn't look exactly right,
+either, since you are to try the case, Judge.  It's legal, but it isn't
+etiquette."
+
+Blackman scratched his head.  "Maybe that's so," said he.  Then turning
+to me, "S'pose _you_ arrest him."
+
+"He can't," said Dan Anderson.  "He's the prosecuting attorney--only
+other lawyer in town.  It wouldn't look right for either the judge or
+prosecutor to make the arrest.  Curly might not like it."  This all
+seemed true enough, and we fell into a quandary.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Dan Anderson at length.  "I'd better arrest him
+myself.  I'm going to defend him, so it would look more regular for me
+to bring him in.  Looks like he wasn't afraid of the verdict.  We
+ain't, either.  I want you to remember, Judge, if you don't clear him--"
+
+Here counsel for the Territory interrupted, feeling that the majesty of
+the law was not fully observed by threatening the trial judge in
+advance.
+
+"Well, come along, then," said Anderson.  "Let that part of it go.
+Come over and let's get out the warrant."
+
+I was not with them when the warrant was issued, though that part of
+the proceeding might naturally have seemed rather the duty of the
+prosecution than of the defence.  Dan Anderson afterward told me that
+Blackman could not find his law book (he had only one, a copy of the
+statutes of Kansas) for a long time, and then couldn't find the proper
+place in it.  Legal blanks did not exist in Heart's Desire, and all
+legal forms had departed from Blackman's mind in this time of
+excitement.  Dan Anderson himself drew the warrant.  As it was read
+later by himself to Curly at the Lone Star, it did not lack a certain
+charm.  It began with "Greeting," and ended with, "Now, therefore, in
+the name of God and the Continental Congress."  Anderson did not crack
+a smile in reading it, and so far as that is concerned, the warrant
+worked as well as any and better than some.  Curly, because he felt
+that he was in the hands of his friends, made no special demurrer to
+the terms of the "writ," and in a few moments the Lone Star was empty
+and Blackman's adobe was packed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
+his Taking Off_
+
+"Order! order! gentlemen!" called Blackman, Justice of the Peace,
+clearing his throat.  "This honorable justice court is now in session.
+Gentlemen, what is your pleasure?"
+
+He was a little confused, but he meant well.  It seemed incumbent upon
+the prosecutor to make some sort of a statement, but the attorney for
+the defence interposed.  He moved for the discharge of the prisoner on
+the ground that there was no Territorial law and no city ordinance
+violated; he pointed out that Heart's Desire was not a city, neither a
+town, but had never been organized, established, or begun, even to the
+extent of the filing of a town site plat; he therefore denied the
+existence of any municipal law, since there had never been any
+municipality; he intimated that the pig had perhaps been killed
+accidentally, or perhaps in self-defence; it was plain that the
+prisoner was wrongfully restrained of his liberty, etc.
+
+The ire of Blackman, J. P., at all this was something to behold.  He to
+be deprived of his opportunity thus lightly?  Hardly!  He overruled the
+objections at once, and rapped loudly for order.
+
+"The trile will go on," said he.
+
+"Then, your Honor," cried Dan Andersen, springing to his feet, "then I
+shall resort to the ancient bulwark of our personal liberties.  I shall
+sue out a writ of _habeas corpus_, and take this prisoner out of
+custody.  I'll sue this court on its bond!  I'll take a change of
+venue!  We'll leave no stone unturned to set this innocent man free and
+restore him to the bosom of his family!"
+
+This speech produced a great effect on the audience, as murmurs of
+approbation testified, but the doughty Justice of the Peace was not so
+easily to be reckoned with.  He pointed out that there was no officer
+to serve a writ of _habeas corpus_; that the court had given no bond
+to anybody and did not propose to do so; that there was no other court
+to which to apply for a change of "vendew," as he termed it; and
+reiterated once more that the "trile must go on."  The prosecution was,
+therefore, once more called upon to state the case.  Again the attorney
+for the defence protested, a foreshadowing of his fighting blood
+reddening his face.
+
+"I call for a jury," said he.  "Does this court suppose we are going to
+leave the liberty of this prisoner in the hands of a judge openly and
+notoriously prejudiced as to the facts of this case?  I demand a trial
+by a jury of the defendant's peers."
+
+Blackman reddened, but was game.  "Jury goes," said he.  "Count out
+twelve fellers there, beginnin' next the door."
+
+"Twelve!" said Dan Andersen, for the moment almost losing his gravity.
+"I thought this court might be content with six for a justice's jury;
+but realizing the importance of this court, we are willing to agree on
+twelve."
+
+It was so agreed.  The jury took in every man in the little room but
+three.  "They'll do for a veniry," said Blackman, J. P., learnedly.
+Under the circumstances, one can perhaps forgive him for becoming at
+times a trifle mixed as to the legal proceedings.
+
+At least, it was easy to agree as to the jury; for obviously the
+population of the place was fully acquainted with all the facts in the
+case, and each one had freely expressed his opinion upon the one side
+or the other.  There seemed to be no reason for excusing any juror for
+cause; and upon the other hand, there are often very good reasons in a
+Land Before the Law for not bringing up personal matters of this kind.
+Indeed, the trial judge settled all that.  He looked over the twelve
+good men and true thus segregated, and remarked briefly: "They're his
+peers, all right.  The trile will now proceed."
+
+Whereupon he swore them solemnly and made a record in his fee book, to
+the later consternation of his jurors.  "Ain't this court a notary,
+too?" said Blackman later.  "And ain't a notary entitled to so much fee
+for administerin' a oath?  And didn't I administer twelve oaths?"
+There was small answer to this, after all.  The laborer is worthy of
+his hire; and Blackman really labored in this case as in all likelihood
+few justices have before or since.
+
+The prosecuting attorney, who, it may be seen, held his office much as
+did the justice of the peace, by the doctrine of _nemine
+contradicente_, now arose and made the opening statement.  There, was
+some doubt as to whether this was a civil or criminal trial, but there
+was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither
+did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case
+the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts.  It
+was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college
+"orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July
+speech, which might have been better for more memorizing.  The attorney
+for the prosecution, however, arose to the occasion--at least to a
+certain extent.  He spoke in low and feeling tones of the struggling
+little community of hardy souls thus set down apart in the far-off
+mountain country of the West; of its trials, its hopes, its ambitions,
+of its expectations of becoming a mountain emporium which should be the
+pride of the entire Territory; he went on to mention the necessity for
+law and order, pointing out the danger to the public interests of the
+community which must lie in a general reputation for ruffianism and
+lawlessness, showing how Eastern Capital must ever be timid in visiting
+a town of such reputation, apart from investing any money therein;
+then, changing to the personal phases of the case, he spoke of the
+absolute disregard of law shown in the act charged, mentioned the
+red-handed deed of this lawless and dangerous person who had thus slain
+a pig, no less the pride of the community than the idol of the family
+now bereft.
+
+At this point the jury began to look much perturbed and solemn, and the
+prisoner very red and uneasy.  Prosecution closed by offering to prove
+all charges by competent testimony.  This latter was a dangerous
+proposition to advance.  We could not well ask the jurymen to testify,
+and of the "veniry," more than half had now slipped out for a hurried
+and excited visit to the Lone Star, there to advise any possible new
+arrivals of what was going on at Blackman's adobe.
+
+Counsel for the defence arose calmly to make his opening statement.
+The man was a natural trial lawyer.  It was simply destiny which had
+driven him into this comedy, as destiny had driven him to Heart's
+Desire.  It was not comedy now, when Dan Anderson faced judge and jury
+here in Blackman's adobe.  There came a swift, sudden chill, a gripping
+as of iron, a darkening, a shrinking of the heart of each man in that
+little room.  It was the coming of the Law!  Ah!  Dan Anderson, you
+ruined our little paradise; and now its walls are down forever, even
+the walls of our city of content.
+
+Dan Anderson stood, young, tall and grave, one hand in the bosom of his
+shirt, for hardly one present wore a coat.  He had his audience with
+him before he spoke.  When he began he caught them tighter to his
+cause, using not merely flowing rhetoric of speech, but the close-knit,
+advancing, upbuilding argument of a man able to "think on his
+feet,"--that higher sort of oratory which is most convincing with an
+American audience or an American jury.
+
+The statement of the prosecution, said Dan Anderson, was on the whole a
+fair one, and no discredit to the learned brother making it.  None
+would more readily than himself yield acquiescence to the statement
+that law and order must prevail.  Without law there could be nothing
+but anarchy.  Under anarchy progress was at an end.  The individual
+must give up something of his rights to the state and the community.
+He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an
+equivalent in protection.  The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no
+monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown.
+The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the
+other hand, it was nothing to be scorned.
+
+There must be a beginning, continued Dan Anderson.  There must be
+something established.  The pound measure was one pound, the same all
+over the country; a yard measure was a yard, and there was no guesswork
+about it.  It was the same.  It was a unit.  So with the law.  It must
+be the same, a unit, soulless, unfeeling, just, unchangeable.  There
+was nothing indeterminate in it.  The attitude of the law was thus or
+so, and not otherwise.  It was not for the individual to pass upon any
+of these questions.  It was for the courts to do so, the approved
+machinery set aside, under the social compact, for reducing the
+friction of the wheels of society, for securing the permanency of
+things beneficial to that society, and for removing things injurious
+thereto.  The Law itself was immutable.  The courts must administer
+that Law without malice, without feeling, impersonally, justly.
+
+In so far as there had hitherto been no Law in Heart's Desire, went on
+the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed
+been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud
+title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as
+well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world.  The
+time had now come for the establishment in this community of the Law,
+that beneficent agency of progress, that indispensable factor, that
+inseparable attendant upon civilization.  Upon the sky should blaze no
+more the red riot of anarchy and barbarism.  Upon the summit of the
+noble mountain overtopping this happy valley there should sit no more
+the grinning figure of malevolent and unrestrained vice, but the pure
+form of the blind Goddess of Justice, holding ever aloft over this
+happy land the unfaltering sword and the unwavering scales, so that all
+might look thereon, the rightdoers in smiling security, the wrong-doing
+in terror of their deeds.  This was the Law!
+
+"And now, gentlemen of this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here
+before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the
+way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the
+time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law.  I say to
+you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned
+above us.  The Law is not to come--it has come, it is here!"
+
+The old days were, therefore, done, he went on.  Henceforth we must
+observe the Law.  We were here now with the intention of observing that
+Law.  Should we therefore fear it?  Should we dread the decision of
+this distinguished servant of the Law?  By no means.  To show that the
+Law was no dragon, no demon, he would now, in the very face of that
+Law, proceed to clear this innocent man of that cloud of doubt and
+suspicion which for a brief moment the social body had cast upon him.
+He would show to the gentlemen of this jury and to this honorable court
+that there had been no violation of the Law through any act of this
+honest, open-faced, intelligent young gentleman, long known among them
+as an upright and fair-dealing man.  The Law, just and exact, would now
+protect this prisoner.  The Law was no matter of haphazard.  The
+prosecution must show that some specific article of the Law had been
+violated.
+
+"Now," continued Dan Anderson, casting an eye about him as calmly as
+could have done any old trial lawyer examining the condition of his
+jury, "what are the charges made by the Territory?  The prosecution
+specifies no section or paragraph of the statutes of this Territory
+holding it unlawful to shoot any dangerous wild beast at large in this
+community.  But we do not admit that this prisoner shot anything, or
+shot at anything whatever.  We shall prove that at the time mentioned
+he was engaged in a simple, harmless, and useful pastime, a pastime
+laudable of itself, since it tends to make the participant therein a
+better and more useful citizen.  There is no Territorial law forbidding
+any act which he is here charged with committing.  Neither has the body
+social in this thriving community placed upon its records any local
+law, any indication that a man may not, without let or hindrance, do
+any act such as those charged vaguely against this good young man, who
+has only availed himself of his right under the Constitution to bear
+arms, to assemble in public, and to engage in the pursuit of happiness."
+
+The prosecution, he said, had introduced reference to a certain pig,
+alleging that it was slain by the act of the prisoner.  He would not
+admit that there had been any pig, since no _corpus delicti_ was
+shown; but in any event this was no civil suit now in progress.  We
+were not here to assess value upon a supposititious pig, injured in a
+supposititious manner, and not represented here of counsel.  No law had
+been violated.  Why, then, his client had been thus ruthlessly dragged
+into court, to his great personal chagrin, his loss of time, his mental
+suffering, the attorney for defence could not say.  It was injustice of
+a monstrous sort!  Prosecution might well feel relieved if no
+retaliatory action were later taken against them for false
+imprisonment.  This innocent young man must at once be discharged from
+custody.
+
+When Dan Anderson sat down there was not a man in the jury who was not
+bathed in perspiration.  Abstruse thought was hard at work.  Blackman,
+J. P., perspiring no less than any member of the jury, drew himself up,
+but he was troubled.
+
+"Evidence f'r the State," the Judge finally managed to stammer, turning
+to the attorney for the prosecution.
+
+But it never came so far along as that.  There was a sound of many
+footsteps; voices came murmuring, growing louder.  The door was pushed
+open from without, and in came much of the remaining population of
+Heart's Desire, so far as it could gain room.  The man from Leavenworth
+was there, his whiskers wagging unintelligibly.  McKinney was there,
+and Doc Tomlinson and Tom Osby, and everybody else; and, pushing
+through the crowd, there came the Littlest Girl from Kansas, her apron
+awry, her hair blown, her face flushed, her eyes moist with tears.
+
+"Curly!" cried she as at last her eyes caught sight of him.  "Come
+right on out of here, this minute!  Come along!"
+
+What would you have?  The Law is the Law; but there are such things as
+supreme courts.  It was useless for Blackman, J. P., to rap and call
+for order.  It had probably been useless for any man to undertake to
+stop the prisoner at the bar, thus adjured.  At any rate he arose and
+said politely to the jurors, "Fellers, I got to go"--and so went, no
+man raising hand to restrain him.
+
+As to Dan Anderson, he himself admitted his wish that the case had gone
+on.  "I wanted to cross-examine," said he.
+
+That night, over by the _arroyo_, we met Curly and the Littlest Girl
+walking in the moonlight.  Curly was quiet.  The Littlest Girl was
+tremulous, content.  Curly, pausing as we approached, mumbled some
+shamefaced thanks.
+
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, his voice queer, "I didn't do it for pay.
+I did it--I don't know why--"
+
+A new mood was upon him.  A lassitude as of remorse appeared to relax
+him, body and mind.  An hour later he and I sat in the glorious flood
+of the light of the moon of Heart's Desire, and we fell silent, as was
+the way of men in that place.  At length Dan Anderson turned his face
+to the top of old Carrizo, the restful, the impassive.  He gazed long
+without speaking, as though he plainly saw something there at the
+mountain top.
+
+"Listen," he whispered to me, a moment later, and his eyes did not
+quite keep back the tears.  "She's there--the Goddess.  The Law has
+come to Heart's Desire.  May God forgive me!  Why could we not have
+stayed content?"
+
+But little did Dan Anderson foresee that day how swiftly was to come
+further ruin for the kingdom of oblivion which we thought that we had
+found.
+
+"There'll be _women_ next!" I said to him bitterly; though this was a
+vague threat of a thing impossible.
+
+His reply was a look more than half frightened.
+
+"Don't!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
+Loneliness of Adam_
+
+Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl,
+and nothing further had happened in the way of change.  The man from
+Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of
+Heart's Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as
+far distant as ever in the future.  Life went on, spent in the open for
+the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice.  Blackman, J.
+P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an
+erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further
+occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent
+much of the day sitting in the sun.
+
+"You might look several times at me," said Dan Andersen one day,
+without preface or provocation, "and yet not read all my past in these
+fair lineaments."
+
+This seemed unworthy of notice.  A man's past was a subject tabooed in
+Heart's Desire.  Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were
+glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall.  Conversation languished.  Dan
+Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a _cigarrillo_ with one hand, his gaze
+the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of
+the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away.  His mind
+might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely.  There was
+nothing to do.  There was only the sun, and as against it the shade.
+That made up life at Heart's Desire.  It was a million miles away to
+any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference
+to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart's Desire.
+Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen's mind,
+as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his
+pocket for a match.
+
+"No, you wouldn't think; just to look at me, my friend," said he, "you
+wouldn't think, without runnin' side lines, and takin' elevations for
+dips, spurs, and angles, that I had ever been anything but a barrister;
+now, would you?  Attorney and Counsellor-at-law, all hours of the day
+and night: that bill of specifications is engraved on my brow, ain't
+it?  You like enough couldn't believe that I was ever anything
+else--several things else, could you?"
+
+His speech still failed of interest, except as it afforded additional
+proof of the manner in which Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like
+disappeared from the speech of all men at Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson
+sat down in the shade, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
+"My boy," said he, "you can gaze at me if you ain't too tired.  As a
+matter of fact, in this pernicious age of specialization I stand out as
+the one glitterin' example of success in more than one line.  Why, once
+I was a success as a journalist--for a few moments."
+
+There was now a certain softness and innocence in his voice, which had
+portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had
+anything of consequence upon his soul.  Without more encouragement he
+went on.
+
+"My brother," said he, "when I first came out of Princeton I was
+burnin' up with zeal.  There was the world, the whole wide world,
+plunged into an abyss of error and wrongdoin'.  I was the sole and
+remainin' hope.  Like all great men, I naturally wanted to begin the
+savin' as early as possible; and like everybody else who comes out of
+Princeton, I thought the best medium for immediate salvation was
+journalism.  I wasn't a newspaper man.  I never said that at all.  I
+was a journalist.
+
+"Well, dad got me a place on a paper in New York, and I worked on the
+dog-fight department for a time, it havin' been discovered that I was
+noted along certain lines of research in Princeton.  I knew the
+pedigree and fightin' weight of every white, black, or brindle pup in
+four States.  Now, a whole lot of fellows come out of college who don't
+know that much; or if they do, they don't know how to apply their
+knowledge.  Now dogs, that's plumb useful.
+
+"I was still doin' dogs when the presidential campaign came along, or
+rather, that feature of our national customs which precedes the
+selection of the People's Choice.  First thing, of course, the People's
+Choice had to take a run over the country--which was a good thing, too,
+because he didn't know much about it--and let the people in general
+know that he was their choice.  I went along to tell the other people
+how he broke it to them."
+
+I confess I sat up at this, for there was now so supreme an innocence
+in Dan Anderson's eye that one might have been morally certain that
+something was coming.  "From dogs to politics--wasn't that a little
+singular?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said he; "but you have to be versatile in journalism.  The
+regular man who was to have gone on that special presidential car got
+slugged at an art gatherin'.  I didn't ask for the place.  I just went
+and told the managin' editor I was ready if he would give me an order
+for expense money.  It wouldn't have been good form for him to look up
+and pay any attention to me, so I got the job.  I needed to see the
+country just as much as the People's Choice did.
+
+"Three other fellows went along,--newspaper men.  I was the only real
+journalist.  We did the presidential tour for ten towns a day.  I
+watched what the other fellows did, and in about two hours it was easy.
+Everything's easy if you think so.  Folks made a lot of fuss about
+gettin' along in the world.  That's all a mistake.
+
+"People's Choice tore it off in fine shape.  Comin' into Basswood
+Junction he turns to his Honorable Secretary, and says he, 'Jimmy,
+what's this?'  Jimmy turns to his card cabinet, and says he: 'Prexie,
+this is Basswood Junction.  Three railroads come in here--and get away
+as soon as they can.  Four overall factories and a reaper plant.
+Population six thousand, and increasin' satisfactory.  Hon. Charles D.
+Bastrop, M.C., from this district, on the straight Republican ticket
+for the last three hundred years; world without end.'
+
+"Then the train would pull into this station to the sad sweet notes of
+the oompah horn, and the delegation of leadin' citizens would file in
+behind the car, and the first leadin' citizen would get red in the face
+with his Welcome talk, while we four slaves of the people were hustling
+the President's speech to the depot telegraph wire before he said it.
+People's Choice, he stands on the back platform with one hand in his
+bosom, and says he: 'Fellow-citizens of Basswood Junction, I am proud
+to see before me this large and distinguished gatherin' of our noble
+North American fauna.  My visit to your pleasant valley is wholly
+without political significance.  These noble et cetera; these smilin'
+et cetera; these beautiful et cetera, fill me with the proudest
+emotions of et cetera.  This, our great and glorious et cetera;
+Basswood Junction has four magnificent factories, and is the centre
+of three great trunk lines of railroad which radiate et cetera; it
+is destined to be a great commercial et cetera.  And what could be
+more confirmatory of the sober, practical judgment of the citizens of
+this flourishing community than the fact that they have produced and
+given to the world that distinguished statesman and gentleman, the
+Hon. Charles D. Bastrop, who is your representative in the Congress
+of the United States and who has always et cetera, et cetera?
+'Fellow-citizens, the issue before this country to-day--' and that
+was where he would hit his gait.
+
+"He had three of these, and on the schedule laid out by the chairman of
+the Central Committee he couldn't spring any two alike closer together
+than a hundred miles.  The whole business would take about five minutes
+to a station.  We would put number Two, or number Three, or whichever
+it was, on the wire, while the People's Choice was talkin', provided we
+could catch the station agent, who on such occasions was bigger than
+the President.  Then, toot! toot! and we were off for the next Basswood
+Junction, to show 'em who was their spontaneous choice.
+
+"Well, that was all right, and it was easy work to report.  The only
+thing was not to get number One speech mixed up with number Two or
+number Three at any given point.  The Honorable Secretary had to attend
+to that.  So all the time we were bored for something to do.  What we
+was hopin' and longin' for all the time was that some one in the
+opposition at some station would haul off and throw a brick at the car.
+Then we would have had some News."
+
+"Oh," said I, "you got to wanting news!  You had a narrow escape."
+
+"Maybe," said Dan Anderson.  "I admit I got to likin' the game.  I
+think, too, I did get to understandin' what news was.  So one day, when
+I was mighty tired of the four-factory, railroad-centre,
+leadin'-citizen business, I mixed up the speeches on the Honorable
+Secretary between stations."  Dan Anderson blew a faint wreath of blue
+smoke up toward the blue sky and remained silent for a time.
+
+"The next particular Basswood Junction happened to be a Democratic
+minin' town, instead of a Republican agricultural community.  It didn't
+have any overall factories at all.  They didn't relish bein' told that
+they had voted the straight Republican ticket ever since Alexander
+Hamilton, and that they had given to the public that distinguished
+citizen, James K. Blinkensop, when the man they had really given to the
+public was Dan G. Healy.  Oh, the whole thing got all mixed up!  Now,
+that was News!  And they fired me by wire that night!  The People's
+Choice was awful hostile.  And me raised tender, too!"
+
+"Well, then, what did you do?" asked I, getting interested in spite of
+myself.
+
+"I was far, far from home.  But not thus easily could I be shaken out
+of my chosen profession.  In thirty-eight minutes I was at work as
+managin' editor of a mornin' paper.  That particular Basswood Junction
+was just startin' a daily, the kind the real-estate men and the local
+congressman have to support or go out of the business.  Their editor
+had been raised on a weekly, and had been used to goin' to sleep at
+eight o'clock in the evening.  The rumor spread that a metropolitan
+journalist had fallen out of a balloon into their midst.  That
+morning's paper was two days late.  So I just went in and went to work.
+I sent every one else home to bed, and sat down to write the paper.
+
+"Of course, I began with dogs, for on account of my early trainin' I
+knew more about that.  Two columns of dogs as a Local Industry.  Then I
+took up Mineral Resources, about half a column.  Might have played that
+up a little stronger, but I was shy on facts.  Then I did the Literary
+and Dramatic.  I shuddered when I struck that, because when a man on a
+paper gets put on Literary and Dramatic, it usually isn't far to his
+finish.  He don't have to send out after trouble--it comes to him
+spontaneous.  Next, I had to do Society.  Didn't know anybody there, so
+that was a little hard.  Had to content myself with the
+Beautiful-and-Accomplished-Who-Shall-be-Nameless,--that sort of thing.
+Why," said Dan Anderson, plaintively, "it's awful hard to write society
+and local news in a town when you've only been there fifteen minutes.
+But a real metropolitan journalist ought to be able to, and I did.
+
+"By this time the office force was standin' around some awed.  I sent
+the foreman of the pressroom out for a bottle of fizz.  Sarsaparilla
+was the nearest he could come to it, but it went.  Then I turned my hot
+young blood loose on the editorial page.  'This,' said I, 'is my
+opportunity to save the country, and I'm goin' to save it, right here.'
+It was then eleven hours, forty-five minutes, and eight seconds by the
+grandpa clock which adorned the newly furnished sanctum."  Dan Anderson
+again sat silent a few moments, the stub of his _cigarrillo_ between
+his fingers.
+
+"Oh, well," said he, "it might, perhaps, have been worse, although I
+admit that was unlikely.  I couldn't prove an alibi, but there were
+extenuatin' circumstances.  The fact was, I got the politics of the
+place mixed up almost as bad as the People's Choice.  That community
+woke up as one man at six-thirty the next morning, and turned out to
+see the evidence of their progress.  I never did see so many Democrats
+in my life.  Or was it Republicans?  I forget.  I had given 'em a good,
+hot, mixed Princeton paper,--dog, international law, society,
+industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had
+Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a
+Household Corner--How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich
+for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers--why, if I do say
+it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in
+all his life, inside the space of one night's writin'.  But they didn't
+like me.  I was too good for them.  Ah, well!"
+
+Dan Anderson sighed softly.  The lazy sun crawled on.  Nobody came into
+the street.  There was nothing to happen.  It might have been an hour
+before Dan Anderson leaned over, picked up a splinter to whittle, and
+went on with his story, back of which I was long before this well
+convinced there remained some topic concealed, albeit beneath
+inconsequent and picturesque details.
+
+"At that state of my _entwickelung_, as the French say, I still wore
+my trousers with a strong crimp at the bottom and cut pear-shaped at
+the hips.  That pair was.  The next one wasn't.  It was a long, long
+way to that next pair.  I forgot how many years.
+
+"You see, by that time--although I did still say 'rully,' account of
+having roomed with a man who had been in Harvard for a while--I was
+really beginning to wake up just a little bit.  My dad still supposed I
+was doing dog on the dramatic page in New York, whereas the facts were
+I had been fired twice.  But that did me good.  I sort of woke up about
+then, and realized there were such things in the world as folks.  I
+wasn't the People's Choice,--not yet,--but I was learnin' a heap more
+about the Basswood Junctions of this world.  And I want to say to you
+that after all's said and done, Princeton hasn't got Basswood Junction
+skinned no ways permanent.  There's several kinds of things in life,
+when you come to find it out.  It ain't all in the gay metropolis.
+
+"At half-past four one afternoon I turned the roll down out of my
+trousers and took account of the world.  Says I to myself: 'Journalism
+is not a science.  It ain't exact enough.'  Then I thought of studyin'
+medicine.  Bah!  That's not a science.  It's a survival.  I clerked for
+a while, but I couldn't stand it.  What I was lookin' for was a
+science.  At last I concluded to take up law, because I thought it was
+more of a science than any of these other things.  I wanted some place
+where I could sort of reason things out, and have them fit and hang
+together.  Well, the law--well, you know the law isn't just exactly
+that way.  But it's a beautiful thing if you just hang to the
+principles, and don't believe too much of the practice.  The law is
+disgraced--but at bottom what the law meant to do was to give humanity
+some sort of a square deal; which, of course, it doesn't.  It ain't a
+science; but I love it, because it might have been."
+
+He fell silent once again for a time, after his fashion, but now his
+gaze was softened, although he went on with his light speech.  "I
+rather thought I would take up the science of the law as the most
+possible line of activity for a man of my attainments.  I began to read
+a little on the side.  Then I didn't know whether to have contempt for
+us fools who live and endure the eternal folly, or whether I ought to
+pity Basswood Junction and Princeton, because life is all so awfully
+hard and hopeless.  Meantime, Old Mr. World went right on--didn't stop
+to ask me anything.
+
+"You can understand these things took a little time.  Meantime, my dad
+had sized me up as one more young man ruined by college life.  The old
+man had a heap of sense in him, and he did the right thing.  He told me
+to go to the devil."
+
+"So you came West?"
+
+"So I came West.  Same pants."
+
+"But you haven't told me about the girl," said I, quietly.
+
+Ah, that was it, then!  I could see his eyelids twitch.  A moisture
+broke out on his lower lip, in that country where perspiration was so
+little known.  "And you!" he said.  "But then, it didn't take much
+brains to guess that.  It was the same way with you.  We all of us came
+here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, there was a Girl."
+
+So now we both were silent.  Indeed, all the world was silent.  The
+calm valley lay unwinking in the sun.  The grave mountains stood about
+unperturbed, unagitated, calm.  The blue sky swept above, peaceful,
+unflecked by any moving cloud.  There was not a leaf in all that land
+to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple.  It was a
+world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with
+nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world
+gone by.  Here was no place for memories or dreams.  The rush of
+another world might go on.  Folk might live and love, grieve and joy,
+and sorrow and die, and it mattered nothing.  These things came not to
+Heart's Desire.
+
+Presently Dan Anderson was guilty of a thing revolutionary, horrible!
+He sat silent as long as he could, but at length there broke from him a
+groan that was half a sob.  He rose and flung out an arm at the great
+blue heaven.  "Girl!" he cried.  "Girl!"  Then he sank down, burying
+his face in his hands.  One might have heard falling, faint and far
+off, the shattered crystals of the walls that had long hedged sacredly
+about the valley of Heart's Desire.  One might have heard, sweeping the
+soft and silken curtains of its oblivion, the rough rush of a
+disturbing wind!
+
+Dan Anderson's back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the
+valley.  "Friend," said he, "I swore never to think of her once more.
+Of course, the old ways had to end.  Her people wouldn't have it.  She
+told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for
+dreamers; that the world was run by workers.  She told me--well, I came
+West, and after a while a little farther West.
+
+"I hadn't begun, I know that.  It was fair enough to suppose I never
+would begin.  But at least I didn't holler.  I sat down to read law.
+Ah, don't let's talk of it.  Her face was on the pages.  I would brush
+it off, and read over a page a dozen times.  I had to force it into my
+mind.  I worked so hard--but maybe it was all the better for me.  I not
+only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced
+comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type
+looks, irregularly set around a roll of brown hair and a pair of gray
+eyes that look straight at you.  My boy, when the principles of law are
+back and under that kind of a page illustration, they are hard to get,
+and you don't forget them when they're yours.  It wasn't hard to learn
+things in Princeton.  It's the things out of college that are hard to
+learn.
+
+"Well, you know how that is.  A fellow lives because this physical
+machine of ours is wound up for threescore years and ten, and unless
+the powers of evil get their fingers in the works, it runs.  Well, one
+time, after I was admitted to the bar back there, I was sitting one
+night reading Chitty on Pleading.  That was the worst of all the books.
+Contracts, notes and bills, torts, replevin, and ejectment--all those
+things were easy.  But when I got to Chitty, the girl's face would
+always get on the page and stick there.  So one night, seeing that I
+was gone, I took Chitty on Pleading, girl's face and all, and screwed
+it shut, tight and fast in the letter-press.  I allowed she couldn't
+get out of there!  Then I pulled my freight.  I punched a burro into
+Heart's Desire, two hundred miles, just as you did.  I have lived here,
+just as you have.  No life, no trouble, no woman--why, you know, this
+is Heart's Desire!"
+
+"It was," said I; "God bless it."
+
+"And amen!  We'd all have been in the Army, or burglary, or outlawry,
+if it hadn't been for Heart's Desire.  God bless it."
+
+"But she got out," said I.  "Some one unscrewed the press?"
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson.  "She's out.  They're out.  I tell you,
+they're out, all over the world!
+
+"We were three hundred men here, and it was Heaven.  One vast commune,
+and yet no commune.  Everything there was if you asked for it, and
+nothing you could take if you didn't ask.  Not a church, because there
+wasn't a woman.  Not a courthouse, because there wasn't any crime, and
+that because there wasn't a woman.  Not a society--not a home--and I
+thank God for it.  I knew what it was back there--every man suspicious,
+every man scared, every man afraid of his own shadow--not a clean, true
+note in all the world; and incidentally a woman behind every tree, in
+every corner, whichever way you turned.  Life in the States was being a
+_peon_ with a halter around your neck.  But it was never that way
+here.  There never was any crime in Heart's Desire.  It's no crime to
+shoot a man when he's tired of living and wants you to kill him.  Why,
+this was Heart's Desire until--"
+
+"Until the press got loose?"
+
+"It's loose all over the world!" cried Dan Anderson.  "They've got out.
+You can't keep them in.  How did Charlie Allen get killed over at
+Sumner?  Woman in it.  When the boys arrested this fellow Garcia over
+at the Nogales, what was it all about?  A woman.  What set the
+desperado Arragon on the warpath so the boys had to kill him?  That was
+a woman, too.  What made Bill Hilliard kill Pete Anderson?  Woman moved
+in within fifty miles of them on the Nogales.  Here's Curly; good man
+in his profession.  Night-wrangler, day-herder, bog-rider, buster,
+top-waddy--why, he'd be the old man on the range for his company if
+that Kansas family hadn't moved down in here and married him.  It's
+Paradise Lost, that's what it is.  Arizona next, and it's full of
+copper mines and railroads.  Where shall we go?"  The sweat stood full
+on his lip now, and a deep line ran across his forehead.  "Where shall
+we go?" he repeated insistently.  "Come!"
+
+In my own bitterness at all this I grew sarcastic with him.  "Sit
+down," said I.  "Why all this foolishness about a college girl with a
+shirtwaist and a straw hat?"
+
+"Oh, now," and his forehead puckered up, "don't you be deceived for one
+minute, my friend.  This wasn't ordinary.  No plain woman; no common or
+crimping variety.  Just a specimen of the great 'North American Girl!"
+He took off his hat.  "And may God bless her, goin' or comin'!" said he.
+
+This was the most untoward situation ever yet known in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Dan Andersen was proving recreant to our creed.  And
+yet, what could be done?
+
+Dan Anderson presently made the situation more specific.  "May old Jack
+Wilson just be damned!" said he.  "If he hadn't found that gold
+prospect up on the Homestake, we might have lived here forever.
+Besides, there's the coal fields yonder on the Patos, no one knows how
+big."
+
+Coal!  That meant Eastern Capital.  I could have guessed the rest
+before he told it.
+
+"Oh, of course, we've got to sell our coal mines, and get a lot of
+States men in here monkeyin' around.  And, of course, it couldn't have
+been anybody else but the particular daddy of this particular girl who
+had to come pokin' in here to look at the country!  He's got money
+literally sinful."
+
+"But, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that the girl's coming,
+too?"
+
+He nodded mutely.  "They're out," said he, at last.  "You can't get
+away from 'em.  They're all over the world."
+
+Here, indeed, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a
+long time, as we sat moodily in the sun.  At about this time, Tom Osby
+drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of
+Whiteman the Jew, just across the street.  Tom tore open a bale of hay,
+and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed
+grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a
+pipe, he began to sing his favorite song.
+
+  "I never _loved_ a fond gazel-l-l-e,"
+
+he drawled out.  Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot
+through the top of Tom Osby's wagon.  Tom came up, rifle in hand, like
+a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.
+
+"Shut up," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Well, I ain't so sure," said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin.  "It's
+a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don't get quite
+so funny, by a leetle shade."
+
+I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire
+over smaller things than this.  "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked
+Tom Osby.
+
+"I hadn't noticed it," said he.
+
+"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson.  "You come here, and tell me what
+time the stage gets in from Socorro."
+
+"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."
+
+"He's _loco_, Tom," said I.
+
+"Well, I reckon _so_.  When a man begins to worry about what time the
+Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."
+
+"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital--Eastern Capital, Eve and
+the Serpent, all on one stage.  The only comfort is that no Eastern
+Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day.  She'll go
+back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again."  But the dumb
+supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.
+
+There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire.  It was ninety miles to the
+nearest wire.  The stage came in but occasionally from the distant
+railroad.  Yet--and this was one of the strange things of that strange
+country, which we accepted without curiosity and without
+argument--there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by
+which news got about over great distances.  Perhaps it was a rider in
+by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had
+seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the caņon, the white
+smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming.  This news
+brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him
+in query.
+
+"Man," said he, as he gripped my arm, "you see, up there on Carrizo,
+the big caņon where we hunt bear.  You know, up there at the end,
+there's a big pine tree.  Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of
+this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late
+Daniel Anderson, you go up the caņon and look up the tree.  I'll be
+there.  I'm scared."
+
+By this I knew that he would, in all likelihood, meet the stage and
+help Eve to alight at Heart's Desire.  Moreover, I reproached him as
+having been deliberately a party to this invasion.  "You've been
+writing back home to the girl," I said.  "That is not playing the game.
+That's violation of the creed.  You're renegade.  Then go back home.
+You don't belong here!"
+
+"I'm not!  I won't!  I didn't!" he retorted.  "I didn't write--at least
+only a few times.  I tried not to--but I couldn't help it.  Man, I tell
+you I couldn't _help_ it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
+the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some._
+
+The sun drew on across the enchanted valley and began to sink toward
+the rim of the distant Baxter Peak.  The tremendous velvet robes of the
+purple evening shadows dropped slowly down upon the majestic shoulders
+of Carrizo, guardian of the valley.  A delicious kindness came into the
+air, sweet, although no flower was in all that land, and soft, though
+this was far from any sea, unless it were the waters immeasurably deep
+beneath this sun-dried soil.  There was no cloud even at the falling of
+the sun, but the gun had no harshness in his glow.  There was a blue
+and purple mystery over all the world, and calm and sweetness and
+strength came down as it were a mantle.  Ah, never in all the world was
+a place like this Eden, this man's Eden of Heart's Desire!
+
+A gentle wind sighed up the valley from the narrow caņon mouth, as it
+did every day.  There was no variableness.  Surprises did not come
+thither.  The world ran always in one pleasant and unchanging groove.
+But the breeze this evening brought no smile of content to Dan
+Anderson's face as he sat waiting for the coming of the new and fateful
+visitor to our ancient Eden.
+
+"They'll be about at the Carrizoso Springs now," said Dan Anderson,
+"twelve miles away down the trail.  Can't you smell the cold cream?"
+
+This was beyond ken, but he became more explicit.  "Cold cream to the
+eyes and ears," said he.  "To the untutored face, the sun of this
+heathen district is something sinful; and like enough she never heard
+of collodion for cracked lips in an alkali country.  And a veil--oh,
+sacred spirits! that veil and its contents is now hatin' Carrizoso
+flats and all the inarticulate earth till fare-ye-well!  Wrapped up to
+the topmast in a white veil,--or one of was-white,--gray travelling
+gown, common-sense boots.  Gloves--ah, yes.  And hate--hate--why, can't
+you feel the simmerin', boilin' hatred of that States girl just raisin'
+the temperature of this land of Canaan?  Hate us?  Why, she'll be
+poisonous.  Ninety miles in the sun, at ninety in the shade.  Water
+once at the Mal Pais, and it alkali."
+
+I reminded Dan Anderson that in view of his promise to absent himself
+at the time of the arrival of the Socorro stage, he was not conducting
+himself with the proper regard either to decorum or historical accuracy.
+
+"I want to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go.  I ought to go
+climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the
+lady and her dad.  I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this
+faintness out of my legs.  But somehow I can't get started.  I'd look
+well, tryin' to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn't I?  Man,
+haven't you any sympathy?"
+
+So we sat on a log out in front of Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, and
+waited for the worst to happen.
+
+"Don't you go away," said Dan Anderson.  "I want you for my second.
+You can go for the doctor.  I ain't feelin' very well."
+
+Now, there was no doctor in Heart's Desire, nor had there ever been, as
+Dan Anderson knew.  Neither did he look in need of any help whatsoever.
+He made no foolish masculine attempt at personal adornment, but his
+long figure, with good bony shoulders and a visible waist line, looked
+well enough in the man's garb of blue shirt and belted trousers.  A
+rope of hair straggled from under his wide hat; for in Heart's Desire
+wide hats were worn of right and not in affectation.  He was a manly
+man enough, in a place where weak men were rare.  The one most vitally
+concerned in all the population of Heart's Desire, he was now the one
+least visibly affected.  All the rest of the settlement, suddenly
+smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and
+a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties.
+Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the
+purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that
+which was to come to him.  True, there was the slight moisture on his
+brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself
+only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.
+
+For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events.
+"What will you do?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you've
+been ass enough to allow this girl to come on down in here?  You'll
+have some one killed in this town before long.  Besides, where can a
+white girl live in this place?  There's not a bedspread or a linen
+sheet in the whole town."
+
+"You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully.  "Do you
+suppose a Wellesley girl, accustomed steady to high thinkin', can't get
+along with a little plain livin' once in a while?  As for women folks,
+why can't Curly's girl take care of her?  Does a chance lady caller in
+this city need a _thousand_ women to entertain her?  And
+blankets--why, you know well enough, that blankets are better after
+sundown here than much fine linen.  Heart's Desire'll be here calm and
+confident after this brief pageantry has passed from our midst."
+
+As he spoke, he half turned and started, with a broken exclamation.  I
+followed his gaze.  The street was vacant, barren of the accustomed
+throng that usually awaited near the post-office the arrival of the
+infrequent stagecoach.  But there, at the mouth of the caņon, almost
+under the edge of the deepening shadow from the purple-topped mountain,
+appeared the dusty top of the creeping vehicle that bore with it the
+fate of Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson was pale now, and he put his hand
+to his shirt collar, as though it were too tight; but he sat gazing
+down the valley.
+
+"That old fool, Bill Godfrey, is showin' them our sign," said he, in
+exasperation.  "That's a nice thing, ain't it, for Eastern Capital, or
+a woman, to see the first thing?"
+
+It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart's Desire, who
+subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had
+prepared the grim blazonry on the caņon wall to which Dan Anderson had
+made reference.  "Prepare to meet thy God!" was the sign that Charlie
+Lee had painted there.  It was the last thing he did on his way out of
+town.  That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading
+citizen.  Charlie's emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for
+expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon.  The
+inhabitants had always left the sign standing there.  But at this time
+it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.
+
+"They ain't goin' to understand that," said he.  "They can't think the
+way we do.  Oh, why didn't that old fool Godfrey call their attention
+the other way?  Oh, that'll set fine, won't it, with a man comin' to
+buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face
+and a consumin' vision of tarantulas in her soul!  This'll be another
+case of New Jersey Gold Mill.  Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he'll run
+out at the same door wherein he went; that's what he'll do.  And, oh,
+doctors and saints, look at that, now!"  Bill Godfrey was leaning out
+of the coach-box and pointing with his whip.  "He's showin' them the
+town now," said Dan Anderson.  "Why--I hadn't thought before but what
+this place was all right."
+
+I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation.  It had been our
+world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it
+had been satisfactory until now.  Never before that moment had the
+scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and
+insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy.  We were suddenly ashamed.
+
+Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the
+log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage,
+white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up
+from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired
+mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.
+
+He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily
+forward.  Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously
+have offered assistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master
+of his faculties.
+
+The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear
+seat, when there appeared the passenger nearest to our side of the
+coach,--a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in
+girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache.  He was well shod and
+well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels
+and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs.
+He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored.  A flush of recognition
+crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.
+
+"Well, Andersen," Mr. Ellsworth said, extending a hand, "how are you?
+Got here at last--awful drive.  Where do we stop?  You know my
+daughter, of course."
+
+What treachery to Heart's Desire was here!  Dan Anderson, a man who had
+come to stay, shaking hands on terms of old acquaintanceship,
+apparently, with Eastern Capital itself; and not content with that,
+advancing easily and courteously, hat in hand, to greet the daughter of
+Eastern Capital as though it were but yesterday that last they met.
+Moreover, and bitterest of all for a loyal man of Heart's Desire, was
+there not a glance, a word between them?  Did Dan Anderson whisper a
+word and did she flush faint and rosy? or was it a touch of the light?
+Certain it was he reached up his hand to take hers, shaking it not too
+long nor too fervently.
+
+"I do remember Miss Ellsworth very well, of course, Mr. Ellsworth,"
+said he.  "We are all very glad to see you."
+
+"And we're very glad to _see_ you!" echoed the girl.  "Oh! the dust,
+the dust!"  She spoke in a full, sweet voice, excellent even for
+outlanders to hear.  If there were agitation in her tones, agitation in
+Dan Andersen's heart, none might know it.  This meeting, five years and
+two thousand miles from a parting, seemed the most natural and ordinary
+thing in all the world.  Mr. Ellsworth was of the belief that he
+himself had planned it so far as himself and Dan Anderson were
+concerned.
+
+"My daughter was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth
+began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up
+here to see about the climate--lots of folks go West nowadays, you
+know, even in the spring.  I'll warrant she's sick of the trip by now.
+A good climate has to have dust to season it.  One of the mules went
+lame--thought we would never get here.  And now tell me, where'll she
+stop?"  The personification of Eastern Capital looked about him
+dubiously at the only hotel of Heart's Desire, before which the coach
+had pulled up as a matter of course.  "Any women folks in town,
+anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan
+Andersen's impassive face.
+
+"I was upon the point of saying, Mr. Ellsworth," replied Dan
+Anderson--and vaguely one felt that his diction was once more that of
+Princeton--"that my friend here, a prominent member of the bar, will go
+with Miss Ellsworth to the house of a nice little woman, wife of--er--a
+cow gentleman of our acquaintance.  That will be best for her.  I'll
+try to take care of you myself, sir, if you like, while the Learned
+Counsel goes with Miss Ellsworth."
+
+There were introductions and further small talk, and presently Learned
+Counsel found himself climbing up to the seat beside Eve; beside the
+Temptress who, he made no manner of doubt, had come to put an end to
+Paradise.
+
+But ah! she was Eve enough for any Eden--a tall girl, rounded, firm
+formed, with a mass of good brown hair, and a frank gray eye, and a
+regular and smooth forehead.  Her garb was a cool, gray serge, and, a
+miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with
+immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman
+might tell.  A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim.  Her
+hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray.  Her foot, trim and well
+shaped,--for even a desolate pariah might note so much,--was shod in no
+ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels,
+all unsuited to gravel and slide-rock, yet exceeding good, as it seemed
+at that time.  The girl raised her eyes, smiling frankly.  There was no
+cold cream traceable.  The first thought of Learned Counsel was that
+her complexion would brown nicely under sunburn; his second thought was
+that he had on overalls,--a fact which had escaped him for more than
+four years.
+
+If Eve, new come within Heart's Desire, felt any surprise, or if she
+even experienced any pique at the calm deportment of Dan Anderson, she
+masked it all and put all at ease with a few words spoken in that
+manner of voice which is an excellent thing in woman.  In a sort of
+dream the coach trundled on up the street, to pause for half an instant
+in front of the commercial emporium of Whiteman the Jew.  Whiteman came
+out with his hat above his head, and said, "Velgome."
+
+The girl looked backward down the street as they turned to cross the
+_arroyo_ beyond which stood the house of the Kansas family, where Curly
+lived.  The off mule limped.  "Poor little fellow," she said; "I wanted
+them to stop.  They have no pity--"
+
+"No," said Learned Counsel to her, "there is no such thing as pity in
+all the world."  She fell silent at this, and looked back once more,
+unconsciously, down the street, as one who would gladly pity, or be
+pitied.  But soon the coach was at Curly's house, and there came out to
+meet it, already forewarned of her guest, the Littlest Girl, wiping her
+hands on her apron, which means Welcome on the frontier.
+
+The Littlest Girl, uncertain and overawed by her visitor, came forward
+and took a first look.  Then she suddenly held out her arms; and
+Constance Ellsworth, from the East, lonely, perhaps grieved, walked
+straight into the outstretched arms and straight into the heart of the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
+Craven Adam_
+
+The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr.
+Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed.  The window-panes
+were very small, where any still remained.  The interior of the hotel
+consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim
+slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might
+rest if very weary from one cause or another.  The front door was
+always open.  The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but
+utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both
+hotel and bank.
+
+There was in Heart's Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern
+Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined
+circulating medium.  That was all the money there was.  No one could
+be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all
+wealth, as was very well known.  To many this may seem a restricting
+and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars
+is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for
+a whole town to have, as any man of Heart's Desire could have told you.
+
+A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the
+front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place
+devoted to the sale of firearms.  There were many nails driven into
+the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all
+these nails held specimens of weapons.  Excellent weapons they were,
+too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of
+Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends
+bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills,
+none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks.  At
+times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the
+wall at Uncle Jim's hotel.  The visible supply fluctuated somewhat.
+Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move
+up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the
+circulating medium.
+
+Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man.  If a man paid,
+very well.  If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him,
+for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well
+knew.  And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as
+Uncle Jim also knew very well.  There were no printed rules or
+regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel.  There was no hotel register.  There
+were no questions ever asked.  Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his
+duty, was to feed men.  For the rest, he often had to do his own
+cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in
+the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk?  Indeed, there was no
+desk.  The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.
+
+That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was
+something never dreamed in Heart's Desire.  Yet one day a sensitive
+young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how,
+down into Heart's Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue
+shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one
+dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time
+he was very hungry.  He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask
+for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim.  The latter
+said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which
+actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed!  "Get
+'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better."  The young man
+"got 'round" the beefsteak.  Perhaps it was the feeling about the
+butter, which of itself was a thing unusual.  At any rate, as he went
+out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door.  This act
+meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer
+existed.  The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle
+Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good.  The
+intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was
+right" was silently and fully evidenced.  That a man would give up his
+gun was proof enough of that.  So this became the custom of the place,
+the unwritten law.  When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the
+three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in,
+handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one
+else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down
+the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air.  It is
+astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can
+be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general
+supply of six-shooters.
+
+On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious
+activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the
+night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were
+hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of
+better days.  The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had
+all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the
+guns.  Temporarily, male Heart's Desire did not exist.
+
+Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to
+display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man
+who--as the rapid word spread to all--had come to look into the
+gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up
+Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head
+and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso!  Humiliated,
+Heart's Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan
+Anderson, do the talking.
+
+"I didn't know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson," said
+Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel.  "Lately organized?"  He
+swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.
+
+"That?  Oh, that's not the arsenal," replied Dan Anderson; "that's the
+clearing-house.  If a man's broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know.
+I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country to you
+right at once, sir.  You see, it's different.  Now, out here, a
+six-shooter is part of a man's clothes.  That's why the fellows stay
+out.  They're ashamed--don't feel properly dressed, you know."
+
+"Not much law and order, eh?"
+
+"Not much law, but plenty of order, and not the least pretence about
+it."
+
+"The courts--"
+
+"No courts at all, or at least within sixty miles.  Why, we haven't
+even a town organization--not a town officer.  There was never even a
+town-site plat filed."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth turned on him suddenly.  "Where's your titles?" he asked.
+
+"We haven't needed any, so far.  Now that you've come, with talk of a
+railroad and all that--"
+
+"Oh, well, you know, that's just talk.  I'm not responsible for that."
+
+"I hope you like canned tomatoes," said Dan Anderson, "or, if you
+don't, that you're very fond of beefsteak.  There won't be much else
+till Tom Osby gets back from Las Vegas with a load of freight.  Tom
+Osby's our common carrier.  I hope the new railroad will do as well."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth was a gentleman, and a very hungry one, so there was no
+quarrel over the tomatoes, which were Special XXX, nor over the
+beefsteak, which might have been worse.  An hour later he went out on
+the street with his host, whose conduct thus far, he was forced to
+admit, had been irreproachable.  They strolled up the rambling street,
+past many straggling buildings, and at length paused before the little
+building, made of sun-dried brick, and plastered with mud, where Dan
+Anderson had his residence and his law office.
+
+"You'll excuse me, Mr. Ellsworth," said that young gentleman, "for
+bringing you here, but the truth is I thought you might be thirsty and
+might get poisoned.  You have to do these things gradually, till you
+get immune.  Now, under my bed, I've got a bottle which never has been
+opened and which ought to be safe.  I don't bother corks a great deal,
+only when we are welcoming distinguished guests."
+
+"It's just a little soon after dinner," demurred Ellsworth, "but,
+ahem!  That dust--yes, I believe I will."
+
+There was a dignity about Dan Anderson now which left Ellsworth
+distinctly uncomfortable.  The latter felt himself in some fashion at
+a disadvantage before this penniless adventurer, this young man whom
+once he had not cared to have as a regular visitor at his own home
+back in the far-off East.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me, young man," he spoke after a long period
+of silence, "that this is the way you live?"
+
+"Certainly," said Dan Anderson.  "I know I'm extravagant.  I don't
+need a place as good as this, but I always was sort of sensuous, you
+know." Ellsworth looked at him without any comprehension, from him to
+the bed with blankets, and the bare table.  "Come in," said Dan
+Anderson, "and sit down.  Better sit on the chair, I reckon.  One leg
+of the bed is sort of dicky."
+
+"So this is the way you live?" repeated Ellsworth to Dan Anderson, who
+was now on his hands and knees and searching under the bed.  "Now,
+about my daughter--is there any hotel--are there any women?"
+
+"Three, from Kansas," said Dan Anderson.  "That is, three real ones.
+All the female earth, Mr. Ellsworth, comes from Kansas, same as all
+the baled hay.  Oh, yes, here she is!"
+
+He had been speaking with his voice somewhat muffled under the bed,
+but now emerged, bearing a dusty bottle in his hand.
+
+Mr. Ellsworth looked at him a bit keenly; for, after all, he was not a
+bad judge of men.  "How long has that bottle been there?" asked he,
+abruptly.
+
+"Oh, a couple of years, maybe."
+
+"And you've never opened it?"
+
+"No, why should I?  You hadn't come yet.  Of course, I knew you'd be
+along some day.  I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr.
+Ellsworth--the health of the man who told me not to come around his
+house--told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable
+company for his--why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all."  His
+voice was slow, but harder now in quality.
+
+Ellsworth sat on the chair, the bottle in his hand hanging between his
+knees.  He looked at Dan Anderson steadily.  "You've got me guessing
+in a good many ways," he said; "I don't know why you came here--"
+
+"No?"
+
+"Nor how you live, nor what encouragement or prospects you find here.
+For instance, about how much did you make last year in your business?"
+
+"My law practice?  Oh, you mean down at the county-seat?  There is no
+law court here.  How much did the boys pay me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, I know it's a heap of money; but I made it."
+
+"Enough for tobacco money!"
+
+"Sir," said Dan Anderson, "more.  I ate frequent.  Why, sir, did you
+ever stop to think that our total circulating medium here is only
+three hundred dollars?  I had almost all of it one time or another.
+Now, not doubting your intentions in the least, did you ever come that
+near to corralling the whole visible supply of cash in your own town?
+Moreover, I am attorney for the men who own the coal-mines.  I'm the
+lawyer for both the gold mills.  We've got one or two mines here, and
+I'm in.  Besides, I've just got the law business from Pitzer Chisum,
+down on the Seven Rivers,  He's got maybe a hundred thousand head of
+cattle.  Now, I'm going to rob Pitzer, because he needs it.   He's got
+money scandalous."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth put the bottle down on the floor, and sat up on the
+chair with his hands in his pockets, wondering.  "But why?" he
+demanded sternly, "why?  What are you doing out here?  Why have you
+thrown away your life?  Come--you're a bright young man, and you--"
+
+"Friend," said Dan Anderson, with a sudden cold quality in his voice,
+"I think that'll about do.  I am no brighter than I was a few years
+ago."
+
+"But this is no place to live."
+
+"Why isn't it?  It takes a man to live here.  Do you reckon you could
+qualify?"  The older man raised his head with a snort, but Dan
+Anderson stood looking at him calmly.  "Now let me tell you one
+thing," said he.  "If you heard of our coal-mines here through me, at
+least I didn't ask you to come out here, and I didn't ask you to bring
+anybody along with you.  I've played fair with you.  You don't come
+here to do me any favor, do you?"
+
+"Oh, well,"--began the other.
+
+"Then you think there might be something here, after all?"
+
+"What is there here?"
+
+"A very great deal.  There's just as much here as there is anywhere
+else in the world."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth arose and stepped to the door.  For a moment he stood
+looking out at the twilight.  He turned suddenly to the young man.
+"I'll tell you," said he.  "There's something to you--I don't know
+what.  Drop all this.  Come on back.  I'll think it over--I'll give
+you a place in my office."
+
+"You'd give me _what_?  Did you ever stop to think that you can't
+give me _anything_?"
+
+Surprise sat on his visitor's face.  "_Nada_!" cried Dan Anderson.
+"Me go back there and work on a salary for you?  Me check my immortal
+soul on your hat-rack?  Me live scared of my life, like all the rest
+of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell?  If I
+should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me
+you once expressed, before you really knew me."
+
+"But what have you got out here?" repeated the other, stupidly.
+
+Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the
+mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his
+blue shirt.
+
+"What made you come?" insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the
+neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.
+
+"You know almighty well why I came.  But let that go.  Let's say I
+came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you
+buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley
+if you have luck later.  I'm going to be your kind and loving partner
+in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you.
+You watch me.  I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to work all I
+want to.  When I don't want to, there isn't any living mortal soul
+that's going to crack a whip over me and tell me I've got to."
+
+"Things seem rather strange," began Mr. Ellsworth.  "You talk as
+though I were obliged to put money into these mines."
+
+"Of course you will.  You can't help it.  You never saw a better
+opportunity for investment in all your life.  But now let me tell you
+another thing, which I oughtn't to tell you if I served you right.
+You go slow while you're here.  There is plenty of gold in this
+valley.  There isn't a fellow in this settlement who hasn't got a
+quart glass fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and
+who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like
+yourself.  You're Glad Tidings in this town.  You couldn't walk
+to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys
+would offer you.  You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes.  You
+wouldn't know where you were; and when you came to; you'd own about
+fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the
+variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid.  Now, I
+oughtn't to take care of you.  I don't owe you a thing on earth.  But
+because you brought--well, because--anyhow, I'm _going_ to take care
+of you, while you're here, and see that you get a square deal."
+
+"By the way, my daughter--" said Mr. Ellsworth, sitting up uneasily.
+
+"Never mind," said Dan Anderson, gently.  "Miss Constance is all
+right.  They'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of
+you.  Everybody will be more sociable by about noon to-morrow.  The
+whole town's scared yet."
+
+"I don't see anything very terrible about me," said Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"Oh, it isn't _you_," said Dan Anderson, calmly.  "Nobody's afraid of
+_you_.  It's your daughter--it's the woman.  Don't you reckon Adam
+was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time
+old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreading fig tree?  I don't
+know that I make myself right plain--you see, it's sort of funny here.
+We aren't used to women any more."
+
+"Oh, well, now, my dear sir, you see, my daughter--"
+
+"I know all about her," said Dan Anderson, sharply.
+
+"I don't doubt she thought I was a mere trifler.  She couldn't
+understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until
+he's found the right thing to stick to.  I don't blame her the least
+bit in the world.  She could only see what I _wasn't_ doing.  I knew
+what I was _going_ to do, and I know it now."  There was a gravity
+and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through the
+self-consciousness of the man before him.  Ellsworth looked at him
+intently.  "We'll be here for a day or so," said he, "and meantime, it
+will seem a little strange for my daughter, I suppose--"
+
+"You don't need to tell me about anything," said Dan Anderson.  "Of
+course, her coming is a little inopportune.  You see, Mr. Ellsworth,
+the morning stars are inopportune, and the sunrise every day, and the
+dew of heaven."
+
+Ellsworth looked at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured
+something about going to look up his daughter.
+
+"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson.  "But I know the
+way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's,
+I am going over there--alone.  Wait till I get my coat.  I don't wear
+it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the
+evening here, the same as they do in the States."
+
+As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets,
+crossed the _arroyo_ alone, he met Curly coming the other way.
+Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness
+of the importance of his position in society at the time.
+
+"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new
+girl is the absolute limit.  She dropped in just like we'd been
+expectin' her.  I was some scared; but _she's_ just _folks_!"
+
+Dan Anderson hardly heard him.  He passed on into the house, where he
+had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place.
+It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl.  "I was
+just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and
+everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to
+our city park.  Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and
+light."
+
+She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the
+half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she
+rose and joined him.  All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening
+fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without
+possible resistance.
+
+A short distance up the _arroyo_, toward the old abandoned stamp
+mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the
+Patos spring, far up on the mountain side.  At the end of this pipe,
+where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas
+had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of
+her own.  Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose
+bush, now blossomless.  Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and
+handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.
+
+"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed
+your stroll along the boulevard.  I hope, also, that the entertainment
+of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."
+
+"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at
+them.  These people are genuine."
+
+"I'm not apologizing," he said quickly; "there are just a few things a
+fellow learns out here.  One is not to apologize; and another is not
+to beg.  Sit down."  There were two white boulders beside which the
+trickle of water rippled.  Obeying him, she seated herself.  Presently
+Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat
+in silence.  The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half
+darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old
+Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of
+Heart's Desire.  The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified
+into a strange, half-ghostly beauty.  The earth has few scenes more
+beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight.  These two sat and gazed
+for a time.
+
+"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself
+than to him.
+
+"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the
+mountain-rimmed horizon.  "Yes, it's mine."
+
+"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful.  Some time there'll be a
+man who'll learn something in such a place as this.  I don't know but
+I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."
+
+"The years!" she whispered to herself.
+
+"It seems forever," said he.  "The time when a fellow's taking his
+medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life
+of five years ago--almost, except a part of it.  It's been another
+world here.  Nothing matters much, does it?"
+
+Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could
+not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.
+
+"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's
+Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.
+"Look!  It is unspeakable."
+
+He looked at her face instead.  "I've seen you right here," he said,
+"right at this very place, a thousand times.  It's Eden.  It's the
+Garden.  It's the Beginning."
+
+"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.
+
+"Yes, yes--"  Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control.
+"It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete.
+Constance--"
+
+The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too
+often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found
+moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life.
+Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not
+served to banish it.  She had heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes
+when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered.  Now, beneath a
+limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world--in
+this Eden which they two alone occupied--she heard him, the man whom
+in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in very person, and
+speaking that very thought which was in her own heart that hour.  Her
+bosom rose tumultuously, her throat fluttered.  Instinctively she
+would have fled, but a hand on her shoulder pressed her back as she
+would have arisen, and she obeyed--as she had always obeyed him--as
+she always would.
+
+"Paradise unfinished--" he whispered, his face close to hers.  "You
+know what it is that's missing."
+
+Ah! could not a woman also know the longing, the vacancy, the solitude
+of an Eden incomplete!  She turned to him trembling, her lips half
+open, as though to welcome a long-hoped-for draught of happiness.
+
+Alas! it was not happiness, but misery that came; for Constance
+Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are
+withheld from none.  There was a sound of a distant shout--the chance
+call of some drunken reveller--far down the street, a tawdry,
+unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an
+illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just.
+Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire.
+It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm,
+another mental world.  He started, and half shivered as his hand
+dropped to his side.  His face showed haggard even in the moonlight.
+
+"My God! what am I saying?" he murmured to himself.
+
+Then presently he drew himself up, smiling bitterly.  "Some prominent
+citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodded toward
+the street.  "Don't you think you'd like Heart's Desire?"
+
+The moment of Eve--the woman's moment--the instant for her happiness
+was past and gone!  The light of the moon lay ghostly over all the
+world, but there was no radiance, no joy nor comfort in it now.
+
+The girl herself was silent.  She sat looking out over the street
+below, instinctively following Dan Anderson's gaze.  Voices came to
+them, clamorous, strident, coarse.  There lay revealed all that was
+crude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of
+Heart's Desire.  It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in
+which he had lived.  For a woman--for her--for this sweet girl of a
+gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous.  "Be
+just!  Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he
+saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.
+
+"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude
+which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in."
+
+His face was averted as he walked beside her.  There was no word that
+he could say.  Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not
+know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood
+and in some part forgave.
+
+"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at
+length from the door of Curly's house.
+
+Choking, he left her.  As he stumbled blindly back, over the
+_arroyo_, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a
+shooting star.  Dully he watched it, and for him it was the flaming
+sword barring the gates of Eden.
+
+Hours later--for sleep was not for him--Dan Anderson stood waiting for
+the sun to rise over old Carrizo.  Far off, along the pathway of the
+morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the
+combat, and the grovelling.  "No, not for me; not there!" he said,
+conviction coming to him once more.
+
+He turned then and glanced down the single street of Heart's Desire, a
+street as straggling and purposeless as his own misdirected life--a
+wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion.
+Longer he looked, and stronger the conviction grew.  "No, no," he
+said, clenching his hand; "not here for her--not here!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
+Legs_
+
+Time wore on at Heart's Desire, uncalendared and unclocked.  The sun
+rose, passed through a sky impenetrably blue, and sank behind Baxter
+Peak at evening.  These were the main events of the day.  All men had
+apparently long ago forgotten the departure of the stage-coach that had
+borne away at one voyaging both Eve and Eastern Capital.  Eve had gone
+forever, as she supposed, although Capital secretly knew full well that
+it, at least, was coming back again.
+
+The population shifted and changed, coming and going, as was the wont
+of the land, but none questioned the man booted and spurred who rode
+out of town or who came into town.  Of late, however, certain booted
+and bearded men wandered afoot over the mountain sides, doing strange
+things with strange instruments.  A railroad was about to cross the
+country somewhere.  Grave and moody, Heart's Desire sat in the sun, and
+for two months did not mention the subject which weighed upon its mind.
+Curly broke the silence one morning at a plebiscite of four men who
+gathered to bask near Whiteman's corral.
+
+"I hit the trail of them surveyors," said he, "other side of Lone
+Mountain, day before yestiday.  They've got a line of pegs drove in the
+ground.  Looks like they was afraid their old railroad was goin' to git
+lost from 'em, unless they picketed it out right strong."
+
+Reproachful eyes were turned on Curly, but he went on.
+
+"It's goin' to run right between Carrizoso ranch and the mouth of our
+caņon," said he.  "You'll have to cross it every time you come to town,
+McKinney.  When she gits to runnin' right free and general, there'll be
+a double row of cow corpses from here to Santa Rosa.  What this here
+new railroad is a-goin' to do to your English stockholders, Mac, is a
+deep and abidin' plenty."
+
+McKinney made no reply, but looked stolidly out across the valley.
+
+"Them fellers come up into town for tobacco, Doc." Curly threw out the
+suggestion cheerfully.
+
+"Tobacco ain't _drugs_," said Doc Tomlinson, annoyed.  He was
+sensitive about allusions to his stock of drugs, which had been
+imported some years before, and under a misapprehension as to Heart's
+Desire's future.
+
+"We might shoot up the surveyors," said Curly, tentatively.  But Dan
+Anderson shook his head.
+
+"That's the worst of it," he answered, "We might shoot any one of us
+here, and the world wouldn't care.  But if we shot even a leg off one
+of the least of these, them States folks would never rest content.  For
+me, I'm goin' in with the railroad.  Looks like I'd have to be
+corporation counsel."
+
+"Well, I reckon we won't have to drive our cows quite so far to
+market," apologized McKinney, striving to see the silver lining.
+
+"Oh, drop it," snapped Doc Tomlinson.  "I might as well say I could get
+in my drugs easier.  Cows can walk; and as for importin' things,
+everybody knows that Tom Osby can haul in everything that's needed in
+this valley."
+
+The members of the plebiscite fell silent for a time, willing to wait
+for Tom Osby's arrival, whenever that might be.
+
+"Now, we ain't downtrod none in this country," finally began Doc
+Tomlinson, who had made political speeches in Kansas.
+
+"Is _any_body?" asked Curly, who had never lived anywhere but on the
+free range.
+
+"We've had three squares a day," said McKinney.  "This country's just
+as good as the States."
+
+"States!" cried Dan Anderson.  "We've got a state of our own, or did
+have, right here, the Free State of Heart's Desire.  But it ain't good
+enough for us.  We want to hitch our little wagon to the star of
+progress.  I reckon we oughtn't to holler if the star travels some
+fast.  It was ours, the Free State of Heart's Desire!  And we--well--"
+
+"Well," said Curly, ruminatingly, "I don't see as ole Carrizo is
+frettin' any about these here things."  He glanced up at the big
+mountain whose shadow lay athwart the valley.  Dan Anderson gazed
+thither as well.  McKinney sat looking quietly up the street.
+
+"No use frettin' about it, anyhow," said he, in his matter-of-fact way.
+"And as to Tom Osby, fellers, I'll bet a plug of tobacco that's him
+pullin' in at the head of town right now."
+
+"Just like I said," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "He's good enough
+railroad for any one, and he's safe!  I wonder what did he bring this
+time."
+
+What Tom Osby brought this time, besides sundry merchandise for
+Whiteman the Jew, was a parrot and a pair of twins.  Neither of these
+specialties had ever before been seen in Heart's Desire.
+
+"Twins!" exclaimed Dan Anderson, when the facts were divulged, "and a
+parrot!"
+
+Tom Osby, after making known the full nature of his cargo, discharged
+divers boxes, bales, and other packages at the store of Whiteman the
+Jew.  The parrot was not disposed to wait for the close of these
+formalities.  From under the white cover of the wagon there came sounds
+of profane speech.  Tom Osby paused and filled his pipe.  "Him?" said
+he, jerking his head toward the cover, as he scratched a match on the
+side of the wagon seat.  "He's a shore peach.  Talked to me all the way
+from Vegas down."
+
+"Quork!" said the parrot.  "Look out!  Look out!  Brrrrrrrr--awk--awk!
+Quork!"
+
+"I told you so," said Tom.
+
+"Oh, dang it, I'm tired!" continued the bird.
+
+"This," remarked Dan Anderson, "seems to be a cultivated gentleman.
+But how about the twins?  Where are they?  And might we--er--ask whose
+are they?"
+
+"Them?" said Tom.  "Why, they're for Curly.  They're asleep down under
+the seat here.  Now, between the parrot and them twins, my trip down
+ain't been any lonesome to speak of."
+
+All eyes were turned on Curly, the newly wedded cow puncher, who
+blushed a bright brick red to the roots of his hair.  "Wh--where did
+they come from?" stammered he.
+
+"I presume, Curly," said Dan Anderson, gravely, "like enough they came
+from somewhere over on the Brazos, your earlier home.  Why didn't you
+tell us you were a married man?"
+
+"I ain't--I never was!" cried Curly, hotly.  "I never did have no twins
+nowhere.  Where'd you git 'em, Tom?"
+
+The freighter threw his leg across the seat.  "Oh, they're yours all
+right, I reckon, Curly," said he.  "Mother's dead.  No relations.  They
+come from Kansas, where all the twins comes from.  I found 'em waitin'
+up there in Vegas, billed through to you.  Both dead broke, both plumb
+happy, and airy one of 'em worth its weight in gold.  Its name is
+Susabella and Aryann, or somethin' like that.  Shall I wake it up?
+It's both alike."
+
+"Now, why, my woman's folks," began Curly, "up there in Kansas--I
+reckon maybe _that's_ how it happened!  She had a sister done married
+a Baptis' preacher, onct.  Say, now, I bet a horse that's right how
+this here happened.  Say, they was so pore they didn't have enough to
+eat."
+
+"Letter come with 'em," said Tom, taking out a handful of tobacco from
+his pocket with the missive.  "I reckon, that explains it, I wouldn't
+take a thousand dollars for 'em if they was mine.  Here, you kids, get
+out of there and come and see the nice gentlemen.  Here they are,
+fellers."
+
+He haled forth from beneath the wagon cover two solemn-eyed and sleepy
+little girls, perhaps five years of age, and of so close a personal
+resemblance to each other as impressed all as uncanny.  The four men
+stepped to the wagon side, and in silence gazed at the curly-headed
+pair, who looked back, equally silent, upon the strange group
+confronting them.  At length the twins buried their faces in Tom Osby's
+overalls.
+
+"Look here, friend," said Tom Osby to Curly, with asperity, "if you
+don't want these here twins, why, I'll take 'em off your hands mighty
+damn quick.  They're corral broke and right well gentled now, half good
+stock anyway, and is due to be right free steppers.  If you don't want
+'em, they're mine for the board bill."
+
+But Curly stepped up and laid an awkward hand on the head of each of
+the twins.  "Fellers," said he, "I ain't got a whole lot of experience
+in this here twin game, but this goes.  These here twins is mine.  This
+is some sudden, but I expect it'll tickle the little woman about half
+to death.  I reckon I can get enough for 'em all to eat, somehow."
+
+McKinney looked at him with anger in his gaze.  "I told you, Curly," he
+reminded the cow puncher with undue emphasis, "that you was drawin' ten
+extry from day before yestiday.  I reckon the stockholders can stand
+that."
+
+"That'll make it about break even," Curly answered simply.
+
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, "if either of them twins should need any
+drugs--"
+
+"Drugs!" snorted Dan Anderson.  "What would they want with drugs?
+After they've run around in here for two weeks, you couldn't kill 'em
+with an axe.  If the coyotes don't catch 'em, there's nothing else can
+happen to 'em."
+
+"I'll give you about eight dollars for the green canary, Tom," said Doc
+Tomlinson.  "I want to hang him in my store."
+
+"But I want to hang him in my wagon," objected Tom Osby.  "He's
+company.  You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town."  His
+voice was plaintive.
+
+"The court rules," observed Dan Anderson, judicially, "that the parrot
+goes with the twins."  And it was finally so decided by the referendum.
+Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common
+carrier, drove off with Curly across the _arroyo_ in search of a new
+mother for the twins.
+
+The Littlest Girl, Curly's wife, read the letter which Tom offered.
+Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the
+Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood
+at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby's
+hand.
+
+"Babies!" cried she.  "You poor little babies!  Oh!"  And so she
+gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly
+head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter
+on his wagon seat.  Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across
+the _arroyo_.  Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart's Desire
+became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.
+
+Within a few weeks the parrot and the twins had so firmly established
+themselves in the social system of the place as to become matters of
+regular conversation.  Curly never appeared at the forum of Whiteman's
+corral without finding himself the recipient of many queries.
+
+"Why, them twins," he replied one day, "they're in full charge of the
+_rodeo_.  They've got me and the woman hobbled, hitched, and
+side-lined for keeps.  Dead heat between them and Bill, the parrot.
+They're in on all the plays together.  Wherever they go, he's right
+after 'em, and he night-and-day-herds 'em closer'n a Mexican shepherd
+dog does a bunch of sheep.  Now, I blew in last night, intoe their
+room, and there was old Bill, settin' on the foot of the bed, watchin'
+of 'em, them fast asleep.  'Too late now,' says he to me.  'Too late.
+All over now!' I didn't know what he meant till I looked under the
+bedclothes; and there was a pan full of ginger cakes the woman had made
+for the fam'ly.  You needn't tell me a parrot can't think."
+
+"It would seem," said Dan Anderson, meditatively, "that we may report
+progress in civilization."
+
+"But say, fellers," remarked Curly, taking off his hat and scratching
+his head perplexedly, "sometimes I wish Bill was a chicken hawk instead
+of a talker.  There is rats, or mice, or something, got into this
+valley at last."
+
+"Do you want any drugs?" asked Doc Tomlinson, suddenly.
+
+"No, not yet," Curly shook his head.  "Never did see airy rat or mouse
+round here, but still, things is happenin' that looks right strange.
+
+"It's this-a-way, fellers," he continued, "--set down here and let me
+tell you."  So they all sat down and leaned back against the fence of
+Whiteman's corral.
+
+"Last Christmas," Curly began at the beginning, "why, you see, my girl,
+she got a Christmas present from some of her folks back in Kansas, in
+the States.  It was a pair of candy legs."
+
+"What's that, Curly?" said Dan Anderson, half sitting up.
+
+"Legs," said Curly, "made out of candy, about so long, or maybe a
+little longer.  Red, and white, and blue--all made out of candy, you
+know.  Shoes on the feet, buckles on the shoes, and heels.  Sort of
+frill around on top.  The feller that made them things could shore do
+candy a-plenty.  They was too pretty to eat up, so the little woman,
+she done put 'em in the parlor,--on the table like, in the middle of
+the floor; tied 'em together with a blue ribbon and left 'em there.
+Now, you all know right well that's the only pair of candy legs in
+Heart's Desire."
+
+"That's legitimate distinction, Curly," Dan Anderson decided.  "It
+entitles your family to social prominence."
+
+"Oh, we wasn't stuck up none over that," laughed Curly, modestly, "but
+we always felt kind of comfortable, thinkin' them there legs was right
+there on the parlor table in the other room.  You can't help feelin'
+good to have some little ornyment like that around the place, you know,
+special if there's women around.  But now, fellers, what I was goin' to
+say is, there's mice, or rats, got in on this range some how, and
+they--"
+
+"Why didn't you put 'em in a box?" asked McKinney, severely.  "You
+ain't got sense enough to know the difference between a hair rope and a
+can of California apricots."
+
+"Put 'em in a box?" cried Curly.  "Why?  Them was _ornyments_!  Now
+you ain't got a ornyment on your whole place, except a horned toad and
+four tarantulas in a teacup.  Now a real ornyment is somethin' you put
+on the parlor table, man, and show it free and open.  It's sort of
+sacred like."
+
+"Not for rats," said McKinney.
+
+"You'd better keep your eye on that parrot," warned Doc Tomlinson.
+"About to-morrow, you tell us what you find out."
+
+But on the morrow the mystery remained unsolved.  "One heel's plumb
+gone," said Curly, sighing.  "And they've begun on the toe of the other
+foot."
+
+Bill, the parrot, remained under increasing suspicion.  "He's got a
+wall eye," said McKinney, "and I never seen a wall eye in a man, woman,
+or mustang, that it didn't mean bad.  This here bird ain't no Hereford,
+nor yet a short-horn.  He's a dogy that ain't bred right, and he ain't
+due to act right."  All Curly could do was to shake his head,
+unpersuaded.
+
+Meantime, there went on in the little cabin across the _arroyo_, a
+reproduction of an old, old drama.  Should we, after all, criticise
+these two descendants of the first sweet human woman of the world?
+Consider; to their young and inexperienced eyes appealed all the
+fascinations of this august but tempting object, new, strange,
+appealing.  For a time their hearts were strong, upon their souls
+rested the ancient mandate of denial.  They gazed, short breathed, in
+awe, upon this radiantly bestriped, unspeakably fascinating, wholly and
+resplendently pulchritudinous creation.  They must have known that it
+was a part of the family pride, a part of the parlor--a part, indeed,
+of the intermingled fabric of the civilization of Heart's Desire!  And
+yet--alas!
+
+One morning the twins foregathered in the parlor.  The hour of
+temptation, as is always the case, found all things well ordered for
+the success of evil.
+
+"Everybody's gone," whispered Suzanne.  "There ain't nobody here at
+all."
+
+"Only Bill," said Arabella, looking at the parrot, which regarded them
+with a badly bored aspect.  "I wonder if he'd tell?"
+
+"Oh, dang it all!" remarked Bill; "I'm tired!"
+
+"He's awful," remarked Arabella.  "He swears.  Folks that swears goes
+to the bad place.  Besides, Bill wouldn't tell, would you, Bill?"
+
+"He'll go to sleep," said Suzanne.  "Besides, we ain't goin' to bite
+off only just a little _bit_ of a _bite_!  Nobody'll never notice it."
+
+Twofold Eve edged up to the centre table.  "You first," said Arabella.
+
+"No, you."
+
+"You first," insisted Arabella.  "I'm afraid.  Bill, he's lookin'."
+
+"I ain't afraid," Suzanne asserted boldly, and stretched out her hand.
+
+That was the time when the first heel disappeared.  Even as Suzanne's
+white teeth closed upon it, the parrot gave a vast screech of
+disapproval.  "Quork!" cried he.  "Look out!  Look out!"  At which
+warning both the twins fled precipitately underneath the bed; whence
+presently their heads peered out, with wide and frightened eyes.
+
+"I didn't have my bite," whimpered Arabella.
+
+"It's only Bill!"  Suzanne was disgusted with herself for running.
+"Come on.  Who's afraid?"  Arabella chose the toe of the other foot.
+
+Thus it was that temptation, at first insidious, at length
+irresistible, had its way.  The lustre paled and dimmed on one gaudily
+bepainted leg.  The remaining heel disappeared.  A slight nick became
+visible on the cap of the right knee.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" said Curly, scratching his head, as he observed
+these developments.
+
+"So'll I," remarked Bill, in frank friendship.  "Ha!  Ha!"
+
+Curly looked at him pugnaciously for a moment.  "For one cent, Bill,"
+said he, "I'd wring your cussed green neck for you.  I'll bet a hundred
+you're the feller that's been a-doin' all this devilment.  Here
+you,--Susy--Airey,--have you seen Bill a-eatin' the ornyment?"  Both
+the young ladies solemnly and truthfully declared that they had never
+noticed any such thing; and pointed out that parrots, in their belief,
+did not eat candy.
+
+The next day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further.
+Only Bill was present when Arabella broke out into tears.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked stout-hearted Suzanne.
+
+"Why, we--we--we--can't eat it but _once_," mourned Arabella.
+"Now--now--now it's most _gone_!  OO--oo--oo!"
+
+"It's good," said Suzanne.
+
+"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.
+
+Suzanne evaded this question.  "How can we _help_ it, when it looks so
+pretty, and tastes so good?  They ought to put 'em in a _box_.  I
+c-c-can't help it!"  And now tears broke from her eyes also.  They
+leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept.  But even as
+they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table,
+reached out toward the disfigured remnant.  A week later the last bite
+was taken.  The parlor table was bare and vacant.  Heart's Desire, in
+all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!
+
+That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of
+Whiteman's corral.  "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he,
+gloomily.  "The finish ain't far off.  You all come on over across the
+_arroyo_ with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing
+happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."
+
+It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and
+Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the _arroyo_.  They found
+Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in aprons full of piņon
+chips for the kitchen stove.
+
+The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one
+in Heart's Desire.  The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of
+the other room was swept clean, spick and span.  A chair stood exactly
+against the wall.  The parlor table--ah, appalling spectacle! the
+parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any
+sort whatever!
+
+"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!"  His hand instinctively
+reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the
+parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.
+
+"All over now!" remarked Bill.  "All over!  Too late!  Quork!"
+
+"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person.  We
+got to look in his teeth."
+
+"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson.  "He hasn't got any teeth."  The
+entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon
+them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his
+honor.
+
+Dan Anderson, his hands in his pockets, turned and strolled alone into
+the other room, and thence out of the door into the sunlight, where the
+twins were still continuing their unwonted industry at the chip pile.
+He stood and looked at them, saying no word, but with a certain smile
+on his face.  A corner of each apron fell down, spilling the chips upon
+the ground.  The other hand of each twin was raised as though to wipe a
+furtive tear.  Dan Andersen put out his arms to them.
+
+"Come here, little women," he said softly, and took them in his arms.
+One chubby face rested against each side of his own.  His long arms
+tightened around them protectingly.  Tears now began to wet his cheeks,
+falling from the eyes of the twins.
+
+"You--you won't tell?" whispered Suzanne, in his right ear, and
+Arabella begged as much upon the left.
+
+"No," said Dan Anderson, hugging them the tighter, "I won't tell."
+
+"It's gone!" said Suzanne, vaguely.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's gone."  He turned at the sound of
+voices.  Curly appeared at the door, carrying in his hand a limp,
+bedraggled figure.
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "I take to be the remains of our late friend
+Bill, the parrot.  What made you, Curly?"
+
+"Well," said Curly, defensively, as he held the body of Bill suspended
+by the head between two fingers, "I was lookin' for his teeth, to see
+if he had any candy in 'em, and he bit my finger nigh about off.  So I
+just wrung his neck.  Do you reckon he'd be good fried?"
+
+"He'd like enough be tolerable tough," said McKinney.  "Them parrots
+gets shore old."
+
+"You ought to have some drugs to tan his hide," Doc Tomlinson
+volunteered hopefully.  "It'd be right stylish on a hat."
+
+Dan Anderson gazed at Curly with reproach in his eyes.  "Now, I just
+wrung his neck," repeated the latter, protesting.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "and you've wrung the wrong neck.  Bill was
+innocent."
+
+"Then who done et the legs?"
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "brings me again to the position which I
+enunciated this morning.  In these modern days of engineers, mining
+companies, parrots, and twins, the structure of our civilization is so
+complex as to require the services of a highly intelligent corporation
+counsel.  You ask who ate the candy ornament, representation, or image
+formerly existent on your premises.  I reply that in all likelihood it
+was done by a corporation; but these matters must appear in court at a
+later time."
+
+"Well," said McKinney, "it looks like the joke was on us."
+
+Dan Anderson smiled gravely.  "In the opinion of myself and the
+consolidation which I represent," said he, and he hugged the twins, who
+looked down frightened from his arms, "the joke is on Bill, the
+prisoner at the bar."
+
+The group would have separated, had it not been for a sudden
+exclamation from Curly.  "Ouch!" cried that worthy, and cast from him
+the body of Bill.  supposedly defunct.  "He bit me again, blame him!"
+said Curly, sucking his thumb.
+
+"If he bit you for true," said McKinney, who was of a practical turn of
+mind, "like enough he ain't been dead at all."
+
+Corroboration was not lacking.  The prisoner at the bar, thrown
+violently upon the ground, now sat up, half leaning against a pinon
+log, and contemplated those present with a cynical and unfriendly gray
+eye.
+
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, regarding him, "you get him a few drugs, and
+he'll be just as good as new, right soon."
+
+"All I got to say," grumbled Curly, "is, for a thing that ain't got no
+teeth, and that's dead, both, he can bite a leetle the hardest of
+anything I ever did see."
+
+"Yet it is strange," remarked Dan Anderson, "that the innocent
+bystander should sit up and take notice, after all.  How are you
+feeling, friend?"
+
+This to Bill, who was now faintly fanning a wing and ruffling up his
+yellow crest.
+
+"I'm mighty tired," said Bill.
+
+"I don't blame you," remarked Dan Anderson, cheerfully, turning to put
+down Suzanne and Arabella safe within the door, "but as corporation
+counsel I am bound to protect the interests of my clients.  Run, you
+kids!
+
+"As to you, Curly," he continued, "you represent, in your ignorance,
+ourselves and all Heart's Desire.  We have intrusted to us a candy
+palladium of liberty, which, being interpreted, means a man's chance to
+be a grown man, with whiskers, in a free state of Heart's Desire.  What
+do we do then?  Ask in a railroad corporation, and shut our eyes!"
+
+"And a corporation," said Curly, meditatively, "can be a shore cheerful
+performer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and other Pastimes_
+
+"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot.  Hurry up," said McKinney, who was
+nervous.
+
+"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former.  "This here croquet is
+a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin'
+to be hurried none."
+
+"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson.
+"Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here
+balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace
+to civilization."
+
+"_Pronto_!  _Pronto_!  Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch
+on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was
+probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and
+Rio Grande rivers.  There were certain features of the contest in
+question which were perhaps not usual.  Indeed, I do not recall ever to
+have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high
+contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls
+and blue shirts.  But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed,
+with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly
+between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the
+other.
+
+"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for
+arguments of counsel.  Curly, you are a disgrace.  You and McKinney
+ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of
+savvy.  Can't you hit that stake?"
+
+"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly.  "I
+ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me.
+If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over
+Carrizy Mountain that last carrom.  You watch me when onct I get the
+hang of this thing."
+
+"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney.  "A cow puncher
+ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."
+
+"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly.  "Now you change
+around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you
+to a finish.  Bet you three _pesos_.  Of course, I can't play this
+thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot.  I wonder what my mammy'd
+say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little
+wooden tack hammer."
+
+"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an
+advertisement," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flushing.
+
+"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson.  "I didn't figure on what
+it might do to our mortality tables.  You fellows can't play the game
+wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns
+on.  Here, all of you, come over here.  The umpire decides that you've
+got to check your guns during the game.  I don't mind bein' umpire in
+the ancient and honorable game of croquet, but I ain't goin' to assume
+no unpaid obligations as coroner."
+
+[Illustration: "'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns
+during the game.'"]
+
+With some protests all those engaged handed their belts to Dan
+Anderson, who casually flung them over a projecting cedar limb of the
+fence.  "For shame!  Curly," said he.  "Talk about tenderfeet!  Here
+you are, wearin' a pearl handle on your gun, just like a cheap Nebraska
+sheepherder with social ambitions.  I thought you was a real cowman.
+The court fines you--"
+
+"It ain't my fault," said Curly, blushing.  "The girl--the little
+woman--that's my wife--she done that last Christmas.  She allowed it
+was fine--and it goes."
+
+"Yes, and put enough money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet
+set for the family.  Ain't that awful!  All this comes of takin' a
+daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns.
+We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down in
+here."
+
+"That's so," said McKinney, scratching his head.  "Times is changin'.
+That reminds me, I ordered a new suit of clothes by mail from
+Philadelphy, and they ought to be just about due when Tom Osby comes
+down; and that ought to be to-day."
+
+"That's so," assented Doc Tomlinson.  "He's got a little bill of goods
+for me, too."
+
+"Oh, why, oh, why this profligacy, Doc?" said Dan Anderson.  "Didn't
+you order two pounds of alum the last trip Tom made?  What do you want
+of so many drugs, anyhow?"
+
+"Hush, fellers," said Curly.  "Listen a minute!"
+
+Curly's ears had detected the rattle of distant wagon wheels.  "That's
+Tom comin' now," said he.  "He's a heap more regular than the Socorro
+stage.  That's him, because I can hear him singin'."
+
+"Tom, he's stuck on music," said McKinney.
+
+Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle
+coming down the caņon; and presently there was borne to our ears the
+sound of Tom Osby's voice in his favorite melody:--
+
+  "I never _lo-o-oved_ a fo-o-o-o-nd ga-a-a-z-elle!"
+
+He proclaimed this loudly.
+
+We knew that Tom would drive up to Whiteman's store, hence we waited
+for him near the corral fence.  As he approached and observed our
+occupation he arrested his salutations and gazed for a moment in silent
+meditation.
+
+"Prithee, sweet sirs," said he, at length, "what in blazes you doin'?"
+
+"These gentlemen," said Dan Anderson from the fence, "are engaged in
+showin' the endurin' quality of the Anglo-Saxon temperament.  Wherever
+the Saxon goes he sets up his own peculiar institutions.  What!  Shall
+New Mexico be behind New York, or New England?  This croquet set cost
+eighteen dollars to get here from Chicago.  Get down, Tom, you're in on
+the game."
+
+But Tom picked up his reins and clucked to his team.  "Excuse _me_,
+fellers," said he.  "That there looks too frisky for me.  I got to
+think of my business reputation."  He passed on up the street.
+
+"What's the matter with Tom?" asked Curly.  "Seems like he wasn't
+feelin' right cheerful, some way."  Dan Anderson gazed after the
+teamster pensively.
+
+"Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom," said he.  "Let's
+go find out what it is, fellows."  He disengaged the respective
+six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly
+clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman's commercial emporium, where Tom
+Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon.
+This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up
+to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was
+his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers's restaurant, but to
+his own adobe down the _arroyo_.  We looked at each other in silence.
+
+"Something on his mind," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"He didn't bring my clothes," said McKinney.
+
+"Nor my drugs," said Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"And yet," said Curly, who was observant, "he kep' one box in the
+wagon.  Couldn't see the brand, but she's there all right."
+
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, "you are appointed a committee of one to
+follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means."
+
+Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom
+Osby's adobe.  The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the
+wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under
+the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters.  He then began to
+search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was
+attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not
+determine.  With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another
+at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom
+Osby's team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher
+can command on foot.  When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled
+in a frown.
+
+"Fellers," said he.  "I didn't think it of him!  This here ain't right.
+Tom Osby's got a baby in there, and he's squeezin' the life out of it.
+Listen!  Come on now.  Do you hear that?  How's that?  Why, I tell
+you--why, dang _me_ if it ain't _singin'_!"
+
+There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody,
+thin, quavering, distant, weird.  As it rose upon the hot afternoon air
+it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible.  The spine of
+each man crawled.
+
+Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who
+maintained his self-possession.  He smiled gently.  "Now," said he, "we
+certainly are fixed; Heart's Desire ain't benighted any after this."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Curly questioned.
+
+"Poor cow puncher," replied Dan Anderson, "I have to do the thinkin'
+for you, and I ain't paid for it.  Who, if not the Learned Counsel on
+my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this
+community?  Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city?
+Who put up the electric lightin' and heatin' plant, and installed the
+forty-eight miles of continuous trolley track all under one transfer
+system?  Who built the courthouse and the red brick schoolhouse, with
+nine school-teachers fresh from Connecticut?  Who planned the new
+depot?  Who got a new leather lounge for the managin' editor of our
+daily newspaper?  Who built the three new smelters?  Who filled our
+busy streets each evenin' with throngs of happy-faced laborers pacin'
+home at night after four hours' pleasant work each day in our elegantly
+upholstered quartz mines?  Was it you, Curly, who made these different
+and several _pasears_ in progress?  Was it you, Doc, you benighted
+stray from the short-grass Kansas plains, where they can't raise Kafir
+corn?  Was it you, McKinney, you sour-dispositioned consumer of canned
+peas?  Nay, nay.  It was myself and my learned brother.  You ought to
+send us both to Congress."
+
+We gazed up the long, silent street of Heart's Desire, asleep in the
+all-satisfying sun, and it almost seemed to us that we could indeed see
+all these things that he had named.  The spell was broken by a renewal
+of the thin, high voice of this mysterious Thing in Tom Osby's house.
+
+"And now," resumed Dan Anderson, "as I remarked, havin' turned our
+hands to the stable things of life, and havin' builded well the
+structure of an endurin', permanent society, there remained for us no
+need save for the softenin' and refinin' touch of a higher culture.  We
+lacked nothing but Art.  Now, here she is!
+
+"What you're listenin' to, my countrymen, is music.  It ain't a baby,
+Curly.  Music, heavenly maid, is young in Heart's Desire, but it ain't
+any baby that you're listenin' to.  I told Tom Osby myself to look into
+the phonograph business some time if he got a chance.  Gentlemen, I now
+bid you follow me, to greet Art upon its arrival in our midst.  I must
+confess that Tom Osby is actin' like a blamed swine over this thing,
+tryin' to keep it all to himself."
+
+The phonograph inside the adobe switched from one tune to another.
+"Don't that sound like the Plaza Major in old Chihuahua by moonlight?"
+cried McKinney, as a swinging band march came squealing out through the
+door.  "That's a piece by a Mexican band.  Can't you hear the
+choo-choo, and the wee-wee, and the bum-bum?  They're all there, sure's
+you're born!"
+
+"If she plays 'La Paloma,' or that 'Golondrina' thing, I'm goin' to
+shoot," threatened Curly.  "I've done danced to them things at more'n a
+thousand _bailes_ here and in Texas, and if this is Art, she's got to
+do different."
+
+"Gentlemen," Dan Anderson suggested, "let us go in and watch Tom Osby
+gettin' his savage breast soothed."
+
+Tom Osby started as he saw shadows on the floor; but it was too late.
+He was discovered sitting on the bed, in rapt attention to the machine
+industriously grinding away upon the table.  Dan Anderson, with great
+gravity, took up a collection of four pins from each of the newcomers
+and handed them to Tom.  "No bent ones," said he.  "It's a good show;
+but, tell us, what are you doin'?  This is worse than croquet.  And we
+asked you in on our game, too.  Ain't you playin' it just a little bit
+lonesome this way?"
+
+Tom frowned in perturbation.  "Well, I was goin' to spring her on you
+about to-night, up at the Lone Star," said he; "but I couldn't wait.
+Ain't she a yaller flower?  Say, I played her every night from Vegas
+down for five nights--Pecos Crossin', Salt Wells, Maxwell's, Hocradle
+Caņon, Jack's Peak--all the way.  After I'd get my horses hobbled out
+and get my bed made down, I'd set her up on the front seat and turn her
+loose.  Coyotes--you'd ought to heard 'em!  When you wind her up plumb
+tight and turn the horn the right direction, you can hear her about a
+mile."
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "must have been a gladsome journey."
+
+"For sure," said Tom Osby.  "Look at the reecords--whole box of 'em.
+Some of the stylishest singers in the business are in here.  Some of
+'em's Dago, I reckon.  Here's one, 'Ah, no Ginger.'"
+
+"That, probably," said Dan Anderson, "is 'Ah, non Giunge.'  Yes, it's
+Dago, but not bad for a lady with a four-story voice."
+
+"Here's another," said Tom; "'Down Mobile.'"
+
+"I know that one," said Curly.
+
+"Let me see it," said the impresario in charge.  "Ah, as I thought;
+it's 'La Donna e Mobile.'  This, bein' translated, means that any lady
+can change her mind occasionally, whether she comes from Mobile or not."
+
+"That's no dream," said Curly.  "Onct on the Brazos--"
+
+"Never mind, Curly.  Just feed that 'Donna' into the machine, Tom, and
+let's hear how it sounds once more."
+
+And so Tom Osby, proud in his new possession, played for his audience,
+there in the adobe by the _arroyo_; played all his records, or nearly
+all; played them over and over again.  It was nearly night when we left
+the place.
+
+"Excuse me," said Dan Anderson to me, with a motion as though adjusting
+a cravat upon my neck, "but your white tie is slipping around under
+your ear again."  And as we walked, I was sure that I saw an opera hat
+under his arm, though sober reason convinced me that we both were
+wearing overalls, and not evening clothes.
+
+"But did you notice," said Curly, after a while, "Tom, he's holdin' out
+on us.  That there music, it's all tangled up in my hair."  He removed
+his hat and ran a questioning hand through the matted tangle on his
+curly front.  "But," he resumed, "there was one piece he didn't play.
+I seen him slip it under the blankets on the bed."
+
+"How could he!" said Dan Anderson.  But memories sufficient came
+trooping upon him to cause him to forget.  He fell to whistling "La
+Donna e Mobile" dreamily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie_
+
+The shadows of night had fallen when at length Tom Osby crept
+stealthily to his door and looked around.  The street seemed deserted
+and silent, as usual.  Tom Osby stepped to the side of the bed and
+withdrew from under the blankets the bit of gutta-percha which Curly
+had noticed him conceal.  He adjusted the record in the machine and
+sprung the catch.  Then he sat and listened, intent, absorbed,
+hearkening to the wonderful voice of one of the world's great
+contraltos.  It was an old, old melody she sang,--the song of "Annie
+Laurie."
+
+Tom Osby played it over again.  He sat and listened, as he had, night
+after night, in the moonlight on the long trail from Las Vegas down.
+The face of a strong and self-repressed man is difficult to read.  It
+does not change lightly under any passing emotion.  Tom Osby's face
+perhaps looked even harder than usual, as he sat there listening, his
+unlit pipe clenched hard between his hands.  Truant to his trusts,
+forgetful of the box of candy which regularly he brought down from
+Vegas to the Littlest Girl, Curly's wife; forgetful of many messages,
+commercial and social,--forgetful even of us, his sworn cronies,--Tom
+Osby sat and listened to a voice which sang of a Face that was the
+Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye.
+
+[Illustration: "A voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and
+of a Dark blue Eye."]
+
+The voice sang and sang again, until finally four conspirators once
+more approached Tom Osby's cabin.  He had forgotten his supper.  Dinner
+was done, in Heart's Desire, soon after noon.  Dan Anderson stood
+thoughtful for a time.
+
+"Let him alone, fellows," said he.  "I savvy.  That fellow's in love!
+He's in love with a Voice!  Ain't it awful?"
+
+Silence met this remark.  Dan Anderson seated himself on a stone, and
+we others followed his example, going into a committee of the whole,
+there in the night-time, on the bank of the _arroyo_.
+
+"Did you notice, Curly," asked Dan Anderson--"did you get a chance to
+see the name on the record of the singer who--who perpetrated this?"
+
+"No," said Curly.  "I couldn't get a clean look at the brand, owin' to
+Tom's cuttin' out the thing so sudden from the bunch.  It was somethin'
+like Doughnuts--"
+
+"Exactly--Madame Donatelli!  I thought I rather recognized that voice
+my own self."
+
+"Dago!" said McKinney with scorn.
+
+"By trainin', though not by birth," admitted Dan Anderson.  "Georgia
+girl originally, they tell me, and Dagoized proper, subsequent.  All
+Yankee girls have to be Dagoized before they can learn to sing right
+good and strong, you know.  They frequent learn a heap of things
+besides 'Annie Laurie'--and besides singin'.  Oh, I can see the Yankee
+Dago lady right now.  Fancy works installed in the roof of her mouth,
+adjacent and adjoinin' to her tongue, teeth, and other vocal outfit.
+
+"Now, this here Georgia girl, accordin' to all stories, has sung
+herself into about a quarter of a million dollars and four or five
+different husbands with that voice of hers; and that same 'Annie
+Laurie' song was largely responsible.  Now, why, _why_, couldn't she
+have taken a fellow of her size, and not gone and made trouble for Tom
+Osby?  It wasn't fair play.
+
+"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn.  What
+does he see?  Madame Donatelli?  Does he see her show her teeth and bat
+her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers?
+Nay, nay.  What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know--"
+
+"Whoa!  Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney.  "This
+country's just as good as--"
+
+"No, let him go on," said Curly to McKinney.  "Onct over on the
+Brazos--"
+
+"Sometimes I think you fellows are inclined to be provincial," said Dan
+Anderson, calmly.  "Now, I'm not goin' to talk if you don't leave me
+alone.  Listen.  What does Tom Osby see in that horn that he's lookin'
+into?  I'll tell you.  He sees a plumb angel in white clothes and a
+blue sash.  She's got gray eyes and brown hair, and she's just a little
+bit shorter than will go right under my arm here when I stretch it out
+level."
+
+"That's about right!" said McKinney.
+
+"She's got on white," resumed Dan Anderson, casting a glance about him
+in the dusk of the evening.  "The girl's got to have on white.  There
+ain't no man can hold out when they come in white and have on a blue
+sash--it's no use tryin' then.
+
+"Now, there she is, a-settin' at the piano in there in the front
+parlor; daddy's gone out into the country after a load of wood, like
+enough; old lady's gone to bed, after a hard day's labor.  Honeysuckles
+bloomin' all around, because in New Jersey--"
+
+"It wasn't in New Jersey," said Learned Counsel, hastily, before he
+thought.
+
+"No, it was in New York," said McKinney, boldly.
+
+"You're all liars," said Curly, calmly; "it was onct on the Brazos."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Dan Anderson, "you are right.  It was once on the
+Brazos, and in Iowa, and in New York, and in New Jersey, and in
+Georgia.  Thank God, it was there, once upon a time, in all those
+places. . . .  And, as I was sayin', the birds was just twitterin' in
+the evergreen trees along the front walk, some sleepy, because it was
+just gettin' right dark.  Vines, you know, hangin' over the edge of the
+front porch, like.  Few chairs settin' around on the porch.  Just a
+little band of moonlight layin' there on the front steps, leadin' up
+like a heavenly walk, like a white path to Paradise--which was there in
+the front parlor, with the best angel there at home.
+
+"The high angel of this here Heaven, like I told you, she's a settin'
+there in white," he went on; "and with a blue sash--it was blue, now,
+wasn't it, fellows?  And she's lettin' her fingers, God bless 'em, just
+tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la, up and down the keys of the piano her
+dad gave her when she graduated.  And now she's sort of singin' to
+herself--half whisperin', soft and deep--I hate a thin-voiced woman, or
+a bad-tempered one, same as you do--she's just singin' about as loud as
+you can hear easy down as far as the front gate.  And--why, she's a
+singin' that same tune there, of 'Annie Laurie'! . . .  And in your
+heart you know it's true, every word of it, all the time, and at any
+station!" said Dan Anderson.
+
+"At any station!" said Curly.
+
+"At any station!" said McKinney,
+
+"At any station!" said Learned Counsel.
+
+There were no hats on at that moment.  To be sure, the evening air was
+a trifle warm.
+
+"And now," said Dan Anderson, after a while, "it's got Tom.  Now, why
+couldn't it have been a man-Dago to sing that air into the tuneful horn
+of the mechanical heavenly maid yonder?  No reason, only it's got to be
+a woman to sing that man's song of 'Annie Laurie.'  A man couldn't any
+more sing 'Annie Laurie' than you could make cocktails without bitters.
+The only way we can get either one of them here is in bulk, which we
+have done.  It's canned Art, that's all.  Owin' to our present
+transportation facilities, everything has to come here in cans."
+
+Dan Anderson arose and stretched out his arm.  "Gentlemen," said he, "I
+present to you Art!"  He raised before him an imaginary glass, which we
+all saw plainly.  "I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored
+combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it.
+Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art!  We are not quite provincial.  Listen
+at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . .  Shoot him up,
+boys!" he cried suddenly.  "I'm damned if I'm going to look all my days
+on the picture of a girl in a blue sash!  The chief end of man is to
+witness an ecru coyote and a few absolute human failures like you and
+me.  Down with the heavenly maid!  Shoot him up!  He's a destroyer of
+the peace!"
+
+So we shot up Tom's adobe for a time, joyously peppering the thick
+walls, until at length that worthy came out annoyed, a phonograph
+record in one hand and a gun in the other.
+
+"Don't, fellers," said he.  "You might break something."
+
+"Come out," said Dan Anderson.  "Not even grand opera lasts all night.
+Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant.  Come on.  Get ready
+to play croquet to-morrow.  It's safer."
+
+And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening.  Our
+little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson turned in at the post-office to see if the daily
+paper from El Paso had come in that month.
+
+It was something that Dan Anderson saw in the daily paper that caused
+him on the following day to lead Tom Osby aside.  "Did you know, Tom,"
+said he, "that that opera singer you've got in your box, the 'Annie
+Laurie' artist, is goin' to be down in this part of the world before
+long?"
+
+"I never _loved_ a fo-o-o-nd ga-aze-ll-lle!" began Tom Osby,
+defensively.
+
+"Well, it's true."
+
+"What are you tellin' me?" said Tom, scornfully.  "Comin' down here?
+Why, don't it say that them things is all sung by _artists_?"
+
+"So they are."
+
+"Well, now, a artist," said Tom Osby argumentatively, "ain't never
+comin' within a thousand miles of this here country.  Besides, a
+_artist_ is somebody that's _dead_."
+
+"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson.  "You've got to be
+dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art,
+of course.  It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will
+be just what it is to-day.  That's Art.  But I'm tellin' you the truth,
+Tom.  The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day.  She
+belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the
+name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life,
+but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything
+but boiled continuous.
+
+"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season.  They
+are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a
+moment, to catch a little of their financial breath.  The Southern
+Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad
+fares.  Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on
+the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the
+idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to
+sidetrack his whole _rodeo_ for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at
+the Sky Top hotel,--that new railroad health resort some Yankees have
+just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure
+in livin'."
+
+"How do you know _she'll_ be there?" asked Tom.
+
+"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it.  They
+think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both
+happy.  And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be
+down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."
+
+Tom Osby was silent.  The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a
+hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail.  "It ain't so," said Tom,
+at length.  "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso.  The
+dust's a fright."
+
+"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson.  "Now, the bull-ring over at
+Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera--especially for
+'Carmen'--which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight,
+anyway.  Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over
+there.  I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim
+smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension.  If
+Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso.
+He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.
+
+"But now," resumed he, "after they get done at El Paso, whatever they
+sing, the grub wagon will be located in the Sacramentos, while old
+Blauring, he goes on in advance and rides a little sign out near
+'Frisco and other places, where Art is patronized copious.  Yes,
+friend, 'Annie Laurie,' she'll be up in Sacramentos; and from all I can
+figure, there'll be trouble in that particular health resort."
+
+"Sometimes I think you're _loco_," said Tom Osby, slowly; "then again I
+think you ain't, quite.  The man who allows he's any better than this
+country don't belong here; but I didn't think you ever did."
+
+"No!" cried Dan Anderson.  "Don't ever say that of me."
+
+"Of course, I know folks is different," went on Tom Osby, presently.
+"They come from different places, and have lived different ways.  Me, I
+come from Georgy.  I never did have much chanct for edication, along of
+the war breakin' out.  My folks was in the fightin' some; and so I
+drifted here,"
+
+"You came from Georgia?" asked Dan Anderson.  "I was born farther
+north.  I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in
+all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart's Desire.
+The only real friends I ever had are here.
+
+"Now," he went on, "it's because I feel that way, and because you're
+going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next
+week to see if you can get a look at that 'Annie Laurie' woman--it's
+because of those things that I want to help you if I can.  And that's
+the truth--or something resemblin' it, maybe.
+
+"Now listen, Tom.  Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she's not dead.
+She was a Georgia girl herself--Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she
+had naturally a wonderful voice.  She went to Paris and Italy to study
+long before I came out West.  She first sang in Milan, and her
+appearance was a big success.  She's made thousands and thousands of
+dollars."
+
+"About how old is she?" asked Tom Osby.
+
+"I should think about thirty-five," said Dan Anderson.  "That is,
+countin' years, and not experience."
+
+"I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both."
+
+"Well, she came from Georgia--"
+
+"And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually.
+
+Dan Anderson was troubled.  His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's.
+
+"It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far."
+
+"I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly
+understanding.  "I can make it in less'n a week."
+
+"Tom," cried Dan Anderson, "don't!"
+
+But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never
+formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a
+country which held real men.
+
+"Do you know, Dan," said he, "if I could just onct in my life hear that
+there song right out--herself singin', words and all--fiddles, like
+enough; maybe a pianny, too--if I could just hear that!  If I _could_
+just hear--_that_!"
+
+"Tom!"
+
+They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke.  "There is
+some folks," said he, "that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of
+the folks that can't do things for keeps.  Some fellers has to just
+drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else
+common and useful--world's sort of fixed up that way, I reckon.  But
+folks that can do things for _keeps_--I reckon they're right proud,
+like."
+
+"Not if they really do the things that keep.  That sort ain't proud,"
+said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Now, I can just see her a-settin' there," went on the freighter.  "It
+sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around."
+
+"She was maybe standin' up."
+
+"She was a-settin' there," said Tom Osby, frowning; "right there at the
+pianny herself.  Can't you see her?  Don't you ever sort of imagine
+things yourself, man?"
+
+"God forbid!" said Dan Anderson.  "No, I can't imagine things.  That's
+fatal--I try to forget things."
+
+"Well," said Tom Osby, "I reckon I've been imaginin' things.  Now,
+there she's settin', right at the pianny, and sort of lettin' her
+fingers run up and down--"
+
+"Tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la?" said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Sure.  That's just it.  Tra-la-la-loo, loo-la-la-la, up and down the
+whole shootin' match.  And she sings!  Now what does she sing?  That
+song about Gingerbread?  That Mobile song?  No, not none.  It's 'Annie
+Laurie' she sings, man, it's 'Annie Laurie'!  Now, I freighted to El
+Paso before the railroad, and I know them boys.  They'll tear up the
+house."
+
+"She'll be wearin' black lace and diamonds," said Dan Anderson,
+irrelevantly; "and when she breathes she'll swell up like a toy
+balloon.  She'll bat her eyes.  They got to do those things."
+
+"Man," said Tom Osby, "there's times when I don't like you."
+
+"Well, then, cut out the lace.  I'll even leave off the diamonds."
+
+"She's settin' right there," said Tom Osby, wagging his forefinger,
+"and she's dressed in white--"
+
+"With a blue sash--"
+
+"Sure!  And she sings!  And it's 'Annie Laurie'!  And because I want my
+own share of things that's for keeps, though I ain't one of the sort
+that can do things for keeps, why, I want--why, you see--"
+
+"Yes, Tom," said Dan Anderson, gently, "I see.  Now, as you said, it's
+only a few days' drive, after all.  I'm goin' along with you.  There's
+watermelons near there--"
+
+"You _are loco_!"
+
+"Not yet," said his friend.  "I only meant to point out that the best
+melons these embalmed Greasers raise in their little tablecloth farmin'
+operations is right down there in the valley at the foot of the
+Sacramentos.  Now, you may have noticed that sometimes a fellow ought
+to cover up his tracks.  What's to hinder you and me just takin' a
+little _pasear_ down in toward the Sacramentos, on the southeast side,
+after a load of melons?  They're better than cactus for the boys here.
+That's straight merchandisin', and, besides, it's Art.  And--well, I
+think that's the best way.
+
+"We don't all of us always get our share, Tom," resumed Dan Anderson;
+"we don't always get our share of the things that are for keeps; but
+it's the right of every man to try.  Every once in a while, by just
+tryin' and pluggin' along on the dead square, a fellow gets something
+which turns out in the clean-up to be the sort that was for keeps,
+after all, even if it wasn't just what he thought he wanted."
+
+"Then you'll go along?"
+
+"_Si, amigo_!  Yes, I'll go along."
+
+They parted, Dan Anderson to seek his own lonely adobe.  There he
+closed the door, as though he feared intrusion.  The old restlessness
+coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room.
+Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and
+stood looking into it intently.  "Fool!" he muttered.  "Liar, and fool,
+and coward--you, you!  You'll take care of Tom, will you?  But who'll
+take care of _you_?"
+
+He seated himself on the blanketed bed, and picked up the newspaper
+which he had brought home with him.  He gazed long and steadily at it
+before he tore it across and flung it on the floor.  It held more news
+than he had given to Tom Osby.  In brief, there was a paragraph which
+announced the arrival in town of Mr. John Ellsworth, President of the
+new A. P. and S. E. Railway, his legal counsel, Mr. Porter Barkley,
+also of New York, and Miss Constance Ellsworth.  This party was bound
+for Sky Top, where business of importance would in all likelihood be
+transacted, as Mr. Ellsworth expected to meet there the engineers on
+the location of the road.
+
+"I ought not to go," said Dan Anderson to himself, over and over again.
+"I _must_ not go . . .  But I'm going!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with a
+Side-tracked Star_
+
+Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top,
+by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hills
+of the Sacramentos.  The silence was unbroken by any music from the
+"heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did the
+two occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from the
+reticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent,
+and mountains ever looking down.  The team of gnarled gray horses kept
+on their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouac
+after bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piled
+up at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tiny
+circle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire.  At last
+the line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavily
+timbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountain
+caņons.
+
+"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the country
+of old.  "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've built
+their fool log hotel.  It beats the dickens how these States folks,
+that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way of
+livin'.  Why didn't they build it out of boards?  They've got a
+saw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in these
+mountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with.  Folks
+that builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain't
+got no boards.  But these States folks always was singerler."
+
+By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwing
+out the blanket rolls upon the ground.  "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie'
+machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattling
+of brass against the wagon box.  But his companion heeded him little,
+casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great horn
+swung wide, disconsolately.
+
+"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'.  It ain't the
+real thing.
+
+"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to do
+like you said you would.  Of course, I know melons don't grow up here
+in the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you was
+comin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
+
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.  "Wait," said he; "it'll be night
+before long.  Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around a
+little.  If you get scared, come back, and I'll--I'll take care of you.
+I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right on
+in alone, you know.  Tell her you know her preserved songs, and liked
+them so much you just had to come down here.  Tell her about the
+watermelons.  Tell her--"
+
+"You're actin' a _leetle_ nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby,
+keenly.  "But you watch Papa.  I been married four times, or maybe
+five, so what's a woman here or there to me?  What is there to any
+woman to scare a feller, anyway?"
+
+"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;--"there isn't--of course
+there isn't, of course not.  You're perfectly safe.  Why, just go right
+on up.  Have your sand along!"
+
+"Sure," said Tom Osby.  "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trail
+after a while."
+
+And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on
+the wagon tongue.  "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back.
+"If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and
+view the remains."
+
+Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat
+dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top.
+She was in effect a prisoner.  El Paso seemed like a dream, San
+Francisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spot
+upon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space.
+She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face that
+which boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
+
+The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor.  Unhappy Peruchini!  He
+started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep
+cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now
+resumed.
+
+"How dare you!" cried the _diva_.  "How dare you intrude on me?"
+
+"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini.  "What service is zere here?  I
+knock, but you do not hear.  Madame, what horror is zis place!"
+
+"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage.  "The beast!
+How dare he bring me here--_me_!" (she smote her bosom)--"who have
+sung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent--in Italy, Paris,
+London, St. Petersburg!  I shall not survive this!"
+
+"_Perfide_!" cried Peruchini, in assent.  "_Perfide_!  R-r-rascal!
+_Cochon_!  Pig unspikkab'!"
+
+"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for
+the scene.  "Behole!  It is I who have lofe you so long.  To lofe--ah,
+it is so divine!  How can you riffuse?"
+
+Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity.  "Never!" she
+cried.  "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this.  I bid you go.
+Begone!"
+
+"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands
+first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly
+tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling.  "I vill not be teniet!  Your
+puty, it is too much!  Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret?  Py
+Heaven, I--"
+
+With a swift motion he grasped her wrists.  Color rose to the Donatelli
+cheek.  Her eyes flashed.  She was about to sing.  She checked herself
+in time.  "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
+
+The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined.  And now the
+log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to
+light for them this unusual stage.  They did not hear the door open
+behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as
+there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack
+servant been directed thither.
+
+The door did open.  In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced.  He was dressed
+in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which
+did not disguise him nor the region which was his home.  His boots were
+new, sharp at toe and heel.  His hat, now removed, was new, but wide
+and white.  His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat,
+neither did white collar confine his neck.
+
+A quick glance took in the scene before him.  A little dark man was
+contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty
+that he had ever seen or dreamed.  Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into
+the room.  There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice
+that brought an instant conviction.  This--this was the Voice that he
+had worshipped!  This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen
+in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights
+afar in the desert lands.  She was assailed.  She was beset.  There
+swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life
+in that comer of the world.  In a flash his weapon leaped from its
+scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of
+this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
+
+"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby.  "Leggo!  What are you doin'
+there?  Break, now, and git out.  This ain't right."
+
+And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter
+sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion.  Tom Osby from that
+instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence.
+Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for
+warlike action rather than that now grown needful.
+
+Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards
+of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than
+actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of
+wide-eyed astonishment.  She had read in certain journals wild stories
+of doings of wild men.  Was that sort of thing actually true?
+
+"Sir," she said, "how dare you!"  At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length.  "I didn't know anybody
+was in here.  I just come in lookin' for somebody."
+
+She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep,
+dark eye, studying him curiously.
+
+"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom.  "I'm camped down the hill by
+the spring.  I left my _compadre_ there.  I--I belong to Heart's
+Desire, up north of here.  I--I come along in here this mornin'.  They
+said there wasn't any one in the parlor--they said there might be some
+one in the parlor, though, maybe.  And I was--I was--ma'am, I was
+lookin'--I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
+
+He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand against
+its edge.  "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
+
+"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice.  "From Heart's Desire?  What
+an exquisite name!  Where is it?  What is it?  That sounds like
+heaven," she said.
+
+"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't.  The water
+supply ain't reg'lar enough.  It's just a little place up in the
+mountains.  Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something like
+a hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!"  And he laughed so sudden and
+hearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out of
+all her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing.  It
+seemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matter
+where one found them.
+
+"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was her
+habit when perturbed.  "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
+
+"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much.
+It's mostly men."
+
+"But how do you live?  What do you do?"
+
+"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that.  But now you mention it, I
+can't say I really know.  The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
+
+"But yourself?"
+
+"Me?  I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire.
+There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon.  We held a
+co'te there, onct.  You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for a
+good many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of the
+country.  Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to the
+States.  Some stayed.  And it's--why, I can't rightly explain it to
+you, ma'am--but it's--it's Heart's Desire."
+
+The face of the woman before him softened.  "It's a beautiful name,"
+said she.  "Heart's Desire!"  She said it over and over again,
+wistfully.  The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocable
+loss.  "Heart's Desire!" she whispered--"I wonder--
+
+"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what do
+you do at Heart's Desire?"
+
+"Nothing," said Tom Osby.  "I just told you, I reckon."
+
+"Do you have any amusements?  Are there ever any entertainments?"
+
+"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
+
+She threw back her head and laughed.  There rose before her the picture
+of a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart,
+saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
+
+"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't do
+no good.  Why--I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'ry
+singers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more.  We
+couldn't afford it.  Onct we had a singin'-school teacher.  Fellow by
+the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music.  He
+used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.'  Used to have a
+daughter, and she sung, too.  Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the
+Prairie Flower.'  They made quite a lot of money holdin'
+singin'-school.  The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and
+that broke up the singin'-school.  There ain't been any kind of show at
+Heart's Desire for five years.  But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about
+that feller that had hold of you when I come in.  Did he hurt you any?"
+
+"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini!  He's a great artist."
+She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter.  "No, don't bother
+him.  We'll need him out on the Coast.  Don't you know, we are just
+here in the mountains for a little while."
+
+"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking back
+into his seat.  "I always did.  They always remind me of the Smokies,
+in Car'lina, back South."
+
+"You came from the South?"
+
+"Georgy, ma'am."
+
+"Georgia!  So did I!  We should be friends," she said, and, smiling,
+held out her hand.  Tom Osby took it.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you.  I've not been
+back home for a good many years.  I've been all over."
+
+"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly.  "I've been all over, too.
+But now, what brought you here?  Tell me, did you want to see me?"
+
+"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply.  "I said that's why I come!"
+
+"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing?  Ah, I wish that
+were not impossible."
+
+"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby.  "Though, of course, the
+boys would do anything for you they could.  What we want in Heart's
+Desire--why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again,
+everything.  Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe we
+was just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
+
+She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled.
+"Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it.  Up at Vegas
+I heard a funny sort of singin' machine.  It had voices in it.  Ma'am,
+it had a Voice in it.  It--it sung--" he choked now.
+
+"And some of the songs?"
+
+Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes.  She flushed
+like a girl as he nodded gravely.  "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
+
+"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath.  "It reconciles me to
+selling my art in that way.  No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
+
+Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
+
+"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he.  "I knew you sung it.  Ma'am, I
+played her all the way from Vegas down."
+
+"But why did you come?"  She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll.
+The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you.  I just come to see you, or to
+hear you, I can't rightly tell which.  It must have been both."  Now he
+arose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently.  "Ma'am," he went
+on, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me.  And I knowed
+that a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spot
+in her heart.  I come to hear you sing.  There's things that us fellers
+want, sometimes."
+
+The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
+
+"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on.  "You'll have to
+sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct,
+before I went away from home."
+
+The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it
+herself, unconsciously.
+
+"My friend," said she, "you're right.  I reckon I'll have to sing."
+
+"When?" said Tom Osby.
+
+"Now," said Alice Strowbridge.  She rose and stepped toward the piano
+open near the fire.
+
+The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a
+deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion.  A splendid creature,
+bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the
+less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands
+twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang
+in public as a child.  The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught
+a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land.  The
+red rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--half
+trembled.  Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known in
+years--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman.  There
+sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this
+lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place where
+men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that
+which was not theirs.  She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how
+she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her,
+what she had done for the heart of humanity.  Halfway across the floor
+she stopped, her hand at her throat.
+
+"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding,
+"for me to do this-a-way.  It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you
+to try to oblige a feller like me.  But, ma'am, all I can say is, all
+the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
+
+She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it.  Tom Osby grew more
+confident, more bold.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I
+reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort
+of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the
+things you are singin' right then.  Ain't that so?"
+
+"We have many costumes," said she, simply.  "We play many parts.
+Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
+
+"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume
+to go along with that?"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always
+seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right
+_white_."  He blushed and hastened to apologize.  "Not sayin' anything
+against that dress you've got on," he said.  "I never saw one as fine
+as that in all my life.  I never saw any woman, never in all my life,
+like you.  I--I--ma'am"--he flushed, but went on with a Titanic
+simplicity--"I _worship_ you, right where you stand, in that there
+dress; but--could you--"
+
+"You are an artist yourself!" cried she.  "Yes!  Wait!"
+
+In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at
+the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening.
+In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared.  The rich black
+laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone.
+She was clad in simple white--and yes! a blue sash was there.  The
+piled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids.  By
+the grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her that
+night.  For once in many years she was sincere.  Now she was a girl
+again, and back at the old home.  Those were the southern mountains
+half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days,
+swinging up again.  There was the gallery at the window of the old
+Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the
+trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, the
+unspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more!  The souls of a
+thousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came to
+her out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.
+
+And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all,
+to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--she
+sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat
+crumpled up, shaken, undone.
+
+She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she
+could not deprive herself of her own little triumph.  Or perhaps,
+deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it
+would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear.  She
+sang first the leading _arias_ of her more prominent operatic roles.
+She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance
+on a critical stage.  "_Nobil signors_," she sang, her voice
+lingering.  And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling
+measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in
+her rendition.  Melody after melody, score after score, product of the
+greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never
+definitely realized what privilege had been his.  She slipped on and
+on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least
+of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her
+fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no
+florid triviality from any land.  With a voice which had mastered the
+world, she sang the best of the masters of the world.  So music, with
+all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a
+time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later
+comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there
+in the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
+
+All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano
+broke, dropped, and paused.  And then, with no more interlude, that
+great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect
+human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie
+Laurie."  At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and
+a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with
+bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
+
+Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who
+approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery.
+Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to
+the hotel.  Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never
+got even so far as the door.  The voice of Donatelli caught and held
+him as it had her other auditor.  He stopped midway of the gallery,
+listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away,
+returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines.  He started even at
+the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the
+little fire.  He could not sleep.  A face looked at him out of the
+dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.
+The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached
+him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he
+admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a
+Face that was the Fairest.
+
+He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time.  It was Tom Osby,
+who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a
+crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure
+on the camper's bed.  Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that
+his companion was not asleep.
+
+"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head
+as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very
+much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back
+home with us."
+
+"Passengers?"  A voice came from the blankets.
+
+"Yes.  Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin'
+train from El Paso.  Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow,
+Barkley, I believe his name is.  I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
+
+Deep silence greeted this.  Tom reached forward and picked up a brand
+to light his pipe more thoroughly.
+
+"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to
+take care of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_
+
+In the morning the travellers arose with the sun, and after breakfast
+Tom Osby began methodically to break camp as though preparing for the
+return up-country.  Neither made reference to any event occurring since
+their arrival, or which might possibly occur in the near future.  Dan
+Anderson silently watched his partner as he busied himself gearing up
+his horses.  All was nearly ready for the start on their journey down
+the east side of the Sacramentos, when they heard afar a faint and
+wheezy squeak, the whistle of a railway train climbing up the opposite
+slope.
+
+"There's the choo-choo cars," said Tom, "comin' a-rarin' and
+a-pitchin'.  The ingine has to side-step and back-track about eight
+times to get up the grade.  Didn't notice my old grays a-doin' that
+none, when we come up, did you?  I'm the railroad for our town, and
+I've got that one beat to a frazzle.  Now listen to that thing, Dan;
+that's the States comin' to find us out."  Dan Anderson made no reply.
+
+"Well, let her come," Tom resumed cheerfully; "I come from Georgy, and
+in that country, it ain't considered perlite to worry if you've got one
+square meal ahead.  Which, by the way, reminds me that that's about all
+we've got ahead now.  You just set here with the team a while, while I
+take a _pasear_ down the caņon to see if I can get a deer for supper
+to-night.  I hope the old railroad ain't scared 'em all away.  Besides,
+we might as well stay here for a hour or so anyway, now, and see what
+the news is, since the cars has got in."
+
+He tapped the muzzle of his old rifle against the wagon wheel to shake
+out the dust, and then took a squint into the barrel.  "I can see
+through her," he said, "or any ways, halfway through, and I reckon
+she'll go off."  Next he poked the magazine full of cartridges, and so
+tramped off down the mountain side.
+
+Dan Anderson sat down on a bundle of bedding, and fell into a half
+dream in the warm morning sun.  There was time even yet for him to
+escape, he reflected.  He had but to step into the wagon, and drive on
+down the caņon.  Constance Ellsworth--if indeed it were true that she
+had come again so near to him--need never know that he had been there.
+How could he learn if she had indeed come?  How could he ever face her
+now?  Surely she could never understand.  She could only despise him.
+Dan Anderson sat, irresolute, staring at the breakfast dishes piled
+near the mess-box ready for packing.
+
+Meantime, in the dining room at Sky Top hotel, there was a certain
+flutter of excitement as there entered, just from the train, the party
+of Mr. Ellsworth, president of the new railway company now building
+northward.  Ellsworth beckoned Porter Barkley to him for talk of
+business nature, so that Constance sat well-nigh alone when Madame
+Alicia Donatelli came sweeping in, tall, comely, sombre, and, it must
+be confessed, hungry.  Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made
+room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli
+hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of class
+other than her own.
+
+"And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli,
+catching a remark made by one of the men.  "I wish I could go as well.
+You go by buckboard?"
+
+Constance nodded.  "I like it," said she.  "I am sure we shall enjoy
+the ride up to Heart's Desire."
+
+"Heart's Desire?" repeated the diva, with an odd smile.
+
+Constance saw the smile and challenged it.  "Yes," she replied briefly,
+"I was there once before."
+
+"What is it like?" asked Donatelli.
+
+"Like nothing in the world--yet it's just a little valley shut in by
+the mountains."
+
+"A man was here from Heart's Desire last night," began Donatelli.  "You
+know, I am a singer.  He had heard in some way.  My faith!  He came
+more than a hundred miles, and he said from Heart's Desire.  I've
+wondered what the place was like."
+
+The Donatelli face flushed hotly in spite of herself.  A queer
+expression suddenly crossed that of Constance Ellsworth as well.  She
+wondered who this man could be!
+
+"It was just a couple of campers who travelled down by wagon,"
+explained the diva.  "Only one of them came up to the house.  Their
+camp is by the springs, a half mile or so down the east side.  He told
+me they had no music at Heart's Desire."
+
+In the heart of Constance Ellsworth there went on jealous questionings.
+Who was this man from Heart's Desire, who had come a hundred miles to
+hear a bit of music?  What other could it be than one?  And as to this
+opera singer, surely she was beautiful, she had charm.  So then--
+
+Constance excused herself and returned to her room.  She did not even
+descend to say farewell to Donatelli and her bedraggled company, who
+steamed away from Sky Top slopes in the little train whose whistlings
+came back triumphantly.  She admitted herself guilty of ignoble joy
+that this woman--a singer, an artist, a beautiful and dangerous woman
+as she felt sure--was now gone out of her presence, as indeed she was
+gone out of her life.  But as to this man from Heart's Desire, how came
+it that he was not here at the hotel, near to his operatic divinity?
+Why did he not appear to say farewell?
+
+Ellsworth and Barkley betook themselves to the gallery after breakfast,
+and paced up and down, each with his cigar.  "I ordered our head
+engineer, Grayson, to meet us," said Ellsworth, "and he ought to be
+camped not far away.  I told him not to crowd the location so that
+those Heart's Desire folks would get wind of our plans.  For that
+matter, we don't want to take those men for granted, either.  Somehow,
+Barkley, I believe we've got trouble ahead."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Barkley.  "The whole thing's so easy I'm almost
+ashamed of it."
+
+"That last isn't usually the case with the Hon. Porter Barkley,"
+Ellsworth observed grimly.
+
+Barkley laughed a strong, unctuous laugh.  He was a sturdy, thick-set
+man, florid, confident, masterful, with projecting eyebrows and a chin
+now beginning its first threat of doubling.  Well known in Eastern
+corporation life as a good handler of difficult situations, Ellsworth
+valued his aid; nor could he disabuse himself of the belief that there
+would be need of it.
+
+"If I don't put it through, Ellsworth," reiterated Barkley, biting a
+new cigar, "I'll eat the whole town without sugar.  If I failed, I'd be
+losing more than you know about."  He turned a half glance in
+Ellsworth's way, to see whether his covert thought was caught by the
+suspicion of the other.  The older man turned upon him in challenge,
+and Barkley retreated from this tentative position.
+
+"Maybe you can do it," said Ellsworth, presently, "but I want to say,
+if I'm any judge, you've got to be mighty careful.  Besides, you've
+never been out here before.  We'll have to go slow."
+
+"Why'll we have to?  I tell you, we can go in and take what we want of
+their blasted valley, and they can't help themselves a step in the
+road."
+
+"I don't know," demurred Ellsworth.  "They're there, and in possession."
+
+"Nonsense!" snorted Barkley.  "How much title have they got?  You say
+yourself they've never filed a town-site plat.  We can go in there and
+take the town away from under their feet, and they can't help
+themselves.  More than that, I'll bet there's not one mining claim out
+of fifty that we can't 'adverse' in the courts and take away from its
+dinky locater.  These fellows don't work assessments.  They never
+complete legal title to a claim.  There never was a mine in the Rocky
+Mountains that was located and proved up on without a fight, if it was
+worth fighting for.  Bah! we just walk in and see what we want, and
+take it, that's all."
+
+"Well," said Ellsworth, "it's the best-looking deal I've seen for a
+long while, that's sure, and I don't see how it's been covered up so
+long.  And yet if you come to talk of law-suits, I've noticed it a
+dozen times that when Eastern men have gone against these Western
+propositions, they've got the worst of it.  They're a funny lot, these
+natives.  They'll live in a shirt and overalls, without a _sou marqué_
+to bless 'emselves with.  They'll holler for Eastern Capital, and
+promise Eastern Capital the time of its life, if it'll only come; and
+when Eastern Capital does come--why, then they _give_ it the time of
+its life!"
+
+"Nonsense," rejoined Barkley, walking up and down with his hands under
+the tails of his coat.  "We'll eat 'em up.  I'm not afraid of this
+thing for a minute.  What I want to do now is to get in touch with that
+Grayson fellow, the head engineer."
+
+"I'm not so sure about that," commented Ellsworth, seating himself in
+the sun at the edge of the gallery.  "If you want to see the real head
+engineer of this whole Heart's Desire situation, the man you want isn't
+Grayson, but a young fellow by the name of Anderson, a lawyer up there."
+
+"Lawyer?"
+
+"Yes, and I shouldn't wonder if he was a pretty goodish one, too.  Oh,
+don't think these people are all easy, Barkley, I tell you.  This isn't
+my own first trip out here."
+
+"What about this lawyer of yours?"
+
+"Well, he's a young man that I knew something about before he went
+West.  He knows every foot of the ground up there, and every man that
+lives there, and I want to tell you, he's got the whole situation by
+the ear.  That gang will do pretty hear what he tells them to do.  He's
+got nerve, too.  He's the most influential man in that town."
+
+"Oh, ho!  Well, that's different.  I'm always right after the man who's
+got the goods in his pocket.  We'll trade with Mr. Anderson mighty
+quick, if he can deliver the goods.  What does he hold out for?  What
+does he want?"
+
+"Well, I don't know.  He talked to me rather stiff, up there, and we
+didn't hitch very well.  He sort of drifted off, and I didn't see him
+at all the day I left, when I'd laid out to talk to him.  He's the
+fellow that put me on to this deal, too.  It was through him I got word
+there was coal in that valley."
+
+"How would it do to charter him for our local counsel?  Is he strong
+enough man for that?"
+
+"Strong enough!  I'm only afraid he's _too_ strong."
+
+"Well, now, let's not take everything for granted, you know.  Let's go
+at this thing a little at a time.  There's got to be a system of courts
+established in here, and we've got to know our judiciary, as a matter
+of course.  Then we've got to know our own lawyers, as another matter
+of course.  Did you say you knew him before, that is, to get a line on
+him, before he came out here?"
+
+Ellsworth colored just a trifle.  "Well, yes," he admitted.  "He's a
+Princeton man.  He comes of good family--maybe a little wild and
+headstrong--wouldn't settle down, you know.  Why, I offered him a place
+in my office once, and he--well, he refused it.  He started out West
+some five years ago.  Of course--well, you know, in a good many cases
+of this sort, there's a girl at the bottom of the Western emigration."
+
+"What girl?" asked Porter Barkley, sharply.
+
+"One back East somewhere," said Ellsworth, evasively.
+
+Porter Barkley came and seated himself beside the older man, leaning
+forward, his elbows resting on his knees, meditatively crumbling a bit
+of bark in his hands.
+
+"I was just going to say, Mr. Ellsworth," said he, "that a girl in a
+case like this--always provided that this man is as influential as you
+think--may be a mighty useful thing.  Maybe you couldn't buy the man
+for himself, but you could buy him for the girl.  Do you see?"
+
+Ellsworth did not answer.
+
+"He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley.  "He wants to go
+back East with a little roll.  Now, we give him a chance to make good.
+We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him
+up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing.  For the sake of going
+back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap
+of things for us.  You've seen it a thousand times yourself.  A woman
+can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work.  Now, Ellsworth, you
+furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me.  I'll deliver Heart's
+Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to
+think he is."
+
+Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly
+and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling
+his bits of bark in the sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
+with a Maid_
+
+Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the
+dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred piņon sticks.  So deep was
+his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet
+approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to
+his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the
+camp and come in on that side of the mountain.  Then he looked up.  It
+was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries
+by day, the face that he had seen but now--the "face that was the
+fairest"!  He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him
+once more for his unreadiness.  Then he sprang up and stared the
+harder--stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her
+father and a well-groomed stranger.
+
+The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley
+discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and
+heightened color upon another man.
+
+When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the
+engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a
+walk in the morning's sun.  If it had been in her mind to discover the
+mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself.  But
+now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this
+stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva
+of the stage!  The consciousness flashed upon her sharply.  Despite her
+traitorous coloring, she greeted him but coolly.
+
+Porter Barkley, noticing some things and suspecting others, drew a breath
+of sudden conviction.  With swift jealousy he guessed that this could be
+none other than the man to whom Ellsworth had referred,--Anderson, the
+lawyer of Heart's Desire.  Why had not Ellsworth told him that Constance
+also knew him?  Porter Barkley ran his eye over the tall strong figure,
+the clean brown jaw, the level eyes, sizing up his man with professional
+keenness.  He instantly rated him as an enemy dangerous in more ways than
+one.
+
+After the first jumbled speeches of surprise, Ellsworth introduced the
+two.  Maugre his coatless costume, Dan Anderson was Princeton man upon
+the moment, and Barkley promptly hated him for it, feeling that in the
+nature of things the stranger should have been awkward and constrained.
+Yet this man must, for business reasons, be handled carefully.  He must
+be the business friend, if the personal enemy, of Hon. Porter Barkley,
+general counsel for the A. P. and S. E. Railway.
+
+The States had come to Sky Top, as Tom Osby had said, and this group,
+gathered around a mountain fireside, became suddenly as conventional as
+though they had met in a drawing-room.  "Who could have suspected that
+you were here, of all places, Mr. Anderson?" Constance remarked with
+polite surprise.
+
+"Why, now, Dolly," blundered Mr. Ellsworth, "didn't the hotel fellow tell
+you that some one had come down from Heart's Desire to hear the latest
+from grand opera--private session--chartered the hall, eh?  You might
+have guessed it would be Mr. Anderson, for I'll warrant he's the only man
+in Heart's Desire that ever heard an opera singer before, or who would
+ride a hundred miles--that is--anyhow, Mr. Anderson, you are precisely
+the man we want to see."  He finished his sentence lamely, for he
+understood in some mysterious fashion that he had not said quite the
+right thing.
+
+"I am very glad to hear that," replied Dan Anderson, gravely, "I was just
+sitting here waiting for you to come along."
+
+"Now, Mr. Anderson," resumed Ellsworth, "Mr. Barkley, here, is our
+general counsel for the railroad.  He's going up to Heart's Desire with
+us in a day or so to look into several matters.  We want to take up the
+question of running our line into the town, if proper arrangements can be
+made."
+
+"Take chairs, gentlemen," said Dan Andersen, motioning to a log that lay
+near by.  He had already seated Constance upon the corded blanket roll
+from which he himself had arisen.  "I will get you some breakfast," he
+added.
+
+"No, no," Mr. Ellsworth declined courteously.  "We just came from
+breakfast.  We were moving around trying to find our engineer's camp;
+Grayson, our chief of location, was to have been here before this.  By
+the way, how did you happen to come down here, after all, Anderson?"
+
+Dan Anderson was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a
+pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue.  He glanced
+at the battered phonograph which leaned dejectedly against a tree.
+
+"As near as I can figure," said he, "I made this pilgrimage to hear a
+woman's voice."  Saying which he leaned over and deliberately kicked the
+phonograph down the side of the hill.
+
+"I hope you enjoyed it," commented Constance, viciously, her cheeks
+reddening.
+
+"Very much," replied Dan Anderson, calmly, and he looked squarely at her.
+
+Porter Barkley, quiet and alert, once more saw the glance which passed
+between these two.  Into his mind, ever bent upon the business phase of
+any problem, there flashed a swift conviction.  This was the girl!  Here,
+miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in
+the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom
+her father had referred!  If so, there was certainly a solution for the
+riddle of Heart's Desire.  Piqued as he was, his heart exulted.  For the
+time his own jealousy must be suppressed.  His accounting with Dan
+Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must
+handle the situation carefully--literally for what it is worth.
+
+"As I was saying," continued Dan Anderson, "what's a breakfast or two
+among friends?"
+
+"If it is among friends," replied Ellsworth, "and if you'll remember
+that, we'll eat with you."
+
+In answer Dan Anderson began to kick together the embers of the fire and
+to busy himself with dishes.  He was resolved to humiliate himself before
+this girl, to show her how absolutely unfit was the life of this land for
+such as herself.
+
+Suddenly he stopped and listened, as there came to his ear the distant
+thin report of a rifle.  Ellsworth looked inquiringly at his host.
+
+"That's my friend, Tom Osby," explained Dan Anderson, "He went out after
+a deer.  Tom and I came down together from the town."
+
+"I presume you do have some sort of friends in here," began Barkley,
+patronizingly.
+
+"I have never found any in the world worth having except here," replied
+Dan Anderson, quietly.
+
+"Oh, now, don't say that.  Mr. Ellsworth tells me that he has known you
+for a long time, and has the greatest admiration for you as a lawyer."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Ellsworth is very fond of me.  He's one of the most passionate
+admirers I ever had in my life," said Dan Anderson.
+
+Barkley looked at him again keenly, realizing that he had to do with a
+quantity not yet wholly known and gauged.
+
+Socially the situation was strained, and he sought to ease it after his
+own fashion.  "You see," he resumed, "Mr. Ellsworth seems to think that
+he can put you in a way of doing something for yourself up at Heart's
+Desire."
+
+It was an ugly thing for him to do under the circumstances, but if he had
+intended to humiliate the other, he met his just rebuke.
+
+"I don't often talk business at breakfast in my own house," said Dan
+Anderson.  "Do you use tabasco with your _frijoles_?"
+
+"Oh, we'll get together, we'll get together," Barkley laughed, with an
+assumed cordiality which did not quite ring true.
+
+"Thank you," Dan Anderson remarked curtly; "you bring me joy this
+morning."
+
+He did not relish this sort of talk in the presence of Constance
+Ellsworth.  Disgusted with himself and with all things, be arose and made
+a pretence of searching in the wagon.  Rummaging about, his hand struck
+one of the round, gutta-percha plates which had accompanied the
+phonograph.  With silent vigor he cast it far above the tree tops below
+him on the mountain side.
+
+"That," he explained to Constance as he turned, "is the 'Annie Laurie'
+record of the Heart's Desire grand opera.  The season is now over." The
+girl did not understand, but he lost the hurt look in her eyes.
+Irritated, he did not hear her soul call out to him.
+
+"It's the luckiest thing in the world that you happen to be here."  Mr.
+Ellsworth took up again the idea that was foremost in his mind.  "You fit
+in like the wheels in a clock.  We're going to run our railroad up into
+your town--I don't mind saying that right here--and we're going to give
+you plenty of law business, Mr. Anderson; that is to say, if you want it,
+and will take it."
+
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, quietly.  But now in spite of himself he
+felt his heart leap suddenly in hope.  Suppose, after all, there should
+be for him, stranded in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, a chance
+for some sort of business success?  Suppose that there should be, after
+all, some work for him to do?  Suppose that, after all, he should
+succeed--that, after all, life might yet unfold before him as he had
+dreamed and planned!  Unconsciously he stole a glance at the gray-clad
+figure on the blanket roll.
+
+Constance sat cool, sweet, delicate but vital, refreshing to look upon,
+her gray skirt folded across her knees, the patent-leather tips of her
+little shoes buried in the carpet spread by the forest conifers.  He
+could just catch the curve of her cheek and chin, the droop of the long
+lashes which he knew so well.  Ah, if he could only go to her and tell
+her the absolute truth--if only it could be right for him, all his life,
+to tell her the truth, to tell her of his reverence, his loyalty, his
+love, through all these years!  If, indeed, this opportunity should come
+to him, might not all of this one day be possible?  He set his mind to
+his work, even as the girl held her heart to its waiting.
+
+There came the sound of a distant whistle approaching up the trail, and
+ere long Tom Osby appeared, stumbling along in his pigeon-toed way, his
+rifle in the crook of his arm.  Tom saluted the strangers briefly, and
+leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel.  Dan Anderson made known the
+names of the visitors, and Tom immediately put in action his own notions
+of hospitality.  Stepping to the wagon side he fished out a kerosene can,
+stoppered with a potato stuck on the spout.  He removed the potato,
+picked up a tin cup, and proceeded calmly to pour out a generous portion.
+
+"I always carry my liquor this way, gentlemen," said he, "because it's
+convenient to pour in the dark, and ain't so apt to get spilled.  This
+here liquor sometimes makes folks forget their geogerphy.  'Missin' me
+one place, search another,' as Walt Whitman says.  If a fellow gets a
+drink of this, he may take to the tall trees, or he may run straight on
+out of the country.  You never can tell.  Drink hearty."
+
+Ellsworth and Barkley, for the sake of complacency, complied with such
+show of pleasure as they could muster.
+
+"Now," said Tom, "I'll cook you a real breakfast.  My _compadre_, here,
+can't drink and he can't cook."
+
+"Three breakfasts before ten o'clock?" protested Constance.
+
+But Tom was inexorable.  "Eat when you get a chanct," he insisted.
+"That's a good rule."
+
+Barkley drew Ellsworth to one side.  "I can't figure these people out,"
+he complained.
+
+Ellsworth chuckled.  "I told you you'd need help, Barkley," he said.
+"They've got ways of their own.  You can't come in here and take that
+whole town without reckoning with the people that live there.  Now
+suppose we get Anderson to himself and talk things over with him a
+little?  We may not have another chance so good."
+
+Ellsworth beckoned to Dan Anderson, and he readily joined them.  The
+three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy
+of Tom Osby.
+
+"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the
+knives by sticking them into the sand.  "I don't reckon you do that way
+back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean."
+
+"So this is the way men live out here?" mused Constance, half to herself.
+
+"Mostly.  You ought to see him"--he nodded toward Dan Anderson--"cook
+flap-jacks.  The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home.
+We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe."
+
+Constance missed the irrelevance of this.  "I wonder," said she, gently,
+"how he happened to come out here--how any one happened to come out here?"
+
+"In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as
+far away from Washington as he could--his mileage will amount to more.
+This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to
+Congress from."  Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
+
+"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every
+feller come out here because of a girl somewheres.  They allow that a
+woman sent most of us out here.  For me, it was my fifth wife, or my
+fourth, I don't remember which.  She never did treat me right, and her
+eyes didn't track.  Yes, I'll bet, ma'am, without knowing anything about
+it, there was a girl back somewhere in Dan Anderson's early ree-cords,
+though whether it was his third or fourth wife, I don't know.  We don't
+ask no questions about such things out here."
+
+He went on rubbing sand around in the bottom of the frying-pan, but none
+the less caught, with side-long glance, the flush upon the brown cheek
+visible beneath its veil.
+
+"I'm mighty glad to see you this mornin', ma'am," he went on; "I am, for
+a fact.  It more'n pays me--it more'n pays him--" and he nodded again
+toward Dan Anderson, "for our trip down here.  We wasn't expectin' to
+meet you."
+
+"How did you happen to come?" asked Constance, feeling as she did so that
+she was guilty of treachery.
+
+Tom Osby again looked her straight in the face.  "Just because we was
+naturally so blamed lonesome," said he.  "That is to say, I was.  I
+allowed I wanted to hear a woman sing.  It wasn't him, it was me.  He
+come along to take care of me, like, because he's used to that sort of
+thing, and I ain't.  He's my chaperoon.  He didn't know, you know--didn't
+either of us know--but what I might be took advantage of, and stole by
+some gipsy queen."
+
+"But--but the phonograph--"
+
+Tom looked around.  "Where is it?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Anderson kicked it down the hill."
+
+"Did he?  Good for him!  I was goin' to do it my own self.  You see,
+ma'am, I come down here to hear a song about Annie Laurie.  I done so.
+Ma'am, I heard about a 'face that was the fairest.'  Him?  Was he
+surprised to see you-all this morning?  Was, eh?  Well, he didn't seem so
+almighty surprised, to my way of thinkin', last night when I told him you
+was comin' up here from El Paso.  I don't know how he knowed it, and I
+ain't sayin' a word."
+
+A strange lightening came to Constance Ellsworth's heart.  The droop at
+the corners of her mouth faded away.  She slid down off the blanket roll
+and edged along across the ground until she sat at his side.  She reached
+out her hand for the skillet.
+
+"That spider isn't clean in the least," said she.
+
+"Oh, well," apologized Tom Osby, leaning back against the wagon wheel and
+beginning to fill a pipe.  "I suppose there might be just a leetle sand
+left in it, but that don't hurt.  Do you want a dish towel?  Here's one
+that I've used for two years, freightin' from Vegas to Heart's Desire.
+Me and it's old friends."
+
+"Let your dishes dry in the sun if you can't do better than that,"
+reproved Constance.  "Ah, you men!"
+
+"You're right hard to get along with, ma'am.  Us gettin' you two
+breakfasts, too!"
+
+They looked into each other's faces and Constance laughed.  "The air is
+delightful--isn't it a beautiful world?" she exclaimed joyously.
+
+"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so.  It's all in
+the way you look at things."
+
+"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully
+explanatory.
+
+"Yes, I know.  You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good
+pasture.  Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you
+out for a lunger.  You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is
+very good, either.  He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
+
+She froze at this.  "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's
+affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
+
+"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly.  "Here's me and him
+have flew down here as a bird to our mountings.  We was wantin' to hear
+about a 'face that was the fairest.'  We was a-settin' here, calm and
+peaceful, eating _frijoles_, who intruded?  Was it us?  Or, what made us
+intrude?"  He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
+
+Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
+
+"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here.  If I come and
+set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name
+of your pet dog.  Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes,
+and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that
+time.  That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any _other_
+fellow what I may think.  It _does_ mean that I'm goin' to see fair
+play."
+
+The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even
+voice went on.
+
+"How I know things is easy," he continued.  "If you think he"--once more
+nodding his head toward the group beyond--"come down here to hear a op'ry
+singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't.  That was me.  He come to give
+me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see
+that he gets fair play in them same circumstances--"
+
+"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly
+thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why.  "He's been ill a great
+deal.  I've been alarmed about him.  I _always_ go with him."
+
+"Of course.  I noticed that.  Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into
+Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after.  You come along just
+to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or
+cerebrus meningittus, or something else.  I understood all that
+perfectly, ma'am.  And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued,
+tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States,
+somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he
+allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and
+ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know,
+ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of
+reasonin'; for _yore_ own face, ma'am,--and I ain't sayin' this with any
+sort of disrespect to any of my wives,--is about the fairest that Dan
+Anderson ever did or could see--or me either.  I don't reckon, ma'am,
+that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."
+
+Constance Ellsworth turned squarely and gazed hard into the eyes of the
+man before her.  She drew a breath in sharply between her lips, but it
+was a sigh of content.  She felt herself safe in this man's hands.  Again
+she broke into laughter and flung herself upon the convenient frying-pan,
+which she proceeded to scrub with sudden vigor.  Tom Osby's eyes twinkled.
+
+"Whenever you think that skillet's clean enough, us two will set up and
+cook ourselves some breakfast right comfterble.  As for them fellers over
+there, they don't deserve none."
+
+So presently they two did cook and eat yet again.  A strange sense of
+peace and content came to Constance, albeit mingled with remorse.  She
+had suspected Dan Anderson of worshipping at the shrine of an operatic
+star, whereas he had made the long journey from Heart's Desire to see
+herself!  She knew it now.
+
+"I'm goin' to take you up to the hotel, ma'am," said Tom Osby, after
+Constance had finished her third breakfast, "and then, after that, I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson back home to Heart's Desire.  We'll see you up
+there after a while.
+
+"One thing I want to tell you, ma'am, is this.  We've got along without a
+railroad, all right, and we ain't tearin' our clothes to have one now.
+If that railroad does get into our town, it's more'n half likely that
+it'll be because the boys has took a notion to you.  I never did see you
+before this mornin'; but the folks has told me about you--Curly's wife,
+you know, and the rest.  We'd like to have you live there, if only we
+thought the town was good enough for you.  It's been mostly for men, so
+far."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel_
+
+Tom Osby and Constance walked up the trail toward the hotel, and Dan
+Anderson from a distance saw them pass.  He watched the gray gown move
+through sun and shadow, until it was lost beyond the thickening boles
+of mountain pines.  She turned once and looked back, but he dared not
+appropriate the glance to himself, although it seemed to him that he
+must rise and follow, that he must call out to her.  She had been
+there, close to him.  He had felt the very warmth of her hand near to
+his own.  There flamed up in his soul the fierce male jealousy.  He
+turned to this newcomer, this man of the States, successful, strong,
+fortunate.  In his soul was ready the ancient challenge.
+
+But--the earth being as it is to-day, a compromise, and love being
+dependent upon property, and chastity upon chattels, and the stars of
+the Universe upon farthing dips--though aching to rise and follow the
+gray gown, to snatch its wearer afar and away into a sweet wild forest
+all their own, Dan Anderson must sit silent, and plan material ways to
+bring the gray gown back again to his eyes according to the mandates of
+our society.  Because the gray gown was made in the States, he must
+forget the lesson of Curly and the Littlest Girl.  Because the wearer
+of the gown lived in the States, he must pull down in ruins the temple
+of Heart's Desire.  Such is the sweet logic of these days of modern
+progress, that independence, friendship, faith, all must yield if need
+be; even though, and after all, man but demands that himself and the
+woman whom he has sought out from all the world may one day be savage
+and sweet, ancient and primitive, even as have been all others who have
+loved indeed, in city or in forest, from the beginning of the world.
+
+"As Mr. Ellsworth has told me," went on Porter Barkley, "you are an
+able man, Mr. Anderson,--far too able to be buried down here in a
+mountain mining town."
+
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, sweetly; "that's very nice of you."
+
+"Now, I don't know what induced you to hide yourself out here--" went
+on Barkley, affably.
+
+"No," replied Dan Anderson, "you don't.  As for myself personally, it's
+no one's damned business.  I may say in a general way, however, that
+the prevailing high prices of sealskins and breakfast food in the
+Eastern States have had a great deal to do with our Western
+civilization.  The edge of the West is mostly inhabited by fools and
+philosophers, all mostly broke."
+
+"I think I follow you," assented Barkley; "but I'd rather classify you
+as a philosopher."
+
+"Perhaps.  At least I am not fool enough to talk about my own affairs.
+You say you are here to talk business.  It is your belief that I
+understand some of the chemical constituents of the population of
+Heart's Desire.  Now, in what way can we be useful to each other?"
+
+Ellsworth broke in, "It's as Barkley says; I've been watching you, Mr.
+Anderson, and I've had an interest in you for quite a while."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, I have.  I want to see you win out.  Now, if you won't go to the
+mountain, the mountain will have to come to you.  If you won't go back
+and live in the States, we will have to bring the States to you; and
+they'll follow mighty quick when the railroad comes, as you know very
+well."
+
+"My friend Tom Osby used those very words this morning, when he heard
+the whistle of your esteemed railroad train."
+
+"Precisely," Ellsworth went on.  "We'll give you a town to live in.
+We'll give you professional work to do."
+
+"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work?  That's very nice
+of you, indeed."
+
+"Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested
+Ellsworth, testily.  "Have we asked you to do anything but straight
+business?"
+
+"Exactly," said Barkley.
+
+They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face
+did not show it.  They were putting him in the balance against Heart's
+Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it.  They were making
+Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did
+not divulge it, as he sat and looked at them.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, at length, "I am a lawyer, the best one in
+Heart's Desire.  The law here is complex in practice.  The titles are
+very much involved.  Between Chitty on Pleading and the land grants of
+the Spanish crown, the law may be a very slow and deliberate matter in
+this country.  Now, I understand the practice.  I speak the language--I
+don't need an interpreter--so that I am probably as good as any lawyer
+you can secure at this time.  In straight matters of business I am open
+for employment."
+
+"Now you are beginning to talk," said Barkley.  "And just to get right
+_down_ to business, and show you we're not all talk, I want to give
+you a little retainer fee.  I'm sorry it isn't larger, but it'll grow,
+I hope."  He drew a goodly wallet from his breast pocket, and counted
+out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, which he threw down carelessly on the
+pine needles in front of Dan Anderson.  "Is that satisfactory?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes," said the latter; but he did not take up the money.
+
+"Oh, there'll be more," suggested Mr. Ellsworth.  "This business ought
+to net you between five and ten thousand dollars this year.  It might
+mean more than that if we got into town without a fight."
+
+"That would be about the only way you would get in at all," and Dan
+Anderson smiled incomprehensibly.
+
+"Exactly!  And now, since you are our counsel--" Barkley spoke with an
+increased firmness--"we want to know your idea on the right-of-way
+question.  What's the nature of the titles in that town, anyhow?"
+
+"As near as I can tell," replied Dan Anderson, "since you retain me and
+ask my legal opinion, the fundamental title to the valley of Heart's
+Desire lies in the ability of every fellow there to hit a tin can at
+forty yards with a six-shooter.  There's hardly a tin can in the street
+that you could cook a meal in," he added plaintively.
+
+"I see," said Barkley, his laughter a little forced.  "But now, I heard
+there never was a town site filed on."
+
+"There was a story," replied Dan Anderson, ruminatingly, "that Jack
+Wilson laid out a town there soon after he made the Homestake strike.
+He had McDonald, the deputy surveyor, plat it out on a piece of brown
+paper,--which was the only sort they had,--and Jack started over with
+the plat to file at the county seat.  He got caught in a rain and used
+the paper to start a fire with.  After that he forgot about it, and
+after that again, he died; so there never was any town site.  The boys
+just built their houses where they felt like it; and since then they
+have been so busy about other things--croquet, music, embroidery,
+antelope hunting, and the like--that they haven't had time to think
+about town lots or town sites, or anything of that sort."
+
+Barkley's eyes gleamed.  "That will simplify matters very much," said
+he.
+
+"You really do need local counsel," Dan Anderson observed.  "On the
+contrary of that, it will complicate matters very much."
+
+"Well, we'll see about that," rejoined Barkley, grimly.  "We'll see if
+a little mining camp can hold up a railroad corporation the size of
+this!  But why don't you put your money in your pocket?  It's yours,
+man."
+
+Dan Anderson slowly picked up the bills, folded them, and tucked them
+into a pocket.  "This," said he, "is a great deal more than the entire
+circulating medium of Heart's Desire.  I'm likely to become a
+disturbing factor up there."
+
+"That's what we want you to become," said Barkley.  "We know there're a
+lot of good mining claims in there, especially the coal lands on the
+east side of the valley.  It isn't the freight and passenger traffic
+that we're after--we want to get hold of those mines.  Why, the inside
+gang of the Southern Pacific--you'll keep this a professional secret,
+of course--has told us that they'll take coal from us for their whole
+system west of Houston.  In a couple of years there'll be a town there
+of eight or ten thousand people.  Why, man, it's the chance of your
+life.  And here's Mr. Ellsworth putting you in on the ground floor."
+
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.
+
+"By the way," began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer's
+blue-print map, "one of the first things we want to settle is the
+question of our depot site.  The only place we can lay out our side
+tracks is just at the head of the caņon, and at the lower end of the
+valley.  Do you know anything about this house here?  It's the first
+one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley."
+
+Dan Anderson bent over the map.  "Yes, I know it perfectly," said he.
+"That's the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down
+with me from Heart's Desire.  He just went up the trail with your
+daughter, sir."
+
+"The yards'll wipe him out," said Barkley.
+
+"The valley is so narrow," went on Ellsworth, "according to what our
+engineers say, that we've got to clean out the whole lower part of the
+town, in order to lay out the station grounds."
+
+Dan Anderson started.  The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.
+
+"The trouble with your whole gang," resumed Barkley, striking a match
+on a log, "has been that you've been trying to stop the world.  You
+can't do that."
+
+Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many
+months, the crack of the whip of modern progress.  Yet, before his eyes
+he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the
+beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his
+young manhood.
+
+"I'll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen," said he, at length,
+rising; "we'll talk it over up at the town itself.  I don't know just
+what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my
+opinion force isn't the way to go about it."
+
+"Well, we'll use force if need be; you can depend on that!" said
+Barkley, harshly.  "I've got to get back home before long, and it will
+be up to you after that."
+
+He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the
+clinging dust and pine needles.  The three turned towards the trail and
+walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky
+Top edifice.
+
+"Quite a house, isn't it?" said Ellsworth, admiringly.
+
+Dan Anderson did not look at the building.  Constance was sitting alone
+at the edge of the gallery.  Wishing nothing so much in the world as to
+go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.
+
+Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him.  They
+seemed to call out to him to pause, to return.  The whispering of the
+pines called over and over to him, "Constance!  Constance!"
+
+Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still
+whispering.  At the edge of the opening he paused unseen.  He saw the
+girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley,
+laughing gayly and walking across the gallery.  Each had offered her an
+arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most
+natural one in the world.  Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose,
+solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very
+end of all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
+Horse_
+
+"That old railroad'll shore bust me up a heap if it ever does git in
+here," remarked Tom Osby one morning in the forum of Whiteman's corral,
+where the accustomed group was sitting in the sun, waiting for some one
+to volunteer as Homer for the day.
+
+There was little to do but listen to story telling, for Tom Osby dwelt
+in the tents of Kedar, delaying departure on his accustomed trip to
+Vegas.
+
+"A feller down there to Sky Top," he went on, arousing only the most
+indolent interest, "one of them spy-glass ingineers--tenderfoot, with
+his six-shooter belt buckled so tight he couldn't get his feet to the
+ground--he says to me I might as well trade my old grays for a nice new
+checkerboard, or a deck of author cards, for I won't have nothing to do
+but just amuse myself when the railroad cars gets here."
+
+No one spoke.  All present were trying to imagine how Heart's Desire
+would seem with a railroad train each day.
+
+"Things'll be some different in them days, mebbe so."  Tom recrossed
+his legs with well-considered deliberation.
+
+"There's a heap of things different already from what they used to be
+when I first hit the cow range," said Curly.  "The whole country's
+changed, and it ain't changed for the better, either.  Grass is longer,
+and horns is shorter, and men is triflin'er.  Since the Yankees has got
+west of the Missouri River a ranch foreman ain't allowed to run his own
+brandin' iron any more, and that takes more'n half the poetry out of
+the cow business, don't it, Mac?"  This to McKinney, who was nearly
+asleep.
+
+"Everything else is changing too," Curly continued, gathering fluency
+as memories began to crowd upon him.  "Look at the lawyers and doctors
+there is in the Territory now--and this country used to be respectable.
+Why, when I first come here there wasn't a doctor within a thousand
+miles, and no need for one.  If one of the boys got shot up much, we
+always found some way to laundry him and sew him together again without
+no need of a diplomy.  No one ever got sick; and, of course, no one
+ever did die of his own accord, the way they do back in the States."
+
+"What's it all about, Curly?" drawled Dan Anderson.  "You can't tell a
+story worth a cent."  Curly paid no attention to him.
+
+"The first doctor that ever come out here for to alleviate us fellers,"
+he went on, "why, he settled over on the Sweetwater.  He was a allopath
+from Bitter Creek.  What medicine that feller did give!  He gradual
+drifted into the vet'inary line.
+
+"Then there come a homeopath--that was after a good many women folks
+had settled in along the railroad over west.  Still, there wasn't much
+sickness, and I don't reckon the homeopath ever did winter through.  I
+was livin' with the Bar T outfit on the Oscura range, at that time.
+
+"Next doctor that come along was a ostypath."  Curly took a chew of
+tobacco, and paused a moment reflectively.
+
+"I said the first feller drifted into vet'inary lines, didn't I?" he
+resumed.  "Well, the ostypath did, too.  Didn't you never hear about
+that?  Why, he ostypathed a horse!"
+
+"Did _what_?" asked Tom Osby sitting up; for hitherto there had seemed
+no need to listen attentively.
+
+"Yes, sir," he went on, "he ostypathed a horse for us.  The boys they
+gambled about two thousand dollars on that horse over at Socorro.  It
+was a cross-eyed horse, too."
+
+"What's that?" Doc Tomlinson objected.  "There never was such a thing
+as a cross-eyed horse."
+
+"Oh, there wasn't, wasn't there?" said Curly.  "Well, now, my friend,
+when you talk that-a-way, you simply show me how much you don't know
+about horses.  This here Bar T horse was as cross-eyed as a saw-horse,
+until we got him ostypathed.  But, of course, if you don't believe what
+I say, there's no use tellin' you this story at all."
+
+"Oh, go on, go on," McKinney spoke up, "don't pay no attention to Doc."
+
+"Well," Curly resumed, "that there horse was knowed constant on this
+range for over three years.  He was a outlaw, with cream mane and tail,
+and a _pinto_ map of Europe, Asia, and Africa wrote all over his ribs.
+Run?  Why, that horse could run down a coyote as a moral pastime.  We
+used him to catch jack rabbits with between meals.  It wasn't no
+trouble for him to _run_.  The trouble was to tell when he was goin'
+to _stop_ runnin'.  Sometimes it was a good while before the feller
+ridin' him could get him around to where he begun to run.  He run in
+curves natural, and he handed out a right curve or a left one, just as
+he happened to feel, same as the feller dealin' faro, and just as easy.
+
+"Tom Redmond, on the Bar T, he got this horse from a feller by the name
+of Hasenberg, that brought in a bunch of has-beens and outlaws, and
+allowed to distribute 'em in this country.  Hasenberg was a foreign
+gent that looked a good deal like Whiteman, our distinguished
+feller-citizen here.  He was cross-eyed hisself, body and soul.  There
+wasn't a straight thing about him.  We allowed that maybe this Pinto
+_caballo_ got cross-eyed from associatin' with old Hasenberg, who was
+strictly on the bias, any way you figured."
+
+"You ain't so bad, after all, Curly," said Dan Andersen, sitting up.
+"You're beginning now to hit the human interest part.  You ought to be
+a reg'lar contributor."
+
+"Shut up!" said Curly.  "Now Tom Redmond, he took to this here Pinto
+horse from havin' seen him jump the corral fence several times, and
+start floatin' off across the country for a eight or ten mile sasshay
+without no special encouragement.  He hired three Castilian busters to
+operate on Pinto, and he got so he could be rode occasional, but every
+one allowed they never did see any horse just like him.  He was the
+most aggravatinest thing we ever did have on this range.  He had a sort
+of odd-lookin' white eye, but a heap of them _pintos_ has got glass
+eyes, and so no one thought to examine his lookers very close, though
+it was noticed early in the game that Pinto might be lookin' one way
+and goin' the other, at the same time.  He'd be goin' on a keen lope,
+and then something or other might get on his mind, and he'd stop and
+untangle hisself from all kinds of ridin'.  Sometimes he'd jump and
+snort like he was seein' ghosts.  A feller on that horse could have
+roped antelopes as easy as yearlin' calves, if he could just have told
+which way Mr. Pinto was goin'; but he was a shore hard one to estermate.
+
+"At last Tom, why, he suspected somethin' wasn't right with Pinto's
+lamps.  If you stuck out a bunch of hay at him, he couldn't bite it by
+about five feet.  When you led him down to water, you had to go
+sideways; and if you wanted to get him in through the corral gate, you
+had to push him in backward.  We discovered right soon that he was born
+with his parallax or something out of gear.  His graduated scale of
+seein' things was different from our'n.  I don't reckon anybody ever
+will know what all Pinto saw with them glass lamps of his, but all the
+time we knowed that if we could ever onct get his lookin' outfit tuned
+up proper, we had the whole country skinned in a horse race; for he
+could shore run copious.
+
+"That was why he had the whole Bar T outfit guessin' all the time.  We
+all wanted to bet on him, and we was all scared to.  Sometimes we'd
+make up a purse among us, and we'd go over to some social getherin' or
+other, and win a thousand dollars.  Old Pinto could run all day; he can
+yet, for that matter.  Didn't make no difference to him how often we
+raced him; and natural, after we'd won one hatful of money with him,
+we'd want to win another.  That was where our judgment was weak.
+
+"You never could tell whether Pinto was goin' to finish under the wire,
+or out in the landscape.  His eyes seemed to be sort of moverble, but
+like enough they'd get sot when he went to runnin'.  Then he'd run
+whichever way he was lookin' at the time, or happened to think he was
+lookin'; and dependin' additional on what he thought he saw.  And law!
+A whole board of supervisors and school commissioners couldn't have
+looked that horse in the face, and guessed on their sacred honor
+whether he was goin' to jump the fence to the left, or take to the high
+sage on the outside of the track.
+
+"Onct in a while we'd git Pinto's left eye set at a angle, and he'd
+come around the track and under the wire before she wobbled out of
+place.  On them occasions we made money a heap easier than I ever did
+a-gettin' it from home.  But, owin' to the looseness of them eyes, I
+don't reckon there never was no horse racin' as uncertain as this here;
+and like enough you may have observed it's uncertain enough even when
+things is fixed in the most comf'terble way possible."
+
+A deep sigh greeted this, which showed that Curly's audience was in
+full sympathy.
+
+"You always felt like puttin' the saddle on to Pinto hind end to, he
+was so cross-eyed," he resumed ruminatingly, "but still you couldn't
+help feelin' sorry for him, neither.  Now, he had a right pained and
+grieved look in his face all the time.  I reckon he thought this was a
+hard sort of a world to get along in.  It is.  A cross-eyed man has a
+hard enough time, but a cross-eyed _horse_--well, you don't know how
+much trouble he can be for hisself, and every one else around him.
+
+"Now, here we was, fixed up like I told you.  Mr. Allopath is over on
+Sweetwater creek, Mr. Homeopath is maybe in the last stages of
+starvation.  Old Pinto looks plumb hopeless, and all us fellers is
+mostly hopeless too, owin' to his uncertain habits in a horse race, yet
+knowin' that it ain't perfessional for us not to back a Bar T horse
+that can run as fast as this one can.
+
+"About then along comes Mr. Ostypath.  This was just about thirty days
+before the county fair at Socorro, and there was money hung up for
+horse races over there that made us feel sick to think of.  We knew we
+could go out of the cow-punchin' business for good if we could just
+only onct get Pinto over there, and get him to run the right way for a
+few brief moments.
+
+"Was he game?  I don't know.  There never was no horse ever got clost
+enough to him in a horse race to tell whether he was game or not.  He
+might not get back home in time for supper, but he would shore run
+industrious.  Say, I talked in a telyphome onct.  The book hung on the
+box said the telyphome was instantaneous.  It ain't.  But now this
+Pinto, he was a heap more instantaneous than a telyphome.
+
+"As I was sayin', it was long about now Mr. Ostypath comes in.  He
+talks with the boss about locatin' around in here.  Boss studies him
+over a while, and as there ain't been anybody sick for over ten years
+he tries to break it to Mr. Ostypath gentle that the Bar T ain't a good
+place for a doctor.  They have some conversation along in there,
+that-a-way, and Mr. Ostypath before long gets the boss interested deep
+and plenty.  He says there ain't no such a thing as gettin' sick.  We
+all knew that before; but he certainly floors the lot when he allows
+that the reason a feller don't feel good, so as he can eat tenpenny
+nails, and make a million dollars a year, is always because there is
+something wrong with his osshus structure.
+
+"He says the only thing that makes a feller have rheumatism, or
+dyspepsia, or headache, or nosebleed, or red hair, or any other
+sickness, is that something is wrong with his nervous system.  Now,
+it's this-a-way.  He allows them nerves is like a bunch of garden hose.
+If you put your foot on the hose, the water can't run right free.  If
+you take it off, everything's lovely.  'Now,' says Mr. Ostypath, 'if,
+owin' to some luxation, some leeshun, some temporary mechanical
+disarrangement of your osshus structure, due to a oversight of a
+All-wise Providence, or maybe a fall off'n a buckin' horse, one of them
+bones of yours gets to pressin' on a nerve, why, it ain't natural you
+ought to feel good.  Now, is it?' says he.
+
+"He goes on and shows how all up and down a feller's backbone there is
+plenty of soft spots, and he shows likewise that there is scattered
+around in different parts of a feller's territory something like two
+hundred and four and a half bones, any one of which is likely any
+minute to jar loose and go to pressin' on a soft spot; 'In which case,'
+says he, 'there is need of a ostypath immediate.'
+
+"For instance,' he says to me, 'I could make quite a man out of you in
+a couple of years if I had the chanct.'  I ast him what his price would
+be for that, and he said he was willin' to tackle it for about fifty
+dollars a month.  That bein' just five dollars a month more than the
+boss was allowing me at the time, and me seein' I'd have to go about
+two years without anything to wear or eat--let alone anything to
+drink--I had to let this chanct go by.  I been strugglin' along, as you
+know, ever since, just like this, some shopworn, but so's to set up.
+There was one while, I admit, when the Doc made me some nervous, when I
+thought of all them soft spots in my spine, and all them bones liable
+to get loose any minute and go to pressin' on them.  But I had to take
+my chances, like any other cow puncher at forty-five a month."
+
+"You ought to raise his wages, Mac," said Doc Tomlinson to McKinney,
+the ranch foreman, but the latter only grunted.
+
+"Mr. Ostypath, he stayed around the Bar T quite a while," began Curly
+again, "and we got to talkin' to him a heap about modern science.  Says
+he, one evenin', this-a-way to us fellers, says he, 'Why, a great many
+things goes wrong because the nervous system is interfered with, along
+of your osshus structure.  You think your stomach is out of whack,'
+says he.  'It ain't.  All it needs is more nerve supply.  I git that by
+loosenin' up the bones in your back.  Why, I've cured a heap of
+rheumatism, and paralysis, and cross eyes, and--'
+
+"'What's that?' says Tom Redmond, right sudden.
+
+"'You heard me, sir,' says the Doc, severe.
+
+"Tom, he couldn't hardly wait, he was so bad struck with the idea he
+had.  'Come here, Doc,' says he.  And then him and Doc walked off a
+little ways and begun to talk.  When they come up toward us again, we
+heard the Doc sayin': 'Of course I could cure him.  Straybismus is dead
+easy.  I never did operate on no horse, but I've got to eat, and if
+this here is the only patient in this whole blamed country, why I'll
+have to go you, if it's only for the sake of science,' says he.  Then
+we all bunched in together and drifted off toward the corral, where old
+Pinto was standin', lookin' hopeless and thoughtful.  'Is this the
+patient?' says the Doc, sort of sighin'.
+
+"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.
+
+"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways,
+sideways, and all around.  Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks
+Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd
+'a' been lookin' him full in the face.  Doc he stands thoughtful for
+quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down
+along Pinto's spine.  He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful
+subject,' says he.  'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject!  Whole osshus
+structure exposed!'  And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful
+in the game."
+
+Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.
+
+"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is
+full of little humps--you can see that easy in the springtime.  Now old
+Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky
+Mountain range.
+
+"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he,
+'Just like I thought,' says he.  'The patient has suffered a distinct
+leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"
+
+"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.
+
+"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.
+
+"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore
+scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.
+
+"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more.  'Now, here is a
+distant luxation in the lumber regions.'  He talked like Pinto had a
+wooden leg.
+
+"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced
+ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.
+
+"'Now look here, Doc,' says Tom Redmond to him then.  'You go careful.
+We all know there's something strange about this here horse; but now,
+if he's got any bone pressin' on him anywhere that makes him _run_ the
+way he does, why, you be blamed careful not to monkey with that there
+particular bone.  Don't you touch his _runnin'_ bone, because
+_that's_ all right the way it is.'
+
+"'Don't you worry any,' says the Doc.  'All I should do would only be
+to increase his nerve supply.  In time I could remedy his ocular
+defecks, too,' says he.  He allows that if we will give him time, he
+can make Pinto's eyes straighten out so's he'll look like a new rockin'
+horse Christmas mornin' at a church festerval.  Incidentally he
+suggests that we get a tall leather blinder and run it down Pinto's
+nose, right between his eyes.
+
+"This last was what caught us most of all.  'This here blinder idea,'
+says Tom Redmond, 'is plumb scientific.  The trouble with us cow
+punchers is we ain't got no brains--or we wouldn't be cow punchers!
+Now look here, Pinto's right eye looks off to the left, and his left
+eye looks off to the right.  Like enough he sees all sorts of things on
+both sides of him, and gets 'em mixed.  Now, you put this here harness
+leather between his eyes, and his right eye looks plumb into it on one
+side, and his left eye looks into it on the other.  Result is, he can't
+see nothing at _all_!  Now, if he'll only run when he's _blind_, why,
+we can skin them Socorro people till it seems like a shame.'
+
+"Well, right then we all felt money in our pockets.  We seemed most too
+good to be out ridin' sign, or pullin' old cows out of mudholes.  'You
+leave all that to me,' says Doc.  'By the time I've worked on this
+patient's nerve centres for a while, I'll make a new horse out of him.
+You watch me,' says he.  That made us all feel cheerful.  We thought
+this wasn't such a bad world, after all.
+
+"We passed the hat in the interest of modern science, and we fenced off
+a place in the corral and set up a school of ostypathy in our midst.
+Doc, he done some things that seemed to us right strange at first.  He
+gets Pinto up in one corner and takes him by the ear, and tries to
+break his neck, with his foot in the middle of his back.  Then he goes
+around on the other side and does the same thing.  He hammers him up
+one side and down the other, and works him and wiggles him till us cow
+punchers thought he was goin' to scatter him around worse than
+Cassybianca on the burnin' deck after the exploshun.  My experience,
+though, is that it's right hard to shake a horse to pieces.  Pinto, he
+stood it all right.  And say, he got so gentle, with that tall blinder
+between his eyes, that he'd 'a' followed off a sheepherder.
+
+"All this time we was throwin' oats a-plenty into Pinto, rubbin' his
+legs down, and gettin' him used to a saddle a little bit lighter than a
+regular cow saddle.  Doc, he allows he can see his eyes straightenin'
+out every day.  'I ought to have a year on this job,' says he; 'but
+these here is urgent times.'
+
+"I should say they was urgent.  The time for the county fair at Socorro
+was comin' right clost.
+
+"At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair,
+and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the
+racin' book.  My friends, you would 'a' shed tears of pity to see them
+folks fall down over theirselves tryin' to hand us their money against
+old Pinto.  There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds
+of fancy riders, and money--oh, law!  Us Bar T fellers, we took
+everything offered--put up everything we had, down to our spurs.  Then
+we'd go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn.  We was gettin'
+rich so quick we felt almost scared.
+
+"There come nigh to bein' a little shootin' just before the horses was
+gettin' ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half.  We
+led old Pinto out, and some feller standin' by, he says, sarcastic
+like, 'What's that I see comin'; a snow-plough?'  Him alludin' to the
+single blinder on Pinto's nose.
+
+"'I reckon you'll think it's been snowin' when we get through,' says
+Tom Redmond to him, scornful.  'The best thing you can do is to shut
+up, unless you've got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar
+T festerval.'  But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the
+post, and there wasn't no more talk.
+
+"Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the
+starter didn't have no trouble with him at all.  At last he got them
+all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the
+whole bunch.  Say, man, that was a fine start.
+
+"Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he'd come out on the track
+that day just standin' on the edges of his feet, he was feelin' that
+fine.  We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up
+on Pinto for to ride him.  Now a Greaser ain't got no sense.  It was
+that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.
+
+"I was tellin' you that there horse was ostypathed, so to speak, plumb
+to a razor edge, and I was sayin' that he went off on a even start.
+Then what did he do?  Run?  No, he didn't _run_.  He just sort of
+passed _away_ from the place where he started at.  Our Greaser, he
+sees the race is all over, and like any fool cow puncher, he must get
+frisky.  Comin' down the homestretch, only needin' about one more
+jump--for it ain't above a quarter of a mile--Jose, he stands up in his
+stirrups and pulls off his hat, and just whangs old Pinto over the head
+with it, friendly like, to show him there ain't no coldness.
+
+"We never did rightly know what happened at that time.  The Greaser
+admits he may have busted off the fastenin' of that single blinder down
+Pinto's nose.  Anyhow, Pinto runs a few short jumps, and then stops,
+lookin' troubled.  The next minute he hides his face on the Greaser and
+there is a glimpse of bright, glad sunlight on the bottom of Jose's
+moccasins.  Next minute after that Pinto is up in the grandstand among
+the ladies, and there he sits down in the lap of the Governor's wife,
+which was among them present.
+
+"There was time, even then, to lead him down and over the line, but
+before we could think of that he falls to buckin' sincere and
+conscientious, up there among the benches, and if he didn't jar his
+osshus structure a heap _then_, it wasn't no fault of his'n.  We all
+run up in front of the grandstand, and stood lookin' up at Pinto, and
+him the maddest, scaredest, cross-eyedest horse I ever did see in all
+my life.  His single blinder was swingin' loose under his neck.  His
+eyes was right mean and white, and the Mexican saints only knows which
+way he _was_ a-lookin'.
+
+"So there we was," went on Curly, with another sigh, "all Socorro
+sayin' bright and cheerful things to the Bar T, and us plumb broke, and
+far, far from home.
+
+"We roped Pinto, and led him home behind the wagon, forty miles over
+the sand, by the soft, silver light of the moon.  There wasn't a horse
+or saddle left in our _rodeo_, and we had to ride on the grub wagon,
+which you know is a disgrace to any gentleman that wears spurs.  Pinto,
+he was the gayest one in the lot.  I reckon he allowed he'd been Queen
+of the May.  Every time he saw a jack rabbit or a bunch of sage brush,
+he'd snort and take a _pasear_ sideways as far as the rope would let
+him go.
+
+"'The patient seems to be still laborin' under great cerebral
+excitation,' says the Doc, which was likewise on the wagon.  'I ought
+to have had a year on him,' says he, despondent like.
+
+"'Shut up,' says Tom Redmond to the Doc.  'I'd shoot up your own osshus
+structure plenty,' says he, 'if I hadn't bet my gun on that horse race.'
+
+"Well, we got home, the wagon-load of us, in the mornin' sometime,
+every one of us ashamed to look the cook in the face, and hopin' the
+boss was away from home.  But he wasn't.  He looks at us, and says he;--
+
+"'Is this a sheep outfit I see before me, or is it the remnants of the
+former cow camp on the Bar T?'  He was right sarcastic.  'Doc,' says
+he, 'explain this here to me.' But the Doc, he couldn't.  Says the boss
+to him at last, 'The _right_ time to do the explainin' is before the
+hoss race is over, and not after,' says he.  'That's the only kind of
+science that goes hereafter on the Bar T,' says he.
+
+"I reckon the boss was feelin' a little riled, because he had two
+hundred on Pinto hisself.  A cross-eyed horse shore can make a sight of
+trouble," Curly sighed in conclusion; "yet I bought Pinto for four
+dollars, and--sometimes, anyway--he's the best horse in my string down
+at Carrizosy, ain't he, Mac?"
+
+In the thoughtful silence following this tale, Tom Osby knocked his
+pipe reflectively against a cedar log.  "That's the way with the
+railroad," he said.  "It's goin' to come in herewith one eye on the
+gold mines and the other on the town--and there won't be no
+blind-bridle up in front of old Mr. Ingine, neither.  If we got as much
+sense as the Bar T feller, we'll do our explainin' before, and not
+after the hoss race is over.  Before I leave for Vegas, I want to see
+one of you ostypothetic lawyers about that there railroad outfit."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PARTITION OF HEARTS DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
+Considerations_
+
+"You see, it's just this-a-way," began Tom Osby, the morning after
+Curly's osteopathic horse saga; "I've got to go on up to Vegas after a
+load of stuff, and I'll be gone a couple of weeks.  Now, you know, from
+what we heard down at Sky Top about this railroad, a heap of things can
+happen in two weeks.  Them fellers ain't showin' their hands any, but for
+all we know their ingineers may come in any day, and start in to doin'
+things."
+
+"They've got to make arrangements first," replied Dan Anderson.
+
+"That's all right; and so ought we to make arrangements.  We seen this
+place first.  Now, Dan--" and he extended a gnarled and hairy
+hand--"you've always done like you said you would.  You took care of me
+down there to Sky Top.  I want you to keep on a-takin' care of me,
+whether I'm here or not.  Now, there's my house and yard, right at the
+head of the caņon, where they've got to come if they get in.  That little
+old place, and my little old team, is about all I've got in the world.
+If old Mr. Railroad comes up this _arroyo_, what happens to me?  You
+tell 'em to go somewheres else, because I seen this place first, and I
+like it.  Ain't that the law in this country?  Ain't it _always_ been
+the law?"
+
+Dan Anderson nodded.  He held out his hand to Tom Osby and looked him
+straight in the eye.  "I'll take care of you, Tom," he promised.
+
+"Then that'll be about all," said Tom; "giddup, boys!"
+
+In some way news of the early advent of the railroad had gotten about in
+Heart's Desire, and Dan Anderson found talk of it on every tongue, talk
+very similar to that of Tom Osby.  Uncle Jim Brothers, owner of the
+one-story hotel and restaurant, the father and the feeder of all Heart's
+Desire when the latter was in financial stress, was the next to come to
+him; and Uncle Jim was grave of face.
+
+"See here, man," said he, "how about this here new railroad?  Do we want
+it, or _do_ we?  Seems to me like we always got along here pretty well
+the way things was."
+
+Dan Anderson nodded again.  Uncle Jim shifted from one large foot to the
+other, and thrust a great hand into the pocket of one trouser leg.
+
+"All I was going to say to you, Dan," he went on, "is, if it comes to
+takin' any sides, we all know which side you're on.  You're with _us_.
+Now, there's my place down there, where you've et many a time with the
+rest of the boys.  You've helped me build the tables in the dining
+room--done a lot of things which makes me feel obliged to you."  (Ah!
+lovable liar, Uncle Jim, who could feed a man broke and hungry, and still
+let him feel that the operation was a favor to the feeder!) "Now, I just
+wanted to say, Dan, I was sure, in case any railroad ever did come
+cavortin' around here, you'd sort of look after the old place.  Will you
+do that?"
+
+"Of course he will," broke in Doc Tomlinson, who had strolled down the
+street and overheard the conversation.  "Dan Anderson, he's our lawyer.
+We've got him retained permanent, ain't we, Dan?  Now, there's my old
+drug store--ain't much in it, but it's where I settled when I first driv
+into the valley, and I like the place.  Ain't no railroad going to boost
+me out without a scrap."
+
+Dan Anderson turned away, sick at heart.  For three days he kept to his
+cabin on the far side of the _arroyo_.
+
+But if hesitation sat on the soul of any man of the community, if doubt
+or questionings harassed the minds of any, there was no uncertainty on
+the part of the management of the railroad, whose coming was causing this
+uneasiness.  One day Dan Anderson was startled to hear a knock at his
+door, and to see the dusty figure of Porter Barkley, general counsel of
+the A. P. and S. E., just from a long buckboard ride from the head of the
+rails.  With him came Grayson, chief engineer.  Dan Anderson invited them
+in.
+
+"Well, Mr. Anderson," said Barkley, "here we are, close after you.  We're
+following up the right-of-way matters sharp and hard now.  We can't hold
+back our graders, and before the line gets abreast of this caņon, we've
+got to know what we can do here.  Now, what can you tell us by this time?"
+
+"I can tell you, as I said, the status of every town lot and every mining
+claim in this valley," replied Dan Anderson.  "It's all simple so far as
+that is concerned."
+
+"How about that town site?  Grayson, here, is ready to go ahead with the
+new plat.  If you never had any town site filed, how were real-estate
+transfers made?"
+
+"There never were any transfers made.  There has not been a town lot sold
+in ten years."
+
+"Real estate just a little dull?" laughed Barkley, sarcastically.
+
+"We hadn't noticed it," said Dan Anderson, simply.
+
+"But how about your courts?  Next thing you'll be telling me there wasn't
+any court."
+
+"There never was, except when we acquitted a man for shooting a pig.  I
+was his counsel, by the way."
+
+"Nor any town election?"
+
+"Why should there be?"
+
+"No government--no nothing? for five years?"
+
+"Over twelve years altogether, to be exact.  I'm rather a newcomer
+myself."
+
+"No organization--no government--" Barkley summed it up.  "Good God!
+what kind of a place is this?"
+
+"It's Heart's Desire," said Dan Anderson.  No man of that valley was ever
+able to say more, or indeed thought it needful to say more.
+
+Porter Barkley gave a contemptuous whistle, as he turned on his heel,
+hands in pockets, his bulky form filling the doorway as he looked out.
+"So you were a lawyer here," he said.  "You must have had rather more
+leisure than law practice, I should think."
+
+"It left me all the more time for my reading," said Dan Anderson,
+gravely.  "You've no idea how much a law practice interferes with one's
+legal studies."  Barkley looked at him, but could discover no sign of
+levity.
+
+"Well, there is one thing mighty sure," said he, shutting his heavy jaws
+tight; "this valley is, or was, open to settlement under the United
+States land laws."
+
+"Certainly," assented Dan Anderson.  "The first men in here were mining
+men from every corner of the Rockies, and they knew their business.  All
+these mountains were platted, and 'adversed,' and litigated.  Then,
+before the second discoveries, and before any coal veins were located on
+the other side of the valley, the gold veins pinched out.  Everybody got
+broke, and nearly everybody got up and walked away.  Meantime, the courts
+had only been sitting over at Lincoln once in a while--when Billy the Kid
+allowed it.  I'll have to admit that things were a trifle tangled as to
+title."
+
+"Well, I should say so!"  Barkley was irritable, Grayson, the engineer,
+silent and smiling.
+
+"There was so much room after the mining boom broke, that nobody cared
+for a town lot.  Every fellow just picked out the place he liked, built
+where he liked, and went in as his own butler, chambermaid, and cook.
+
+"You are seeing this country now, gentlemen," he went on, "pretty much as
+God made it, and as Coronado saw it three hundred years ago.  I deprecate
+any undue haste on your part.  We've been three hundred years in getting
+this far along.  We've done very well without either a town site or a
+city council."
+
+Barkley was utterly unable to comprehend either Dan Anderson or Heart's
+Desire.  "This is the absolute limit!" he rapped out.  "At least we'll
+end this now.  Come on, Grayson, we three'll go out and have a look at
+the place, and see what is the best way to lay out the streets.  I
+suppose, Anderson, you can tell us how we can get title under government
+patent--mineral lands--coal lands--desert lands--homestead--whatever we
+can dig out the quickest?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Dan Anderson, "but don't dig too deep, or you may run
+against a land grant from Ferdinand and Isabella to some well-beloved
+_hidalgo_ whose descendants may now be herding sheep on the Pecos, or
+owning the earth along the Rio Grande.  Cabeza de Vaca may own this
+valley, for all I know.  Maybe Coronado owns it.  _Quien sabe_?  We only
+borrowed the place.  We thought that probably Charles IV, or Philip II,
+or whoever it was, wouldn't mind very much, seeing that he's dead anyhow,
+in case we returned the valley in good condition, reasonable wear and
+tear excepted, after we were dead ourselves.  Of course, this railroad
+coming in complicates matters a good deal.  Do I make all this clear to
+you, gentlemen?  I never did see a place just like this, myself."
+
+"No?" snapped Barkley.
+
+"So we called it Heart's Desire."
+
+"We'll call it Coalville now," retorted Barkley.
+
+They passed out into the bright sunlit street of Heart's Desire.
+Stern-browed Carrizo, guardian through centuries of calm and secrecy,
+gazed down on them unwinking.  Dan Anderson looked up at the grim
+sentinel of the valley, and mockery left his speech.  He looked about at
+the wide and vacant spaces of the little settlement, lying content,
+secure, and set apart, and a horror came upon his soul.  He was about to
+be a traitor, a traitor to Heart's Desire!  Law--title--security--what
+more of these could these men bring to Heart's Desire than it had long
+had already?  What wrong here had ever been left unrighted?  Truth, and
+justice, and fairness, and sincerity, those priceless things--why, he had
+known them here for years.  Were they now to be made more obvious, or
+more strong?  He had believed his friends, had had friends to believe;
+would these walking at his side be better friends?  These men of Heart's
+Desire, these simple children who had left the smother of civilization to
+seek out for themselves a place of strength and simplicity, these strong
+and fearless giants, these friends of his--had he not promised them that
+they would be safe in his hands?  Hitherto there had never been a traitor
+among all the men of Heart's Desire.  Was he, their accepted friend, to
+be the first?  Dan Anderson passed his hand over a forehead suddenly
+grown moist.  He dared not look up at the chiding front of old Carrizo.
+
+"I was saying," said Porter Barkley, turning from the taciturn engineer
+as they walked along the hillside, "that this place seems to have been
+laid off with a circular saw.  I can't see any idea of streets at all."
+
+"There is a sort of a street along the _arroyo_," said Dan Anderson,
+dully.  "There never were any cross streets.  The boys just built where
+they felt like it."
+
+"And great builders they were!  I didn't know men ever lived in such
+places.  What's that joint there?"  He pointed out a ruined _jacal_ of
+upright mud-chinked logs, now leaning slantwise far to one side.  "Was
+that a house, too?  It hasn't even a chimney,"
+
+"That was the residence and law office of a former supreme judge of the
+State of Kansas," replied Dan Anderson.  "He didn't need any chimney.
+You've no idea how useless a chimney really is.  He never stopped to cut
+any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and
+let the smoke go out the window.  He had a pet wildcat that shared his
+legal studies--oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to you,
+just fresh from New York."
+
+"But didn't you live in New York once yourself?"
+
+"Yes, once."
+
+"What made you come away?"
+
+"Objected to, as irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; and objection
+sustained," replied Dan Anderson.  "The first thing I learned in this
+country was not to inquire about any man's past.  That's a useful thing
+for _you_ to learn, too."
+
+Porter Barkley, accustomed to dominating those around him, flushed red,
+but managed to suppress his rising choler for the time.  "And by the way,
+what's that old shell over there, across the ditch?" he asked.
+
+"I regret your irreverence," said Dan Anderson.  "That's the New Jersey
+Gold Mills.  Eighty thousand of Eastern Capital went in there at one
+time.  They didn't understand the ways of the country."
+
+"Humph!  Well, it's a more practical layout you've got in here this time.
+You can gamble that Ellsworth and our gang are not going to sink their
+roll here, by a long ways, unless they get something for it."
+
+"You'll get a run for your money, in all likelihood," remarked Dan
+Anderson.
+
+"As I said, now, Grayson, don't pay any attention to this gully here,"
+went on Barkley.  "We'll fill this ditch and put in drains at the
+crossings, and run the main street north and south.  We'll take the
+ramshorn crooks out of this town in about two days, when we get started."
+
+"I see no reason why we could not run the cross streets at right angles,"
+said Grayson, the constructive.  "Of course, we'll catch a good many of
+these buildings--" he hesitated, pointing at the time to Doc Tomlinson's
+drug store.
+
+"The corner of this fence would be inside the line of the main street,"
+he went on, sighting along his lead pencil to the angle of Whiteman's
+corral.  It was the very spot where Dan Anderson had sat in council with
+his cronies many a time.  He bit his lip now as he followed the gaze of
+the engineer.
+
+"How about the stone house down the _arroyo_?" asked he of Grayson.
+This was Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, sanctuary for the homeless of
+Heart's Desire, a temple of refuge, a place where the word "Friendship,"
+unspoken, never written, was known and understood among men gathered from
+all corners of this unfriendly world.
+
+"That would have to go," replied Grayson.
+
+"As to that shanty down below, at the head of the caņon," growled
+Barkley, pointing to Tom Osby's adobe, "that's going to be the first
+thing we'll tear down, street or no street.  We need that place for our
+depot yard, and we're going to take it.  Besides, there was something
+about that Osby fellow I didn't like when we met him over at Sky Top.
+He's too damned independent to suit me."
+
+Dan Anderson straightened up as though smitten, his face a dull red.  The
+dancing heat mist blurred before his eyes.  He said nothing.  They turned
+presently and strolled down toward the foot of the _arroyo_.  Barkley
+pushed his hat back on his furrowed forehead.
+
+"There is a lot in this thing for me, Andersen," said he, "and there'll
+be a lot in it for you.  Have you got any claims of your own in here?
+Mineral, I mean?"
+
+"Of course," Dan Anderson replied.  "We all have claims.  This is the
+only valley in the West, so far as I know, where there is good coal on
+one side, and paying gold quartz on the other.  But that's the case here.
+We haven't overlooked it."
+
+Barkley whistled.  "I wouldn't ask a better show than you'll have here,"
+said he, contemplatively.  "The only wonder to me is that some one hasn't
+broken into this long ago."
+
+"There might be some few difficulties," suggested Dan Anderson.
+
+"Difficulties!  What do you care about that?  We'll wear 'em out, pound
+'em out, break 'em up, I tell you.  We're the first ones to find this
+country--"
+
+"Except maybe Coronado, De Vaca and Company."
+
+"Who were they?"
+
+"The same as you and me," replied Dan Anderson, enigmatically.  "Ask the
+mountains."
+
+"Oh, rot!" said Barkley.  "I'll tell you, once for all, I'm not
+interested in dreams or foolishness.  Now, if you want to go in with us,
+that's one thing.  If you don't, we want to find it out mighty quick."
+
+"You might do worse," said Dan Anderson.  "The other lawyer is worse than
+myself.  At times I suspect him of being lazy."
+
+"Well, well, let's get together," urged Barkley, impatiently.  "Now,
+Grayson thinks it will take about three hundred and fifty acres for the
+first plat, without additions; we'll supersede the old Jack Wilson
+patent.  He's dead, you say?  Never left a will, or any heirs?  Never did
+get his town site platted and filed?  Well, he never will, now.  You go
+with Grayson to-morrow and run out these lines quietly, and help him get
+an idea of the best mining claims on both sides of the valley, too.
+There'll be plenty for you to do."
+
+Dan Anderson nodded, but made no comment.  Many things were revolving in
+his mind.
+
+"Meantime," concluded Barkley, "I've got to get back down the line to
+meet Mr. Ellsworth.  We'll come up again.  You can readily see that we've
+got to have a town meeting before very long.  Get things in line for it.
+Will you attend to this?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dan Anderson, slowly and musingly; "yes, I'll attend to
+it."
+
+Barkley looked once more upon the impassive face of his local counsel,
+and departed more than ever puzzled and exasperated.  He liked Dan
+Anderson as little as he understood him.  "I'll handle him, though," he
+muttered to himself.  "There's a way to handle every man, and I rather
+think that this one'll come to his feed before we get done with him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
+and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator_
+
+"Learned Counsel," said Dan Anderson on the morning following the
+preliminary survey of Heart's Desire, "I want you to take my case."
+
+"What's up?" asked Learned Counsel.  Dan Anderson pointed down the
+street, where a group stood talking among themselves, casting
+occasional side-long glances in his direction.  "They're milling like a
+bunch of scared longhorns," he said.  "Something's wrong, and I know it
+mighty well.  I want you to take my case.  Come along."
+
+Contrary to the ancient custom of the forum at Whiteman's corral, the
+group did not move apart to admit them to the circle.  "The gentleman
+from Kansas was addressing the meeting," said Dan Anderson.  Doc
+Tomlinson continued speaking, but still the circle made no move.
+
+"Say it!" burst out Dan Anderson.  "Tell it out!  What's on your minds,
+you fellows?"
+
+"We don't like to believe it," McKinney began, facing toward him.  "We
+hope it ain't true."
+
+"What's not true?" he demanded, looking from one averted face to
+another.  At length Doc Tomlinson resumed his office as spokesman.
+"They say you've sold us out.  They say you're bought by the railroad
+to clean us out; that the scheme is to steal the town, and you're in
+the steal.  Is that so?"
+
+"Is it true?" asked McKinney.
+
+"We want to _know_ if it's true," insisted Doc Tomlinson.  "You was
+all over town with them fellers.  Now they've let it out they're goin'
+to grab the town site and make a re-survey."
+
+"We know there wasn't ever any town site here," added Uncle Jim
+Brothers, "but what need was there?  Wasn't there plenty of room for
+everybody?"
+
+"You can't try any hurrah game on us fellers here," said McKinney,
+facing Dan Anderson squarely.
+
+"Nor you with me," retorted Dan Anderson.  "Don't any of you undertake
+that."
+
+"Hold on there," called Learned Counsel, lifting his hand for
+attention.  "This man is my client!  You're not hearing both sides."
+
+"Tell the other side, Dan," said Uncle Jim Brothers.  Dan Anderson
+shook his head.
+
+"Why can't you?" asked Uncle Jim.
+
+"I can't!" broke from Dan Andersen's dry lips.  "If you knew, you
+wouldn't ask me to."
+
+"That's no argument," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "What we do know is
+that you were figurin' to run the street right past here, maybe through
+my store and Uncle Jim's place, maybe takin' Tom's place for depot
+yards.  That outfit's been all over the hills lookin' for claims to
+jump.  It's a case of gobble and steal.  They say you're hired to help
+it on, and are gettin' a share of the steal.  Now, if that's so, what
+would you do if you was in our place?"
+
+"I'd run the fellow out of town," said Dan Anderson.  "If there was
+that sort of a traitor here, by God! I'd kill him."
+
+"We never did have no man go back on us here," Uncle Jim Brothers
+remarked.
+
+"Don't say that to me!" Dan Andersen's voice was shaken.  "You've fed
+me, Uncle Jim.  Don't say that to me."
+
+"Then what _shall_ we say, man?" replied Uncle Jim.  "We want to be
+fair with you.  But let me tell you, _you_ don't own this valley.
+_We_ own it.  There's other places in the world besides the States,
+and don't you forget that.  We didn't think you'd ever try to bring
+States ways in here."
+
+"To hell with the States!" said McKinney, tersely.
+
+"And States ways with them!" added Doc Tomlinson.  "I'd like to see any
+railroad, or any States, or any United States government, try to run
+this place."  Unconsciously he slapped his hand upon the worn scabbard
+at his hip, and without thought others in the group eased their pistol
+belts.  It was the Free State of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Well, by God!" said Uncle Jim Brothers, snapping and throwing away the
+piņon twig which he had been fumbling, "if we don't want no railroad,
+we don't _have_ it, and that goes!"
+
+"Of course," broke in Learned Counsel.  "We all know that.  That's a
+small thing.  The big question is whether or not we've been fair to my
+client.  I've not had time yet to go fully into his case.  We'll have
+to continue this trial.  We've got to have fair play."
+
+"That's right enough," assented McKinney, and the others nodded.
+
+"Then wait a while.  You can't settle this thing until my client has
+had time to talk with me.  I'll find out what he ought to tell."
+
+"All right for that, too," agreed Uncle Jim Brothers.  "But about that
+railroad, we'll hold court right here.  We'll send out a summons to
+them folks, and have a meetin' here, and we'll see which is which and
+what is what in this town."
+
+"That's fair enough," assented Learned Counsel.  "We'll try the
+railroad, and we'll try my client at the same time."
+
+"Write out the summons," said Doc Tomlinson.  "Send word down to them
+railroad folks to come up here and be tried.  It's time we knew who was
+boss, them or us.  Go ahead, you're a lawyer; fix it up."
+
+They ignored Dan Anderson, their long-time leader in all matters of
+public interest!  Eventually it was Doc Tomlinson himself who drafted
+the document, one of the most interesting of the Territorial records--a
+summons whereby civilization was called before the bar of primitive
+man.  These presents being signed and sealed, a messenger was sought
+for their delivery.  None better offered than a half-witted sheepherder
+commonly known as Willie, who chanced to be in town by buckboard from
+the lower country.  This much accomplished, the meeting at Whiteman's
+corral broke up.
+
+Learned Counsel took his client by the arm and led him away.  "You need
+not say much to your lawyer," he remarked; "but while I don't ask you
+to incriminate yourself even with your counsel, I only want to say that
+a Girl is, in a great many decisions of the upper courts, held to be an
+extenuating circumstance."  He watched the twitch of Dan Anderson's
+face, but the latter would not speak.
+
+"I don't know just where the girl exists now in this case," went on
+Learned Counsel, "or how; but she's somewhere.  It is not wholly
+necessary that you should specify."
+
+"My God!" broke out Dan Anderson.  "I wanted--I hoped so much?  It was
+my opportunity, my first--"
+
+"That's enough," said Learned Counsel.  "You needn't say any more.
+Every fellow has something of that sort in his life.  What brought
+McKinney here, and Doc Tomlinson, and all the rest?"
+
+"Ribbons!" said Dan Anderson.  "Tintypes!"
+
+"Precisely.  And who shall cast the first stone?  If the boys knew--"
+
+"But they don't know, they can't know.  Do you think I'd uncover her
+name, even among my friends--make her affairs public?  No."
+
+"Then your only defence cannot be brought into court."
+
+"No.  So what do you advise?"
+
+"What do you advise your counsel to advise you?" asked Learned Counsel,
+bitterly.
+
+"Nothing.  I'm done for, either way it goes."
+
+Dan Anderson turned a drawn face.  "What shall I do?" he asked at
+length again.
+
+For once Learned Counsel was wise.  "In this sort of crisis," said he,
+"one does not consult a lawyer.  He decides for himself, and he lives
+or dies, succeeds or fails, wins or loses forever, for himself and by
+himself, without aid of counsel or benefit of clergy."  He stood and
+watched the iron go home into the soul of a game man.  Dan Anderson was
+white, but his reply came sharp and stern.
+
+"You're right!  Leave me alone.  I'll take the case now myself."
+
+They shook hands and separated, not to meet again for days; for Dan
+Anderson shut himself up in his cabin and denied himself to all.  Gloom
+and uncertainty reigned among his friends.  That a crisis of some sort
+was imminent now became generally understood.  At length the crisis
+came.
+
+There arrived in town, obedient to the summons of Heart's Desire, the
+dusty buckboard driven by Willie the sheepherder.  Upon the front seat
+with him was Mr. Ellsworth; on the back seat sat Porter Barkley and
+Constance.  The chief actors in the impending drama were now upon the
+stage, and all Heart's Desire knew that action of some sort must
+presently follow.
+
+With due decorum, however, all Heart's Desire stood apart, while the
+three travellers, dusty and weary, buried themselves in the privacy of
+Uncle Jim Brothers's best spare rooms.  Then Heart's Desire sought out
+Willie the sheepherder.
+
+"Now, Willie," said Doc Tomlinson, "look here--you tell us the truth
+for once.  There's a heap of trouble goin' on here, and we want to get
+at the bottom of it.  Maybe you heard something.  Now, say, is this
+here railroad figurin' on comin' in here, or not?"
+
+"Shore it'll come," said Willie, sagely.  "Them folks has got money to
+do just what they want.  Railroad'll be here in a few days if they feel
+like it."
+
+"Maybe _we_ don't feel like it," said Doc Tomlinson, grimly.  "We'll
+see about that to-night."
+
+"The girl, she's the one," said Willie, vaguely.
+
+"What's that you mean?" commanded Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"The funniest thing," said Willie, "is how things is mixed.  Lord John,
+he rides on the front seat; and Lord Peter Berkeley,--that's the lawyer
+for the railroad,--he rides on the back seat with her, and he sues for
+her hand, he does, all the way up from the Sacramentos.  Says he to
+Lord John, says he, 'Gimme the hand of this fair daughter of thine, and
+the treasure shall be yours,' says he."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Doc Tomlinson.  "I shore thought that girl was mixed up
+in this somehow.  But I didn't understand.  Wonder if Dan Anderson told
+us everything he knew?"
+
+"They set on the back seat," continued Willie, glancing importantly at
+the listeners to his romance, "a-lookin' into each other's eyes.  And
+says the bold juke, to her, says he, 'Constance!' like that.
+'Constance,' says he, 'I've loved you these many years agone.'"
+
+"What did she say then?"
+
+"I didn't ketch what she said.  But by'm by the proud earl--"
+
+"You said the bold juke."
+
+"It's the same thing.  The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint,
+like earls always is, and says he agin, 'Lord John, the treasure shall
+be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of
+thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,' says he.  From that I
+thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn't ketch.  Of
+course, I was busy drivin' the coach."
+
+The men of Heart's Desire looked from one to the other.  "Well, I'll be
+damned!" said Doc Tomlinson.
+
+Curly chewed tobacco vigorously.  "To me," he said, "it looks like Dan
+was throwed down.  That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn't
+think that of her."
+
+"Throwed down hard," affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; "but now, hold on
+till we get all this straight.  Maybe Dan wouldn't work for this outfit
+if he knew all that's goin' on.  Seems to me like, one way or another,
+the girl's kind of up at auction.  If she's part of the railroad's
+comin' into Heart's Desire, why, then, we want to know about it.  I
+wish 't Dan Anderson was here,"
+
+But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his
+_casita_ across the _arroyo_.  As fate would have it, he had caught
+Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own
+account.  Willie escaped alive, and presently left town.  Whereafter
+Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the
+court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised;
+and that of the woman as well.
+
+At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him.
+Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself,
+and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation.  Then, in his
+loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him,
+conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.
+
+Far up on the flank of Carrizo he sat and looked down upon the little
+straggling town in the valley below.  These hills, he thought, with all
+their treasures, were to be sold and purchased for a price, for a
+treasure greater than all their worth,--the hand of the woman whom he
+loved.  She had consented to the bargain.  She had been true to the
+States, and not to Heart's Desire.  She had been true to her class, and
+not to him, who had left her class.  She had been true to her sex, and
+not to him, her unready lover.  Ah, he had not deserved her
+remembrance; but still she ought to have remembered him!  He had not
+been worthy of her, but still she ought to have loved him!  He had
+offered her nothing, he had evaded her, shunned her, slighted her--but
+in spite of that she ought to have waited for him, and to have loved
+him through all, and believed in him in spite of all!
+
+He sat, befooled and befuddled, arguing, accusing, denying, doubting,
+until he knew not where treachery began or faith had ended.  It was
+late when he descended the mountain and walked dully down the street.
+
+All this time Constance, in ignorance of everything except the absolute
+truth, sat in the meagre room of the little stone hotel.  She wondered
+if there would ever be any change in her manner of life, if there would
+ever be anything but this continuous following of her father from one
+commercial battle into another.  She wondered why Dan Anderson did not
+come.  Surely he was here.  Surely his business was with his employers;
+and more surely than all, and in spite of all, his place was here with
+her; because her heart cried out for him.  In spite of all, he was her
+heart's desire.  Why did he not come?
+
+She arose, her hands clenched; she hated him, as much as she had longed
+for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events_
+
+There are two problems in life, and only two: food and love.
+Civilization offers us no more, nor indeed does barbarism; for
+civilization and barbarism are not far apart.  The great metropolis
+which sent its emissaries out to the little mountain hamlet never held
+within its teeming confines any greater or graver questions than those
+which were now to come before the town meeting of Heart's Desire.
+
+Down at the stone hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers the tables had been
+cleared away to make room for this event, the first of its kind ever
+known in that valley.  Heretofore there had been no covenant among
+these men, no law save that which lay in leather on each man's thigh.
+It was a land of the individual; and a sweeter land than that for a man
+was never known in all the world.  Now these men were coming together
+to debate what we call a great question, but what is really a small
+question--that of an organization under the laws of what is denominated
+civilization; that compact which the world devised long ago, when first
+man's flocks and herds became of value, and against which the world has
+since then rebelled, and ever will rebel, until there is no longer any
+world remaining, nor any worth the name of man.
+
+The long room, low and bare, was filled with silent, bearded men.  Two
+or three smoky little lamps but served to emphasize the gloom.  At the
+farther end, on chairs raised a few inches above the level of the
+floor, sat John Ellsworth and Porter Barkley.  The latter was the first
+to address the meeting, and he made what might have been called an able
+effort.
+
+Ignoring the fact that civilization had been summoned to the bar of
+Heart's Desire for trial, and assuming that barbarism was put upon its
+defensive, he pointed out to the men of Heart's Desire that they had
+long been living in a state of semi-savagery.  To be sure, they had not
+yet had among them men of executive and organizing minds, but the
+fulness of years had now brought this latter privilege.
+
+He paused, waiting a space for applause, but no applause came.  He felt
+upon him scores of straight-forward eyes, unwavering, steady.
+
+The town, in its new shape, he hurried on to explain, ought, of course,
+to wipe out and forget its past.  Even the name, "Heart's Desire," was
+an absurd one, awkward, silly, meaning nothing.  They had tremendous
+coal-fields directly at their doors.  He suggested the name of
+Coalville as an eminently practical one for the reconstructed
+community.  His suggestion brought out a stir, a shuffle, a sigh; but
+no more.
+
+Mr. Barkley declared that there must be a fundamental revolution as to
+the old ideas of Heart's Desire.  There had been no courts.  There had
+been no government, no society.  It was time that the old days of the
+mining camp and cow town were done, time that miner's law and no law at
+all should give way to the laws of the Territory, to the laws of the
+United States government, and to the greater law of industrial progress.
+
+He additionally, and with a hardening of his voice, pointed out that,
+under the provisions of the laws of society and civilization, property
+belonged only to the man who held the legal title to it.  The gentlemen
+representing this new railroad were the first to assume legal title to
+this town site; they had taken all necessary steps, and intended to
+hold this town site in the courts as their own.  Their expenses would
+be very large, and they proposed to be repaid.  They felt that their
+holdings in the valley would warrant them in going ahead rapidly with
+their plans of development.  They had bought some few claims in the
+coal-fields, had filed on others for themselves, and had taken over
+other and abandoned claims on both sides of the valley.  Their
+disposition was not to be hostile.  They hoped, after the preliminary
+organization of the town government should have been completed, to have
+the unanimous ratification of all their actions.  They felt most
+friendly, most friendly indeed, toward the hardy citizens of this
+remote community.  They proposed to help them all they could.  He felt
+it a distinguished privilege for himself to be the man to take the
+first steps for the organization of the new commercial metropolis of
+Coalville.
+
+But it was distinctly to be understood by all that the gentlemen whom
+he represented did not propose to entertain, and would not tolerate,
+any interference with their plans.  He begged, in conclusion, to
+present to them, with the request for a respectful and intelligent
+hearing, that able, that distinguished, that benevolent gentleman, well
+known in financial circles of the East, Mr. John Ellsworth of New York,
+who would now address them.
+
+Barkley sat down, and, with customary gesture of the orator, passed his
+handkerchief across his brow.  Then he gazed up, surprised.  The
+applause was long in coming.  He straightened in his chair.  The
+applause did not come at all.  The men of Heart's Desire sat hard and
+grim, each silent, each looking straight ahead, nor asking any counsel.
+
+Ellsworth felt the chill which lay upon the audience, and understood
+its meaning.  He stood before them, a rather portly figure, clean,
+ruddy, well clad, fully self-possessed, and now, by intent,
+conciliatory.  With hands behind his back, he told a certain funny
+little story with which he had been wont to conquer, at least in social
+gatherings.  No ripple came in response.  The eyes of the men of
+Heart's Desire looked as intolerably keen and straight at him as they
+had at his predecessor.  He could feel them plainly in the gloom beyond.
+
+Unconsciously on the defensive now, he explained in detail the
+undeniable advantages which would accrue to Heart's Desire on the
+advent of this railroad and the carrying out of the plans that had been
+outlined.  He did not deny that he considered the opinion of his
+counsel valid; that the valley was in effect open to settlement; that
+they had taken steps to put the first legal possession in their own
+names.  Yet, he stated, although they had taken over a number of claims
+to which there seemed to be no legal title, they did not propose to
+interfere, if it could be avoided, with the holdings of any man then
+living in Heart's Desire.  The re-survey of the town would naturally
+make some changes, but these should sit as lightly as possible upon
+those affected.  Of course, the railroad company could condemn and
+confiscate, but it did not wish to confiscate.  It desired to take the
+attitude of justice and fairness.  The gentlemen should bear in mind
+that all these improvements ran into very considerable sums of money.
+A hundred miles of the railroad below them must pass over a barren
+plain, a cattle country and not an agricultural region, and hence
+offering relatively small support to a railroad enterprise.  As yet,
+artesian water was unknown in that country, and might remain always a
+problem.  No natural streams crossed that great dry table land which
+lay to the west, or the similar plateau to the east.  All their hopes
+lay in this one valley and its resources, and while without doubt those
+resources were great, while the coal-fields upon the one side of the
+valley and the gold claims upon the other had been proved beyond a
+peradventure to be of value, the gentlemen should nevertheless remember
+that all this road building and mine developing cost money, a great
+deal of money.  Of course, no capital could be invested except under
+the protection of a stable and adequate system of the law.
+
+These gentlemen before him, Ellsworth said in conclusion, had chosen
+for their habitation one of the most delightful localities he had ever
+seen in all his travels.  He congratulated them.  He looked forward to
+seeing a prosperous city built up in this happy valley.  The country
+was changing, and it must change, the line of the frontier passing
+steadily from the east to the west across the continent.  They could
+not forever escape civilization.  Indeed, it had now come to them.  He
+hoped that they would receive it, and that they would receive him as
+their friend.
+
+As he closed, Ellsworth found himself not dictating, but almost
+pleading.  The stern gravity of his audience removed the edge of any
+arrogance he might have felt.  He sat down and in turn passed his hand
+across his forehead, as perplexed as had been Barkley before him.  Both
+grew uneasy.  There was a shifting in the seats out in the half-lighted
+interior before them, but there came no sound of applause or comment.
+Ellsworth leaned over and whispered to his associate.
+
+"There's something up," said he.  "We haven't got them going.  What's
+on their minds?  Where's Anderson?  He ought to be here.  Get him, and
+let's nominate him for mayor, or something.  This thing's going to
+split!"
+
+"I'll go out and find him," whispered Barkley, and so slipped out of
+the room.
+
+He did find him, aloof, alone, pacing slowly up and down the street,
+the one man needed by both divergent interests, and the one man absent.
+"Good God!  Anderson," protested Barkley.  "What are you doing out here
+by yourself?  We need you in there.  They're like bumps on a log.  We
+can't get them started at all."
+
+"That's funny," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Funny!  I don't _think_ it's very funny.  You are the one supposed to
+understand these men, and we want you now to deliver the goods."
+
+"If you will pardon me, sir," said Dan Anderson, facing him with his
+hands in his pockets, "I don't exactly like that expression."
+
+"Like it or not," retorted Barkley, hotly.  "You belong in there, and
+not out here in the moonlight studying over your maiden speech.  What
+are you afraid of?"
+
+"Of nothing," said Dan Anderson, simply.  "Or, of nothing but myself."
+
+"But we need another strong talk to stir them up."
+
+"Go make it, then."
+
+"What's that!" cried Barkley, sharply; "you'll not come in."
+
+"No, I'm done with it."
+
+"Why, damn your soul! man, you don't mean to tell me that you've
+flunked--that you've gone back on us?"
+
+Dan Anderson bit his lip, but continued silent.
+
+"You've taken our money!" exclaimed Barkley.  "We've hired you, bought
+you!  We won't stand for any foolishness, and we won't put up with any
+treachery, I want you to understand that.  Your place is in there, at
+the meeting--and here you are standing around as though you were
+mooning over some girl."
+
+"I hadn't noticed the moonlight," said Dan Anderson.  "As to the rest
+of it, the street of this town has usually been free for a man to think
+as he pleased."
+
+"You're a traitor and a squealer!" cried Barkley.
+
+"You're a damned cad!" retorted Dan Anderson, calmly.  He stepped close
+to the other now, although his hands remained in his pockets.  "I
+dislike to make these remarks to an oiled and curled Assyrian ass," he
+went on, smiling, "but under the circumstances, I do; and it goes."
+
+Porter Barkley, dominant, arrogant, aggressive, for years accustomed to
+having his own way with men, felt a queer sensation now--a replica,
+fourfold intensified, of that he had experienced before the silent
+audience he had left within.  He was afraid.  Dan Anderson stepped
+still closer to him, his face lowered, his lips smiling, his eyes
+looking straight into his own.
+
+"It's just what I said," began Barkley, desperately, "I told
+Constance--"
+
+The wonder was that Barkley lived, for the resort to weapons was the
+only remedy known in that land, and Dan Anderson knew the creed, as
+Barkley should have known it.  His weapon leaped out in his hand as he
+drew back, his lean body bent in the curve of the fanged rattler about
+to strike.  He did strike, but not with the point of flame.  The heavy
+revolver came to a level, but the hooked finger did not press the
+trigger.  Instead, the cylinder smote Porter Barkley full upon the
+temple, and he fell like a log.  Dan Anderson checked himself, seeing
+the utter unconsciousness of the fallen man.  For a moment he looked
+down upon him, then walked a few steps aside, standing as does the wild
+stag by its prostrate rival.  The fierce heats of that land, still
+primitive, now flamed in his soul, gone swiftly and utterly savage.  It
+was some moments before he thrust the heavy weapon back into its
+scabbard, and, turning, strode toward the door.
+
+As he entered the crowded room he was recognized, and heard his name
+called again and again.  The audience had wakened, was alive!
+Ellsworth, sitting, alone and anxious, looked up hopefully and beckoned
+Dan Anderson to his side.  The latter seemed scarce to know him, as he
+walked to the end of the hall and, without preliminary, began to speak.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he,--"boys--I am glad to answer you.  I have twice
+been invited to speak at this meeting.  Rather I should say that I am
+now invited by you.  A moment ago I was commanded, ordered to speak, by
+a man who seemed to think he was my owner.
+
+"He thought himself my owner by reason of this!"  He drew from his
+pocket the roll of bills which had been untouched since he had received
+them at Sky Top.  "Here's my first fee as a lawyer.  It's a thousand
+dollars.  I wanted the money.  My business is that of the law.  I am
+open to employment.  You ought not to blame me--you shall not blame
+me."  He held the money in his hand above his head.
+
+The silent audience looked at him gravely, with eyes level and
+straight, as it had regarded the speakers preceding him.
+
+"But--" and here he stiffened--"I did not know I was asked to help
+steal this town, to help rob my friends.  These men have proposed to
+take what was not theirs.  They have wanted no methods but their own.
+They have not asked, but ordered.  If this is their way, they'll have
+to get some other man."
+
+The men of Heart's Desire still looked at him gravely, silently.
+
+"Now," said Dan Anderson, "I've had my chance to choose, and I've
+chosen.  The choice has cost me much, but that has been my personal
+cost, with which you have nothing to do.  I am throwing away my chance,
+my future, but I do throw them away!"
+
+As he spoke he flung at Mr. Ellsworth's feet the roll of bills.  "Sir,"
+said he, "it is the sense of this meeting that the railroad shall not
+come into Heart's Desire.  Is it so?" he asked of the eyes and the
+darkness; and a deep murmur said that it was so.
+
+Dan Anderson stepped down from the little platform out into the room.
+Hands were thrust out to him, but he seemed not to see them.  He pushed
+on out, haggard; and presently the assemblage followed, breaking apart
+awkwardly, and leaving Ellsworth standing alone at the rear of the room.
+
+Ellsworth was now wondering what had become of Barkley, and in his
+discomfiture was turning around in search, when he heard a voice behind
+him, and passing back encountered Barkley, staggering and bloody, as he
+entered through a side door of the building.
+
+"Great God! man, what's the matter?" exclaimed Ellsworth.  "What's
+happened to you?"
+
+"That fellow struck me with a gun.  Let me in!  Let me get fixed for
+him!  By God!  I'll kill him."
+
+"Kill whom?  Who did it?  Wait!  Wait, now!" expostulated Ellsworth,
+following him toward his room; but Barkley still fumed and threatened.
+"That fellow Anderson--" Ellsworth caught.
+
+The sound of their voices reached other ears.  Constance came running
+from her own room, questioning.
+
+"Barkley's been hurt," explained her father, motioning her away.  "Some
+mistake.  He and Anderson have had trouble over this railroad business,
+some way."
+
+"By God!  I'll kill him!" shrieked Barkley again, in spite of her
+presence, perhaps because of it.  "Where can I get a gun?"
+
+"You forget--my daughter--" began Ellsworth.  But Constance avenged the
+discourtesy for herself.
+
+"Never mind, papa," she said coldly.  "Mr. Barkley, you look
+ridiculous.  Go wash your face; and then, if you want a gun, go get one
+in the front room.  The wall's full of them."  A glint of scorn was in
+her eyes, which carried no mercy for the vanquished, nor any concern
+for the victor.  She drew her father with her into her own room.
+
+"By the Lord! girl," exclaimed he, "things have come out different from
+what we expected.  I never thought--"
+
+"No," said Constance, "you never thought.  You didn't know."  She spoke
+bitterly.
+
+Ellsworth sank down in a chair, his hands in his pockets.  "Well, we're
+whipped," said he.  "The game's up.  That fellow Anderson did us up,
+after all,--and look here, here's the money he threw back, almost in my
+face.  They went with him like so many lambs.  Confound it all, I don't
+more'n half believe I ever understood that fellow."
+
+"No, you never did," said Constance, slowly.  She was sitting upon the
+edge of the bed, gazing at her father quietly.  "And so he threw away
+his chance?"
+
+"Just what he did.  Said it meant a lot for him to throw away his
+future, but he was going to do it."
+
+"Did he say that?" asked the girl.
+
+"Sure he said it!  There's not going to be any railroad at Heart's
+Desire; and incidentally Mr. Daniel Anderson isn't going to be mayor,
+or division counsel with a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.  Oh,
+well, to-morrow we'll pull out of here."
+
+Constance was deliberate with her reply.  "One thing, dad, is sure,"
+said she; "when we go, you and I go together.  Let Porter Barkley take
+the stage to-morrow if he likes.  You and I'll go back by way of Sky
+Top; and we'll go alone."
+
+Ellsworth pursed his lips into a whistle, many things perplexing him.
+"He's lucky to get away at all," he remarked at length.  "From what he
+said, it looks like there'd be more trouble."
+
+"Trouble!"  She flung out her hand in contempt.  "There'll be no
+trouble if it waits for him to make it.  If I know Porter Barkley,
+he'll know enough to stay right there in his room.  If he does not--"
+
+"By Jinks!  Dolly," exclaimed her father, "you remind me all the time
+of your mother.  I never could fool that woman; and no one ever could
+scare her!"
+
+She looked at him without reply, and though he stroked her hair softly,
+he departed in discontent, his own head bowed in reflection.
+
+Meanwhile, out in the long street of Heart's Desire, little groups of
+men gathered; but they held to the sides of the street, within the
+shelter of angles and doorways.  In the centre of the street there
+paced slowly up and down, his hands behind his back and not fumbling
+his weapon, a tall figure, with head bent slightly forward as in
+thought, although with eyes keenly watching the door of the hotel.
+Uncle Jim Brothers himself had brought out word of Barkley's
+threatenings, and according to the only known creed there was but one
+issue possible.  That issue was now awaited decently and in order.  The
+street was free and fair.  Let those concerned settle it for
+themselves.  Incidentally, Heart's Desire was willing that its question
+should be settled at the same time.  Here was its champion, waiting.
+
+The watchers in the street grew restless, but nothing happened to
+interrupt their waiting.  Upon the side of the house nearest them,
+lights shone from three windows.  Presently one of these, that in the
+room of Constance Ellsworth, was extinguished.  A second window
+blackened; Mr. Ellsworth had retired.  The third light disappeared.
+Porter Barkley, not yet exactly of the proper drunkenness to find
+courage for his recently declared purpose, had concluded to go to sleep
+instead.
+
+In the street Heart's Desire waited patiently, gazing at the darkened
+house, at the shaded door.  Half an hour passed, an hour.  Dan
+Anderson, without speech to any one, walked slowly up the street and
+across the _arroyo_.  The light in his own casita flickered briefly
+and then vanished.
+
+"I told you all along he was game!" said Curly, emerging from the
+corner of Whiteman's store and offering everybody a chew from his plug
+of tobacco.  "They ain't runnin' him any, I reckon.  Huh?"
+
+"Shucks!" remarked Uncle Jim, disgustedly.  "From the way that feller
+Barkley roared around, I shore thought he was a-goin' to tear up the
+earth.  He's so yellow that in the mornin' I'm goin' to tell him to
+move on out of town.  I've always kep' a respectable house before now,
+and I never did harbor a man who wouldn't shoot _some_!"
+
+"In the mornin'," added Doc Tomlinson, as the group broke up, "I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson that saddle of mine that's layin' around in
+my store.  Why, what does a man want of a _saddle_ in a drug store?  I
+just want to _give_ the boy something."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
+the Jew_
+
+There was a barber at Heart's Desire, a patient though forgotten man,
+who had waited some years in the belief that eventually a patron would
+come into his shop in search of professional services.  No one did
+come, but still the barber hoped.  He was one of those who had clamored
+most loudly for Eastern Capital.  After the town meeting the courage of
+the barber failed him.  He declared himself as at length ready to
+abandon his faith in Heart's Desire, and to depart in search of a
+community offering conditions more encouraging.  In this determination
+he was joined by Billy Hudgens of the Lone Star, a man also patient
+through long years of adversity, who now admitted that he might be
+obliged to close up and move to Arizona.
+
+The news of these impending blows fell upon a community already gloomy
+and despondent.  Some vague, intangible change had come over Heart's
+Desire.  The illusion of the past was destroyed.  Men rubbed their
+eyes, realizing that they had been asleep, that they had been dreaming.
+There dawned upon them the conviction that perhaps, after all, the old
+scheme of life had not been sufficient.  The lotus plant was robbed of
+its potency.
+
+It was at this time that McGinnis came to town.  His advent was the
+most fortunate thing that could have happened.  Certainly, it was
+hailed with joy and accepted as an omen; for, as was known of all men
+over a thousand miles of mining country in the Rockies, McGinnis was
+the image and emblem of good luck.
+
+Not that this meant prosperity for McGinnis himself, for that gentleman
+continued in a very even condition as to worldly goods, being steadily
+and consistently broke,--a sad state of affairs for one who had brought
+so much happiness to others.  History proved to the point of proverb
+that whenever McGinnis visited a camp,--and he had followed scores of
+strikes and stampedes in all the corners of the metalliferous
+world,--that camp was destined to witness a boom at no distant day.
+
+McGinnis was not actually a newcomer at Heart's Desire, but upon the
+contrary one of the autochthones of that now decadent community.  He
+was a friend and former bunk-mate of old Jack Wilson, discoverer of the
+Homestake mine.  Five years ago, however, at the breaking of the
+Heart's Desire boom, he had silently stolen away, whether for Alaska or
+the Andes no one knew nor asked.  Returning now as though from
+temporary absence, he punched an ancient and subdued burro into town,
+and unrolled his blankets behind Whiteman's corral, treating his
+return, as did every one else, entirely as a matter of course.  Seeing
+these things, a renewed cheerfulness came to the lately despondent.
+Whiteman the Jew, ever a Greatheart, openly exulted, and voiced again
+his perennial confession of commercial faith in Heart's Desire.
+
+"Keep your eye on Viteman," said he.  "Der railroat may go, der barber
+may go, der saloon may go, but not Viteman.  My chudgment is like it
+vas eight years ago.  Dis stock of goots is right vere I put it.  If no
+one don't buy it, I keeps it.  I know my pizness.  Should I put in
+twenty thousand dollars' vort of goots, and make a mistake of der blace
+vere a town should be?  I guess not!  Viteman stays.  By and by der
+railroat comes to Viteman.  You vatch.  Keep your eye on Viteman."
+
+He stood in the door of his long log store building, squat, stocky,
+bristling, blue shirted like the rest, and cast his eye down counters
+and shelves piled with clothing and hats, boots and gloves, pick-axes,
+long-handled shovels, saddles, spurs, wagon bows, flour, bacon, and all
+manner of things which come in tin cans.  Dust was over all; but above
+the dust was expectancy and not despair.  The Goddess of Progress had
+her choicest temple in the frontier store.
+
+"I toll you poys years ago," Whiteman went on, "you should blat der
+town.  Ve blat it oursellufs now.  Ve don't act like childrens no more.
+Ve meet again.  Ve holt a election.  Ve make Viteman gounty dreasurer.
+Dan Anderson should be mayor, and McGinney glerk.  Ve make a town
+gouncil, and ve go to vork like ve should ought to did.  Ve move
+Nogales City over here and make dis der gounty seat.  Ve bedition for a
+new gounty--ve don't vant to belong to dot Becos River gow outfit.  Ve
+make a town for oursellufs.  Viteman didn't put in dis stock of goots
+for noddings.  You vatch Viteman."
+
+This speech turned the tide, coming as it did with the arrival of
+McGinnis.  Billy Hudgens decided to wait for a few more days, although
+for the time he was out of business for lack of liquids.  It was
+fortunate that McGinnis did not know this latter fact.
+
+The capital of McGinnis, aside from his freckles and his thirst, was
+somewhat limited.  His blankets were thin and ragged, his pistol minus
+the most important portion of a revolver--to wit, the cylinder--and
+withal so rusted that even had it boasted all the component parts of a
+six-shooter, it could not have been fired by any human agency.  He had
+a shovel, a skillet, and a quart tin cup.  He had likewise a
+steel-headed and long-handled hammer, in good condition; this being,
+indeed, the only item of his outfit which seemed normal and in perfect
+repair.  McGinnis was a skilled mechanic and a millwright and could use
+a hammer as could but few other men.
+
+On the morning after his arrival McGinnis rolled early out of his
+blankets, ate his breakfast of flapjacks and water, and put his hammer
+in his hip pocket, where some men put a gun who do not know how to
+carry a gun.  McGinnis spoke to no one in particular, but headed up
+into the mouth of the curving valley where stood the silent works of
+the New Jersey Gold Mills Company.  He was not cast down because he
+found no one whom he could ask for work.  He whistled as he walked
+through the open and barn-like building, looking about him with the eye
+of a man who had seen gold mills before that time.
+
+"They've got their plates fixed at a lovely angle!" said he; "and
+there's about enough mercury on 'em to make calomel for a sick cat.
+There's been _talent_ in this mill, me boy!"
+
+He crawled up the ore chute into the bin, and cast a critical gaze upon
+the rock heaped up close to the crusher.  Then he examined the battery
+of stamps with silent awe.  "This," said McGinnis, softly to himself,
+"is the end of the whole and intire earth!  Is it a confectionery shop
+they've got, I wonder?  They do well to mash sugar with them lemon
+squeezers, to say nothing of the Homestake refractories."
+
+He passed on about the mill in his tour of inspection, still whistling
+and still critical, until he came to the patent labor-saving ore
+crusher, which some inventor had sold to the former manager of the New
+Jersey Gold Mills Company, along with other things.  McGinnis drifted
+to this instinctively, as does the born mechanician, to the gist of any
+problem in mechanics.
+
+"Take shame to ye fer this, me man, whoivver ye were," said McGinnis,
+and the blood shot up under his freckles in indignation.  "This is so
+bad it's not only unmechanical and unprofissional--it's absolutely
+unsportsmanlike!"
+
+His ardor overcame him, and, hammer in hand, he swung down into the ore
+bin underneath the crusher.  "Here's where it is," said he to himself.
+"With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this
+stuff--especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss
+was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry!  Yer little donkey
+injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a
+crusher--yah!  It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill.
+Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, man; loose her off!"
+
+McGinnis was a man of action.  In a moment he was tapping at the
+clenched bolt with the head of his bright steel hammer.  Slowly at
+first, and sullenly, for it had long been used to treatment that
+McGinnis called "unsportsmanlike"; then gently and kindly as it felt
+the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at
+length the workman was satisfied.  Then he turned also the
+corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great
+steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast
+again.  "She's but a rat-trap," said he to himself, "but it's only fair
+to give the rat-trap its show."
+
+McGinnis went out and sat down upon a pile of ore.  It was a bright and
+cloudless morning, such as may be seen nowhere in the world but in
+Heart's Desire.  The Patos Mountains, across the valley, seemed so
+close that one might lay his hand upon them.  The sun was bright and
+unwinking, and all the air so golden sweet that McGinnis pushed back
+his hat and gloried simply that he was alive.  He did not even note the
+cottontail that came out from behind a bush to peer at him, nor mark
+the sweeping shadow of a passing eagle that swung high above the little
+valley.  His eye now and again fell upon the abandoned mill, gaunt,
+idle and silent; yet he regarded it lazily, the spell of the spot and
+the languor of the air filling all his soul.
+
+But at last the sun grew more ardent, and McGinnis, knowing the secret
+of the dry Southwest, sought shade in order that he might be cool.  He
+rose and strolled again into the mill, looking about him as before,
+idly and critically.  "Av ye was all me own, it's quite a coffee mill I
+cud make of ye, me dear," said he, familiarly.  And at this moment a
+thought seemed to strike him.
+
+"It has always been me dream to be a captain of industhry,"
+soliloquized McGinnis.  "I've always longed to hear the busy hum of me
+own wheels, and to feel that I was the employer and not merely the
+employeed."  He mused for a few moments, too lazy to think far at one
+flight.
+
+"It wud be nice," he resumed later, "to see the smoke of your own
+facthory ascendin' to the sky, and to feel that yerself 'uz the whole
+affair, cook and captain bold, ore shoveller, head ingineer,
+amalgamator and main squeeze."
+
+"All capital," continued McGinnis, "is too much depindent upon labor.
+The only real solution--" he paused to feel his pockets for a
+match--"the only real solution is to be _both_ capital and labor.
+Then, av ye've anny kick, take it to yourself, and settle it fair fer
+both!"  He paused again, and again the light of his idea showed upon
+his countenance.  "This," said McGinnis, "is Accajyun!"
+
+He wandered over to the little boiler which drove the engine, and took
+inventory of the pile of crooked piņon wood that lay heaped up near by.
+He sounded the tank on top of the engine house, and found that it was
+half full.  Then, calmly and methodically, he took off his coat, folded
+it, and laid it across a bench.  He picked up a piece of board,
+whittled a little pile of shavings, thrust them into the ashy grate,
+and piled some wood above them.  Then he scraped a match, and turning a
+cock or so to satisfy himself that the boiler would not go out through
+the roof in case he did get up steam, sat down to await developments.
+"She'll steam for sure," he ruminated.  "She'll steam as much as wud do
+for a peanut wagon, av ye give her time."
+
+Before the morning was gone the little boiler began to thump and churn
+and threaten.  McGinnis ran the belt on to the stamp shaft.  He went up
+and connected the crusher and shovelled a few barrows of ore into the
+hopper.  Not long afterwards there was a dull and creaking rumble.  The
+shaft of the stamps turned half around, slipped and stopped with a
+rusty squeak.  Then came further creaks, groans, and rumbles.  McGinnis
+walked calmly from place to place, tightening, loosening, shaking,
+testing, shovelling, and watching.
+
+"It's wonderful," said he to himself, softly.  "It's just wonderful
+what human bein's can do!  If I, hadn't ever seen this mill, I wuddn't
+have believed it!  But I'll say at this point meself, that I'm not
+looking a gift mill in the mouth.  Moreover, this runnin' of your own
+mill, not bein' beholden to any sordid capitalist, nor yet depindent on
+anny inefficient labor, is what I may call a truly ijeel situation in
+life.  I'll stay here till the wood runs out.  Not that I'll cut wood
+for annybody.  Capital must draw the line somewhere!"
+
+No one noticed the smoke from the abandoned gold mill.  McGinnis ran it
+by himself and undisturbed until his woodpile waned.  Then he
+disconnected, blew off, and set to work to scrape his plates, whereon
+to his experienced eye there now appeared a gratifying roughness in the
+coating.  He got off a lump of amalgam as big as his fist, and was
+content.  "It's ojus there's no retort here," said he, "but like enough
+I'll find some way to vollituize this mercury."
+
+He crossed the _arroyo_, and went to the cabin which had once been the
+office of the assayer.  The latter was now an _emigré_, but he had left
+his crucibles and his furnace behind him; because it is not convenient
+to carry such things when one is afoot.  McGinnis found a retort,
+adjusted it, set it going, volatilized the mercury from his amalgam,
+and in time had his button of dirty but quite valid gold.  It lay heavy
+in his hand and rested heavy in his pocket.  "As a captain of
+industhry," said he, "I must see what I can do for poor sufferin'
+humanity."  He chuckled, and passed out into the street.
+
+"As capital," said McGinnis to himself, walking on in the moonlight, "I
+am entitled to the first drink meself, and after that to one or two as
+a laborer.  Then, if there's anny left, after treatin' all round, I'll
+buy the town a public liberry, pervidin' the town'll make it
+sufficiently and generally understood that I'm a leadin' and
+public-minded citizen that has reached success by the grace of God and
+a extraordinary brain."
+
+But McGinnis in his philanthropic intentions met difficulty.  He
+wandered into the Lone Star, and placing his crude bullion upon the
+counter, swept about him a comprehensive hand.  To his wonder there was
+no response.  A few of the assembled populace shifted uneasily in their
+seats, but none arose.  "Do you take this for a low-down placer camp?"
+asked Billy Hudgens, with a dull show of pride, when McGinnis demanded
+the gold scales.
+
+"No," said McGinnis, "it's a quartz camp right enough, and all it needs
+is developin'.  At this speakin', I'm capital and labor both, and crew
+of the _Nancy Brig_.  What's the matter?"
+
+A sigh escaped from the audience, as Billy Hudgens made reply.  "Not a
+drop," said he; "all gone.  Nothing till Tom Osby gets back from Vegas,
+and maybe not then.  I owe Gross & Blackwell over two hundred now."
+
+McGinnis's voice dropped into a low, intent whisper.  "Do you mean to
+tell me that?" he said.  "Me, with my thirst?"  He laid a hand on
+Billy's shoulder.  "Friend," said he, "I've walked two hundred miles.
+I've developed your place.  I'm in a position to give this town a
+public liberry worth maybe forty dollars.  Now, do you mean to say to
+me--do you mean--"  He gulped, unable to proceed.  Hudgens nodded.
+McGinnis let fall his hand from the counter, turned and silently left
+the place.
+
+He moved up the street to the adobe where the barber had his shop.  The
+barber was gloomily sitting inside, waiting.  McGinnis entered, and
+looked about him with the ease of one revisiting familiar scenes.
+
+In a case upon the wall were rows of shaving mugs, now dusty and
+abandoned, mute witnesses of a former era of glory.  Indeed, they
+remained an historical record of earlier life in Heart's Desire.
+
+Once there had been rivalry between McGinnis and Tom Redmond for the
+affections of a widow who kept a boarding-house in Heart's Desire, the
+same long since departed.  There came by express one day, addressed to
+Tom Redmond, a shaving mug of great beauty and considerable size,
+whereon the name of Tom Redmond, handsomely emblazoned, led all the
+rest.  The fame of this work of art so spread abroad that Tom Redmond,
+as befitted one who had attained social distinction, became the
+recipient of increased smiles from the widow aforesaid.  McGinnis bided
+his time.  Thirty days later, there arrived by stage for him a shaving
+mug of such stature and such exceeding art as cast that of Tom Redmond
+completely in the shade!  Thenceforth the widow smiled upon McGinnis.
+Tom Redmond, unable to endure this humiliation, and in the limitation
+of things wholly unable to raise the McGinnis ante in shaving mugs, was
+obliged to leave the town.  McGinnis hung upon the handle of the
+Redmond mug a goodly card bearing the legend, "Gone, but not
+forgotten."  Shortly after that McGinnis himself left town.  Alas! at
+the instance of the widow the barber hung upon the McGinnis mug a
+similar card; it having appeared that McGinnis had emigrated without
+paying either his board bill or his barber's bill.
+
+This evidence of his early delinquency now confronted McGinnis as he
+stepped into the shop for the first time in these years.  He regarded
+it with displeasure.  "Take it off," said he to the barber, sternly.
+"I paid the widdy in Butte, two years ago.  As for yourself, I have
+come six hundred miles to pay my bill to you.  Take it out of that."
+He presented his heavy button of gold.
+
+The barber protested that he could not make change on this basis, but
+cheerfully extended the credit.  He was glad to see McGinnis back
+again, for he was most promisingly hairy.
+
+"I am back, but I'll not be stayin' long," said McGinnis.  "Have ye
+annything to drink?"
+
+The barber mournfully shook his head, even as had Billy Hudgens.
+McGinnis, refusing to believe such heavy news, walked up to the mantle,
+picked up a tall bottle labelled "Hair tonic," smelled of it, and
+without asking leave, raised it to his lips and drained it to the
+bottom.
+
+"For industhrial purposes, friend," said he.  In twenty minutes he was
+lying in a deep and dreamless sleep.
+
+"In some ways this fellow has talent," said Billy Hudgens, as he looked
+in on McGinnis later; "but like enough he's come to a show-down now."
+
+Until noon the next day McGinnis slept soundly.  Then he sat up on the
+floor.  "How're you feelin' now, man?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+
+"Friend," said McGinnis, "I'm feelin' some dark and hairy inwardly; but
+I'm a livin' example of how a man can thriumph over circumstances."
+Wherewith he smiled gently, sank back, and slept again till dark.
+
+"It wud have been too bad," said McGinnis to the barber when he awoke,
+"if you had left this town before I came.  What ye've all been needin'
+is some one to give ye a lesson in not gettin' discouraged.
+
+"As for combinin' hair tonic and strong drink into one ingradyint, if
+anny one tells you it's a good thing, you may say for me the report
+lacks confirmashun.  But we'll not despair.  Aside from the proverb
+about the will and the way, 'tis well known that no disgrace can come
+to a real captain of industhry through a timporary change in the
+industhrial conditions.  I'm sayin' to you, get in a new chair, and get
+ready for the boom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken_
+
+Even as the stouter-hearted captains of Heart's Desire began to voice
+their confidence, a sudden sense of helplessness, of personal inadequacy,
+came upon Porter Barkley, erstwhile leader of the forces of the A. P. and
+S. E. Railway Company.  With emotions of chagrin and humiliation he found
+himself obliged wholly to readjust his estimate of himself and his
+powers.  He had come hither full of confidence, accustomed to success,
+animated by a genial condescension toward these benighted men; and now,
+how quickly had the situation been reversed!  Nay, worse than reversed.
+He, Porter Barkley, a man who had bought a legislature in his time, was
+ignored, forgotten by these strangers, as though he did not exist!  More
+than that, Ellsworth was reticent with him; and worst of all, when he met
+Constance at the table she gave him no more than a curt nod and a polite
+forgetfulness of his presence.
+
+Porter Barkley wished nothing so much as speedily to get away from the
+scene of his twofold defeat, although he knew that farewell meant
+dismissal.  He knew also that he could restore himself to the respect of
+Heart's Desire in only one way; but he did not go out on the street in
+search of that way, although the Socorro stage was a full day late in its
+departure, and he was obliged to remain a prisoner indoors.
+
+Indeed, Constance and her father were little better than prisoners as
+well, for no possible means of locomotion offered whereby they could get
+out of town; and all Heart's Desire remained aloof from them, not even
+the Littlest Girl coming across the _arroyo_ to call on Constance at the
+hotel.
+
+"I'd like to have her come over to see the twins," said Curly to his
+spouse, "but I reckon like enough she's sore."
+
+"I'd be mighty glad to have a good square talk with some woman from the
+States," rejoined the Littlest Girl, hesitatingly.  "I'd sort of like to
+know what folks is wearin' back there now.  Besides that--"
+
+"Besides what?"
+
+"I don't more'n half believe her and Dan Anderson is gettin' along very
+well, someway."
+
+"That so?  Well, I don't see how they can, the way he throwed the spurs
+into her pa the other night."
+
+"He just worships the ground that girl walks on."
+
+"You oughtn't to talk so much.  That ain't our business--but how do you
+know?"
+
+"Well, because I _do_ know," responded the Littlest Girl, warmly.  "Don't
+you suppose I can see?  I've talked with Dan every time he come up here
+to buy a pie--talked about that girl.  He buys more pies now than he used
+to.  I reckon I _know_."
+
+"That may all be.  Question is, how's she a-feelin' toward _him_ these
+days?"
+
+"Curly," after a little silence, "I'm going to put on my bonnet and go
+over there and see that girl.  She's all alone.  I'll take her a pie.  I
+always did think she was nice."
+
+"Well, all right.  There's Bill Godfrey drivin' the stage out of his barn
+now.  I'll go over to the post-office and help the old man with the mail.
+May ride out as far as the ranch with Bill and see if Mac has anything
+special to do.  There was talk of that Nogal sheep outfit gettin' in on
+the lower end of our range.  If they do, something'll pop for sure.  You
+go on over to the hotel if you want to.  Ma'll take care of the twins."
+
+The departure of the stage for Socorro occurred once a week or so, if all
+went well, and the event was always one of importance.  Even Mr.
+Ellsworth and Constance found themselves joining the groups which
+wandered now toward the post-office, next door to Whiteman's store, in
+front of which Bill Godfrey regularly made his first stop preparatory to
+leaving town.  As they two passed up the street from the hotel, they
+missed the Littlest Girl, who crossed the _arroyo_ above them by a
+quarter of a mile; Heart's Desire being, in view of its population, a
+city of magnificent distances.
+
+The man from Leavenworth, postmaster, had nearly finished the solemn
+performance of locking up the emaciated mail-bag for Socorro, and Bill
+Godfrey was looking intently at his watch--which had not gone for six
+months--when all at once the assemblage in and around the post-office was
+startled by shrieks, screams, and calls of the most alarming nature.
+These rapidly approached from the direction of the _arroyo_, beyond
+which lay the residence portion of Heart's Desire.  Presently there was
+to be distinguished the voice of a woman, raised in terrified
+lamentations, accompanied with the broken screams of a child in evident
+distress.  There appeared, hastening toward the group in front of the
+store, Curly's mother-in-law, wife of the postmaster of Heart's Desire,
+and guardian as well of the twins of Heart's Desire.  It was one of these
+twins, Arabella, whom she now hurried along with her, at such speed that
+the child's feet scarce touched the ground.  When this latter did happen,
+Arabella seemed synchronously to catch her breath, becoming thus able to
+emit one more spasmodic wail.  There was pain and fright in the cries,
+and the whole attitude of the woman from Kansas was such that all knew
+some tragedy had occurred or was impending.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Curly, "I'll bet a thousand dollars the kid's got my
+strychnine bottle this time!  I left it in the window.  There was enough
+to poison a thousand coyotes!"
+
+He sprang forward to catch the other arm of the sobbing child.  The man
+from Kansas, postmaster of Heart's Desire, hastened to join his wife in
+the street, wagging his gray beard in wild queries.  In half a moment all
+the population was massed in front of Whiteman's store, incoherent,
+frightened, utterly helpless.
+
+"She's dyin'!" cried the woman from Kansas.  "Poison!  Oh, Willyam, what
+shall we do?"  But the postmaster was unable to offer any aid or counsel.
+
+"I just left it there in the window," explained Curly, excitedly; "I was
+goin' to put out some baits around a water hole, about to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, it's awful!" sobbed the woman from Kansas.  "What shall we do?  What
+shall we do?"
+
+"Doc," said Curly to Doc Tomlinson, "you run the drug store--ain't you
+got no anecdote for this?"  Doc Tomlinson could only shake his head
+mournfully.  A ring of bearded, beweaponed men gathered about the little
+sufferer, hopeless, at their wits' end.
+
+Constance and her father, hurrying to learn the cause of the commotion,
+received but incoherent answers to their questions.  "Good Lord! girl,
+that child's hurt!" cried Ellsworth, helpless as the others.  "What'll we
+do?"
+
+Constance did not even reply to him.  Without his assistance, indeed
+without looking to right or left, she made straight through the circle of
+men, who gave way to admit her.
+
+"What's the trouble here?  What's wrong?" she demanded sharply, catching
+the weeping woman by the arm, even as she reached out a hand toward the
+suffering Arabella.
+
+"Poison!" wailed the woman from Kansas again.  "She's goin' to die!
+There ain't no way to help it."
+
+"What poison--what has the child taken?" asked Constance.
+
+"It was strychnine, ma'am, like enough," ventured Curly.  "There was
+some--"
+
+"Nonsense!  It's not strychnine," cried the girl.  In an instant her eye
+had caught what every other individual present had overlooked, although
+it was certainly the most obvious object in all the landscape,--the
+half-empty can which still remained tightly clutched in Arabella's free
+hand.
+
+"Why, here it is!" she exclaimed.  "The child has eaten concentrated lye.
+Quick!  Get her in somewhere.  What are you standing around here for--get
+out of the way, you men!"
+
+They scattered, and Constance glanced about her.  "Where's some
+grease--some lard?  Quick!" she called out to Whiteman, who was looking
+on.
+
+"In here, lady--dis vay," he answered eagerly; but she outfooted him to
+the rear of the store, carrying Arabella in her arms.  Spying a lard tin,
+she thrust off the cover, and plunged in a hand.  Immediately the sobs of
+Arabella changed to sputterings, for the physician in charge had covered
+her face, lips, and a goodly portion of the interior of her mouth and
+throat with the ameliorating unguent!  At this act of first aid, the
+wails of the woman from Kansas ceased also, and a vast sigh of relief
+arose from the confederated helplessness of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Is she going to die?" gasped the woman from Kansas.
+
+"No," said Constance, scornfully.  "I've seen much worse burns.  The lye
+has perhaps lost a little of its strength, too.  The burns are all well
+in the front of the mouth and tongue, and I don't think she swallowed any
+of it.  Lard is as good as anything to stop the burn.  Why didn't you
+think of it?"
+
+"I don't know, ma'am," confessed the woman from Kansas.
+
+A sudden loquacity now seized upon all those recently perturbed and
+silent.
+
+"Now," said Curly, "it's this-a-way; the women they must have left that
+can of lye settin' around.  It's mighty careless of 'em.  I _needed_ my
+strychnine, but there ain't no _sense_ in leavin' lye settin' around.
+Them twins was due to eat it, shore.  Why, they was _broke_ to eat
+anything that comes in tin cans!"
+
+Constance gathered Arabella in her arms.  The tailored gown was ruined
+now.  One hand remained gloved, but both were grease-laden to the wrists.
+She was unconscious of all this.  Her gaze, frowning, solicitous,
+maternal, bent itself upon the face of her patient.  The men of Heart's
+Desire looked on, silent, relieved, adoring.  A few began to edge toward
+the open air.
+
+"You ain't no kind of a drug-store man," said the postmaster, scornfully,
+to Tomlinson.
+
+"Why ain't I?" retorted the latter, hotly.  "What _chance_ does a
+merchant get in this town?  What do I get for carrying a full line of
+drugs here for years?  Now, _lard_ ain't drugs.  It ain't in the
+pharmacopy."
+
+"I don't know but it's a good thing for that kid," said Curly.  "She
+ought to be plumb soft-spoken all her life, after all that lard in her
+frontispiece.  But it won't do 'em no good,--they'll eat my strychnine
+next.  This here stage-coach--with her along," jerking his thumb towards
+the physician in charge, "won't be any more'n out of sight before that
+twin corporation will be fryin' dynamite on the kitchen stove.  I shore
+thought that set of twins was busted this time for keeps.  Unless there's
+two of 'em, twins ain't no good!"
+
+"Ma'am, your dress is just ruined," said the woman from Kansas; "you are
+lard clean from head to foot!"
+
+"I know it," cried Constance, gayly, the color coming to her cheeks; "but
+never mind, the baby's all right now."
+
+"Well, you've got to come over to our house and get fixed up.  Was you
+goin' out on the stage?  You stay here for a day or so and watch that
+child; we'd like it mighty well if you would."
+
+It was a flag of truce from Heart's Desire.  Nevertheless, Constance
+seemed to hesitate.  Ah! wily Constance.  A great many things might
+happen which had not yet happened, but which ought to happen.  And in all
+that group Dan Anderson was nowhere to be seen.  Perhaps after a time he
+might come!
+
+Constance hesitated just long enough.  The dignity of Bill Godfrey had to
+be sustained.  His stagecoach had not started on the appointed and
+stipulated time any day these many months; yet for that stage, ready
+equipped for its journey, to stand waiting idly upon the convenience of
+any mortal after the "mails" had been brought out from the post-office
+and placed safely in the boot, was mortal affront to any stage-driver's
+reputation.  Bill Godfrey again looked solemnly at his watch and gathered
+up the reins.  "All aboard!" he cried.  "Git up!" and so swung a wide
+circle and headed down the street to the hotel.  Presently he departed.
+He carried a solitary passenger.  Constance and her father were still
+prisoners, or guests, in Heart's Desire for an indefinite time!  And in
+an indefinite time many things may occur.
+
+In his house across the _arroyo_ Dan Anderson endured the silence and
+loneliness as long as he could, turning over and over again in his mind
+the old questions to which he had found no answer.  Most of all, one
+question was insistent.  Had he been just to her, to Constance, in
+allowing himself to accept her alleged conduct as a motive for his own
+actual conduct?  He had taken for granted much--all--and upon what manner
+of testimony?  The babblings of a half-witted herder!  He had asked the
+men of Heart's Desire to hear both sides of his own case.  The men of
+Heart's Desire had heard both sides of the railroad's case.  But he had
+condemned without trial the woman whom he loved--her--Constance!  It was
+impossible, unbelievable of any man.
+
+When the horror of this thought broke upon him fully, Dan Anderson sprang
+up, caught his hat, and started fast as he might for the hotel.  He
+crossed the _arroyo_ below the post-office, and so did not know, at the
+time, of the peril and rescue of Arabella.  Nor did he know that all of
+Heart's Desire was penitent regarding her and her father; nor that both
+were to remain for yet a little time.
+
+Dan Anderson approached the stone hotel in time to watch the stage
+depart, himself unobserved.  Then he stepped farther toward the hotel
+door.  He met the Littlest Girl just emerging from the building, whither
+she had gone upon the same errand as his own.
+
+"She ain't here, Mr. Anderson," explained the Littlest Girl; "her and her
+pa has just went to the post-office."
+
+He looked at her silently.  "Oh, I know who you come to see," asserted
+the Littlest Girl, "and I don't blame you.  It's _time_ you did, too."
+
+Without a word he turned and walked with her up the street, there to miss
+Constance by three moments, which, potentially, might have been a
+life-time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work,
+and a Man's Medicine_
+
+"Dad, you've been drinking!" burst out Constance as her father met her
+at the door of Curly's house.  She had heard footsteps, and hastened to
+meet the visitor.  Perhaps it was disappointment, perhaps indignation
+with herself that she had listened, that she had waited, which caused
+her to greet her parent with such asperity.
+
+"You wrong me, daughter!" protested Mr. Ellsworth, solemnly; "only took
+one or two little ones, to celebrate the saving of the twin.  You've
+made a great hit with those people over there.  They'd all celebrate,
+if there was anything to drink.  I had to stock the Lone Star myself
+out of my valise.  They won't have anything in till Tom Osby comes.
+
+"I say," he resumed, taking his daughter's arm with genial gallantry as
+they stepped out into the sunlight together, "these people are not so
+bad.  They're warming up right along now.  If you and I could stay here
+awhile, we'd get along with 'em all right--better understanding all
+around."
+
+Her face brightened.  "Then you don't give up the railroad?"
+
+"No; by no means.  I never give up a thing I want.  Besides, I wouldn't
+mind coming here to live for a while.  The climate's glorious."
+
+"You live here?  You'd look well in a wide hat and a blue shirt,
+wouldn't you, dad?"
+
+"More irreverence!  Of course I'd look well.  And it's worth something
+to eat the way I do here.  I'm getting better every day.  Why, they
+tell me no one has died out here in a hundred years.  A man can eat
+anything from cactus to sole leather, and keep hearty.  I saw a lot of
+fellows over there just now, sitting flat on the ground in the sun out
+in the middle of the street, eating dried beef and canned tomatoes, and
+they looked so happy that I sat down and took a bite with them.  They
+are just travelling through,--sheriff's party from somewhere, going
+somewhere after somebody."
+
+"What's that, Mr. Ellsworth?" the woman from Kansas came out and
+inquired; for she knew better than he what that meant.  "Sheriff?  Was
+he a tall, slim man, longish mustache, sorter thin?"
+
+Ellsworth nodded; the woman wiped her hands on her blue-checked apron.
+Constance glanced at her serious face, and wondered.
+
+"Then it's Ben Stillson," the woman from Kansas said, "the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He's after somebody.  Did he summons any of our men along?"
+
+"I don't know, madam," answered Ellsworth.  The woman said no more; she
+only watched and listened.
+
+It was this posse, headed by the sheriff of Blanco, that Dan Anderson
+and the Littlest Girl saw when they reached a point midway between
+Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel and the post-office.  The little group of
+riders, dusty and travel-stained, had come at a steady trot down the
+street.  Stillson, tall, grim-featured, and bronzed, looked neither to
+the right nor to the left.  He stopped, and ordered his men to dismount
+and eat.  They swung out of their saddles without a word, loosening the
+cinches to breathe their horses.  The men of Heart's Desire began to
+gather around them.
+
+"What's up, Ben?" asked McKinney, the one most apt to be concerned; for
+cow men had borne the brunt of outlawry in that land for more than a
+generation.  "Has Chacon come across from Arizona, or has the Kid broke
+out again?"
+
+The sheriff looked at him gravely.  "The Kid's out," said he.  "We had
+him and two others at Seven Rivers, but he broke out four days ago.  He
+killed the jailer and a couple of Mexicans farther up the river.
+There's four in his bunch now, and we've trailed them this far.
+They're likely headed for Sumner.  We dropped in here, across the
+Patos, to get a couple of men or so.  How are you fixed here?"
+
+"Wait till I get a Winchester," said McKinney, briefly, and started
+down the street.
+
+"Whiteman," Doc Tomlinson volunteered, "you 'tend to my drug store
+while I'm away, and if anybody wants any drugs, you go get 'em."
+
+"You all hold on a minute," said Curly, hurrying forward, "while I run
+over home and git saddled up."  He did not see the Littlest Girl
+approaching, but the sheriff did.
+
+"Never mind, Curly," said the sheriff, quietly, pointing to her.  "I
+want one more man, a single man."
+
+"You, Curly!" interrupted his spouse, "you stay right where you are.
+You get some one else, Mr. Stillson.  He's got a family, and besides,
+he's _such_ a fool."
+
+Curly flushed.  "Was it _my_ fault I got married?" he began hotly.
+"And them twins, was they mine, real?  Now look here--"  But the
+sheriff shook his head.  He looked at Dan Anderson inquiringly.
+
+"Certainly I'll go," said he.  "Wait till I get fixed."
+
+"That's as many as I'll need," said Stillson.  "Hurry up, all of you."
+
+Dan Anderson hastened across the _arroyo_ to his house, first asking
+Curly to get him a horse.  Curly departed to his own home with the
+Littlest Girl; so that Constance presently got fuller news of the
+arrival of the sheriff's party, and learned also that Dan Anderson was
+to join them.
+
+"But, Curly," cried Constance, "isn't it dangerous?  Won't some one get
+hurt?"  She winced.  The steady flame of her own brave heart flickered
+at this new terror.
+
+"_Kin savvy_?" grinned Curly.  "The Kid's gang shore'll fight.  A good
+many fellers has got hurt goin' after him.  But what you goin' to do?
+Let 'em steal all the cows they want, and kill everybody they feel
+like?"
+
+"That's work for the officers," insisted Constance.
+
+"There ain't no police out here," Curly replied, "and not sherfs enough
+to go around; so a feller sorter has to go when he's asked.  They won't
+let me, because I got twins--though they ain't mine.  But, now, I've
+got to take this here horse over to Dan Anderson."  He mounted and rode
+away.
+
+It was Dan Anderson himself who presently came at a gallop across the
+_arroyo_.  A heavy revolver swung at his hip, a rifle rested in the
+scabbard under his leg, and a coat was rolled behind his saddle,
+plainsman fashion.  Constance noted these details, but passed them in
+her eagerness and pleasure that he should come at least to say good-by.
+Something of the joy faded from her eyes as he approached.  She had
+seen his face wear this same expression before,--fierce, eager,
+forgetful of all but a purpose.
+
+He did not smile.  He stooped from his saddle and grasped her hand.  He
+looked squarely into her eyes, but said no word of salutation or
+farewell.  He did not look back, as upon the instant, he whirled and
+galloped away!  For her there were to be yet more days of waiting; for
+him the relief of action and of danger.
+
+That afternoon Tom Osby drove into town from the northern trail.  Mr.
+Ellsworth welcomed him and his rude vehicle as the first feasible means
+of getting back to Sky Top.  By noon of the following day they were
+well upon their way, leaving behind them problems enough unsolved, and
+breaking touch with pending events which might cut short all problems
+for at least one loyal heart.  It was a sad and silent Constance who
+looked back and said good-by to the rambling street of Heart's Desire,
+lying in the sun empty, empty!
+
+As for the sheriff of Blanco and his men, they trotted on steadily
+toward the northeast, hour after hour.  They crossed the Patos divide,
+and a few miles beyond took up the trail of their quarry, at the point
+where Stillson had earlier left it.  This they followed rapidly,
+crossing wide plains of sage brush and cactus throughout the day.  They
+slept in their saddle-blankets that night, and were up and off again by
+dawn for the second day of steady travel.  There were seven men in the
+posse, three besides Stillson from the Seven Rivers country, employees
+of the cow men on the Pecos,--slim, brown, thin-featured fellows, who
+talked little either in the saddle or at the bivouac fire by night.
+
+The second night out they spent by a water hole in the desert; and on
+the morning of the third day they ran into their game, earlier than
+they had expected.  The sheriff, riding in advance, suddenly pulled up
+at the crest of a low ridge which they were ascending, and came back
+motioning to his men to remain under cover.
+
+"That's the Piņos Altos ranch house just ahead," he explained, "and
+there's smoke coming out of it.  Old Frazee's friendly enough with the
+Kid, and more'n likely the bunch has stopped in there to get something
+to eat.  Hold on a little till I have a look."  He took a pair of
+field-glasses from his saddle, and crawling to the top of the ridge lay
+examining the situation.
+
+"It's them, all right," he said when he returned.  "I know some of the
+horses.  It's the Kid and about three others.  They are all saddled
+up--probably stopped in to cook a meal.  We'll get 'em sure.  Now, all
+of you hitch back here, and crawl around to the _arroyo_ below, there.
+That'll put us within a hundred yards or so of the house."
+
+Each man, dismounting, hitched his horse, then quietly ran over the
+cylinder of his revolver, blew the dust out of the rear sight of his
+Winchester, tested the magazine, and cleared the breech action.  This
+done, each crept to the place assigned to him.  Dan Anderson found
+himself moving mechanically, dully, with a strange absence of
+excitement.  He almost felt himself looker-on at what other men were
+doing.
+
+For some time Stillson lay behind a little bush at the edge of the
+gully, peering critically at the house, from which came nothing to
+indicate that their approach had been discovered.  At length, without a
+word, he slowly raised his short-barrelled rifle and fired.  One of the
+horses hitched to the beam above the door stumbled forward and sank
+across the opening, blocking it.  The bullet had caught it at the butt
+of the ear, and it fell stone dead, its neck bent up by the shortened
+rein.
+
+In response, without a word of parley, a thin cloud of smoke gushed out
+of the only window facing the attack.  Puffs of sand arose along the
+front of the _arroyo_, searching out each little bush top which might
+possibly offer cover.  Stillson heard a smothered spat and a short
+sound, and turned his head quickly.  He saw Jim Harbin, one of the boys
+from the lower range, turn over with a sigh, and lie with arms spread
+out.  He had been shot straight through the neck.  Dan Anderson, the
+man nearest to him, drew him back.  He would have raised the head of
+the wounded man, but the choking warned him.  Harbin lay out on his
+back, looking up, his breath gurgling in his throat.  "No use," he
+whispered thickly.  "Leave me alone.  I've got to take my medicine."
+In ten minutes he was dead.
+
+The day's work went on.  The sheriff fired three or four more
+deliberate shots, but finally turned around.  At each shot, the other
+horse tied to the beam sprang back.
+
+"Can't you hit it?" grinned McKinney.
+
+"I don't want to kill the horse," said Stillson; "I know that horse,
+and it's a good one.  I want to turn it loose.  Here you, Anderson, can
+you see that rope from where you are?  Shoot it off, if you can, close
+up to the beam."
+
+Dan Anderson, in spite of Stillson's hasty warning to keep down, rose
+at full height at the edge of the cover, and took a deliberate off-hand
+shot.  They saw him whirl half around, and look down at his left arm;
+but as he dropped lower, he rested his rifle on a bit of sage brush,
+and fired once more.  With a snort the horse, which had been pulling
+back wildly on its lariat, now broke free and went off, saddled as it
+was.
+
+"Good shot!" commented the sheriff.  "That'll about put 'em on foot.
+What, did they get you?"
+
+Dan Anderson drew back from the crest and rolled up his shirt-sleeve
+above an arm now wet with blood.  A bullet had cut through the upper
+arm above the elbow.
+
+"Serves you mighty near right," called McKinney to him, "standing up,
+like a blamed fool!  You suppose them fellers can't shoot, same as us?"
+
+Doc Tomlinson crawled over to him and examined the hurt.  "It's all
+right," said he.  "Bone ain't touched.  Let me tie her up."
+
+A half hour passed without further firing.  Stillson edged around to
+the point nearest the house.  "Here you, Kid," he called out.  "Come on
+out.  We've got you on foot, and you might as well give up."
+
+A dirty rag was thrust out of a window at the end of a rifle-barrel.
+"That you, Ben?" called a muffled voice from the adobe.
+
+"You know it is, Kid.  Drop it, and come on out.  We've got you sure."
+
+The day's work was over.  Dan Anderson remembered afterward how matter
+of fact and methodical it all had seemed.  A few moments later a short,
+dirty young man appeared at the door, crawling over the prostrate
+horse.  He held up his hands, grinning.  He was followed by two others,
+both chewing tobacco calmly.  The sheriff ordered down his men to meet
+them.  McKinney unbuckled the belts.  The captives seated themselves a
+few feet apart on the ground.
+
+"This all the men you've got?" asked the Kid.
+
+The sheriff nodded.  "You've killed Jim Harbin," he added, jerking a
+thumb toward the _arroyo_.
+
+"Why didn't he stay home, then?" said the Kid, peevishly.  No one
+seemed disposed again to mention an unpleasant subject.
+
+"Where you goin' to take us?" the Kid inquired.
+
+"Vegas.  It's a United States warrant, and you go dead or alive, either
+way you want."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Ben.  We'll take the chance of stayin' alive a
+while."
+
+Stillson now appeared to experience his first concern in regard to his
+casualties.  "Doc," said he, "you take the ranch wagon here and carry
+Jim back to the settlements.  You go along, Anderson.  Doc, you drive."
+
+"You busted up our breakfast," said the Kid, in an aggrieved tone.
+"Don't we eat?"  He spoke complainingly.  The day's work was thus
+concluded.
+
+It was a long ride back for Dan Anderson, lying part of the time
+himself prone at the bottom of the wagon, too faint to sit with comfort
+on the narrow, jolting seat.  The long, muffled body of the dead man,
+wrapped tightly in its blankets, at times rolled against him as the
+wagon tilted, and he pushed it back gently.  The day's work had been
+savage, stern, and simple.  The lesson of the landscape, the lesson of
+life, came to him as he had never felt it before.  He saw now how
+little a thing is life, how easy to lay down--gayly, bitterly, lightly,
+or quietly perhaps; but not cheaply.  He remembered the last words of
+the boy who now lay there, shrouded and silent,--"I've got to take my
+medicine."
+
+"It's not a question of being happy," thought Dan Anderson, "but of
+doing your work, and taking your medicine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
+in Foreign Parts_
+
+In the absence of McKinney with the sheriff's posse, Curly became, by
+virtue of seniority, acting foreman on the Carrizoso ranch.  Grieving
+over the edict which held him home from sheriffing, and disconsolate
+now that Ellsworth and Constance had departed, he sought an outlet for
+his feelings.  "I'll show folks what a real cow foreman is like," he
+asserted, and forthwith began plans which, in his opinion, had been too
+long deferred by the more conservative McKinney.
+
+The wagons of the Carrizoso cow outfit came into town one morning, with
+a requisition for all the loose .44-caliber ammunition that could be
+bought, begged, or commandeered under the plea of urgent necessity.
+Whiteman burrowed through his stock from top to bottom, but still the
+new foreman growled at the insufficiency.
+
+"There's more'n five thousand sheep in that bunch that has just crossed
+the Nogales," said he, "and we've got to kill 'em, every one.  Do you
+suppose my men is goin' to take to clubs, like Digger Injuns?"
+
+Whiteman could only shrug.  There had always been ammunition in Heart's
+Desire sufficient for all benevolent and social purposes.  No one had
+suspected sheep.  The Carrizoso plateau had been sacred ground, and it
+was unsupposable that it could ever be desecrated by the trampling
+hoofs and scissor noses of these woolly abominations.  Grumbling, Curly
+rode away with his wagons, surrounded by a group of be-Winchestered cow
+punchers, not unlike that which had accompanied Stillson out at the
+other end of the town.
+
+It was two days before they returned.  When they did so, two of the men
+were not in their saddles, but at the bottom of a wagon.  Beside them,
+bucked up and bound, lay a strange and long-haired figure, at which the
+new foreman occasionally looked back with a gaze of mingled curiosity
+and respect.
+
+It appeared that Carrizoso cow honor had been maintained.  The five
+thousand sheep had been rounded up in a box caņon, and scrupulously
+killed to the last item, while two herders went flying westward in
+fright such as might have warranted euchre upon their stiffly extended
+coat-tails.
+
+Willie, the half-wit, one of the sheep outfit, had readily taken the
+oath of allegiance; beyond that, however, there had been a hitch in the
+proceedings.  The man causing this hitch--the long-haired figure at the
+bottom of the wagon--had been presumptuous enough to make a stand
+against the lords of the earth!  The men of Heart's Desire, confident
+that the new foreman understood his business, asked few questions as
+they gathered about the wagon and gazed at the silent captive.
+
+He was a singular-looking man, tall, lean, sinewy, with a high, thin
+nose and a square chin which seemed not in keeping with his calling.
+His left nostril was indented by a scar which ran across his cheek, and
+one ear was notched well-nigh as deeply as that of a calf at a spring
+branding.
+
+"This feller," said Uncle Jim Brothers, "looks like he come from
+Arkansaw."
+
+"Maybe _so_," answered Curly.  "Anyhow, he shot up two of the boys and
+killed a horse for us before we got at him.  We was out of
+ammunition--I told you we didn't have enough.  After we killed the
+woollies, and run off them two herders, we rid up the caņon.  There was
+him, a-settin' in the door of his ole Kentucky home, with a Winchester
+that'd go off--which it stands to reason couldn't have happened if he
+was a real sheepherder.  I can't figure that out."  Curly scratched his
+head dubiously, and looked again at his prisoner.
+
+"He ain't saying a vort alretty," said Whiteman.
+
+"He's happy enough without.  He was livin' like a lord there, in his
+shack--four hundred paper-back novels, a keg of whiskey and a tin cup,
+and some kind of 'hop' that we brung along, and which was the only
+thing he hollered over."
+
+The prisoner sat up in the wagon.  "If you'd be so good as to give me
+the packet you've in your pocket," said he to Curly, "I'd be awfully
+obliged to you, old fellow, I would indeed."  Curly drew a paper
+package from his pocket and passed it to the speaker, who opened it
+with eager fingers.
+
+"Thanks, my good man," he remarked, "thank you awfully."  They led him
+into the deserted Lone Star for further deliberations.
+
+"That's the snuff he's been takin'," Curly explained aside.  "I know.
+It's 'hop.'  Sheep, 'hop,' and whiskey!  With that for a life and them
+for a steady diet, I don't believe our friend here'd last more'n about
+thirty years more."  He turned to the captive, who by this time was
+leaning back against the wall in his chair, the central figure of
+present affairs, but apparently quite unconcerned.
+
+"How you feelin' now?" Curly asked.
+
+"Much better," replied the prisoner.  "Thank you awfully.  I was
+beginning to feel deucedly seedy, you know."
+
+"I'd like to know," inquired Curly, bluntly, "what in merry-hell you're
+doing down in here, anyhow.  Where'd you come from?  Where've you been?"
+
+A half-humorous smile came to the face of the captive.  "You seem not
+to know a Sandhurst man, gentlemen, when you see one," said he.
+
+"I said he was from Arkansaw," remarked Uncle Jim.
+
+"No foolin' now, young feller," said Curly, frowning.  "You may have
+more trouble than you're lookin' for.  What's your name?"
+
+"I really forget my first name," replied the prisoner, blandly, but not
+discourteously.  "Of late I have been customarily addressed as the King
+of Gee-Whiz."
+
+"Well, King," suggested the acting foreman, grimly, "you'd better turn
+loose and tell us your story, about as soon as you know how."
+
+"Very gladly," responded the other, "very gladly.  You seem a good
+sort, and you fought fair.  I'll tell you the absolute truth.
+
+"I came from England originally, and not from Arkansaw, as my friend
+supposes, although I don't know where Arkansaw is, I'm sure.  I was
+long in the British Army, or Navy, I cawn't remember which.  I'm quite
+sure it was one or the other, possibly both."
+
+"I wouldn't kid too much, friend," said Curly, warningly.
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"Drop the foolishness!"
+
+"You misunderstand me, I'm sure," said the King of Gee-Whiz.  "At that
+time it was quite customary, indeed very fashionable, for young
+gentlemen to belong both to the Army and the Navy.  Now, I remember
+with perfect distinctness that I shipped before the mast on her
+Majesty's submarine, the _Equator_."
+
+Uncle Jim drew a long breath.  "A submarine ain't _got_ no mast," said
+he.  "It crawls, on the bottom of the ocean."
+
+"Don't mind him, friend," interrupted Curly.  "He come from the
+short-grass country of Kansas, and he don't know a submarine from a
+muley cow.  Go on, King."
+
+"As I was saying," continued the latter, somewhat annoyed, "I shipped
+before the mast on her Majesty's submarine, the _Equator_, Captain
+Harry Oglethorpe commanding,--a great friend of mine, and a very brave
+and clever fellow.  I knew him well before I got so deucedly down on my
+luck.  But what was I saying?"
+
+"About submarines--"
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember; we left Portsmouth Harbor the 12th of August,
+1357.  It seemed a gruelling hard thing to us to sail just on the
+opening of the shooting season, but the wuzzies were troubling a bit.
+
+"One day, as Sir Harry and I were sitting on deck before the mast,
+having a cigarette--"
+
+"At the bottom of the sea--on deck!" gasped Uncle Jim Brothers.
+
+"Pray don't interrupt me, or I'll never get on," chided the King of
+Gee-Whiz, politely.  "We were smoking, as I said, awfter dinner.  I was
+remarking to Sir Harry that we were having a very good voyage over,
+when, as he turned to reply, an orderly rode up to us and saluted."
+
+"Rode--rode--rode up!" murmured Curly.  "How could he?"
+
+"Let him alone," said Uncle Jim.  "Didn't he say he couldn't remember
+whether he was in the Army or the Navy?  The horse goes."
+
+"The orderly saluted," resumed the King of Gee-Whiz, "and said he, 'I
+beg pardon, but the officer of the day presents his compliments, and
+begs to report that the ship's a-fire, and upon the point of exploding.'
+
+"Sir Harry looked at his watch.  'Thanks,' said he.  'Present my
+compliments to the officer of the day, and ask how long it will be
+before the explosion occurs.'
+
+"'I beg pardon,' replied the orderly, 'but the officer of the day
+presents his compliments, and begs to say that the explosion will occur
+in about three minutes.'
+
+"'Very well,' said Sir Harry, 'you may go.'--'That will give us time to
+finish our cigarettes,' said he to me.  The orderly saluted and rode
+away.  We never saw him again.
+
+"The officer of the day was a very accurate man, very accurate indeed.
+In three minutes to the dot the explosion did occur.  We never knew
+what caused it.  No doubt the Admiralty Board determined that, but we
+were not present at the session.
+
+"The explosion was most violent, and no doubt the submarine was quite
+destroyed by it.  Sir Harry and I were blown to an extraordinary
+distance from the spot.  I remember saying to him, as we reached the
+surface and started upward, that it seemed quite too bad that we'd not
+had time to get together our personal kit for the journey.
+
+"It's no use my mentioning how long we travelled thus, for I'm not in
+the least clear about it myself.  All I can say is that in course of
+time we descended, and that we found ourselves on solid ground, on the
+island of Gee-Whiz.  That, you will understand, was an uncharted and
+hitherto undiscovered land, lying near the 400th parallel west of
+London and somewhere below Sumatra--several weeks' march from Calcutta,
+I should say.  We'd never seen the place nor heard of it, but were
+jolly well pleased to alight upon it, under the circumstances.  Of the
+rest of the ship's company we never heard.
+
+"It was a baddish fix, I must say, for to be marooned on a desert
+island is serious; and it's still more serious to lose one's ship in
+the British Army.  Presently, however, we composed ourselves.  'I say,'
+said Sir Harry, 'this is a great go, isn't it?  Here I am with no
+luggage whatever except one bar of soap!'
+
+"Presently I saw approaching a band of natives, headed by a large
+person, who was apparently their leader or king."
+
+"Then that was the real King of Gee-Whiz?" asked Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"At that time, but not permanently, as I shall presently show you."
+
+"I explained the situation to the King, who turned out to be a very
+good sort.  'God bless my soul!' said he.  'My dear sir, there's not
+the slightest occasion for uneasiness, there really isn't, indeed.'
+
+"You may fawncy the situation!  As it was, Sir Harry and I were obliged
+to make the best of it.  We concluded to remain and to take possession
+of the region in the name of her Britennic Majesty."
+
+"That's the most natural part of your story!" affirmed Uncle Jim, with
+conviction.
+
+"Thank you.  But I must tell you of the complications which now arose.
+You will see that all these people were sun-worshippers, or something
+of the sort, and they'd a beastly unpleasant habit, you know, of
+offering up a sacrifice now and again to appease the spirits, or the
+like.  We learned they'd a valley of gold hidden away somewhere back in
+the island, and from this the King got all his gold, though even under
+these circumstances not so much as he wanted at all times.  He'd the
+trouble of most royal families.
+
+"The ruler of this golden valley was some sort of a princess, and she
+was downright niggardly with her money, as some of these heiresses are,
+you know.  She'd promise the King to bring him an apronful of gold if
+he'd give her a sacrifice to offer up, but he had no way of providing
+an offering.  No one had come for years in the line of a sacrifice,
+excepting ourselves.  You can imagine the awkwardness this created.
+The King wanted to sacrifice us, one or both, directly.  The princess,
+who by the by was a regular ripper in her way, was quite gone on Sir
+Harry, and he on her as well.  At this point my own personal fortunes
+were much involved, as you may understand.
+
+"Sir Harry explained that while he wished to be quite the gentleman
+about it, and accord me every courtesy, he'd be obliged if I'd be the
+sacrifice, and leave him to represent her Majesty in the new territory.
+We talked it over a bit, but came to no conclusion about the matter.
+It was at this time that one of the most remarkable portions of our
+experience occurred.
+
+"One morning Sir Harry and I were standing in front of our residence,
+in our part of the island, talking over matters.  Sir Harry was taking
+a bawth in a wash-hand basin--"
+
+"What's that?" asked Uncle Jim.
+
+"I reckon he means a wash-pan," explained Billy Hudgens.
+
+"At least, Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and
+he'd the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles.  Just then the King of
+Gee-Whiz came by, and chawnced to notice the bubbles.  You should have
+seen his expression!
+
+"You must remember he'd never seen a bit of soap in all his life; and
+no one who has been without it--like the King and myself--can tell what
+that means.  He was deucedly infatuated with the bubbles.  In short, he
+valued them at once far more than all the gold in the valley; and he
+wound up by telling us flat, that so long as we could make bubbles for
+him, there would be no sacrifice.  He commanded us to appear before him
+every day and make these bubbles--Sir Harry showed him how to do it
+with his pipe--every morning and awfternoon.
+
+"Awfter he'd gone, Sir Harry and I looked at each other.  'It's death
+or bubbles,' said he to me.  I pointed out to him that it was either
+death or no bawth.  He was much shocked.  Evidently the thing could not
+go on, for our soap was already very near exhausted.  Sir Harry was a
+sad dog.  Said he to me, 'While there is soap there is life,' meaning
+to say, you see, that while there was life there was hope.  Ha, ha!"
+
+"Leave that out," admonished Curly.  "Go on."
+
+"About now there went ashore on the island the private yacht of a
+gentleman whom we found to be Sir Isaac Morgenstern.  He was a retired
+soap-maker, of wealth and station, and was on a voyage to Samoa with
+his daughter, his household servants, and the like.  He'd with him, as
+chaplain, a missionary, William Cook, a person of very fat habit of
+body.
+
+"When the boat went ashore, Sir Isaac, his daughter, Lady Sophie, her
+maid, a Miss Eckerstrom, Mr. Cook, and one or two others were saved,
+together with certain of their effects--an auto car or so, a piano, a
+harp, some books, pictures, and a number of other items which made our
+life much pleasanter.  We all settled down together in a bit of colony,
+and we got on well enough.
+
+"The King by this time was becoming most unpleasant again about his
+sacrifice.  Sir Harry was a sad dog.  'Sacrifice Morgenstern,'
+suggested he, 'he's used to sacrifice.'  You see, in the retail
+business--"
+
+"Never mind dot," said Whiteman.  "Tell vot happenet!"
+
+"A great many things happened.  For one thing, the death of Sir Isaac."
+
+"How come that?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+
+"One day Sir Harry met Sir Isaac in the woods, and they'd a bit of
+talk.  Without thinking much about it, Sir Harry explained that he was
+called on to blow soap bubbles for the King, and that he was in great
+need of soap, which at that time was worth far more than gold."
+
+"Unt Morgenstern a retiret soap-mager" exclaimed Whiteman,
+involuntarily.
+
+"Now that was shore hard luck for _him_," added Uncle Jim.
+
+"You may quite believe so," said the teller of the story, gently.  "And
+the saddest part of it, he'd nearly solved our problem before he left
+us.  At once Sir Harry began talking of soap, Sir Isaac began wondering
+how he could make soap.  Ere long he thought of Mr. Cook, the
+missionary.  'Soap making is simple,' said he, 'if one has fat and a
+bit of alkali.'  The water there was most alkaline, I may add.  'Now
+there is Mr. Cook?'
+
+"'You cawn't have the missionary,' interrupted Sir Harry, 'until after
+he has married me and the princess.  Then I don't mind.'
+
+"I've every reason to believe that Mr. Cook was made over into soap.
+But for once Sir Isaac was wrong.  He oversold the market, and that was
+his mistake.  As soon as the King of Gee-Whiz found that there was
+abundance of soap he lost his fawncy for bubbles.  The shock of this
+lost opportunity prostrated Sir Isaac, and he presently passed away.
+We mourned him for a time, but presently other events occurred which
+deadened the loss.
+
+"You will understand that the King of Gee-Whiz was a deucedly good
+sort.  He'd take a nip now and again, of course.  The only thing he had
+to drink was palm wine, which he got by chopping a notch in a tree and
+catching the juice in a cup."
+
+"That sounds like wood alcohol," said Billy Hudgens, in a professional
+tone of voice.  "It ain't safe."
+
+"Quite right.  It wasn't safe.  The palm wine itself caused the King to
+cut a pretty caper now and then; but awfter his mistake, he was far
+worse--far, far worse.  He never got over that, never."
+
+"What happened to him?"
+
+"A most extraordinary thing.  I never knew of anything like it in all
+the world.
+
+"You see, there were two trees which grew close together near the royal
+palace.  One of these was his Majesty's private drinking tree.  The
+other, as it chawnced, was a rubber tree."
+
+Curly deliberately removed his hat and placed it on his knee, wiping,
+as he did so, a brow dotted thick with moisture.  No one broke the
+silence.
+
+"You will easily understand," resumed the speaker, "that when the King
+of Gee-Whiz had chopped into the rubber tree with his little gold axe,
+drinking awfterwards a cupful of pure caoutchouc, it did not take him
+long to repent of his inadvertence.  The results were what I may call
+most extraordinary.  I should judge the rubber juice to have been of
+very high proof indeed.
+
+"To be brief, I give you my word of honor, the King was turned into an
+absolutely elastic person on the spot!  When he stamped his foot he
+bounded into the air.  'He's a regular bounder, anyway,' said Sir
+Harry, who would always have his joke.  'And,' said he to me, as I
+remember distinctly, 'if his conscience becomes elastic, we're gone,
+the same as Cook and Morgenstern.'  Sir Harry was a great wit.
+
+"Now, the more furious the King became, the more helpless he became as
+well.  He simply bounced up and down and around and about.  Reigning
+monarch, too--lack of dignity--all that sort of thing--must have been
+most annoying to him.  We could do nothing to calm him.  In all my
+travels, I have never seen such a state of affairs; I haven't, really."
+
+"Nor me neither," said Billy Hudgens, sighing, "and I've kept bar from
+Butte to El Paso."
+
+"Then what happened?" demanded Curly.
+
+"Everything that could happen," said the other, bitterly.  "Lady Sophie
+and her maid, Sir Harry and the princess--the entire household suite of
+the King of Gee-Whiz--were mad enough to taste also of the juice of
+this rubber tree.  It had the same effect upon them!  I say to you,
+positively and truthfully, that then and there the island of Gee-Whiz
+was inhabited by the maddest population ever known in any possession of
+her Britannic Majesty."
+
+"Reckon they was a pretty lively bunch to hold," suggested Curly; "but
+what happened next?"
+
+"I am not quite clear as to all that transpired awfter that.  I know
+that I was the only sane man left on the island."
+
+"Then," remarked Curly, with conviction, taking a huge chew off his
+plug, "then that must shore have been one hell of a island!"
+
+But the narrator went on unmoved: "I reproved the others, and they
+resented it.  There was a great battle with the natives one day, of
+which I remember but little.  I seem to have been left insensible on
+the field.  When I recovered, I saw dawncing off across the sea the
+figures of all these different persons except Sir Harry--who, of
+course, was with me in the battle.  Sir Harry was still with me, quite
+sober at lawst, and quite dead, I do not know from what cause.  I was
+left alone.
+
+"It was thus, gentlemen, that I acquired, by right, as I think, my
+title which I assumed--awfter acting for a time as Viceroy for her
+Britannic Majesty--as the King of Gee-Whiz.  For a while I lived there
+alone.  Awfterwards, in some way, which I do not quite call to mind at
+present, I appear to have been discovered.  It was shortly awfter that
+I received my decoration--I beg your pardon."  He flushed a dull red.
+"It was nothing, of course," said he.  "As to saving Sir Harry, it was
+only what any other fellow would have done in the Army or the Navy--I
+don't remember which.
+
+"So, gentlemen, I've told you my story as a gentleman should.  I've
+been deucedly down on my luck ever since then, and I cawn't tell you,
+really I cawn't, how I happened to be here and in this business as you
+found me.  There's many a younger son, in the Army or the Navy, who
+knocks about and gets a bit to the bad.  I hope you'll not lay it up
+against me, I do indeed!"  His head dropped forward on his chest.  "I
+was stone broke," he whispered, "and I'd not a friend on earth."
+
+"And so you drifted here," said Curly.  "Well, it's about the right
+place.  Heart's Desire's wide open."
+
+"It wasn't so bad," resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand
+across his forehead; "it wasn't so bad down here for a time.  I didn't
+mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on
+the island for so long.  But the trouble was that I was followed all
+the time--have been for more than a year now--by that cursed King--that
+damned fiend that I thought I'd left long ago!  I'd go out into the
+sunshine, and there he'd be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along,
+anyway I'd look!  He'd follow me like a--look! look! there he is now.
+See!"
+
+He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open
+door.  A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight
+which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.
+
+"Look!" cried the King of Gee-Whiz.  "He's there!  He's there!"  He
+slipped and sank to the floor, rolling over into an utter
+insensibility.  Curly put on his hat and stood looking down at him.
+
+"Sand, sunshine, and sheep herdin'," said he, "will do up any man in
+time.  I'd 'a' made a good cow puncher out of this fellow, too, if I'd
+got him in time.  By Golly!  I'll do it anyhow.  I'll have Mac get him
+a horse and saddle and put him to work.  Any feller that kin shoot and
+lie as good as him has got the makin' of a good cow puncher in him."
+
+They turned over the King of Gee-Whiz gently, that he might rest more
+easily, where he lay.  His coat and waistcoat fell open.  Underneath
+them, upon the left side of his chest, appeared a small, dull-colored
+cross of metal.
+
+"For Valor"; Curly read the inscription with difficulty.  "I knowed it;
+I knowed he'd been a cow puncher sometime, and just went wrong."
+
+"Great Scott!" exclaimed Uncle Jim Brothers, "that's the Victoria
+Cross!  This here's a V. C. man!"
+
+"I don't know that brand.  It ain't registered for this range," said
+Curly.
+
+"Well," said Billy Hudgens, philosophically gazing at the sleeper, "I
+reckon 'D. T.' would be easier to understand, all things considered."
+
+"If he ever comes to," said Curly, as he cast away through the open
+door the contents of the pockets of the King of Gee-Whiz, "we'll try to
+get him through the D. T. stage as well as the V. C., whatever that is,
+and I reckon he's good for a job on the Carrizoso range.  This country
+can't afford to be too damned particular about a feller's past."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby_
+
+Tom Osby's freight wagon made not so bad a conveyance after all.  The
+first fifty miles of the journey were passed in comparative silence,
+Constance and her father for the most part keeping to the shelter of
+the wagon tilt.  Tom Osby grew restless under solitude ere long, and
+made friendly advances.
+
+"You come up here and set by me on the seat," said he to Constance,
+"and let the sun shine on you.  The old man can stay back there on the
+blankets with my kerosene can of whiskey if he still thinks his health
+ain't good.  Like enough he'll learn to get the potato off'n the snoot
+of the can before long.
+
+"You see," he went on, "I don't make no extry charge for whiskey or
+conversation to my patients.  Far's I know, I'm the only railroad that
+don't.  I got a box of aigs back there in the wagon, too.  Ever see ary
+railroad back in the States that throwed in ham and aigs?  I reckon
+not."
+
+"Twenty dollars extra!" remarked Ellsworth, "You've made the girl
+laugh."
+
+"Man, hush!" said Tom Osby.  "Go on to sleep, and don't offer me money,
+or I'll make you get out and walk."  This with a twinkle which robbed
+his threat of terror, though Ellsworth took the advice presently and
+lay down under the wagon cover.
+
+"Don't mind him, Miss Constance," apologized Tom Osby.  "He's only your
+father, anyhow, if it comes to the worst.  But now tell me, what ails
+_you_?  Say, now, you ain't sick, are you?"  He caught the plaintive
+droop of the girl's mouth; but, receiving no answer, he himself evaded
+the question, and began to point out antelope and wolves, difficult for
+the uneducated eye to distinguish upon the gray plains that now swept
+about them.  It was an hour before he returned to the subject really
+upon his mind.
+
+"I was hearin' a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a
+feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he
+began tentatively.  "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't
+have more'n half time enough to git the news."  From the corner of his
+eye he watched the face of his passenger.
+
+"A great way to do, wasn't it!" exclaimed Constance, in sudden
+indignation.  "I asked them why they didn't hire men to do such work."
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby; "I used to think you had some sense.  You
+ain't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You can't think of no way but States ways, can you?  I s'pose you
+think the _po_lice ought to catch a bad man, don't you?"
+
+"Well, it's officer's work, going after a dangerous man.  Wasn't this
+man dangerous?"
+
+He noted her eagerness, and hastened to qualify.  "Him?  The Kid?  No,
+I don't mean him.  _He's_ plumb gentle.  I mean a _real_ bad man--if
+there was any out here, you know.  Now, not havin' any _po_lice, out
+here, the fellers that believes in law and order, why, onct in a while,
+they kind of help go after the fellers that don't.  It works out all
+right.  Now I don't seem to just remember which ones it was of our
+fellers that Stillson took with him the other day, along of your
+hurrying me out of town so soon after I got in."
+
+"It was Mr. Tomlinson, and Mr. McKinney from the ranch, you know; and
+Curly wanted to go, but they wouldn't let him."
+
+"Why wouldn't they?"
+
+"Because he was a married man, they said.  And yet you say this
+criminal is not dangerous?"
+
+"He'd ought to been glad to go, him a married man.  I've been married a
+good deal myself.  But was them two the only ones that went?"
+
+"They two--and Mr. Anderson."
+
+Tom smoked on quietly.  "Well, I don't see why they'd take a tenderfoot
+like him," he remarked at length, "while there was men like Curly
+standin' around."
+
+"I thought you were his friend!" blazed the girl, her cheeks reddening.
+
+Tom Osby grinned at the success of his subterfuge.
+
+"If he wasn't a good man, Ben Stillson wouldn't 'a' took him along,"
+admitted he.
+
+"Then it _is_ dangerous?"
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, tapping his pipe against the side of the wagon
+seat, "they're about even, a half dozen good ones against about that
+many bad ones.  They're game on both sides, and got to be.  And we all
+know well enough that Dan Anderson's game as the next one.  The boys
+figured that out the other night.  Why, he'll come back all right in a
+few days; don't worry none about _that_."  He looked straight ahead of
+him, pretending not to notice the little gloved hand that stole toward
+his sleeve.  In her own way, Constance had discovered that she might
+depend upon this rough man of the plains.
+
+"Ma'am," he went on after a while, "not apropy of nothing, as they say
+in the novels, I wish you and your dad would hurry and get your old
+railroad through here.  Us folks may some of us want to go back to the
+States sometime, and it's a long way to ride from Heart's Desire to any
+railroad the way it is, unless you've got mighty good company, like I
+have, this trip.  I get awful lonesome sometimes, drivin' between here
+and Vegas.  I had a parrot onct, and a phonygraph, as you may remember,
+but the fellers took 'em both away from me, you know.  I'm thinkin' of
+makin' up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin' down.  She makes
+fine pies.  I've knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles--all
+the way up to Vegas--they're that permernent.  She reminds me a heap of
+my third wife.  Now, allowin' I did take one more chanct, and make up
+to that oldest girl, we'd look fine, wouldn't we, takin' a weddin' trip
+in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!"
+
+Constance was smiling now.  "I've got her gentled and comin' along
+right easy now," thought Tom Osby to himself.
+
+"I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct," he went on, "got married and went
+plumb to New York, towering around.  He got lost on a ferry-boat down
+there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me,
+'Blamed if every man in that town didn't get his boots blacked every
+day.'  That's foolish."
+
+The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and
+taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she
+had felt for days.  Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a
+deep snore from the rear of the wagon.
+
+"That," said Tom Osby, "sounds like the old man had got the potato
+loose."
+
+"I'm ashamed of him," declared Constance.
+
+"Natural," said Tom; "but why special?"
+
+"He oughtn't to touch that whiskey.  I hate it."
+
+"So do I, when it ain't good.  That in the can is good.  It's only fair
+your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone
+Star.  They didn't have a drop when I got in.  Now, that's another
+reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart's Desire.  It might
+prevent a awful stringency, sometime.  There's Dick McGinnis, why, he
+nearly--"
+
+"But it's not coming.  It will not be built.  They wouldn't let us in.
+We couldn't get the right of way."
+
+"Now listen at you!  You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer
+couldn't.  Of course not.  But you haven't tried it your own self yet."
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"Well, you'd a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa
+did.  The boys told me all about what happened.  A man out here don't
+holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that's
+different.  Dan Anderson done just right."
+
+"He broke up all our plans," Constance retorted hotly; and at once
+flushed at her own speech.
+
+"What was he to do?  Sell out?  Turn the whole town over to you folks?
+Soon as he knows what's up, he throws back the money and tells the road
+to go to hell.  He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers
+that had spoke to him about lookin' after their places.  He done right."
+
+Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon.  At length
+she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby's eyes.  "Yes, he was right,"
+she said.  "He did what was right."  But she drew a long breath as she
+spoke.
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, "not referrin' to the
+fact that you're squarer than your men folks, I want to say that,
+speakin' of game folks, you're just as game as any man I ever saw.
+Lots of women is.  Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin'
+on, sometimes."
+
+She felt his eyes upon her, and this time turned away her own.  For a
+time they were silent, as the well-worn wagon rolled along behind the
+long-stepping grays; but Tom Osby was patient.
+
+"A while ago," he resumed after a time, "you said 'we,' and 'our
+railroad.'  That's mighty near right.  You two folks right here in this
+wagon, yourself particular, can save that there railroad, and save
+Heart's Desire, both at the same time.  And that's something, even if
+them was all that was saved."
+
+"I don't quite see what you mean," answered Constance.
+
+"Oh, now, look here," said Tom, filling another pipe, "I ain't so
+foolish.  I ain't goin' to say that the old days'll last forever.  We
+all know better'n that when it comes right down to straight reasonin'.
+A country'll sleep about so long, same as a man; and then it'll wake
+up.  I've seen the States come West for forty years.  They're comin'
+swifter'n ever now."
+
+"When we first came here," said Constance, "I thought this was the very
+end of all the world."
+
+"It has been.  And the finest place in all the world, ma'am, is right
+at the end of the world.  That's where a man can feel right
+independent.  A woman can't understand that, no way on earth.  A man's
+a right funny thing, ma'am.  He's all the time hankerin' to git into
+some country out at the end of the world, where there ain't a woman
+within a thousand miles; and then as quick as he gets there, he begins
+to holler for some woman to come out and save his life!"
+
+She turned upon him again, smiling in spite of herself.
+
+"The boys have been mighty slow to let go of the old days," he went on.
+"In some ways there won't never be no better days.  We never had a
+thief in our valley, until your pa come in here last summer.  There
+ain't been a lock on a door in four hundred miles of this country in
+the last twenty years.  When the railroad comes the first thing it'll
+bring will be locks and bolts.  At the same time, it's got to come--I
+know that.  We've about had our sleep and our dream out, ma'am."
+
+"It was beautiful," Constance murmured vaguely; and he caught her
+meaning.
+
+"Yes, plumb beautiful.  Folks that hasn't tried it don't know.  A man
+that's lived the old life here, with a real gun on him as regular as
+pants, why, in about three years he gets what we call galvanized.
+He'll never be the same after that.  He'll never go back to the States
+no more.  That's hard for you to understand, ain't it?  And yet that
+sort of feelin' catches almost any man out here, sooner or later, if
+he's any good.  It's the country, ma'am."
+
+A strange spell seemed now to fall upon Constance herself, as she sat
+gazing out in the sunlight.  She felt the fatalism, the unconcern of a
+child, of a young creature.  She understood perfectly all that she had
+heard, and was ready to listen further.
+
+"Of course," continued Tom, "this, bein' South, and bein' West, it
+ain't really a part of the United States; so I can't save the whole
+country.  But, such as this part of the country is, I reckon I'll have
+to save it.  You'll see my name wrote on tablets in marble halls some
+day; because I've got a hard job.  I've got to reconcile these folks to
+your dad!  And yet I'm going to make 'em say, 'Now is the winter of our
+discontent made glorious summer by this son-of-a-gun from New York.'
+You didn't know I read Shakespeare?  Why, I read him constant, even if
+I do have to wear specs now for fine print."
+
+Constance, in spite of herself, laughed outright with so merry a peal
+that she wakened her father from his slumber.  "What's that?  What's
+that?" broke in Mr. Ellsworth, suddenly sitting up on his blankets.
+
+"Never mind, friend," said Tom Osby, "you go back to sleep again; me
+and Miss Constance is savin' things.  I was just talkin' to her about
+her railroad."
+
+Ellsworth rubbed his eyes.  "By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly, "that's a
+good idea.  It shall be hers if she says so.  I'll give her every share
+I own if that road ever runs into the valley."
+
+"Now you are beginnin' to _talk_," said Tom Osby, calmly.  "Not that
+you'd be givin' her much; for you and your lawyer wouldn't be able to
+get the railroad in there in a thousand years.  The girl can play a
+heap stronger game than both of you."
+
+"Well, if she can," responded Ellsworth, "she's going to have a good
+chance to do it.  We're going to build the railroad on north, and we
+don't feel like hauling coal down that caņon by wagon."
+
+Tom Osby seemed to have pursued his game as far as he cared to do at
+this time.  "S'pose we stop along somewhere in here," he suggested,
+"and eat a little lunch?  My horses gets hungry, and thirsty, the same
+as you, Mr. Ellsworth.  Whoa, boys!"
+
+Descending from his high seat, he now unhitched his team and strapped
+on their heads the nose-bags with the precious oats, after a pail of
+not less precious water from the cask at the wagon's side.
+Methodically he kicked together a little pile of greasewood roots.
+
+"We're to have some tea, you know," he remarked.  "I don't charge
+nothin' extry for tea, whiskey, or advice on this railroad of mine.
+Get down now, ma'am," he added, reaching up his arms to assist
+Constance from her place.  "Come along, set right down here on the
+ground in the sun.  It's good for you.  Ain't it nice?
+
+"There's the back of old Carrizy just beginnin' to show," he explained;
+"and there's the Bonitos comin' up below.  That's Blanco Peak beyond,
+the tallest in the Territory; and them mountings close in is the
+Nogales.  There ain't a soul within many and many a mile of here.  And
+now, with them old mountings a-lookin' down at us on the strict
+_cuidado_, not botherin' us if we don't bother them, why, ain't it
+comfortable?  This country'll take hold of you after a while, ma'am.
+It's the oldest in the world; but somehow it seems to me onct in a
+while as if it was about the youngest, too."
+
+Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full
+glare of the Southwestern sun.  She looked about her and felt an
+unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle
+and under some watchful eye.  "Dad," said she, quietly, "I'm not going
+home.  I'm going to spend a month at Sky Top."
+
+"Has it caught _you_, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, simply.
+
+"She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be
+taken care of," grumbled her father.
+
+"Oh, now, interests ain't exclusive for the States," said Tom Osby.
+"You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn't do it.
+Give the girl a month, an' she'll just about have the town--or her and
+me together will.  You settin' there talkin' about goin' home!  Go on
+home if you feel like it.  Me and Miss Constance will stay out here,
+and take care of the business interests ourselves."
+
+"We're personally conducted, dad," laughed Constance.
+
+"Listen," said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon
+his knee.  "Now, you folks has got money behind you that's painful.
+You don't _have_ to steal, Mr. Ellsworth.  It's only a _habit_ with
+you.  Now s'pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin' that God can plat
+a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin' that the first fellers that
+finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones--which she _does_
+allow, and _know_.  Now, here's what she says.  Says she, 'We'll go in
+with this outfit, and we won't try to steal the landscape.  We'll pay
+for every foot of ground that's claimed by anybody that seen it first.
+We won't try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates
+back to Jack Wilson.  We'll put in the yard at the lower end of the
+town, provided that Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, gives his
+permission--always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr.
+Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he
+feels like goin' there.  Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas
+Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."
+
+"Of course," assented Constance; and her father nodded.
+
+"That'd be fair, and it'd be easy," went on Tom.  "We'll fix it up
+that-a-way, me and Miss Constance--not you.  And as soon as we get to a
+telegraft office, we fire the general counsel, Mr. Barkley; don't we,
+Miss Constance?"  The girl nodded grimly.
+
+"He's fired," said Tom.  "You can take care of that the first thing you
+do, Mr. Ellsworth.  Then you can make out my papers as yardmaster and
+general boss of the deepot.  You can be clerk.
+
+"Now here we go, the railroad cars a choo-chooin' up our caņon, same as
+down here at Sky Top.  In the front car is the president, which is Miss
+Constance, with me clost along, the new yardmaster.  Your pa is
+somewhere back on the train, Miss Constance, with the money to pay off
+the hands.  He's useful, but not inderspensible."
+
+"Go on!" applauded Constance.  "Who besides us and poor old dad?"
+
+Tom Osby turned and looked at her gravely.
+
+"And there comes down to meet us at the station," he concluded, "the
+only man we needed to help us put this thing through."  Tom Osby
+finished his tea in silence.  Constance herself made no comment.  Her
+gaze was on the far-off mountains.
+
+"That there man," he resumed, shaking out the grounds from his tea-cup,
+"is the new division counsel for the road, the first mayor of Heart's
+Desire,--after Miss Constance,--and mighty likely the next
+Congressional delergate from this Territory.  Now can you both guess
+who that man is?"
+
+"I'll admit he's a bigger man than Barkley," said Ellsworth, slowly.
+"That boy would make a grand trial lawyer.  They couldn't beat him."
+
+"No," said Tom Osby, "they'd think he was square, and that means a lot.
+They _do_ think he's square; and the boys are goin' to do something
+for him if they can.  Now if he gets back--"
+
+Constance turned upon him with a glance of swift appeal.
+
+"As I was sayin', _when_ he gets back," resumed Tom, "some of us
+fellers may perhaps take it up with him, and tell him what Miss
+Constance wants to have done."
+
+This was too much.  The girl sprang to her feet.  "You'll tell him
+nothing!" she cried.
+
+Ellsworth turned to Tom Osby with a sober face.  "Young Anderson rode
+away from us the other morning," said he, "and he hardly troubled
+himself to say good-by.  We used to know him back East; and he needn't
+have taken that affair of the railroad meeting so much to heart."
+
+"Come!" called Constance, "get ready and let's be going.  I'm sick of
+this country!"  She walked rapidly away from the others.
+
+"A woman can change some sudden, can't she, Mr. Ellsworth?" remarked
+Tom Osby, slowly.
+
+"Look here, Miss Constance," said he, presently, when he came nearer to
+her, standing apart from the wagon, "there's been mistakes and busted
+plans enough in here already.  Now don't get on no high horse and break
+up my scheme."
+
+"Don't talk to me!"  She stamped her foot.
+
+"Ma'am! ain't you ashamed to say them words?"  She did not answer, and
+Tom Osby took the step for which he had been preparing throughout the
+entire morning.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, "one word from you would bring that feller to you on
+the keen lope.  He'd fix the railroad all right mighty soon.  Then
+besides--"
+
+She turned away.  "The question of the railroad is a business one, and
+nothing else; talk to my father about it."
+
+Tom went silently about his preparations for resuming the journey.
+When he came to put the horses to the wagon tongue, he found Constance
+sitting there, staring with misty eyes at the distant hills beyond
+which lay Heart's Desire.  Tom Osby paused at the shelter of the wagon
+cover and backed away.
+
+"Something has got to be did," he muttered to himself, "and did mighty
+blame quick.  If we don't get some kind of hobbles on that girl,
+_she's_ goin' to jump the fence and go back home."
+
+[Illustration: "'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame
+quick.'"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen_
+
+When Tom Osby came back to Heart's Desire, he drew Curly to one side,
+and the two walked over to a shady spot at the side of Whiteman's
+corral, seating themselves for what was evidently to be an executive
+session.
+
+Tom Osby continued to stuff tobacco into his pipe with a stubby
+forefinger, and Curly's hat was pushed back from a forehead wrinkled in
+deep thought.
+
+"It's a good deal like you say, Tom," he assented; "I know that.
+Unless we can get Dan Anderson and that girl to some sort of an
+understandin', the jig's up, and there ain't a-goin' to be no railroad
+at Heart's Desire.  But how're you a-goin' to _do_ that?"
+
+"Well, I done told you what I thought," said Tom Osby.  "I'm a married
+man, been married seven times, or maybe six.  There's just two things I
+understand, and them is horses and women, which I ought to, from
+associatin' with them constant.  Now, I tell you, if I'm any judge of
+women, that girl thinks a heap of Dan Anderson, no matter what she lets
+on.  It's her that's got the railroad up her sleeve.  The old man just
+thinks she's a tin angel with fresh paint.  Why, he's done _give_ her
+the whole railroad.  He don't want it.  He's got money now that's
+sinful.  Now, I say, she's got the railroad.  Dan Andersen's chances,
+they go with the railroad.  If she could just get _him_ to go with the
+business _chances_, that'd about fix things; and I more'n half believe
+she'd drop into line right free and gentle."
+
+"Well, why don't she _say_ so, then," grumbled Curly, "and stop this
+foolishness?"
+
+"Now there you go!" replied Tom.  "Can't you see that any woman on
+earth, even a married woman, is four-thirds foolishness and the rest
+human?  With girls it's still worse'n that.  If I'm any judge, she's
+wishin' a certain feller'd come along and shake the tree.  But she
+ain't goin' to fall off until the tree's done shook.  Consequently,
+there she is, still up the tree, and our railroad with her."
+
+"Looks like _he_ ought to make the first break," observed Curly,
+sagely.
+
+"Of course he ought.  But _will_ he, that's the question."
+
+"No, he won't," admitted Curly, pushing his hat still farther back on
+his head.  "He's took his stand, and done what he allowed was right.
+After that, he ain't built to crawfish.  He's passed up the girl, and
+the railroad, too, and I reckon that settles it."
+
+"And yet he thinks a heap of the girl."
+
+"Natural?  Of course he does.  How can he help it?  That's where the
+trouble is.  I tell you, Tom, these here things is sort of _personal_.
+If these two folks is havin' trouble of their own, why, it's _their_
+trouble, and it ain't for us to square it, railroad or no railroad."
+
+"When two people is damn fools," commented Tom Osby, gravely, "it's all
+right for foreign powers to mediate a-plenty."
+
+"But what you goin' to do?  She won't bat a eye at him, and he ain't
+goin' to send for her."
+
+"Oh, yes he _is_," corrected Tom Osby; and the forefinger, crowding
+tobacco into his pipe, worked vigorously.  "He's _got_ to send for
+her."
+
+"Looks to me like we can't do nothin'," replied his friend,
+pessimistically.  "I like that girl, too.  Say, I'll braid her a nice
+hair rope and take it down to her.  Maybe that'll kind o' square things
+with her for losin' out with Dan."
+
+"Yes," scoffed Tom Osby, "that's all the brains a fool cow puncher has
+got.  Do you reckon a hair lariat, or a new pair of spurs, is any
+decent remedy for a girl's wownded affections?  No, sir, not none.  No,
+you go on down and take your old hair rope with you, and give it to the
+girl.  That's all right; but you're goin' to take something else along
+with you at the same time."
+
+"What's that?" "Why, you're goin' to take a letter to her,--a letter
+from Dan Andersen's death-bed."
+
+"Who--me?  Death-bed?  Why, he ain't _on_ no death-bed.  He's eatin'
+three squares a day and settin' up readin' novels.  Death-bed nothin'!"
+
+"Oh, no," said Tom Osby, "that's where you're mistaken.  Dan Anderson
+_is_ on his death-bed; and he writes his dyin' confession, his message
+in such cases made and pervided.  He sends his last words to his own
+true love.  Says he, 'All is forgiven.'  Then she flies to receive his
+dyin' words.  You ain't got no brains, Curly.  You ain't got no
+imagi_na_tion.  Why, if I left all this to you, she'd get here too
+late for the funeral.  You're a specialist, Curly.  You can rope and
+throw a two-thousand-pound steer, but you can't handle a woman that
+don't weigh over a hundred and twenty-five.  Now, you watch your Pa."
+
+Curly sat and looked at him in silence for a few minutes, but at last a
+light seemed to dawn upon him.  "Oh, I _see_," said he, smiling
+broadly.  "You mean for us to get up a letter for him--write it out and
+send it, like he done it hisself."
+
+Tom Osby nodded.  "Of course--that's the only way.  There wouldn't
+either of them write to the other one.  That's the trouble with these
+here States girls, and them men from the States, too.  You have to take
+care of 'em.  You and me has got to be gardeens for these two folks.
+If we don't, they're goin' to make all kinds of trouble for theirselves
+and each other."
+
+"Kin you disguise your handwritin' any, Tom?" asked Curly.  "I can't.
+Mine's kind of sot."
+
+"Curly," answered Tom, with scorn, "what you call your brains is only a
+oroide imitation of a dollar watch.  Why, of course we can't write a
+letter and sign his name to it deliberate.  That's forgery, and we'd
+get into the penitentiary for it.  That ain't the way to do.
+
+"Now look here.  Dan Anderson may be lookin' right well for a dyin'
+man, but he's on his death-bed just the same.  That's needful for the
+purposes of dramatic construction.  He's a-layin' there, pale and wore
+out.  His right arm is busted permernent, and it's only a question of
+time when he cashes in--though he _might_ live a few days if he was
+plumb shore his own true love was a-hastenin' to his bedside."
+
+"But it was his _left_ arm that got shot," argued Curly; "and it
+didn't amount to a whole lot at that."
+
+"There's you go," jeered Tom, in answer, "with them imitation brain
+works of yours.  It's his _right_ arm that's busted.  Now, him
+a-layin' there plumb helpless, his thoughts turns to his bride that
+might 'a' been, but wasn't.  With his last dyin' words he greets her.
+If she would only hasten to his deathbed, he could die in peace.
+That's what he writes to her.  'Dear Madam,' says he, 'Havin' loved you
+all my life, I fain would gaze on you onct more.  In that case,' says
+he, 'the clouds certainly would roll away!'"
+
+"That shorely would _fetch_ her," said Curly, admiringly, "but how you
+goin' to fix it?"
+
+"Why, how?  There ain't but one way.  The dyin' man has his dear friend
+Curly, or Tom Osby, or some one, write his last words for him.  That
+ain't counterfeitin'.  That's only actin' as his literary amanyensis,
+and that's plumb legal."
+
+"Things may be legal, and not _safe_," objected Curly.  "Supposin' he
+finds out?"
+
+"Why, then, we'll be far, far away.  This letter has got to be wrote.
+I can't write it myself, and you can't; but maybe several of us could."
+
+"I ain't in on writin' the letter," Curly decided; "I'll carry it, but
+my writin' is too sot, and so's my thinker."
+
+"Well, I ain't used my own thinker in this particular way for about
+twenty years," said Tom Osby, "although I did co'te two of my wives by
+perlite correspondence, something like this; and I couldn't see but
+what them wives lasted as good as any."
+
+"It's too bad Dan Anderson ain't in on this play hisself," Curly
+resumed.  "Now if it was us that was layin' dead, and him writin' the
+letter, he'd have us both alive, and have the girl here by two o'clock
+to-morrer, and everything 'd be lovely.  But us!  We don't know any
+more about this than a pair of candy frogs."
+
+"The fewer there is in on a woman deal the better," said Tom Osby, "and
+yet it looks like we needed help right now!"
+
+The two sat gazing gloomily down the long street of Heart's Desire, and
+so intent were they that they did not see the shambling figure of
+Willie the sheepherder coming up the street.  Then Tom Osby's gaze
+focussed him.
+
+"Now there's that damned sheepherder that broke us up in business,"
+said he.  "It was him that got us into this fix.  If he hadn't lied
+like a infernal pirate, and got Dan Anderson to thinkin' that the girl
+and this lawyer feller Barkley was engaged to each other on the side,
+why Dan wouldn't have flared up and busted the railroad deal, and let
+the girl get away, and gone and got hisself shot."
+
+"S'posin' I shoot Willie up just for luck," suggested Curly.  "He's got
+it comin' to him, from the way that Gee-Whiz friend of his throwed lead
+into our fellers, time we was arguin' with them over them sheep.  This
+country ain't got no use for sheep, nor sheepherders either, specially
+the kind that makes trouble with railroads, and girls."
+
+"No, hold on a minute," interrupted Tom Osby.  "You wait--I've got a
+idea."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Wait a minute.  How saith the psalmist?  All men is liars; and
+sheepherders special, natural, eighteen-karat, hand-curled liars--which
+is just the sort we need right now in our business."
+
+Curly slapped his thigh in sudden understanding.  The two sat, still
+watching Willie as he came rambling aimlessly up the street, staring
+from side to side in his vacant fashion.
+
+"A sheepherder, as you know, Curly," went on Tom, "has three stages in
+his game.  For a while he's human.  In a few years, settin' round on
+the hills in the sun, a-watchin' them damned woolly baa-baa's of his,
+he gets right nutty.  He sees things.  Him a-gettin' so lonesome, and
+a-readin' high-class New York literature all the time, he gets to
+thinkin' of the Lady Eyemogene.  You might think he's seein' cactus and
+sheep, but what is really floatin' before him is proud knights, and
+haughty barons, and royal monarchs, and Lady Eyemogenes.
+
+"It ain't sinful for Willie to lie, like it is for us, because life is
+one continuous lie to him.  He's seen a swimmin' picture of
+hand-painted palaces, and noble jukes, and stately dames out on the
+Nogal flats every day for eight years.  That ain't lyin'--that's
+imagination.
+
+"Now this feller's imagination is just about ripe.  Usual, at the end
+of about seven years, a sheepherder goes plumb dotty, and we either
+have to shoot him, or send him to Leavenworth.  Your Gee-Whiz man can
+maybe take to cow punchin' and prosper, but not Willie.  His long suit
+is imaginin' things, from now on.
+
+"Now, that feller is naturally pinin' to write this here particular
+letter we've got on our minds.  You watch Willie compose."
+
+"Here you, Willie, come over here!" Curly called out.
+
+The herder started in fright.  Timid at best, he was all the more so
+since the raid of the Carrizoso stock men.  His legs trembled under
+him, but he slowly approached in obedience.
+
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, sternly, "I'm some hardened as a sinner my own
+self, but the kind of way you do pains me.  What made you tell that lie
+about seein' the lady and that lawyer feller makin' love to each other,
+on the back seat of the buckboard, behind the old man's back?"
+
+"I _thought_ I seen 'em," pleaded Willie.  "I--I _thought_ I heard
+'em talkin'."
+
+"Oh, sufferin' saints!  Listen to that!  You _thought_!  Of course you
+did.  You and that Gee-Whiz friend of yours ought to turn yourselves
+into a symposium and write for the papers.  Now look here.  Have you
+got a copy of the 'Proud Earl's Revenge,' in your pocket?"
+
+Willie tremulously felt in his clothing, and did produce a dog-eared
+volume to somewhat that effect.  Tom Osby turned over a few of the
+pages thoughtfully, and then sat up with a happy smile.  "There ain't
+no trouble about that letter _now_!" said he.
+
+"What--what--what do you want?" asked Willie.  Then they told him.
+Willie radiated happiness.  He sat down beside them, his hands
+trembling with joy and eagerness--conspirator number three for the
+peace and dignity of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Go get some paper, Curly," said Tom Osby, and Curly departed.  Willie
+remained wrapped in thought, his mind confused at this sudden
+opportunity.
+
+"It's all about Lancelot," said he.
+
+"What brand did Lancelot ride under?  Now, no foolin', Willie."
+
+"Why--why--why," said Willie, "Lancelot, he's at a tournyment.  Now, he
+loves a beautiful queen."
+
+"Shore he does!  That goes.  What's the queen's name?"
+
+"Her name--her name--her name's Guinevere," replied Willie.  "And the
+proud king, he brooks it ill.  The proud king's name is Arthur."
+
+"Oh, no, it _ain't_!" said Tom Osby.  "There ain't no man who's name
+is _Arthur_ that has no scrap to him.  It ain't _Arthur_ that goes on
+no war-path."
+
+"Yes, he did," insisted Willie.  "Lancelot gets herded out.  He gets
+shot up some at the tournyment, so he leaves the beautiful queen, and
+he rides off for the range all alone by himself.  He's like a
+sheepherder."
+
+"Come on with the paper, Curly," called Tom Osby.  "This feller's
+thinker is workin' fine.  Go on, Willie."
+
+"Now, Lancelot, he's layin' at the point of death, and he's thinkin'
+all the time of Guinevere.  I reckon he writes her a letter, and he
+says, says he, 'Dear Lady, I send thee my undyin' love,' says he.  'I
+kiss the picture which is a-layin' on my breast,' says he; 'and with my
+last breath,' says he, 'I shorely yearn for thee!'"
+
+"Meanin' Guinevere?"
+
+"Shore!  Says Lancelot, 'Fair queen, thou didst me a injury onct; but
+couldst thou but come and stand at my bedside, I hadst new zeal in
+life,' says he."
+
+"Meanin' he'd get well?" asked Curly.  "That's the same as Dan
+Anderson!  _This_ feller's a peach!"
+
+"Shut up!" admonished Tom Osby.  "Go on, Willie."
+
+"It's always that-a-way," said Willie.  Tears stood in his eyes.  He
+looked vaguely out over the blue hills which hedged in the enchanted
+valley of Heart's Desire.  "It's always that-a-way," he repeated.
+"Somehow, somewhere, there's always a beautiful queen, for every
+fellow, just over the mountains.  It's always that-a-way."
+
+Tom Osby reached out a hand and gently shook him.
+
+"Set up, Willie," said he.  "Come down now, till we get this business
+fixed.  Now, what happens after that?"
+
+Willie winked his eyes and smiled amiably.  "The sick knight, he writes
+a missive to the beautiful queen," he went on.  "He sets his signet
+ring on to the missive, and he hands it to his trusted henchman, and
+his trusted henchman flies to do his bidding."
+
+"That's you, Curly," nodded Tom Osby.  "You're the trusted henchman."
+
+"I'm damned if I am!" replied Curly.  "I'm nothin' but a plain cow hand
+from the Brazos; but I don't take 'henchman' from nobody!"
+
+"Hush!" said his friend.  "This feller's a genius.  If he don't get
+side-tracked on Dead Shot Dick, or something of that kind, this letter
+is just as good as wrote, right now."
+
+"The good knight presses his signet ring on to the missive," resumed
+Willie, "and his trusted cow hand wraps the missive in the folds of his
+cloak, and climbs on to his trusted steed, and flies far, far away, to
+the side of the beautiful queen."
+
+"That's good!"
+
+"And the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and
+says she, 'My Gawd!'"
+
+"Oh, _now_ we're gettin' at it!" said Tom Osby.  "Say, this is pretty
+_poor_, ain't it, Curly?"
+
+"And then," went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, "the
+beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the
+distant bedside of the sufferin' knight."
+
+"She'll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely," said Tom Osby.  "You
+got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly?  But we'll let it go at that.
+She's got to fly to the distant bedside somehow."
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right," agreed Willie, sweetly.  "She'll fly.
+She'll come.  It's always the same.  It's always the same."
+
+"Write it down, Willie," ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before
+him.  Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.
+
+The latter balked in turn.  "What!  Have I got to start it for you?
+Well, then, begin it, 'Dear Madam!'"
+
+Curly shook his head.  "You couldn't never marry a woman writin' to her
+that-a-way."  And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the
+justice of the assertion.
+
+"Leave it to Willie," suggested Curly.  "He'll get it started after a
+while.  Go ahead, Willie.  How did he say it to her, now, when he sent
+for the beautiful queen?"
+
+Tom Osby's pencil followed rapidly as it might.
+
+"He writes," said Willie, "like they always do.  He says: 'Light of my
+heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.
+I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know
+with no proof but my word.  If I have drawn apart from you, 'twas
+through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe.  If I have
+not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, 'tis for that reason
+I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the
+same.  If I have missed the dear sight of your face, 'twas because I
+could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea
+on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor.  Heart's
+Heart, and life of my life, could you not see?  I could not doom you to
+a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.'"
+
+He passed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he
+heard speaking; but he went on.
+
+"'Now I lie here hurt to death,' says the good knight Lancelot.  'This
+is the end.  Now, at the time when truth must come from the soul, I say
+to you, my queen'--she's always queen to him--'I say to you, I have
+loved you more than I have loved myself.  But if you could come, if you
+could stand at my bedside before it is too late, before it is too
+late--too late--'"  Willie's voice broke into a wail.  The ray of light
+was almost fading from his clouded brain.
+
+"Go on," whispered Tom Osby.
+
+"'My queen, my darling--' says Lancelot."
+
+Willie's hands, trembling, fell into his lap.  "It's always
+that-a-way," he whimpered vaguely, coming now to himself.
+
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, gently, "I ain't right sure I've got it all
+down straight, but I think I have.  You read her over, and touch her up
+here and there where she needs it.  Curly, look here.  I don't believe
+Dan Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if he saw it."
+
+"They sign it with their hearts," said Willie, vaguely.  "They always
+do."
+
+"He signs it with his heart," said Tom Osby, "and it goes!"  He folded
+the paper and handed it to Curly.
+
+"Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can," said he, "and make the
+run to Sky Top as fast as God'll let you.  This letter's all right, and
+it goes!"
+
+So presently there rode down the long sunlit street of Heart's Desire,
+mounted upon the mad horse Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a
+message from a mad brain and two simple hearts,--a courier bound upon a
+strange and kindly errand.
+
+The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign, looked gently
+down, and the stern walls of the caņon seemed to widen and make room
+for the messenger as he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent
+knight to his distant queen.
+
+"It's like he said," mused Curly to himself, feeling in his pocket for
+tobacco as he rode.  "It's that-a-way, and I reckon it always has been.
+I've felt like that myself sometimes.  _Ola, Pinto_!  _Vamos_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
+Ananias with Spurs_
+
+Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the
+bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and
+hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed.  The mad horse,
+Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears
+back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an
+antelope.  The two swept down the long caņon from Heart's Desire,
+traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed
+then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle
+thieves and those who pursued them.  At last they swung down into the
+beautiful valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to the
+southward, until at length they reached the defiles of the Sacramentos.
+They pulled up after more than a day and a night of travel, weary but
+not hopelessly the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up the
+mountains to the Sky Top hotel.
+
+Curly, a trifle gaunt, gave his first attention to his horse, which he
+unsaddled with a slap of approval, and turned loose to feed as best it
+might on the coarse herbage of the upper heights.  His next thought was
+for himself, and he realized that he was hungry.  Immediately there
+dawned upon his mind another great conviction.  He was scared!
+
+He looked about at the long galleries of the ornate modern log house,
+wherein civilization sought to ape the wilderness; but it was not the
+arrogant pretentiousness of the building itself which caused him to
+shift his glance and stand dubiously upon one foot.  It was the thought
+of what the edifice might contain.  There, as he began too late to
+reflect, was the queen!  He, the trusted henchman, was bearing to her a
+missive regarding whose nature he now experienced sudden misgivings.
+Suppose Willie, the sheepherder, had not, after all, been able to meet
+the requirements of a situation so delicate and so important!  Curly
+had known the plains and the mountains all his life.  He had ridden in
+the press of the buffalo herd in the Panhandle, had headed cattle
+stampedes in the breaks of the Pecos, had met the long-toed cinnamon
+bear all over these mountains that lay about him--had even heard the
+whisper of hostile lead as part of his own day's work,--but never
+before had his heart failed him.
+
+Nevertheless, his face puckered into a frown of determination, he
+stumbled, a trifle pigeon-toed in his high-heeled boots, across the
+floor of one gallery after another, and knocked at one door after
+another, until finally, by aid of lingering Mexican servants, he found
+himself in the presence of the beautiful queen whom he had sought.
+
+He ratified her title when she came toward him where he stood, twirling
+his hat in his hands; so tall was she, so grave and dignified, yet so
+very sweet and simple.  Curly was a man, and he felt the spell of
+smooth brown hair and wide brows, and straight, sincere eyes; not to
+speak of a queen's figure clad in such raiment as had not often been
+given Curly to look upon.  He gazed in a frank admiration which
+lessened his fear.
+
+Constance Ellsworth held out her hand, with questions for his own
+household at Heart's Desire.  Was everything right with them?  Was
+Arabella quite well of her accident?  Was his wife well?  And so on.
+But all the time she questioned him deeper with eyes large, wistful,
+eager.  She had had no news since leaving Heart's Desire, and now she
+dreaded any.  This, then, she said with tightening heart, was news, but
+fatal news, long withheld.  Had Dan Anderson come back unhurt from his
+sheriff's errand, there would have been no message at all, and silence
+would have been sweeter than this certainty of evil.  This messenger,
+reticent, awkward, embarrassed, brought her news of Dan Anderson--of
+the boy whom she had loved, of the man she loved, debonair, mocking,
+apparently careless, but, as she herself knew, in his heart indomitably
+resolved.  Now he was gone forever from her life.  He was dead!  She
+could never see him again.  Ah! why had they not used the days of this
+life, so brief, so soon ended?  It was of his death that the messenger
+must speak.
+
+Curly, already sufficiently perturbed, witnessed all this written on
+her face, stumbled, stammered, but was unable to find coherent speech;
+although he saw plainly enough the subterfuge with which even now the
+girl sought to hedge herself against prying eyes that would have read
+her secret.  She began again, to ask him of his family, the same
+questions.  "Is anything wrong?" she demanded.  In some way they were
+seated before he could go on.
+
+"It ain't the twins, ma'am," he began.  "I got--I got a letter for you.
+It's from him--from us--that is, I got a letter from Mr. Anderson--Dan
+Anderson, you know."
+
+He fumbled in his pocket.  The girl, thoroughbred, looked him straight
+in the face, pale, meeting what she felt to be the great moment of her
+life.
+
+"Then he's alive!  He must be!"
+
+Curly shook his head; meaning that he was feeling in the wrong pocket.
+
+"He is dead!  And I did not see him.  He--went away--"  Her chin
+quivered.  "Tell me," she whispered, "tell me!"
+
+Curly, busy in his search for the letter, lost the tragedy of this.
+
+"Tell me, _tell_ me, how did it happen?"
+
+"Well, ma'am, he ain't hurt so awful," remarked Curly, calmly.  "He
+just got a finger or so touched up a little, so's he couldn't write
+none to speak of, you see."
+
+Her heart gave a great bound.  She feared to hope, lest the truth might
+be too cruel; but at length she dared the issue.  "Curly," said she,
+firmly, "you are not telling me the truth."
+
+"I know it, ma'am," replied Curly, amiably; he suddenly realized that
+he was not making his own case quite strong enough.  "The fact is, he
+got hurt a _leetle_ bit worse'n that.  His hand, his _left_--no, I
+mean his _right_ hand got busted up plenty.  Why, he couldn't cut his
+own victuals.  The fact is, it's maybe even a little worse'n that."
+
+"Tell me the truth!" the girl demanded steadily.  "Is his arm gone?"
+
+"Sure it is," replied Curly, cheerfully, glad of assistance.  "Do you
+reckon Dan Anderson would be gettin' _anybody_ to write to _you_ for
+him if he had even a piece of a arm left in the shop?  I reckon not!
+He ain't that sort of a _man_."
+
+Curly's sudden improvement gave him courage.  "The fact is, ma'am,"
+said he, "I got to break this thing to you kind of gentle.  You know
+how that is yourself."
+
+"I know all about it now," she said calmly.  "I knew he would not come
+back--I saw it in his face.  It was all because of that miserable
+railroad trouble that he went away--that he didn't ever come.  It was
+all my own fault--my fault,--but I didn't mean it--I didn't--"
+
+Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an
+important emotional situation.  He rose and gazed down at her with
+solemn pity written upon his countenance.
+
+"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on.  I wish't you
+wouldn't.  Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean
+through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six
+weeks."
+
+"He _will_ live?"
+
+"Oh, _well_," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say
+about _that_.  He _might_ live.  You see, there ain't no doctor at
+Heart's Desire.  The boys just took care of him the best they could.
+They brung him home from quite a ways off.  They--they cut his arm off
+easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors.  They--they sewed
+him up fine.  He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to
+the Piņos Altos ranch.  The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man
+as ever throwed a leg over a saddle.  When he got back from takin' the
+Kid up to Vegas, the sherf--that's Ben Stillson--he starts down to
+Cruces.  Convention there this week, ma'am.  Ben, he allowed he'd get
+Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress--that is, if he hadn't 'a' got
+killed."
+
+"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly.  "I've known that
+a long time."
+
+"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly.
+"There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on
+leather than him.  He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we
+all wouldn't let go of.  Some of 'em goes back home.  He didn't.  What
+there was here he could have.  For one while we thought he was throwin'
+us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't.  We done
+elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something
+better'n that--if they ain't started it already over to Cruces--that
+is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely--him bein' dead.
+Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this
+letter.  But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any
+feller could."
+
+Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights.
+"Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do.  We all
+know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along.
+_You_ got no right to cry.  You got no right to let on what you don't
+really feel.  I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am.  Now I'm--I'm
+plumb sincere and _truthful_.  No frills goes."  There was the
+solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.
+
+"I'm this much of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you
+don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson.  That's everdent.  I
+ain't in on that side of the play.  I'm just here to say that, so far
+as he's concerned _hisself_, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any
+minute of his life for _you_."
+
+She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.
+
+"He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that's
+all," said Curly, firmly.  "He don't talk of nothing else but you,
+ma'am."
+
+"How dare he talk of me!" she flashed.
+
+"Oh, that is--well, that is, he don't talk so blamed much, after
+_all_," stammered Curly.  "Leastwise, not none now.  He's out of his
+head most of the time, now."
+
+"Then you've not told me everything, even yet," exclaimed she,
+piteously.
+
+"Not quite," said Curly, with a long breath; "but I'm a-comin' along."
+
+"He's dying!" she cried with conviction.  Curly, now taking an
+impersonal interest in the dramatic aspect of the affair, solemnly
+turned away his head.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, at length, "he thought a heap of you when he was
+alive.  We--we all did, but _he_ did special and private like.  Why,
+ma'am, if you'd come and stand by his grave, he'd wake up _now_ and
+welcome you!  You see, I am a married man my own self, and Tom Osby,
+he's been married copious; and Tom and me, we both allowed just like I
+said.  We knew the diseased would have done that cheerful--if he had
+any sort of chanct."
+
+The girl sprang up.  "He's not dead!" she cried, and her eyes blazed,
+her natural courage refusing to yield.  "I'll not believe it!"
+
+"I didn't ast you to, ma'am," said Curly.  "He ain't plumb dead; he's
+just threatened.  Oh, say, you've kind of got me rattled, you see.
+I've got a missage--I mean a missive--anyways a letter, from him.  I
+had it in my pants pocket all the time, and thought it was in my coat.
+Them was the last words he wrote."
+
+She tore the letter from his hand, and her eyes caught every word of it
+at the first glance.
+
+"This is not his letter!" she exclaimed.  "He never wrote it!  It's not
+in his hand!"
+
+"Ma'am," said Curly, virtuously grieved, "how could you!  I didn't
+_say_ he wrote it.  He had to have a amanyensis, of course,--him
+a-layin' there all shot up.  Nobody _said_ it was his handwriting It
+_ain't_ his handwritin'.  It's his _heart_writin'.  They sign it with
+their _hearts_, ma'am!  Now I tell you that for the truth, and you can
+gamble on _that_, anyways.
+
+"I think I had better go away.  I'm hungry, anyhow," he added, turning
+away.
+
+"Soon!" she said, stretching out her hand.  "Wait!" her other hand
+trembled as she devoured the pages of the message to the queen.  Her
+cheeks flushed.
+
+"Oh, _read_ it, ma'am!" said Curly, querulously.  "Read it and get
+sorry.  If you can read that there letter from Dan Anderson--signed
+with his heart--and not hit the trail for his bedside, then I've had a
+almighty long ride for nothing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much
+Better_
+
+As Curly stumped away, his spurs clinking on the gallery floor, he
+encountered Mr. Ellsworth, who held out his hand in recognition.
+
+"I just heard some one was down from the town," he began.  "How are you,
+and what's the news?"
+
+"Mighty bad," said Curly, "mighty bad."  Then to himself: "O Lord!  I'm
+in for it again, and worse.  I'd a heap rather lie to a woman than a
+man--it seems more natural."
+
+"Bring any word down with you from up there?" asked Ellsworth.  Curly
+nodded.  "I brung a letter," said he.
+
+"That so?  What's it about?"
+
+"Well, sir, it bein' a letter to a lady--"
+
+"You mean my daughter?  Now, what--"
+
+"Yes, it's for her," admitted Curly; "but it's personal."
+
+"Well, I didn't know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson.
+You know he went with the posse.  Do you happen to know?"
+
+"You ask her.  It is, though."
+
+"Did he send you down here?"
+
+"I'm almighty hungry; I ain't had no breakfast, nor nothing."  Whereupon
+Curly bolted.
+
+Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance.  He found her, a
+crumpled and pathetic figure.  The news then had, indeed, been bad!
+
+"Now, now, child," he began, "what's up here?  You've a letter, the man
+tells me."
+
+She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap.  "Is it from him,
+young Anderson?" he asked.  She nodded.
+
+"It's written by a friend of his," she answered presently.  "He himself
+couldn't write.  He was too--ill."
+
+"Sent for you?" His voice was grave.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, "when it was too late."
+
+"We'll go," he said with decision.  "Get ready.  Maybe there is some
+mistake."
+
+"Don't," she begged, "there is no mistake.  I knew it would happen; I
+felt it."
+
+"By Jove, I hope it's not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of
+that boy myself."
+
+Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room.  She
+turned and blazed at him.  "Then why didn't you talk that way before?"
+
+She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.
+
+An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the
+Sky Top caņon, bound for the northern trail.
+
+Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse,
+which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been
+left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and
+dragging on the ground.  Curly seated himself on the ground near by and
+addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.
+
+"Pinto," said he, "you remind me of a heap of folks I know.  You think
+them reins holds you, but they don't.  They ain't tied to nothing.
+You're just like them, hitched tight to a fool notion, that's all.  If I
+don't take your bridle off, you'll stand there and starve to death, like
+a good many fool folks I've heard of.  You've got to eat, Pinto."
+
+Curly arose and with a meditative finger traced the outlines of the
+continental maps displayed on Pinto's parti-colored flanks.  That
+cynical beast, with small warning, kicked at him viciously.
+
+"Oh, there you go!" remonstrated Curly; "can't you get tired enough to
+be decent?  Git on away--_vamos_!"
+
+He stripped off the bridle from Pinto's head, and again gave him a
+friendly slap, as he drove him off to graze, without any precaution to
+prevent his running away.  As for himself, Curly lay down upon the
+ground, his face on his arm, and was soon fast asleep in the glaring
+sun.  Pinto, misanthropic as he was, did not abuse the confidence
+reposed in him.  He walked off to a trickle of water which came down
+from a mountain spring, and grazed steadily upon the coarse mountain
+grass, but every now and then, under the strange bond which sometimes
+exists between horse and man, wandered around to look inquiringly at his
+sleeping master, whom he would gladly have brained upon occasion, but
+upon whom, none the less, he relied blindly.
+
+There were long shadows slanting toward the eastward when Curly arose
+and again saddled up his misfit mount.  He knew that the buckboard was
+well in advance of him in time, but it must take the longer wagon trail
+to the westward of Sky Top, while for himself there were shorter paths
+across the mountains.  He rode on until night fell, and the moon arose,
+flooding all the mountain range with wondrous silvery light, which grew
+the plainer as he left the whispering pines and came into the dwindled
+piņons of the lower levels.  Then up and down, over and over, he crossed
+the edges of other spurs, coming down from the great backbone of the
+range.  It was past midnight when he reached the flat-topped mesa near
+the Nogales divide, where there were no trees at all, and where ancient
+pottery, relics of a forgotten Heart's Desire of another race and time,
+crumbled beneath his horse's hoofs.  Here Curly loosened the saddle
+cinches, flung down the bridle-rein over Pinto's head again, and himself
+lay down to sleep, uncovered, but hardy as any mountain bear that roamed
+the hills.
+
+When he awoke the red sun hung poised on the shoulder of Blanco, far
+away, as though to receive the ghostly worship of those who once lived
+and loved, and prayed here, in the long ago.  So now he ate as he might,
+and drank at the Rio Bonito, a dozen miles farther on, and went his way
+comforted.
+
+Dropping down rapidly on the farther side of the Nogales, Pinto
+shambling along discontentedly but steadily, Curly at length came to the
+wagon trail which led along the edge of the plain on the western side of
+these ranges which he had threaded.  He leaned forward and examined the
+trail for wheel marks.
+
+"By Jinks!  Pinto," he muttered, "the old man and the girl is shore
+hittin' the trail hard for that there death-bed.  I'll bet that pore
+girl's tired, for they must have made a short camp last night.  _Vamos,
+caballo_!" and so he spurred on to the northward along the hot low
+flats.
+
+By noon he sighted a dust cloud on ahead, which told him that he had the
+other party well in hand if he liked, in spite of the speed they were
+making.
+
+"They travelled all night, that's what they did!  If that Mexican don't
+kill his team, it's a lucky thing."  He did not seek to close the gap
+between them, but on the other hand pulled up and rode more slowly.
+
+"Now, Pinto," he pondered, "whatever in the world am I goin' to do when
+we all pull into town?  Deathbed--and him like enough settin' up and
+playin' solitaire, or out pitchin' horse shoes.  Shucks!  If I could git
+around behind Dan Anderson's house, I believe I'd shoot him a few for
+luck, so's to make some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the
+small bills.  We've been playin' it low down on them two folks, and for
+one, I wish't I was out of it.  Pinto, this here particular trusted
+henchman has shore got cold feet right here."
+
+He trailed behind the buckboard hour after hour, dropping back into a
+gully for concealment now and then, and putting off the unpleasant hour
+of meeting as long as possible.  He kept in the rear until the vehicle
+turned in at the mouth of the caņon which led up to the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Then Curly hastened, and so finally clattered up
+alongside the buckboard.  Ellsworth was gray with fatigue, and Constance
+worn and pale; seeing which Curly cursed himself, Tom Osby, and all
+animate and inanimate things.  "It's a shame, that's what it is!" he
+muttered to himself reproachfully, and averted his face when Constance
+smiled at him bravely and disclaimed fatigue.
+
+The sun was beginning to sink beyond Baxter peak as they came in view of
+the little straggling town, clinging hard to the earth as it had through
+so many years of oblivion.  It was an enchanted valley upon which they
+gazed.  The majestic robes of the purple shadows, tremendous,
+wide-spreading, yet soft as the texture of thrice-piled velvet, were
+falling upon the shoulders of the hills.  An unspeakable, stately calm
+came with the hour of evening.  It was a world apart, beautiful, unreal,
+sweet and full of peace.  Far, far from here were all the tinselled
+trappings of an artificial world, distant the clamorings of a disturbing
+civilization with its tears and terrors.  Battle and striving, anxiety
+and doubt, apprehension and repinings--the envy and the jealousies and
+little fears of life--none of these lay in the lap of old and calm
+Carrizo.  Peace, rest, and pause,--these things were here.
+
+The ravens of the Lord had cared for those who had come hither, pausing,
+dreaming, for a pulse-beat in a frenzied century of rapacity and greed.
+Would the ravens care for a now pale-faced, trembling girl?
+
+"It's perty, ain't it, ma'am?" said Curly.  She looked at him and
+understood many things.
+
+But Curly left them traitorously, almost as soon as they entered the
+lower end of the street, intent upon plans of his own.  Those in the
+slower buckboard, whose tired team could ill afford any gait beyond a
+walk, saw him set spurs to his horse and dash ahead.  There came more
+and more plainly to their ears the sound of a vast confused shouting,
+mingled with rapid punctuation of revolver fire.  As they came into full
+view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the
+entire population of Heart's Desire, all apparently gone mad with some
+incomprehensible emotion.
+
+"What's the matter?  What's the matter?"  Mr. Ellsworth called out to
+one man after another as they passed; but none of them answered him.
+Coherent speech seemed to have deserted all.  "Here, you, Curly!" he
+shouted.  "What's all this about?"
+
+Curly, after a swift dash up the street, was now spurring back madly,
+his hat swinging in the air, himself crazed as the others.
+
+"He's in!" he yelled.  "We done it!"
+
+"Who's in?  What've you done?"
+
+"Dan Anderson--nomernated him for Congress--day 'fore yestidday, over to
+Cruces.  Whole convention went solid--Cruces and Doņa Ana, Blanco--whole
+kit and b'ilin' of 'em.  Ben Stillson done it--boys just heard--heard
+the news!"  After which Curly relapsed into a series of yells which
+closed the incident.
+
+Constance listened, open-eyed and silent.  So then, he had succeeded!
+The joy in his success, the pride in his victory, brought a flush to her
+cheek; but in the same moment the light faded from her eye.  She caught
+her father by the shoulder almost fiercely.  "Look at them!" she
+exclaimed.  "They're proud of their victory, but they do not think of
+_him_.  See!  He is not here."
+
+Her father, sniffing politics, was forgetting all else; but sobered at
+this speech, he now motioned the driver to move on.  McKinney was there,
+Doc Tomlinson, Uncle Jim Brothers--the man from Leavenworth--many whom
+they knew, but not Dan Anderson.
+
+As they turned from the street to cross the _arroyo_, they saw
+following at a respectful distance both Curly and Tom Osby, the latter
+walking at Curly's saddle-skirt, for reasons not visible at a distance.
+Tom Osby was still continuing his protestations.  "You go on over,
+Curly," said he.  "You've done mighty well; now go on and finish up.  I
+ain't in on the messenger part."
+
+"Maybe not," replied Curly, "but both halfs of this here amanyensis is
+goin' over there together.  I told that girl that Dan Anderson was shot
+to a finish and just about to cash in.  Now here's all this hoorah about
+his bein' put up for Congress!  I dunno _what_ she'll find when she
+gets into that house, but whichever way it goes, she's due to think I'm
+a damned liar.  You come along, or I'll take _you_ over on a rope."
+
+The two conspirators crossed the _arroyo_ and paused at the path which
+led up to Dan Anderson's little cabin.  They saw Mr. Ellsworth and
+Constance leave the buckboard and stop uncertainly at the door.  They
+saw him knock and step half within, then withdraw and gently push his
+daughter ahead of him.  Then he stood outside, his hat in hand,
+violently mopping his brow.  As he caught sight of the two laggards he
+beckoned them peremptorily.
+
+"O Lord!" moaned Tom Osby; "now here's what that sheepherder done to us,
+with his missive and his signet ring."
+
+Constance Ellsworth had grown deadly pale as she approached the
+dwelling.  The open door let in upon a darkened interior.  There was no
+light, no ray of hope to comfort her.  There, as it seemed to her, in
+that tomblike abode, lay the end of all her happiness.  In her heart was
+only the prayer that she might find him able, still to recognize her.
+
+At her father's gesture she stepped to the door--and stopped.  The blood
+went first to her heart, and then flamed back into her face.  Her cheeks
+tingled.  Her hand fell lax from the door jamb, and she half staggered
+against it for support, limp and helpless.
+
+There before her, and busily engaged in writing--so busy that he had
+merely called out a careless invitation to enter when he heard the knock
+of what he presumed to be a chance caller--there, perhaps a trifle pale,
+but certainly well, and very much himself, sat Dan Anderson!
+
+"He's alive!" whispered Constance to her heart.
+
+"He's going to live!"
+
+The future delegate from the Territory had slunk away from the noisy
+street to pen some line of acknowledgment to his friend the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He had succeeded, so he reasoned with himself insistently; and
+yet a strange apathy, a sadness rather than exultation, enveloped him.
+The world lay dull and gray around him.  The price of his success had
+been the sight of a face worth more to him than all else in the world.
+He had won something, but had lost everything.  His hand stopped, his
+pencil fell upon the paper.  He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his
+door!
+
+Dumb, unbelieving, he gazed and gazed.  She turned from red to pale,
+before his eyes, and still he could not speak.  He knew that in an
+instant the vision would fade away.
+
+"Oh, why, hello!" said he at last, weakly.
+
+"How--that is, how do you do?" Constance said, flushing adorably again.
+
+"I didn't expect--I didn't know you were coming," stammered Dan Anderson.
+
+She chilled at this, but went on wonderingly.  "I got your letter--" she
+began.
+
+"Letter?  My letter--_what_ letter?"
+
+Constance looked at him fairly now, agitation sufficiently gone to
+enable her to notice details.  She saw that Dan Anderson's left arm was
+supported upon the table, but apparently not seriously injured.  And he
+had been writing--with his _right_ hand--at this very moment!  She
+almost sank to the ground.  There had been some cruel misunderstanding!
+Was she always to be repudiated, shamed?  She stood faltering, and would
+have turned away.
+
+But by this time Dan Anderson's own numbed faculties came back to him
+with a rush.  With a bound he was at her side, his right arm about her,
+holding her close, strong.
+
+"Constance!" he cried.  "Constance!  You!  You!"  He babbled many
+things, his cheek pressed against hers.  She could not speak.
+
+"You see--you see--" exclaimed Dan Anderson, at length, half freeing her
+to look the more directly into her eyes, and to assure himself once more
+that it all was true--"I didn't understand at first.  Of _course_, I
+sent the letter.  I wrote it.  I couldn't wait--I couldn't endure it any
+longer.  Darling, I couldn't _live_ without you--and so I wrote, I
+wrote!  And you've come!"
+
+"But your handwriting--" she murmured.
+
+"Of course!  of course!" said Dan Anderson.  He was lying beautifully
+now.  "But of course you know I'm left-handed, and my left arm got hurt
+a while ago, so I couldn't use that hand.  I don't suppose my
+handwriting did look quite natural to you."
+
+Her eyes were solemn but contented as she looked into his face, and saw
+that in spite of his words he was as much mystified as herself.  Slowly
+she presented to him the letter which he had never seen.  His face grew
+grave and tender as he read it line for line.
+
+"It is mine!" he said.  "I wrote it.  I sent it.  I've sent it a
+thousand times to you before now, across the mountains."
+
+"Is it signed with your heart, Dan?" she whispered.
+
+"With my heart--yes, yes!"
+
+"It is beautiful," said she, simply.  And so they dropped between them
+the letter to the queen.  Hand in hand they stepped to the door, the
+room too small now to contain their happiness.
+
+Two stumbling figures fleeing, pigeon-toed and sharp-heeled, on the
+further side of the _arroyo_ meant much to Dan Anderson.  A laugh
+choked in his throat as he caught her once more in his arms.
+
+"It looks like Willie had made good!" said Tom Osby to Curly, as he took
+a swift glance back over his shoulder.
+
+But Constance and her lover had forgotten all the world, as they stepped
+out now into the glory of the twilight of Heart's Desire.
+
+"You remember," said he--"up there--the other time?"  He nodded toward
+the head of the _arroyo_, where lay the garden of the Littlest Girl.
+
+"You broke my heart," she murmured.  "I loved you, Dan.  What could I
+do?"
+
+"Don't!" he begged as he tightened his arm about her.  "I loved _you_,
+Constance--what could _I_ do?  We've been through the fire together.
+It has all come right.  It's all so beautiful."
+
+They stood together at the little garden spot.  Two brave red roses now
+blossomed there, and he plucked them both, pinning them at her throat
+with hands that trembled.  They turned and looked out over the little
+valley, and to them it seemed a golden cup overrunning with joy.
+
+"Heart's Desire," he murmured, and once more his cheek rested against
+hers.
+
+"Yes," she whispered vaguely, "all, all--your Heart's Desire, I
+hope--and mine--_mine_."
+
+"It's the world," he murmured.  "It is the Beginning.  We are the very
+first.  Oh, Eve!  Eve!"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Heart's Desire, by Emerson Hough</title>
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
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+<body>
+<center>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Heart's Desire, by Emerson Hough</h1>
+</center>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Heart's Desire</p>
+<p>Author: Emerson Hough</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15159]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br>
+<hr noshade>
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Frontispiece" BORDER="2" WIDTH="336" HEIGHT="505">
+<H5>
+[Frontispiece: "He looked up&mdash;to see <I>her</I> standing at his door!"]
+</H5>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+HEART'S DESIRE
+</H1>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+The STORY of a CONTENTED TOWN, CERTAIN PECULIAR CITIZENS, and TWO
+FORTUNATE LOVERS
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+A NOVEL by EMERSON HOUGH
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AUTHOR OF THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE, THE LAW OF THE LAND, THE GIRL AT THE
+HALF WAY HOUSE, ETC
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NEW YORK
+<BR><BR>
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP
+<BR><BR>
+PUBLISHERS
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1905, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1903, BY OUT WEST COMPANY.
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY.
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1905, BY EMERSON HOUGH.
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+<BR><BR><BR>
+Set up and electrotyped.  Published October, 1905.  Reprinted November,
+1905: January, April, 1907; November, 1908.
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+Norwood Press
+<BR>
+J. B. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick & Smith Co.
+<BR>
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap01">
+CHAPTER I
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the Girl
+from Kansas</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap02">
+CHAPTER II
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the Girl
+from Kansas; and introducing Others</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap03">
+CHAPTER III
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig of
+the Man from Kansas</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap04">
+CHAPTER IV
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
+his Taking Off</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap05">
+CHAPTER V
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
+Loneliness of Adam</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap06">
+CHAPTER VI
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to the
+Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap07">
+CHAPTER VII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
+Craven Adam</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap08">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy Legs</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap09">
+CHAPTER IX
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and Other Pastimes</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap10">
+CHAPTER X
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap11">
+CHAPTER XI
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by Mere Chance collided with a
+Side-tracked Star</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap12">
+CHAPTER XII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap13">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
+with a Maid</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap14">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap15">
+CHAPTER XV
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
+Horse</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap16">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE PARTITION OF HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
+Considerations</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap17">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens, and
+the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap18">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap19">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
+the Jew</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap20">
+CHAPTER XX
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap21">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work, and
+a Man's Medicine</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap22">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
+in Foreign Parts</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap23">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap24">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap25">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
+Ananias with Spurs</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<A HREF="#chap26">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+Frontispiece: "He looked up&mdash;to see <I>her</I> standing at his door!"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-126">
+"'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game.'"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-136">
+"A voice which sang of a face that was the fairest, and of a dark blue eye."
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-326">
+"'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+HEART'S DESIRE
+</H1>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"It looks a long ways acrost from here to the States," said Curly, as
+we pulled up our horses at the top of the Capitan divide.  We gazed out
+over a vast, rolling sea of red-brown earth which stretched far beyond
+and below the nearer foothills, black with their growth of stunted
+pines.  This was a favorite pausing place of all travellers between the
+county-seat and Heart's Desire; partly because it was a summit reached
+only after a long climb from either side of the divide; partly,
+perhaps, because it was a notable view-point in a land full of noble
+views.  Again, it may have been a customary tarrying point because of
+some vague feeling shared by most travellers who crossed this
+trail,&mdash;the same feeling which made Curly, hardened citizen as he was
+of the land west of the Pecos, turn a speculative eye eastward across
+the plains.  We could not see even so far as the Pecos, though it
+seemed from our lofty situation that we looked quite to the ultimate,
+searching the utter ends of all the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yours is up that-a-way;" Curly pointed to the northeast.  "Mine was
+that-a-way."  He shifted his leg in the saddle as he turned to the
+right and swept a comprehensive hand toward the east, meaning perhaps
+Texas, perhaps a series of wild frontiers west of the Lone Star state.
+I noticed the nice distinction in Curly's tenses.  He knew the man more
+recently arrived west of the Pecos, possibly later to prove a
+backslider.  As for himself, Curly knew that he would never return to
+his wild East; yet it may have been that he had just a touch of the
+home feeling which is so hard to lose, even in a homeless country, a
+man's country pure and simple, as was surely this which now stretched
+wide about us.  Somewhere off to the east, miles and miles beyond the
+red sea of sand and <I>grama</I> grass, lay Home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet," said Curly, taking up in speech my unspoken thought, "you
+can't see even halfway to Vegas up there."  No.  It was a long two
+hundred miles to Las Vegas, long indeed in a freighting wagon, and long
+enough even in the saddle and upon as good a horse as each of us now
+bestrode.  I nodded.  "And it's some more'n two whoops and a holler to
+my ole place," said he.  Curly remained indefinite; for, though
+presently he hummed something about the sun and its brightness in his
+old Kentucky home, he followed it soon thereafter with musical allusion
+to the Suwanee River.  One might have guessed either Kentucky or
+Georgia in regard to Curly, even had one not suspected Texas from the
+look of his saddle cinches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the day before Christmas.  Yet there was little winter in this
+sweet, thin air up on the Capitan divide.  Off to the left the Patos
+Mountains showed patches of snow, and the top of Carrizo was yet
+whiter, and even a portion of the highest peak of the Capitans carried
+a blanket of white; but all the lower levels were red-brown, calm,
+complete, unchanging, like the whole aspect of this far-away and
+finished country, whereto had come, long ago, many Spaniards in search
+of wealth and dreams; and more recently certain Anglo-Saxons, also
+dreaming, who sought in a stolen hiatus of the continental conquest
+nothing of more value than a deep and sweet oblivion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a Christmas-tide different enough from that of the States toward
+which Curly pointed.  We looked eastward, looked again, turned back for
+one last look before we tightened the cinches and started down the
+winding trail which led through the foothills along the flank of the
+Patos Mountains, and so at last into the town of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord!" said Curly, reminiscently, and quite without connection with
+any thought which had been uttered.  "Say, it was fine, wasn't it,
+Christmas?  We allus had firecrackers then.  And eat!  Why, man!"  This
+allusion to the firecrackers would have determined that Curly had come
+from the South, which alone has a midwinter Fourth of July, possibly
+because the populace is not content with only one annual smell of
+gunpowder.  "We had trees where I came from," said I.  "And eat!  Yes,
+man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some different here now, ain't it?" said Curly, grinning; and I
+grinned in reply with what fortitude I could muster.  Down in Heart's
+Desire there was a little, a very little cabin, with a bunk, a few
+blankets, a small table, and a box nailed against the wall for a
+cupboard.  I knew what was in the box, and what was not in it, and I so
+advised my friend as we slipped down off the bald summit of the
+Capitans and came into the shelter of the short, black pinons.  Curly
+rode on for a little while before he made answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," said he, at length, "ain't you heard?  You're in with our rodeo
+on Christmas dinner.  McKinney, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, the
+other lawyer, and me,&mdash;we're going to have Christmas dinner at
+Andersen's 'dobe in town to-morrer.  You're in.  You mayn't like it.
+Don't you mind.  The directions says to take it, and you take it.  It's
+goin' to be one of the largest events ever knowed in this here
+settlement.  Of course, there's goin' to be some canned things, and
+some sardines, and some everidge liquids.  You guess what besides that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him I couldn't guess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore you couldn't," said Curly, dangling his bridle from the little
+finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match.  He
+had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
+<I>cigarrillo</I>.  These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
+from somewhere near the Rio Grande.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
+paper going.  "I reckon not in a hundred years.  Champagne!  Whole
+quart!  Yes, sir.  Cost eighteen dollars.  Mac, he got it.  Billy
+Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
+the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
+railroad, which there wasn't.  But Lord! that ain't all.  It ain't the
+beginnin'.  You guess again.  No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
+scornfully.  "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next.  We got
+a <I>cake</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
+of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
+cake.  Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
+Dutch oven&mdash;they had to know how to do that or starve.  But as to cake,
+there was none could compass it.  And I knew there was not a woman in
+all Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
+trail among the pinons.  "Heap o' things happened since you went down
+to tend co'te," said he.  "You likely didn't hear of the new family
+moved in last week.  Come from Kansas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then there's a girl," said I; for I was far Westerner enough to know
+that all the girls ever seen west of the Pecos came from Kansas, the
+same as all the baled hay and all the fresh butter.  Potatoes came from
+Iowa; but butter, hay, and girls came from Kansas.  I asked Curly if
+the head of the new family came from Leavenworth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Course he did," said Curly.  "And I'll bet a steer he'll be
+postmaster or somethin' in a few brief moments."  This in reference to
+another well-known fact in natural history as observed west of the
+Pecos; for it was matter of common knowledge among all Western men that
+the town of Leavenworth furnished early office-holders for every new
+community from the Missouri to the Pacific.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly continued; "This feller'll do well here, I reckon, though just
+now he's broke a-plenty.  But what was he goin' to do?   His team
+breaks down and he can't get no further.  Looks like he'd just have to
+stop and be postmaster or somethin' for us here for a while.  Can't be
+Justice of the Peace; another Kansas man's got that.  As to them two
+girls&mdash;man!  The camp's got on its best clothes right this instant,
+don't you neglect to think.  Both good lookers.  Youngest's a peach.
+I'm goin' to marry <I>her</I>."  Curly turned aggressively in his saddle
+and looked me squarely in the eye, his hat pushed back from his tightly
+curling red hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, Curly," said I, mildly.  "You have my consent.  Have
+you asked the girl about it yet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't had time yet," said he.  "But you watch me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the name of the family?" I asked as we rode along together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Blamed if I remember exactly," replied Curly, scratching his head,
+"but they're shore good folks.  Old man's sort o' pious, I reckon.
+Anyhow, that's what Tom Osby says.  He driv along from Hocradle caņon
+with 'em on the road from Vegas.  Said the old man helt services every
+mornin' before breakfast.  More services'n breakfast sometimes.  Tom,
+he says old Whiskers&mdash;that's our next postmaster&mdash;he sings a-plenty,
+lifts up his voice exceeding.  Say," said Curly, turning on me again
+fiercely, "that's one reason I'd marry the girl if for nothing else.
+It takes more'n a bass voice and a copy of the Holy Scriptures to make
+a Merry Christmas.  Why, man, say, when I think of what a time we all
+are going to have,&mdash;you, and me, and Mac, and Tom Osby, and Dan
+Anderson, with all them things of our'n, and all these here things on
+the side&mdash;champagne and all that,&mdash;it looks like this world ain't run
+on the square, don't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I assured Curly that this had long been one of my own conclusions.
+Assuredly I had not the bad manners to thank him for his invitation to
+join him in this banquet at Heart's Desire, knowing as I did Curly's
+acquaintance with the fact that young attorneys had not always
+abundance during their first year in a quasi-mining camp that was
+two-thirds cow town; such being among the possibilities of that land.
+I returned to the cake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where'd we git it?" said Curly.  "Why, where'd you s'pose we got it?
+Do you think Dan Anderson has took to pastry along with the statoots
+made and pervided?   As for Dan, he ain't been here so very long, but
+he's come to stay.  We're goin' to send him to Congress if we ever get
+time to organize our town, or find out what county we're in.  How'd our
+Delergate look spreadin' jelly cake?   Nope, he didn't make it.  And
+does it look any like Mac has studied bakery doin's out on the
+Carrizoso ranch?  You know Tom Osby couldn't.  As for me, if hard luck
+has ever driv me to cookin' in the past, I ain't referrin' to it now.
+I'm a straight-up cow puncher and nothin' else.  That cake?   Why, it
+come from the Kansas outfit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't know which one of 'em done it, but it's a honey," he went on.
+"Say, she's a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over.  She's
+soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a
+little.  We just got it recent and we're night-herdin' it where it's
+cool.  Cost a even ten dollars.  The old lady said she'd make the price
+all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we'd
+drop about a ten in their recep<I>ti</I>cle when we come to pay for that
+cake.  This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim
+Bond left when they went away,&mdash;it's right acrost the 'royo from Dan
+Anderson's office, where we're goin' to eat to-morrer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them
+narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens&mdash;no stove at all&mdash;no nothing&mdash;say,
+that's some like adoptin' yourself to circumstances, ain't it?   Why,
+man, I'd marry intoe that fam'ly if I didn't do nothing else long as I
+lived.  They ain't no Mexican money wrong side of the river.  No
+counterfeit there regardin' a happy home&mdash;cuttin' out the bass voice
+and givin' 'em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh?   Well, I
+reckon not.  Watch me fly <I>to</I> it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The idiom of Curly's speech was at times a trifle obscure to the
+uneducated ear.  I gathered that he believed these newcomers to be of
+proper social rank, and that he was also of the opinion that a certain
+mending in their material matters might add to the happiness of the
+family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But say," he began again shortly, "I ain't told you half about our
+dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is to say&mdash;" said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're goin' to have oysters!" he replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Curly!" objected I, petulantly, "what's the use lying?   I'll
+agree that you may perhaps marry the girl&mdash;I don't care anything about
+that.  But as to oysters, you know there never was an oyster in Heart's
+Desire, and never will be, world without end."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Huh!" said Curly.  "Huh!"  And presently, "Is that <I>so</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know it's so," said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that so?" reiterated he once more.  "Nice way to act, ain't it,
+when you're ast out to dinner in the best society of the place?  Tell a
+feller he's shy on facts, when all he's handin' out is just the plain,
+unfreckled truth, for onct at least.  We got oysters, four cans of 'em,
+and done had 'em for a month.  They're up there."  He jerked a thumb
+toward the top of old Carrizo Mountain.   I looked at the snow, and in
+a flash comprehended.  There, indeed, was cold storage, the only cold
+storage possible in Heart's Desire!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom Osby brought 'em down from Vegas the last time he come down," said
+Curly.  "They're there, sir, four cans of 'em.  You know where the
+Carrizo spring is?   Well, there's a snowbank in that caņon, about two
+hundred yards off to the left of the spring.  The oysters is in there.
+Keep?   They got to keep!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Them's the only oysters ever was knowed between the Pecos and the Rio
+Grande," he continued pridefully.  "Now I want to ask you, friend, if
+this ain't just a leetle the dashed blamedest, hottest Christmas dinner
+ever was pulled off?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly," said I, "you are a continuous surprise to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The trouble with you is," said Curly, lighting another cigarette, "you
+look the wrong way from the top of the divide.  Never mind about home
+and mother.  Them is States institooshuns.  The only feller any good
+here is the feller that comes to stay, and likes it.  You like it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Curly," I replied seriously, "I do like it, and I'm going to stay
+if I can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you be mighty blamed careful if that's the way you feel about
+it," said Curly.  "I got my own eye on that girl from Kansas, and I
+serve notice right here.  No use for you or Mac or any of you to be
+a-tryin' to cut out any stock for me.  I seen it first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We dropped down and ever down as we rode on along the winding mountain
+trail.  The dark sides of the Patos Mountains edged around to the back
+of us, and the scarred flanks of big Carrizo came farther and farther
+forward along our left cheeks as we rode on.  Then the trail made a
+sharp bend to the left, zigzagged a bit to get through a series of
+broken ravines, and at last topped the low false divide which rose at
+the upper end of the valley of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a spot lovely, lovable.  Nothing in all the West is more fit to
+linger in a man's memory than the imperious sun rising above the valley
+of Heart's Desire; nothing unless it were the royal purple of the
+sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling
+hills, which guarded it round about.  In Heart's Desire it was so calm,
+so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring.  Perhaps
+the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the
+early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands.  Perhaps again he
+named it at sunset, and did so reverently.  God knows he named it right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no rush nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor
+thieving there.  Heart's Desire!  It was well named, indeed; fit
+capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they
+might, that Life can be left aside when one grows weary of it;
+dreaming&mdash;ah! deep, foolish, golden dream&mdash;that somewhere there is on
+earth an Eden with no Eve and without a flaming sword!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The town all lay along one deliberate, crooked street, because the
+<I>arroyo</I> along which it straggled was crooked.  Its buildings were
+mostly of adobe, with earthen roofs, so low that when one saw a
+rainstorm coming in the rainy season (when it rained invariably once a
+day), he went forth with a shovel and shingled his roof anew, standing
+on the ground as he did so.  There were a few cabins built of logs, but
+very few.  Only one or two stores had the high board front common in
+Western villages.  Lumber was very scarce and carpenters still scarcer.
+How the family from Kansas had happened to drift into Heart's
+Desire&mdash;how a man of McKinney's intelligence had come to settle
+there&mdash;how Dan Anderson, a very good lawyer, happened to have tarried
+there&mdash;how indeed any of us happened to be there, are questions which
+may best be solved by those who have studied the West-bound, the
+dream-bound, the malcontents.  At any rate, here we were, and it was
+Christmas-time.  The very next morning would be that of Christmas Day.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas; and Introducing Others</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There were no stockings hung up in Heart's Desire that Christmas Eve,
+for all the population was adult, male, and stern of habit.  The great
+moon flooded the street with splendor.  Afar there came voices of
+rioting.  There were some adherents to the traditions of the South in
+regard to firecrackers at Yuletide, albeit the six-shooter furnished
+the only firecracker obtainable.  Yet upon that night the very shots
+seemed cheerful, not ominous, as was usually the case upon that long
+and crooked street, which had seen duels, affairs, affrays,&mdash;even riots
+of mounted men in the days when the desperadoes of the range came
+riding into town now and again for love of danger, or for lack of
+<I>aguardiente</I>.  It was so very white and solemn and content,&mdash;this
+street of Heart's Desire on Christmas Eve.  Far across the <I>arroyo</I>,
+as Curly had said, there gleamed red the double windows of the cabin
+which had been preempted by the man from Leavenworth.  To-night the man
+from Leavenworth sat with bowed head and beard upon his bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Christmas Day dawned, brilliant, glorious.  There was not a Christmas
+tree in all Heart's Desire.  There was not a child within two hundred
+miles who had ever seen a Christmas tree.  There was not a woman in all
+Heart's Desire saving those three newcomers in the cabin across the
+<I>arroyo</I>.  Yet these new-comers were acquainted with the etiquette of
+the land.  There was occasion for public announcement in such matters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At eleven o'clock in the morning the man from Leavenworth and the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas came out upon the street.  They were
+ostensibly bound to get the mail, although there had been no mail stage
+for three days, and could be none for four days more, even had the man
+from Leavenworth entertained the slightest thought of getting any mail
+at this purely accidental residence into which the fate of a tired team
+had thrown him.  Yet there must be the proper notification that he and
+his family had concluded to abide in Heart's Desire; that he was now a
+citizen; that he was now entitled by the length of his beard to be
+called "'Squire," and to be accepted into all the councils of the town.
+This walk along the street was notice to the pure democracy of that
+land that all might now leave cards at the cabin across the <I>arroyo</I>.
+One need hardly doubt that the populace of Heart's Desire was lined up
+along the street to say good morning and to receive befittingly this
+tacit pledge of its newest citizen.  Moreover, as to the Littlest Girl,
+all Heart's Desire puffed out its chest.  Once more, indeed, the camp
+was entitled to hold up its head.  There were Women in the town!
+<I>Ergo</I> Home; <I>ergo</I> Civilization; <I>ergo</I> Society; and ergo all the
+rest.  Heretofore Heart's Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized
+section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has
+no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in
+his aeon of the world no real content or peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reckon the old man is goin' to take a look at the post-office to see
+how he likes the place," said Curly, reflectively, as he gazed after
+the gentleman whom he had frankly elected as his father-in-law.  "He'll
+get it, all right.  Never saw a man from Leavenworth who wasn't a good
+shot at a postoffice.  But say, about that Littlest Girl&mdash;well, I
+wonder!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly was very restless until dinner-time, which, for one reason or
+another, was postponed until about four of the afternoon.  We met at
+Dan Anderson's law office, which was also his residence, a room about a
+dozen feet by twenty in size.  The bunks were cleaned up, the blankets
+put out of the way, and the centre of the room given over to a table,
+small and home-made, but very full of good cheer for that time and
+place.  At the fireplace, McKinney, flushed and red, was broiling some
+really good loin steaks.  McKinney also allowed his imagination to soar
+to the height of biscuits.  Coffee was there assuredly, as one might
+tell by the welcome odor now ascending.  Upon the table there was
+something masked under an ancient copy of a newspaper.  Outside the
+door of the adobe, in the deepest shade obtainable, sat two soap boxes
+full of snow, or at least partly full, for Tom Osby had done his best.
+In one of these boxes appeared the proof of Curly's truthfulness&mdash;three
+cans of oysters, delicacies hitherto unheard of in that land!  In the
+other box was an object almost as unfamiliar as an oyster can,&mdash;an
+oblong, smooth, and now partially frost-covered object with tinfoil
+about its upper end.  A certain tense excitement obtained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if she'll get <I>frappe</I> enough," said Dan Anderson.  He was a
+Princeton man once upon a time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It don't make no difference about the frappy part," said Curly, "just
+so she gets <I>cold</I> enough.  I reckon I savvy wine some.  I never was
+up the trail, not none!  No, I reckon not!  Huh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We agreed on Curly's worldliness cheerfully; indeed, agreed cheerfully
+that all the world was a good place and all its inhabitants were
+everything that could be asked.  Life was young and fresh and strong.
+The spell of Heart's Desire was upon us all that Christmas Day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Curly, dropping easily into the somewhat vague position of
+host, when McKinney had finally placed his platter of screeching hot
+steaks upon the table.  "Now, then, grub pi-i-i-i-le!"  He sang the
+summons loud and clear, as it has sounded on many a frosty morning or
+sultry noon in many a corner of the range.  "Set up, fellers," said
+Curly.  "It's bridles off now, and cinches down, and the trusties next
+to the mirror."  (By this speech Curly probably meant that the time was
+one of ease and safety, wherein one might place his six-shooter back of
+the bar, in sign that he was in search of no man, and that none was in
+search of him.  It was not good form to eat in a private family in
+Heart's Desire with one's gun at one's belt.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat down and McKinney uncovered the cake which had been made by the
+wife of the man from Leavenworth.  It appeared somewhat imposing.
+Curly wanted to cut into it at the first course, but Dan Anderson
+rebelled and coaxed him off upon the subject of oysters.  There was
+abundance for all.  The cake itself would have weighed perhaps five or
+six pounds.  There was a part of a can of oysters for each man, any
+quantity of wholesome steaks and coffee, with condensed milk if one
+cared for it, and at least enough champagne for any one who cared for
+precisely that sort of champagne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was nightfall before we were willing to leave the little pine table.
+Meantime we had talked of many things; of the new strike on the
+Homestake, of the vein of coal lately found in the Patos, of Apache
+rumors below Tularosa, and other matters interesting to citizens of
+that land.  We mentioned an impending visit of Eastern Capital bent
+upon investigating our mineral wealth.  We spoke of the vague rumor
+that a railroad was heading north from El Paso, and might come close to
+Heart's Desire if all went well; and, generous in the enthusiasm of the
+hour, we builded upon that fancy, ending by a toast to Dan Anderson as
+our first delegate to Congress.  Dan bowed gravely, not knowing the
+future any more than ourselves.  Nor should it be denied that there was
+talk of the new inhabitants across the arroyo.  The morning promenade
+of the man from Leavenworth had been productive of results; add to
+these the results of so noble a feast as this Christmas dinner of ours,
+and it was foregone that our hearts must expand to include in welcome
+all humanity west of the Pecos.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+
+After all, no man is better than the prettiest woman in his
+environment.  As to these girls from Kansas, it is to be said that
+there had never before been a real woman in Heart's Desire.  You, who
+have always lived where there is law, and society, and women, and
+home,&mdash;you cannot know what it is to see all these things gradually or
+swiftly dawning upon your personal horizon.  Yet this was the way of
+Heart's Desire, where women and law and property were not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was perhaps the moon, or perhaps youth, or perhaps this state of
+life to which I have referred.  Assuredly the street was again flooded
+with a grand, white moonlight, bright almost as a Northern day, when we
+looked out of the little window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson was the first to speak, after a silence which had fallen
+amidst the dense tobacco smoke.  "It cost us less than fifteen dollars
+a plate," said he.  "I've paid more for worse&mdash;yes, a lot worse.  But
+by the way, Mac, where's that other can of oysters?  I thought you said
+there were four."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what I said," broke in Tom Osby.  "I done told Mac I ought to
+bring 'em all down, but he said only three."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said McKinney, always a conservative and level-headed man, "I
+allowed that if they would keep a month, they would keep a little
+longer.  Now you all know there's goin' to be a stage in next week, and
+likely it'll bring the president of the New Jersey Gold Mills, who's
+been due here a couple of weeks.  Now here we are, hollerin' all the
+time for Eastern Capital.  What's the right thing for us to do when we
+get any Eastern Capital into our town?  This here man comes from
+Philadelphy, which I reckon is right near the place where oysters
+grows.  What are you goin' to <I>do</I>?  He's used to oysters; like enough
+he eats 'em every day in the year, because he's shore rich.  First
+thing he hollers for when he gets here is <I>oysters</I>.  Looks like you
+all didn't have no public spirit.  Are we goin' to give this here
+Eastern man the things he's used to, kinder gentle him along like, you
+know, and so get all the closeter and easier to him, or are we goin' to
+throw him down cold, and leave him dissatisfied the first day he
+strikes our camp?  It shore looks to me like there ain't but one way to
+answer that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that there one answer," said Tom Osby, "is now a-reclinin' in the
+snowbank up on Carrizy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reckon that's so, all right, Mac," assented Curly, reflectively.  "I
+<I>could</I> have et one more oyster or so, but I can quit if it's for the
+good of the country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'm feeling just a little bit guilty as it is," said Dan
+Anderson, who was in fairly good post-prandial condition.  "Here we
+are, eating like lords.  Now who knows what that poor family from
+Kansas is having for Christmas dinner?  Mac, I appoint you a committee
+of one to see how they are getting along.  Pass the hat.  Make it about
+ten for the cake.  Come on, now, let's find out about these folks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly was distinctly unhappy all the time McKinney was away.  It was
+half an hour before the latter came back, but the look on his face
+betrayed him.  Dan Anderson made him confess that he still had the ten
+dollars in his pocket, that he had been afraid to knock at the door,
+and that he had learned nothing whatever of the household from Kansas.
+McKinney admitted that his nerve had failed, and that he dared not
+knock, but he said that he had summoned courage enough to look in at
+the window.  The family had either finished its dinner long ago, had
+not eaten, or did not intend to eat at all.  "The table looked some
+shy," declared McKinney.  Beyond this he was incoherent, distressed,
+and plainly nervous.  Silence fell upon the entire group, and for some
+time each man in Dan Andersen's salon was wrapped in thought.  Perhaps
+each one cast a furtive look from the tail of his eye at his neighbors.
+Of all present, Curly seemed the happiest.  "Didn't see the Littlest
+Girl?" he asked.  McKinney shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I guess I'll be gettin' up to see about my wagon before long,"
+said Tom Osby, rising and knocking his pipe upon his boot-heel.  "I've
+got a few cans of stuff up here in my load that I don't really need.
+In the mornin', you know&mdash;well, so long, boys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard that Jim Peterson killed a deer the other day," suggested Dan
+Anderson.  "I believe I'll just step over and see if I can't get a
+quarter of venison for those folks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore," said McKinney, "I'll go along.  No, I won't; I'll take a
+<I>pasear</I> acrost the street and have a look at a little stuff I brung
+up from the ranch yesterday."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No Christmas," said Curly, staring ahead of himself into the tobacco
+smoke, and indulging in a rare soliloquy.  "No Christmas dinner&mdash;and
+this here is in Ameriky!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is difficult to tell just how it occurred; but presently, had any
+one of us turned to look about him, he must have found himself alone.
+The moonlight streamed brilliantly over the long street of Heart's
+Desire. . . .  The scarred sides of old Carrizo looked so close that
+one might almost have touched them with one's hand. . . .
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was about three miles from the street, up over the foot-hills, along
+the fiat caņon which debouched below the spring where lay the snowbank.
+There were different routes which one could take. . . .
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew the place very well from Curly's description, and found it easy
+to follow up the trickle of water which came down the caņon from the
+spring.  Having found the spring, it was easy to locate the spot in the
+snowbank where the oysters had been cached.  I was not conscious of
+tarrying upon the way, yet, even so, there had been feet more swift
+than mine.  As I came up to the spring, I heard voices and saw two
+forms sitting at the edge of the snowbank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here's another one!" called out Dan Anderson as I appeared; and
+forthwith they broke into peals of unrighteous laughter.  "You're a
+little slow; you're number three; Mac was first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I heard an elk as I came up," said I, as I sat down beside
+the others and tried to look unconcerned, although plainly out of
+breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Elk!" snorted McKinney, as he arose and walked to the other edge of
+the snowbank.  "Here's your elk tracks."  McKinney, foreman on
+Carrizoso, was an old range-rider, and he was right.  Here was the
+track, plunging through the snow, and here was a deep hole where an
+elk, or something, had digged hurriedly, deeply, and, as it proved,
+effectively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Elk!" said McKinney again, savagely.  "Damn that cow puncher!  He took
+to his horse, 'course he did, and not one of us thought of ridin'.
+Who'd ever think a man would ride up here at all, let alone at night?
+Come on, fellers, we might as well go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'm pleased to have met you, gentlemen," said Anderson, lighting
+a philosophic pipe, "and I don't mind walking back with you.  It's a
+trifle lonesome in the hills after dark.  Why didn't you tell me you
+were coming up?"  He grinned with what seemed to us bad taste.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When we got down across the foot-hills and into the broad white street
+of Heart's Desire, we espied a dark figure slowly approaching.  It
+proved to be Tom Osby, who later declared that he had found himself
+unable to sleep.  He had things in his pockets.  By common consent we
+now turned our footsteps across the <I>arroyo</I>, toward the cabin where
+dwelt the family from Kansas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house of the man from Leavenworth was lighted as though for some
+function.  There were no curtains at the windows, and even had there
+been, the shock of this spectacle which went on before our eyes would
+have been sufficient to set aside all laws and conventions.  With hands
+in pockets we stood and gazed blankly in at the open window.  There was
+a sound of revelry by night.  The narrow Mexican fireplace again held
+abundance of snapping, sparkling, crooked pinon wood.  The table was
+spread.  At its head sat the next postmaster; near him a lately
+sorrowful but now smiling lady, his wife, the woman from Kansas.  The
+elder daughter was busy at the fire.  At the right of the man from
+Leavenworth sat none less than Curly, the same whose cow pony, with
+bridle thrown down over its head, now stood nodding in the bright flood
+of the moonlight of Heart's Desire.  At the side of Curly was the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas, and she was looking into his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was thus that the social compact was first set on in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A vast steaming fragrance arose from the bowl which stood at the head
+of the table.  In the home of the girl from Kansas there was light,
+warmth, comfort, joy.  It was Christmas, after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the great jumpin' Jehossophat!" said Tom Osby, "them's <I>our</I>
+oysters!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And to think," mused Dan Anderson, softly, as we turned away,&mdash;"we
+<I>fried</I> ours!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
+of the Man from Kansas</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A great many abdomens have been injured in the pastime known as the
+"double roll."  Especially has this been the case with persons not
+native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof.  Even
+those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast
+landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man
+seized with a purpose of attaining speed and efficiency with firearms,
+did not always reach that smoothness and precision in the execution of
+this personal manoeuvre which alone could render it safe to themselves
+or impressive to the beholder.  The owner of this accomplishment was
+never apt to find himself much crowded with company, in the way either
+of participants or spectators.  Yet the art was a simple and harmless
+one, pertaining more especially to youth, enthusiasm, and the fresh air
+of high altitudes, which did ever evoke saltpetreish manifestations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The evolution of the "double roll" is executed by taking a
+six-shooter&mdash;let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the
+East&mdash;upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the
+trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn
+about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant
+discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it
+shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is
+pointed away from the operator's person and not toward it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty
+weapon.  Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is
+all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way,
+and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the
+weight of the heavy gun being commonly sufficient to pull back the
+trigger and so discharge the piece.  When the ambitious soul has
+learned to do this "roll" with one empty gun, he may try it with two
+empty guns.  If he finds it possible thus to content himself, it will
+perhaps be all the better for him.  To stand upright, with a gun in
+each hand, even an empty gun, and so revolve the same while its own
+cylinder is revolving, is not wholly easy, though when one has finally
+gotten both hemispheres of his brain into accord with his forefingers,
+he will ever thereafter be able to understand fully the double
+revolution of the earth upon its axis and around the sun; provided
+always that he is able to perform the "double roll" without hitch or
+break, pulling right and left forefinger alternately and rapidly until
+he has heard what in his tentative case must be a series of six double
+clicks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This performance with an empty six-shooter is but a pale and spiritless
+form of the sport of high altitudes.  Instead there should be twelve
+reports, so closely sequent as to sound as one string of explosion.
+Thus executed the game is a fine one, the finer for being risky.  So to
+stand erect, with an eight-inch Colt in either hand, each arm at full
+length, one gun shooting joyously down the centre of the street of your
+chosen town, the other shooting as cheerfully up the same street&mdash;to do
+this actually, with bark of powder and attending puffs of dust
+cut&mdash;this is indeed delightsome when the heart is full of red blood,
+and the chest swells with charged wine o' life, and the eyes gleam and
+the muscles harden for very search of some endeavor immediate and
+difficult!  It is the more delightsome when this moment of man-frenzy
+finds one in such a town as was this of Heart's Desire; where, indeed,
+a man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted
+wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so
+of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of
+the joy of living.  To own this little world, to live free of touch or
+taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of
+the free sky&mdash;to live in Heart's Desire and be a man&mdash;ah! would that
+were possible for all of us to-day!  Were it so, then assuredly we
+should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain,
+perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous
+appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee
+simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had
+prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a
+salary of forty-five dollars a month.  He had already, less than two
+months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his
+friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the
+happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town
+and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom,
+as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more
+persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the
+public that all was well.  Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear
+to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly,
+pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow
+advance&mdash;ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the
+bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,&mdash;a grunting, fat, conceited
+pig,&mdash;arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's
+fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn&mdash;tell me,
+if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the
+"double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if
+while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek
+pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over
+its back, what, as a man, would you do?  What, as a man, <I>could</I> you
+do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a
+court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been
+known?  Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this
+matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that
+the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig&mdash;but then,
+the matter is absurd!  There is but one answer.  It was right&mdash;indeed,
+it was inevitable&mdash;that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the
+first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second
+place he felt like it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose
+the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook
+that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened
+its very continuance.  Ah, well! perhaps the time had come.  Perhaps
+the sun was now to set over all the valleys of Heart's Desire.  Perhaps
+this was the beginning of the end.  The law, they say, must have its
+course.  It had its course in Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But not without protest, not without struggle.  There were two factions
+from the start.  Strange to say, that most bitterly opposed to Curly
+was headed by no less a person than his own intended father-in-law, the
+man from Leavenworth.  It was his pig.  The rest of us had lived at
+Heart's Desire for a considerable time, but there had hitherto seemed
+no need for law.  Order we already had in so far as order is really
+needed; though the importance of order, or indeed the importance of
+law, is a matter very much overrated.  No man at Heart's Desire ever
+dreamed of locking his door.  His horse might doze saddled in the
+street if he liked.  No man spoke in rudeness or coarseness to his
+neighbor, as do men in the cities where they have law.  No man did
+injustice to his neighbor, for fair play and an even chance were gods
+in the eyes of all, eikons above each pinon-burning hearth in all that
+valley of content.  The speech of man was grave and gentle, the
+movements of man were easy and unhurried; neither did any man work by
+rule, or by clock, or by order.  There was no such thing as want or
+hunger; for did temporary poverty encompass one, was there not always
+the house of Uncle Jim Brothers, and could not one there hang up his
+gun behind the door and so obtain credit for an indefinite length of
+time, entitling him to eat at table with his peers?  Had there been
+such a thing as families in Heart's Desire, be sure such a thing as a
+woman or child engaged in any work had been utterly unknown.  It was a
+land of men, big, grave, sufficient men, each with a gun upon his hip,
+and sometimes two, guaranty of peace and calm and content.  And any man
+who has ever lived in a Land Before the Law knows that this is the only
+fit way of life.  Alas! that this scheme, this great, happy simple,
+perfect scheme of society should be subverted.  And, be it remembered,
+this was by reason of nothing more than a pig, an artless, lissom pig,
+it is true; an infrequent, somewhat prized, a little petted and perhaps
+spoiled pig, it is true; yet, after all, no fit cause of elemental
+strife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil,
+bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization,
+seeds of discontent.  He wailed aloud that the pride of the community,
+meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of
+the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught
+left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the
+mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of
+his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large
+designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking
+off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and
+one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his
+neighbor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed
+black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but
+the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the
+town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population,
+began to attract attention.  It began to play upon the nicely attuned
+instrument of Public Spirit.  What, indeed, asked the community
+gravely, was to separate Heart's Desire in the eye of Eastern Capital,
+from any other camp in the far Southwest?  Once the town could claim a
+pig, which no other camp of that district could do.  Now it could do so
+no more forever.  This began to put a different look upon the face of
+things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems like the ole man took it some hard," said Curly, lighting a
+<I>cigarrillo</I>.  "He don't seem to remember that I was due to be a
+member of the family right soon, same as the pig.  I don't like to
+think I'm shy when it comes to comparison with a shoat.  Gimme time,
+and I reckon I could take the place of the pig in my new dad's
+affections.  But I say deliberate that pigs has got no call to be in a
+cow country, not none, unless salted.  Say, can't we salt this one?
+Then, who's the worse <I>off</I> for it?  What's all this furse about,
+anyway?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right, Curly," said Dan Anderson, who stood with hands in
+pockets and pipe in mouth, leaning against the door-jamb in front of
+his "law office."  "You have enunciated a great principle of law in
+that statement.  They have got to prove damages.  Moreover, you have
+got a counter-claim.  It's laceratin' to be compared to a shoat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And me just goin' to be married," said Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, it ain't right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Andersen," said I, moving up to the group, "did you ever hear of such
+things as champerty and maintenance?  The first thing you know, you'll
+get disbarred for stirring up litigation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keep away from my client," said Dan Anderson, grinning.  "You're
+jealous of my professional success, that's all.  Neither of us has had
+a case yet, and now that it looks like I was going to get one, you're
+jealous.  Do you want to pass up the first lawsuit ever held in the
+county?  Come now, I'm bored to death.  Let's have some fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly began to shift uneasily on his feet.  His hat went still farther
+back on his red, kinky curls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Law!" said he.  "Law!  You don't mean&mdash;"  For the first time in his
+life Curly grew pale.  "Why, I'll clean out the hull bunch!" he said,
+the red surging back in his face and his hand instinctively going to
+his gun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you won't," said Dan Anderson.  "Do you want to bust up your
+marriage with the girl from Kansas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sho'!" said Curly, and fell thoughtful.  "This looks bad," said he;
+"mighty bad."  He sat down and began to think.  I do not doubt that Dan
+Anderson at that moment was a disgrace to his profession, though later
+he honored it.  He winked at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you tamper with my client," said he; and then resumed to Curly;
+"What you need is a lawyer.  You've got to have legal advice.  It
+happens that the full bar of Heart's Desire is now present talking to
+you.  Take your pick.  I've got a mighty good idea which is the best
+lawyer of this bar, but I wouldn't tell you for the world that I'm the
+one.  Take your pick.  Here's the whole legal works of the town, us
+two.  Try the Learned Counsel on my right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Law!" said Curly.  "Why&mdash;law&mdash;lawyers!  Then who&mdash;say, now, I'll
+<I>pay</I> for the pig.  I didn't mean nothing, no way."
+
+Then Dan Anderson rose to certain heights.  "You can't settle it that
+way," said he.  "That's too easy.  Oh, you can pay for the <I>pig</I> easy
+enough; but how about the majesty of the law?  Where is the peace and
+dignity of the commonwealth to come in?  This is criminal.  Nope, you
+choose.  You need a lawyer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you-all got me <I>locoed</I>," said Curly, nervously.  "Law!  Why, I
+don't want no law.  There ain't never been no co'te set here.  Down to
+the county-seat, over to Lincoln, that's all right; but here&mdash;why, they
+don't <I>want</I> no law here.  Besides, I can't choose between you two
+fellers.  I like you both.  You're both white men.  Ef you could rope
+and shoot better, I could git either one of you a job cowpunchin' any
+day, and that's a heap better'n practisin' law.  I couldn't make no
+choice between you fellers.  Say, I'll have you <I>both</I>."  This with a
+sudden illumination of countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be unconstitutional," said Dan Anderson, solemnly, "and
+against public policy as well.  That would be cornering the whole legal
+supply of the community, Curly, and it wouldn't leave anybody for the
+prosecution."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sho'!" said Curly.  Then suddenly he added: "There's the old man.
+Don't you never doubt he'd prosecute joyful.  And there never was a man
+from Kansas didn't know some law.  Why, onct, down on the Brazos&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can't act as attorney-at-law," said Anderson.  "He's never been
+admitted to the bar.  Say, you flip a dollar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thought of chance-taking appealed to Curly.  He flipped the dollar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heads, me," said Dan Anderson; and so it fell.  That young man smiled
+blithely.  "We'll skin 'em, Curly," said he.  "You'll be as free as air
+in less'n a week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Dan Anderson to me, "it's all right thus far.  Next we have
+got to get a Justice of the Peace, and then we've got to get the
+prisoner arrested."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Rested!" said Curly.  "Who?  Me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," drawled his newly constituted attorney.  "Didn't you kill
+the pig?  You just hang around for a little, for when we need you, we
+don't want to have to hunt all over the country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," said Curly, dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's Blackman?" said Dan Anderson, again addressing me.  "We have
+got to have a judge, or we can't have any trial.  Come on and let's
+hunt him up.  Curly, don't you run away, mind.  You trust to me, and
+I'll get you clear, and get you married, both."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," said Curly again, "I'll just sornter down to the Lone
+Star, and when you-all want me I'll be in there, either takin' a drink
+or playin' a few kyards."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's get Blackman now," said Curly's lawyer.  Blackman was the duly
+constituted Justice of the Peace in and for Heart's Desire.  Nobody
+knew precisely when or how he had been elected, and perhaps indeed he
+never was elected at all.  There must be a beginning for all things.
+The one thing certain as to Blackman was that he had once been a
+Justice of the Peace back in Kansas, which fact he had not been slow to
+announce upon his arrival in Heart's Desire.  Perhaps from this arose
+the local custom of calling him Judge, and perhaps from his wearing the
+latter title arose the supposition that he really was a judge.  The
+records are quite silent as to the origin of his tenure of office.  The
+office itself, as has been intimated, had hitherto been one purely
+without care.  At every little shooting scrape or other playfulness of
+the male population Blackman, Justice of the Peace, became inflated
+with importance and looked monstrous grave.  But nothing ever came of
+these little alarms, so that gradually the inflations grew less and
+less extensive.  They might perhaps have ceased altogether had it not
+been for this malignant zeal of Dan Anderson, formerly of Princeton,
+and now come, hit or miss, to grow up with the country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blackman was ever ready enough for a lawsuit, forsooth pined for one.
+Yet what could he do?  He could not go forth and with his own hands
+arrest chance persons and hale them before his own court for trial.
+The sheriff, when he was in town, simply laughed at him, and told his
+deputies not to mix up with anything except circuit-court matters,
+murders, and more especially horse stealings.  Constable there was
+none; and policeman&mdash;it is to wonder just a trifle what would have
+happened to any such thing as a policeman or town marshal in the valley
+of Heart's Desire!  In short, there was neither judicial nor executive
+arm of the law in action.  One may, therefore, realize the hindrances
+which Dan Anderson met in getting up his lawsuit.  Yet he went forward
+in the attempt patiently, driven simply by ennui.  He did not dream
+that he was doing something epochal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blackman, Justice of the Peace, was sitting in the office of the
+<I>Golden Age</I> when we found him, reading the exchanges and offering
+gratuitous advice to the editor.  He was a shortish man, thick in body,
+with sparse hair and hay-colored, ragged mustache.  His face was
+florid, his pale eyes protruded.  He was a wise-looking man,
+excellently well suited in appearance for the office which he filled.
+We explained to him our errand.  Gradually, as the sense of his own new
+importance dawned upon him, he began to swell, apparently until he
+assumed a bulk thrice that which he formerly possessed.  His spine
+straightened rigidly; a solemn light came into his eye; a cough that
+fairly choked with wisdom echoed from his throat.  It was a great day
+for Blackman, J. P.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I know this man, this cow puncher?" said he.  "Of course I know
+him, damn him, and I know what he done, too.  Such a high-handed act
+never ought to be tolerated, sir!  Destroyin' property&mdash;why,
+a-destroyin' of life <I>and</I> property, for he killed the pig&mdash;and this
+new family of citizens dependin' in part on the pig fer their
+sustenances this comin' season; to say nothin' of his nigh shootin' me
+up as I was crossin' the street from the post-office!  Try him!  Why,
+of <I>course</I> we ought to try him.  What show have we got if we go on
+this lawless way?  What injucement can we offer Eastern Capital to
+settle in our midst if, instead of bein' quiet and law-abidin', we go
+on a-rarin' and a-pitchin' and a-runnin' wide open, every man for
+hisself?  What are we here for, you, and you, and me, if it ain't to
+set in trile over such britches of the peace?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're in," said Dan Anderson, succinctly.  "Get over to your 'dobe.
+We'll hold this trial right away.  I reckon all the boys'll know about
+it by this time.  I'll go over and get the prisoner.  But, hold on!  He
+ain't arrested yet.  Who'll serve the warrant?  Ben Stillson (the
+sheriff) is down on the Hondo, and his deputy, Poe, is out of town.
+There ain't a soul here to serve a paper.  Looks like the court was
+some rusty, don't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Warrant!" said the Justice, "warrant!  You don't need no warrant.
+Wasn't he seen a-doin' the act?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but it wasn't a real first-class felony," demurred Dan, with some
+shade of conscience left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'll arrest him myself," said the Justice.  "He's got to be
+brought to trile."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now," I ventured to suggest, "that doesn't look exactly right,
+either, since you are to try the case, Judge.  It's legal, but it isn't
+etiquette."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blackman scratched his head.  "Maybe that's so," said he.  Then turning
+to me, "S'pose <I>you</I> arrest him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can't," said Dan Anderson.  "He's the prosecuting attorney&mdash;only
+other lawyer in town.  It wouldn't look right for either the judge or
+prosecutor to make the arrest.  Curly might not like it."  This all
+seemed true enough, and we fell into a quandary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll tell you," said Dan Anderson at length.  "I'd better arrest him
+myself.  I'm going to defend him, so it would look more regular for me
+to bring him in.  Looks like he wasn't afraid of the verdict.  We
+ain't, either.  I want you to remember, Judge, if you don't clear him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here counsel for the Territory interrupted, feeling that the majesty of
+the law was not fully observed by threatening the trial judge in
+advance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, come along, then," said Anderson.  "Let that part of it go.
+Come over and let's get out the warrant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was not with them when the warrant was issued, though that part of
+the proceeding might naturally have seemed rather the duty of the
+prosecution than of the defence.  Dan Anderson afterward told me that
+Blackman could not find his law book (he had only one, a copy of the
+statutes of Kansas) for a long time, and then couldn't find the proper
+place in it.  Legal blanks did not exist in Heart's Desire, and all
+legal forms had departed from Blackman's mind in this time of
+excitement.  Dan Anderson himself drew the warrant.  As it was read
+later by himself to Curly at the Lone Star, it did not lack a certain
+charm.  It began with "Greeting," and ended with, "Now, therefore, in
+the name of God and the Continental Congress."  Anderson did not crack
+a smile in reading it, and so far as that is concerned, the warrant
+worked as well as any and better than some.  Curly, because he felt
+that he was in the hands of his friends, made no special demurrer to
+the terms of the "writ," and in a few moments the Lone Star was empty
+and Blackman's adobe was packed.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of his Taking Off</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Order! order! gentlemen!" called Blackman, Justice of the Peace,
+clearing his throat.  "This honorable justice court is now in session.
+Gentlemen, what is your pleasure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was a little confused, but he meant well.  It seemed incumbent upon
+the prosecutor to make some sort of a statement, but the attorney for
+the defence interposed.  He moved for the discharge of the prisoner on
+the ground that there was no Territorial law and no city ordinance
+violated; he pointed out that Heart's Desire was not a city, neither a
+town, but had never been organized, established, or begun, even to the
+extent of the filing of a town site plat; he therefore denied the
+existence of any municipal law, since there had never been any
+municipality; he intimated that the pig had perhaps been killed
+accidentally, or perhaps in self-defence; it was plain that the
+prisoner was wrongfully restrained of his liberty, etc.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ire of Blackman, J. P., at all this was something to behold.  He to
+be deprived of his opportunity thus lightly?  Hardly!  He overruled the
+objections at once, and rapped loudly for order.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The trile will go on," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, your Honor," cried Dan Andersen, springing to his feet, "then I
+shall resort to the ancient bulwark of our personal liberties.  I shall
+sue out a writ of <I>habeas corpus</I>, and take this prisoner out of
+custody.  I'll sue this court on its bond!  I'll take a change of
+venue!  We'll leave no stone unturned to set this innocent man free and
+restore him to the bosom of his family!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This speech produced a great effect on the audience, as murmurs of
+approbation testified, but the doughty Justice of the Peace was not so
+easily to be reckoned with.  He pointed out that there was no officer
+to serve a writ of <I>habeas corpus</I>; that the court had given no bond
+to anybody and did not propose to do so; that there was no other court
+to which to apply for a change of "vendew," as he termed it; and
+reiterated once more that the "trile must go on."  The prosecution was,
+therefore, once more called upon to state the case.  Again the attorney
+for the defence protested, a foreshadowing of his fighting blood
+reddening his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I call for a jury," said he.  "Does this court suppose we are going to
+leave the liberty of this prisoner in the hands of a judge openly and
+notoriously prejudiced as to the facts of this case?  I demand a trial
+by a jury of the defendant's peers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blackman reddened, but was game.  "Jury goes," said he.  "Count out
+twelve fellers there, beginnin' next the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twelve!" said Dan Andersen, for the moment almost losing his gravity.
+"I thought this court might be content with six for a justice's jury;
+but realizing the importance of this court, we are willing to agree on
+twelve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was so agreed.  The jury took in every man in the little room but
+three.  "They'll do for a veniry," said Blackman, J. P., learnedly.
+Under the circumstances, one can perhaps forgive him for becoming at
+times a trifle mixed as to the legal proceedings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At least, it was easy to agree as to the jury; for obviously the
+population of the place was fully acquainted with all the facts in the
+case, and each one had freely expressed his opinion upon the one side
+or the other.  There seemed to be no reason for excusing any juror for
+cause; and upon the other hand, there are often very good reasons in a
+Land Before the Law for not bringing up personal matters of this kind.
+Indeed, the trial judge settled all that.  He looked over the twelve
+good men and true thus segregated, and remarked briefly: "They're his
+peers, all right.  The trile will now proceed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereupon he swore them solemnly and made a record in his fee book, to
+the later consternation of his jurors.  "Ain't this court a notary,
+too?" said Blackman later.  "And ain't a notary entitled to so much fee
+for administerin' a oath?  And didn't I administer twelve oaths?"
+There was small answer to this, after all.  The laborer is worthy of
+his hire; and Blackman really labored in this case as in all likelihood
+few justices have before or since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prosecuting attorney, who, it may be seen, held his office much as
+did the justice of the peace, by the doctrine of <I>nemine
+contradicente</I>, now arose and made the opening statement.  There, was
+some doubt as to whether this was a civil or criminal trial, but there
+was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither
+did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case
+the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts.  It
+was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college
+"orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July
+speech, which might have been better for more memorizing.  The attorney
+for the prosecution, however, arose to the occasion&mdash;at least to a
+certain extent.  He spoke in low and feeling tones of the struggling
+little community of hardy souls thus set down apart in the far-off
+mountain country of the West; of its trials, its hopes, its ambitions,
+of its expectations of becoming a mountain emporium which should be the
+pride of the entire Territory; he went on to mention the necessity for
+law and order, pointing out the danger to the public interests of the
+community which must lie in a general reputation for ruffianism and
+lawlessness, showing how Eastern Capital must ever be timid in visiting
+a town of such reputation, apart from investing any money therein;
+then, changing to the personal phases of the case, he spoke of the
+absolute disregard of law shown in the act charged, mentioned the
+red-handed deed of this lawless and dangerous person who had thus slain
+a pig, no less the pride of the community than the idol of the family
+now bereft.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this point the jury began to look much perturbed and solemn, and the
+prisoner very red and uneasy.  Prosecution closed by offering to prove
+all charges by competent testimony.  This latter was a dangerous
+proposition to advance.  We could not well ask the jurymen to testify,
+and of the "veniry," more than half had now slipped out for a hurried
+and excited visit to the Lone Star, there to advise any possible new
+arrivals of what was going on at Blackman's adobe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Counsel for the defence arose calmly to make his opening statement.
+The man was a natural trial lawyer.  It was simply destiny which had
+driven him into this comedy, as destiny had driven him to Heart's
+Desire.  It was not comedy now, when Dan Anderson faced judge and jury
+here in Blackman's adobe.  There came a swift, sudden chill, a gripping
+as of iron, a darkening, a shrinking of the heart of each man in that
+little room.  It was the coming of the Law!  Ah!  Dan Anderson, you
+ruined our little paradise; and now its walls are down forever, even
+the walls of our city of content.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson stood, young, tall and grave, one hand in the bosom of his
+shirt, for hardly one present wore a coat.  He had his audience with
+him before he spoke.  When he began he caught them tighter to his
+cause, using not merely flowing rhetoric of speech, but the close-knit,
+advancing, upbuilding argument of a man able to "think on his
+feet,"&mdash;that higher sort of oratory which is most convincing with an
+American audience or an American jury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The statement of the prosecution, said Dan Anderson, was on the whole a
+fair one, and no discredit to the learned brother making it.  None
+would more readily than himself yield acquiescence to the statement
+that law and order must prevail.  Without law there could be nothing
+but anarchy.  Under anarchy progress was at an end.  The individual
+must give up something of his rights to the state and the community.
+He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an
+equivalent in protection.  The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no
+monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown.
+The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the
+other hand, it was nothing to be scorned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There must be a beginning, continued Dan Anderson.  There must be
+something established.  The pound measure was one pound, the same all
+over the country; a yard measure was a yard, and there was no guesswork
+about it.  It was the same.  It was a unit.  So with the law.  It must
+be the same, a unit, soulless, unfeeling, just, unchangeable.  There
+was nothing indeterminate in it.  The attitude of the law was thus or
+so, and not otherwise.  It was not for the individual to pass upon any
+of these questions.  It was for the courts to do so, the approved
+machinery set aside, under the social compact, for reducing the
+friction of the wheels of society, for securing the permanency of
+things beneficial to that society, and for removing things injurious
+thereto.  The Law itself was immutable.  The courts must administer
+that Law without malice, without feeling, impersonally, justly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In so far as there had hitherto been no Law in Heart's Desire, went on
+the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed
+been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud
+title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as
+well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world.  The
+time had now come for the establishment in this community of the Law,
+that beneficent agency of progress, that indispensable factor, that
+inseparable attendant upon civilization.  Upon the sky should blaze no
+more the red riot of anarchy and barbarism.  Upon the summit of the
+noble mountain overtopping this happy valley there should sit no more
+the grinning figure of malevolent and unrestrained vice, but the pure
+form of the blind Goddess of Justice, holding ever aloft over this
+happy land the unfaltering sword and the unwavering scales, so that all
+might look thereon, the rightdoers in smiling security, the wrong-doing
+in terror of their deeds.  This was the Law!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now, gentlemen of this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here
+before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the
+way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the
+time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law.  I say to
+you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned
+above us.  The Law is not to come&mdash;it has come, it is here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old days were, therefore, done, he went on.  Henceforth we must
+observe the Law.  We were here now with the intention of observing that
+Law.  Should we therefore fear it?  Should we dread the decision of
+this distinguished servant of the Law?  By no means.  To show that the
+Law was no dragon, no demon, he would now, in the very face of that
+Law, proceed to clear this innocent man of that cloud of doubt and
+suspicion which for a brief moment the social body had cast upon him.
+He would show to the gentlemen of this jury and to this honorable court
+that there had been no violation of the Law through any act of this
+honest, open-faced, intelligent young gentleman, long known among them
+as an upright and fair-dealing man.  The Law, just and exact, would now
+protect this prisoner.  The Law was no matter of haphazard.  The
+prosecution must show that some specific article of the Law had been
+violated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," continued Dan Anderson, casting an eye about him as calmly as
+could have done any old trial lawyer examining the condition of his
+jury, "what are the charges made by the Territory?  The prosecution
+specifies no section or paragraph of the statutes of this Territory
+holding it unlawful to shoot any dangerous wild beast at large in this
+community.  But we do not admit that this prisoner shot anything, or
+shot at anything whatever.  We shall prove that at the time mentioned
+he was engaged in a simple, harmless, and useful pastime, a pastime
+laudable of itself, since it tends to make the participant therein a
+better and more useful citizen.  There is no Territorial law forbidding
+any act which he is here charged with committing.  Neither has the body
+social in this thriving community placed upon its records any local
+law, any indication that a man may not, without let or hindrance, do
+any act such as those charged vaguely against this good young man, who
+has only availed himself of his right under the Constitution to bear
+arms, to assemble in public, and to engage in the pursuit of happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prosecution, he said, had introduced reference to a certain pig,
+alleging that it was slain by the act of the prisoner.  He would not
+admit that there had been any pig, since no <I>corpus delicti</I> was
+shown; but in any event this was no civil suit now in progress.  We
+were not here to assess value upon a supposititious pig, injured in a
+supposititious manner, and not represented here of counsel.  No law had
+been violated.  Why, then, his client had been thus ruthlessly dragged
+into court, to his great personal chagrin, his loss of time, his mental
+suffering, the attorney for defence could not say.  It was injustice of
+a monstrous sort!  Prosecution might well feel relieved if no
+retaliatory action were later taken against them for false
+imprisonment.  This innocent young man must at once be discharged from
+custody.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Dan Anderson sat down there was not a man in the jury who was not
+bathed in perspiration.  Abstruse thought was hard at work.  Blackman,
+J. P., perspiring no less than any member of the jury, drew himself up,
+but he was troubled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Evidence f'r the State," the Judge finally managed to stammer, turning
+to the attorney for the prosecution.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it never came so far along as that.  There was a sound of many
+footsteps; voices came murmuring, growing louder.  The door was pushed
+open from without, and in came much of the remaining population of
+Heart's Desire, so far as it could gain room.  The man from Leavenworth
+was there, his whiskers wagging unintelligibly.  McKinney was there,
+and Doc Tomlinson and Tom Osby, and everybody else; and, pushing
+through the crowd, there came the Littlest Girl from Kansas, her apron
+awry, her hair blown, her face flushed, her eyes moist with tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly!" cried she as at last her eyes caught sight of him.  "Come
+right on out of here, this minute!  Come along!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What would you have?  The Law is the Law; but there are such things as
+supreme courts.  It was useless for Blackman, J. P., to rap and call
+for order.  It had probably been useless for any man to undertake to
+stop the prisoner at the bar, thus adjured.  At any rate he arose and
+said politely to the jurors, "Fellers, I got to go"&mdash;and so went, no
+man raising hand to restrain him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As to Dan Anderson, he himself admitted his wish that the case had gone
+on.  "I wanted to cross-examine," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night, over by the <I>arroyo</I>, we met Curly and the Littlest Girl
+walking in the moonlight.  Curly was quiet.  The Littlest Girl was
+tremulous, content.  Curly, pausing as we approached, mumbled some
+shamefaced thanks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, his voice queer, "I didn't do it for pay.
+I did it&mdash;I don't know why&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A new mood was upon him.  A lassitude as of remorse appeared to relax
+him, body and mind.  An hour later he and I sat in the glorious flood
+of the light of the moon of Heart's Desire, and we fell silent, as was
+the way of men in that place.  At length Dan Anderson turned his face
+to the top of old Carrizo, the restful, the impassive.  He gazed long
+without speaking, as though he plainly saw something there at the
+mountain top.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen," he whispered to me, a moment later, and his eyes did not
+quite keep back the tears.  "She's there&mdash;the Goddess.  The Law has
+come to Heart's Desire.  May God forgive me!  Why could we not have
+stayed content?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But little did Dan Anderson foresee that day how swiftly was to come
+further ruin for the kingdom of oblivion which we thought that we had
+found.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There'll be <I>women</I> next!" I said to him bitterly; though this was a
+vague threat of a thing impossible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His reply was a look more than half frightened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding Loneliness of Adam</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl,
+and nothing further had happened in the way of change.  The man from
+Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of
+Heart's Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as
+far distant as ever in the future.  Life went on, spent in the open for
+the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice.  Blackman, J.
+P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an
+erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further
+occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent
+much of the day sitting in the sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might look several times at me," said Dan Andersen one day,
+without preface or provocation, "and yet not read all my past in these
+fair lineaments."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This seemed unworthy of notice.  A man's past was a subject tabooed in
+Heart's Desire.  Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were
+glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall.  Conversation languished.  Dan
+Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a <I>cigarrillo</I> with one hand, his gaze
+the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of
+the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away.  His mind
+might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely.  There was
+nothing to do.  There was only the sun, and as against it the shade.
+That made up life at Heart's Desire.  It was a million miles away to
+any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference
+to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart's Desire.
+Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen's mind,
+as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his
+pocket for a match.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you wouldn't think; just to look at me, my friend," said he, "you
+wouldn't think, without runnin' side lines, and takin' elevations for
+dips, spurs, and angles, that I had ever been anything but a barrister;
+now, would you?  Attorney and Counsellor-at-law, all hours of the day
+and night: that bill of specifications is engraved on my brow, ain't
+it?  You like enough couldn't believe that I was ever anything
+else&mdash;several things else, could you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His speech still failed of interest, except as it afforded additional
+proof of the manner in which Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like
+disappeared from the speech of all men at Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson
+sat down in the shade, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
+"My boy," said he, "you can gaze at me if you ain't too tired.  As a
+matter of fact, in this pernicious age of specialization I stand out as
+the one glitterin' example of success in more than one line.  Why, once
+I was a success as a journalist&mdash;for a few moments."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was now a certain softness and innocence in his voice, which had
+portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had
+anything of consequence upon his soul.  Without more encouragement he
+went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My brother," said he, "when I first came out of Princeton I was
+burnin' up with zeal.  There was the world, the whole wide world,
+plunged into an abyss of error and wrongdoin'.  I was the sole and
+remainin' hope.  Like all great men, I naturally wanted to begin the
+savin' as early as possible; and like everybody else who comes out of
+Princeton, I thought the best medium for immediate salvation was
+journalism.  I wasn't a newspaper man.  I never said that at all.  I
+was a journalist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, dad got me a place on a paper in New York, and I worked on the
+dog-fight department for a time, it havin' been discovered that I was
+noted along certain lines of research in Princeton.  I knew the
+pedigree and fightin' weight of every white, black, or brindle pup in
+four States.  Now, a whole lot of fellows come out of college who don't
+know that much; or if they do, they don't know how to apply their
+knowledge.  Now dogs, that's plumb useful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was still doin' dogs when the presidential campaign came along, or
+rather, that feature of our national customs which precedes the
+selection of the People's Choice.  First thing, of course, the People's
+Choice had to take a run over the country&mdash;which was a good thing, too,
+because he didn't know much about it&mdash;and let the people in general
+know that he was their choice.  I went along to tell the other people
+how he broke it to them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I confess I sat up at this, for there was now so supreme an innocence
+in Dan Anderson's eye that one might have been morally certain that
+something was coming.  "From dogs to politics&mdash;wasn't that a little
+singular?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said he; "but you have to be versatile in journalism.  The
+regular man who was to have gone on that special presidential car got
+slugged at an art gatherin'.  I didn't ask for the place.  I just went
+and told the managin' editor I was ready if he would give me an order
+for expense money.  It wouldn't have been good form for him to look up
+and pay any attention to me, so I got the job.  I needed to see the
+country just as much as the People's Choice did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three other fellows went along,&mdash;newspaper men.  I was the only real
+journalist.  We did the presidential tour for ten towns a day.  I
+watched what the other fellows did, and in about two hours it was easy.
+Everything's easy if you think so.  Folks made a lot of fuss about
+gettin' along in the world.  That's all a mistake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People's Choice tore it off in fine shape.  Comin' into Basswood
+Junction he turns to his Honorable Secretary, and says he, 'Jimmy,
+what's this?'  Jimmy turns to his card cabinet, and says he: 'Prexie,
+this is Basswood Junction.  Three railroads come in here&mdash;and get away
+as soon as they can.  Four overall factories and a reaper plant.
+Population six thousand, and increasin' satisfactory.  Hon. Charles D.
+Bastrop, M.C., from this district, on the straight Republican ticket
+for the last three hundred years; world without end.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the train would pull into this station to the sad sweet notes of
+the oompah horn, and the delegation of leadin' citizens would file in
+behind the car, and the first leadin' citizen would get red in the face
+with his Welcome talk, while we four slaves of the people were hustling
+the President's speech to the depot telegraph wire before he said it.
+People's Choice, he stands on the back platform with one hand in his
+bosom, and says he: 'Fellow-citizens of Basswood Junction, I am proud
+to see before me this large and distinguished gatherin' of our noble
+North American fauna.  My visit to your pleasant valley is wholly
+without political significance.  These noble et cetera; these smilin'
+et cetera; these beautiful et cetera, fill me with the proudest
+emotions of et cetera.  This, our great and glorious et cetera;
+Basswood Junction has four magnificent factories, and is the centre of
+three great trunk lines of railroad which radiate et cetera; it is
+destined to be a great commercial et cetera.  And what could be more
+confirmatory of the sober, practical judgment of the citizens of this
+flourishing community than the fact that they have produced and given
+to the world that distinguished statesman and gentleman, the Hon.
+Charles D. Bastrop, who is your representative in the Congress of the
+United States and who has always et cetera, et cetera?
+'Fellow-citizens, the issue before this country to-day&mdash;' and that was
+where he would hit his gait.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He had three of these, and on the schedule laid out by the chairman of
+the Central Committee he couldn't spring any two alike closer together
+than a hundred miles.  The whole business would take about five minutes
+to a station.  We would put number Two, or number Three, or whichever
+it was, on the wire, while the People's Choice was talkin', provided we
+could catch the station agent, who on such occasions was bigger than
+the President.  Then, toot! toot! and we were off for the next Basswood
+Junction, to show 'em who was their spontaneous choice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that was all right, and it was easy work to report.  The only
+thing was not to get number One speech mixed up with number Two or
+number Three at any given point.  The Honorable Secretary had to attend
+to that.  So all the time we were bored for something to do.  What we
+was hopin' and longin' for all the time was that some one in the
+opposition at some station would haul off and throw a brick at the car.
+Then we would have had some News."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said I, "you got to wanting news!  You had a narrow escape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe," said Dan Anderson.  "I admit I got to likin' the game.  I
+think, too, I did get to understandin' what news was.  So one day, when
+I was mighty tired of the four-factory, railroad-centre,
+leadin'-citizen business, I mixed up the speeches on the Honorable
+Secretary between stations."  Dan Anderson blew a faint wreath of blue
+smoke up toward the blue sky and remained silent for a time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The next particular Basswood Junction happened to be a Democratic
+minin' town, instead of a Republican agricultural community.  It didn't
+have any overall factories at all.  They didn't relish bein' told that
+they had voted the straight Republican ticket ever since Alexander
+Hamilton, and that they had given to the public that distinguished
+citizen, James K. Blinkensop, when the man they had really given to the
+public was Dan G. Healy.  Oh, the whole thing got all mixed up!  Now,
+that was News!  And they fired me by wire that night!  The People's
+Choice was awful hostile.  And me raised tender, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, what did you do?" asked I, getting interested in spite of
+myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was far, far from home.  But not thus easily could I be shaken out
+of my chosen profession.  In thirty-eight minutes I was at work as
+managin' editor of a mornin' paper.  That particular Basswood Junction
+was just startin' a daily, the kind the real-estate men and the local
+congressman have to support or go out of the business.  Their editor
+had been raised on a weekly, and had been used to goin' to sleep at
+eight o'clock in the evening.  The rumor spread that a metropolitan
+journalist had fallen out of a balloon into their midst.  That
+morning's paper was two days late.  So I just went in and went to work.
+I sent every one else home to bed, and sat down to write the paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I began with dogs, for on account of my early trainin' I
+knew more about that.  Two columns of dogs as a Local Industry.  Then I
+took up Mineral Resources, about half a column.  Might have played that
+up a little stronger, but I was shy on facts.  Then I did the Literary
+and Dramatic.  I shuddered when I struck that, because when a man on a
+paper gets put on Literary and Dramatic, it usually isn't far to his
+finish.  He don't have to send out after trouble&mdash;it comes to him
+spontaneous.  Next, I had to do Society.  Didn't know anybody there, so
+that was a little hard.  Had to content myself with the
+Beautiful-and-Accomplished-Who-Shall-be-Nameless,&mdash;that sort of thing.
+Why," said Dan Anderson, plaintively, "it's awful hard to write society
+and local news in a town when you've only been there fifteen minutes.
+But a real metropolitan journalist ought to be able to, and I did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By this time the office force was standin' around some awed.  I sent
+the foreman of the pressroom out for a bottle of fizz.  Sarsaparilla
+was the nearest he could come to it, but it went.  Then I turned my hot
+young blood loose on the editorial page.  'This,' said I, 'is my
+opportunity to save the country, and I'm goin' to save it, right here.'
+It was then eleven hours, forty-five minutes, and eight seconds by the
+grandpa clock which adorned the newly furnished sanctum."  Dan Anderson
+again sat silent a few moments, the stub of his <I>cigarrillo</I> between
+his fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," said he, "it might, perhaps, have been worse, although I
+admit that was unlikely.  I couldn't prove an alibi, but there were
+extenuatin' circumstances.  The fact was, I got the politics of the
+place mixed up almost as bad as the People's Choice.  That community
+woke up as one man at six-thirty the next morning, and turned out to
+see the evidence of their progress.  I never did see so many Democrats
+in my life.  Or was it Republicans?  I forget.  I had given 'em a good,
+hot, mixed Princeton paper,&mdash;dog, international law, society,
+industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had
+Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a
+Household Corner&mdash;How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich
+for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers&mdash;why, if I do say
+it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in
+all his life, inside the space of one night's writin'.  But they didn't
+like me.  I was too good for them.  Ah, well!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson sighed softly.  The lazy sun crawled on.  Nobody came into
+the street.  There was nothing to happen.  It might have been an hour
+before Dan Anderson leaned over, picked up a splinter to whittle, and
+went on with his story, back of which I was long before this well
+convinced there remained some topic concealed, albeit beneath
+inconsequent and picturesque details.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At that state of my <I>entwickelung</I>, as the French say, I still wore
+my trousers with a strong crimp at the bottom and cut pear-shaped at
+the hips.  That pair was.  The next one wasn't.  It was a long, long
+way to that next pair.  I forgot how many years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, by that time&mdash;although I did still say 'rully,' account of
+having roomed with a man who had been in Harvard for a while&mdash;I was
+really beginning to wake up just a little bit.  My dad still supposed I
+was doing dog on the dramatic page in New York, whereas the facts were
+I had been fired twice.  But that did me good.  I sort of woke up about
+then, and realized there were such things in the world as folks.  I
+wasn't the People's Choice,&mdash;not yet,&mdash;but I was learnin' a heap more
+about the Basswood Junctions of this world.  And I want to say to you
+that after all's said and done, Princeton hasn't got Basswood Junction
+skinned no ways permanent.  There's several kinds of things in life,
+when you come to find it out.  It ain't all in the gay metropolis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At half-past four one afternoon I turned the roll down out of my
+trousers and took account of the world.  Says I to myself: 'Journalism
+is not a science.  It ain't exact enough.'  Then I thought of studyin'
+medicine.  Bah!  That's not a science.  It's a survival.  I clerked for
+a while, but I couldn't stand it.  What I was lookin' for was a
+science.  At last I concluded to take up law, because I thought it was
+more of a science than any of these other things.  I wanted some place
+where I could sort of reason things out, and have them fit and hang
+together.  Well, the law&mdash;well, you know the law isn't just exactly
+that way.  But it's a beautiful thing if you just hang to the
+principles, and don't believe too much of the practice.  The law is
+disgraced&mdash;but at bottom what the law meant to do was to give humanity
+some sort of a square deal; which, of course, it doesn't.  It ain't a
+science; but I love it, because it might have been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fell silent once again for a time, after his fashion, but now his
+gaze was softened, although he went on with his light speech.  "I
+rather thought I would take up the science of the law as the most
+possible line of activity for a man of my attainments.  I began to read
+a little on the side.  Then I didn't know whether to have contempt for
+us fools who live and endure the eternal folly, or whether I ought to
+pity Basswood Junction and Princeton, because life is all so awfully
+hard and hopeless.  Meantime, Old Mr. World went right on&mdash;didn't stop
+to ask me anything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can understand these things took a little time.  Meantime, my dad
+had sized me up as one more young man ruined by college life.  The old
+man had a heap of sense in him, and he did the right thing.  He told me
+to go to the devil."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you came West?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I came West.  Same pants."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you haven't told me about the girl," said I, quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, that was it, then!  I could see his eyelids twitch.  A moisture
+broke out on his lower lip, in that country where perspiration was so
+little known.  "And you!" he said.  "But then, it didn't take much
+brains to guess that.  It was the same way with you.  We all of us came
+here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, there was a Girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So now we both were silent.  Indeed, all the world was silent.  The
+calm valley lay unwinking in the sun.  The grave mountains stood about
+unperturbed, unagitated, calm.  The blue sky swept above, peaceful,
+unflecked by any moving cloud.  There was not a leaf in all that land
+to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple.  It was a
+world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with
+nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world
+gone by.  Here was no place for memories or dreams.  The rush of
+another world might go on.  Folk might live and love, grieve and joy,
+and sorrow and die, and it mattered nothing.  These things came not to
+Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Dan Anderson was guilty of a thing revolutionary, horrible!
+He sat silent as long as he could, but at length there broke from him a
+groan that was half a sob.  He rose and flung out an arm at the great
+blue heaven.  "Girl!" he cried.  "Girl!"  Then he sank down, burying
+his face in his hands.  One might have heard falling, faint and far
+off, the shattered crystals of the walls that had long hedged sacredly
+about the valley of Heart's Desire.  One might have heard, sweeping the
+soft and silken curtains of its oblivion, the rough rush of a
+disturbing wind!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson's back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the
+valley.  "Friend," said he, "I swore never to think of her once more.
+Of course, the old ways had to end.  Her people wouldn't have it.  She
+told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for
+dreamers; that the world was run by workers.  She told me&mdash;well, I came
+West, and after a while a little farther West.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hadn't begun, I know that.  It was fair enough to suppose I never
+would begin.  But at least I didn't holler.  I sat down to read law.
+Ah, don't let's talk of it.  Her face was on the pages.  I would brush
+it off, and read over a page a dozen times.  I had to force it into my
+mind.  I worked so hard&mdash;but maybe it was all the better for me.  I not
+only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced
+comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type
+looks, irregularly set around a roll of brown hair and a pair of gray
+eyes that look straight at you.  My boy, when the principles of law are
+back and under that kind of a page illustration, they are hard to get,
+and you don't forget them when they're yours.  It wasn't hard to learn
+things in Princeton.  It's the things out of college that are hard to
+learn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you know how that is.  A fellow lives because this physical
+machine of ours is wound up for threescore years and ten, and unless
+the powers of evil get their fingers in the works, it runs.  Well, one
+time, after I was admitted to the bar back there, I was sitting one
+night reading Chitty on Pleading.  That was the worst of all the books.
+Contracts, notes and bills, torts, replevin, and ejectment&mdash;all those
+things were easy.  But when I got to Chitty, the girl's face would
+always get on the page and stick there.  So one night, seeing that I
+was gone, I took Chitty on Pleading, girl's face and all, and screwed
+it shut, tight and fast in the letter-press.  I allowed she couldn't
+get out of there!  Then I pulled my freight.  I punched a burro into
+Heart's Desire, two hundred miles, just as you did.  I have lived here,
+just as you have.  No life, no trouble, no woman&mdash;why, you know, this
+is Heart's Desire!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was," said I; "God bless it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And amen!  We'd all have been in the Army, or burglary, or outlawry,
+if it hadn't been for Heart's Desire.  God bless it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she got out," said I.  "Some one unscrewed the press?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson.  "She's out.  They're out.  I tell you,
+they're out, all over the world!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were three hundred men here, and it was Heaven.  One vast commune,
+and yet no commune.  Everything there was if you asked for it, and
+nothing you could take if you didn't ask.  Not a church, because there
+wasn't a woman.  Not a courthouse, because there wasn't any crime, and
+that because there wasn't a woman.  Not a society&mdash;not a home&mdash;and I
+thank God for it.  I knew what it was back there&mdash;every man suspicious,
+every man scared, every man afraid of his own shadow&mdash;not a clean, true
+note in all the world; and incidentally a woman behind every tree, in
+every corner, whichever way you turned.  Life in the States was being a
+<I>peon</I> with a halter around your neck.  But it was never that way
+here.  There never was any crime in Heart's Desire.  It's no crime to
+shoot a man when he's tired of living and wants you to kill him.  Why,
+this was Heart's Desire until&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Until the press got loose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's loose all over the world!" cried Dan Anderson.  "They've got out.
+You can't keep them in.  How did Charlie Allen get killed over at
+Sumner?  Woman in it.  When the boys arrested this fellow Garcia over
+at the Nogales, what was it all about?  A woman.  What set the
+desperado Arragon on the warpath so the boys had to kill him?  That was
+a woman, too.  What made Bill Hilliard kill Pete Anderson?  Woman moved
+in within fifty miles of them on the Nogales.  Here's Curly; good man
+in his profession.  Night-wrangler, day-herder, bog-rider, buster,
+top-waddy&mdash;why, he'd be the old man on the range for his company if
+that Kansas family hadn't moved down in here and married him.  It's
+Paradise Lost, that's what it is.  Arizona next, and it's full of
+copper mines and railroads.  Where shall we go?"  The sweat stood full
+on his lip now, and a deep line ran across his forehead.  "Where shall
+we go?" he repeated insistently.  "Come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In my own bitterness at all this I grew sarcastic with him.  "Sit
+down," said I.  "Why all this foolishness about a college girl with a
+shirtwaist and a straw hat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, now," and his forehead puckered up, "don't you be deceived for one
+minute, my friend.  This wasn't ordinary.  No plain woman; no common or
+crimping variety.  Just a specimen of the great 'North American Girl!"
+He took off his hat.  "And may God bless her, goin' or comin'!" said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was the most untoward situation ever yet known in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Dan Andersen was proving recreant to our creed.  And
+yet, what could be done?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson presently made the situation more specific.  "May old Jack
+Wilson just be damned!" said he.  "If he hadn't found that gold
+prospect up on the Homestake, we might have lived here forever.
+Besides, there's the coal fields yonder on the Patos, no one knows how
+big."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Coal!  That meant Eastern Capital.  I could have guessed the rest
+before he told it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, of course, we've got to sell our coal mines, and get a lot of
+States men in here monkeyin' around.  And, of course, it couldn't have
+been anybody else but the particular daddy of this particular girl who
+had to come pokin' in here to look at the country!  He's got money
+literally sinful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that the girl's coming,
+too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded mutely.  "They're out," said he, at last.  "You can't get
+away from 'em.  They're all over the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here, indeed, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a
+long time, as we sat moodily in the sun.  At about this time, Tom Osby
+drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of
+Whiteman the Jew, just across the street.  Tom tore open a bale of hay,
+and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed
+grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a
+pipe, he began to sing his favorite song.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+  "I never <I>loved</I> a fond gazel-l-l-e,"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+he drawled out.  Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot
+through the top of Tom Osby's wagon.  Tom came up, rifle in hand, like
+a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up," said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I ain't so sure," said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin.  "It's
+a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don't get quite
+so funny, by a leetle shade."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire
+over smaller things than this.  "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked
+Tom Osby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hadn't noticed it," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson.  "You come here, and tell me what
+time the stage gets in from Socorro."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's <I>loco</I>, Tom," said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I reckon <I>so</I>.  When a man begins to worry about what time the
+Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital&mdash;Eastern Capital, Eve and
+the Serpent, all on one stage.  The only comfort is that no Eastern
+Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day.  She'll go
+back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again."  But the dumb
+supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire.  It was ninety miles to the
+nearest wire.  The stage came in but occasionally from the distant
+railroad.  Yet&mdash;and this was one of the strange things of that strange
+country, which we accepted without curiosity and without
+argument&mdash;there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by
+which news got about over great distances.  Perhaps it was a rider in
+by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had
+seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the caņon, the white
+smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming.  This news
+brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him
+in query.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Man," said he, as he gripped my arm, "you see, up there on Carrizo,
+the big caņon where we hunt bear.  You know, up there at the end,
+there's a big pine tree.  Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of
+this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late
+Daniel Anderson, you go up the caņon and look up the tree.  I'll be
+there.  I'm scared."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By this I knew that he would, in all likelihood, meet the stage and
+help Eve to alight at Heart's Desire.  Moreover, I reproached him as
+having been deliberately a party to this invasion.  "You've been
+writing back home to the girl," I said.  "That is not playing the game.
+That's violation of the creed.  You're renegade.  Then go back home.
+You don't belong here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not!  I won't!  I didn't!" he retorted.  "I didn't write&mdash;at least
+only a few times.  I tried not to&mdash;but I couldn't help it.  Man, I tell
+you I couldn't <I>help</I> it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
+the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some.</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The sun drew on across the enchanted valley and began to sink toward
+the rim of the distant Baxter Peak.  The tremendous velvet robes of the
+purple evening shadows dropped slowly down upon the majestic shoulders
+of Carrizo, guardian of the valley.  A delicious kindness came into the
+air, sweet, although no flower was in all that land, and soft, though
+this was far from any sea, unless it were the waters immeasurably deep
+beneath this sun-dried soil.  There was no cloud even at the falling of
+the sun, but the gun had no harshness in his glow.  There was a blue
+and purple mystery over all the world, and calm and sweetness and
+strength came down as it were a mantle.  Ah, never in all the world was
+a place like this Eden, this man's Eden of Heart's Desire!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A gentle wind sighed up the valley from the narrow caņon mouth, as it
+did every day.  There was no variableness.  Surprises did not come
+thither.  The world ran always in one pleasant and unchanging groove.
+But the breeze this evening brought no smile of content to Dan
+Anderson's face as he sat waiting for the coming of the new and fateful
+visitor to our ancient Eden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They'll be about at the Carrizoso Springs now," said Dan Anderson,
+"twelve miles away down the trail.  Can't you smell the cold cream?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was beyond ken, but he became more explicit.  "Cold cream to the
+eyes and ears," said he.  "To the untutored face, the sun of this
+heathen district is something sinful; and like enough she never heard
+of collodion for cracked lips in an alkali country.  And a veil&mdash;oh,
+sacred spirits! that veil and its contents is now hatin' Carrizoso
+flats and all the inarticulate earth till fare-ye-well!  Wrapped up to
+the topmast in a white veil,&mdash;or one of was-white,&mdash;gray travelling
+gown, common-sense boots.  Gloves&mdash;ah, yes.  And hate&mdash;hate&mdash;why, can't
+you feel the simmerin', boilin' hatred of that States girl just raisin'
+the temperature of this land of Canaan?  Hate us?  Why, she'll be
+poisonous.  Ninety miles in the sun, at ninety in the shade.  Water
+once at the Mal Pais, and it alkali."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I reminded Dan Anderson that in view of his promise to absent himself
+at the time of the arrival of the Socorro stage, he was not conducting
+himself with the proper regard either to decorum or historical accuracy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go.  I ought to go
+climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the
+lady and her dad.  I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this
+faintness out of my legs.  But somehow I can't get started.  I'd look
+well, tryin' to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn't I?  Man,
+haven't you any sympathy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we sat on a log out in front of Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, and
+waited for the worst to happen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you go away," said Dan Anderson.  "I want you for my second.
+You can go for the doctor.  I ain't feelin' very well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, there was no doctor in Heart's Desire, nor had there ever been, as
+Dan Anderson knew.  Neither did he look in need of any help whatsoever.
+He made no foolish masculine attempt at personal adornment, but his
+long figure, with good bony shoulders and a visible waist line, looked
+well enough in the man's garb of blue shirt and belted trousers.  A
+rope of hair straggled from under his wide hat; for in Heart's Desire
+wide hats were worn of right and not in affectation.  He was a manly
+man enough, in a place where weak men were rare.  The one most vitally
+concerned in all the population of Heart's Desire, he was now the one
+least visibly affected.  All the rest of the settlement, suddenly
+smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and
+a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties.
+Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the
+purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that
+which was to come to him.  True, there was the slight moisture on his
+brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself
+only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events.
+"What will you do?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you've
+been ass enough to allow this girl to come on down in here?  You'll
+have some one killed in this town before long.  Besides, where can a
+white girl live in this place?  There's not a bedspread or a linen
+sheet in the whole town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully.  "Do you
+suppose a Wellesley girl, accustomed steady to high thinkin', can't get
+along with a little plain livin' once in a while?  As for women folks,
+why can't Curly's girl take care of her?  Does a chance lady caller in
+this city need a <I>thousand</I> women to entertain her?  And
+blankets&mdash;why, you know well enough, that blankets are better after
+sundown here than much fine linen.  Heart's Desire'll be here calm and
+confident after this brief pageantry has passed from our midst."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he spoke, he half turned and started, with a broken exclamation.  I
+followed his gaze.  The street was vacant, barren of the accustomed
+throng that usually awaited near the post-office the arrival of the
+infrequent stagecoach.  But there, at the mouth of the caņon, almost
+under the edge of the deepening shadow from the purple-topped mountain,
+appeared the dusty top of the creeping vehicle that bore with it the
+fate of Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson was pale now, and he put his hand
+to his shirt collar, as though it were too tight; but he sat gazing
+down the valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That old fool, Bill Godfrey, is showin' them our sign," said he, in
+exasperation.  "That's a nice thing, ain't it, for Eastern Capital, or
+a woman, to see the first thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart's Desire, who
+subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had
+prepared the grim blazonry on the caņon wall to which Dan Anderson had
+made reference.  "Prepare to meet thy God!" was the sign that Charlie
+Lee had painted there.  It was the last thing he did on his way out of
+town.  That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading
+citizen.  Charlie's emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for
+expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon.  The
+inhabitants had always left the sign standing there.  But at this time
+it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They ain't goin' to understand that," said he.  "They can't think the
+way we do.  Oh, why didn't that old fool Godfrey call their attention
+the other way?  Oh, that'll set fine, won't it, with a man comin' to
+buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face
+and a consumin' vision of tarantulas in her soul!  This'll be another
+case of New Jersey Gold Mill.  Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he'll run
+out at the same door wherein he went; that's what he'll do.  And, oh,
+doctors and saints, look at that, now!"  Bill Godfrey was leaning out
+of the coach-box and pointing with his whip.  "He's showin' them the
+town now," said Dan Anderson.  "Why&mdash;I hadn't thought before but what
+this place was all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation.  It had been our
+world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it
+had been satisfactory until now.  Never before that moment had the
+scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and
+insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy.  We were suddenly ashamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the
+log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage,
+white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up
+from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired
+mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily
+forward.  Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously
+have offered assistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master
+of his faculties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear
+seat, when there appeared the passenger nearest to our side of the
+coach,&mdash;a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in
+girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache.  He was well shod and
+well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels
+and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs.
+He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored.  A flush of recognition
+crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Andersen," Mr. Ellsworth said, extending a hand, "how are you?
+Got here at last&mdash;awful drive.  Where do we stop?  You know my
+daughter, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What treachery to Heart's Desire was here!  Dan Anderson, a man who had
+come to stay, shaking hands on terms of old acquaintanceship,
+apparently, with Eastern Capital itself; and not content with that,
+advancing easily and courteously, hat in hand, to greet the daughter of
+Eastern Capital as though it were but yesterday that last they met.
+Moreover, and bitterest of all for a loyal man of Heart's Desire, was
+there not a glance, a word between them?  Did Dan Anderson whisper a
+word and did she flush faint and rosy? or was it a touch of the light?
+Certain it was he reached up his hand to take hers, shaking it not too
+long nor too fervently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do remember Miss Ellsworth very well, of course, Mr. Ellsworth,"
+said he.  "We are all very glad to see you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And we're very glad to <I>see</I> you!" echoed the girl.  "Oh! the dust,
+the dust!"  She spoke in a full, sweet voice, excellent even for
+outlanders to hear.  If there were agitation in her tones, agitation in
+Dan Andersen's heart, none might know it.  This meeting, five years and
+two thousand miles from a parting, seemed the most natural and ordinary
+thing in all the world.  Mr. Ellsworth was of the belief that he
+himself had planned it so far as himself and Dan Anderson were
+concerned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My daughter was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth
+began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up
+here to see about the climate&mdash;lots of folks go West nowadays, you
+know, even in the spring.  I'll warrant she's sick of the trip by now.
+A good climate has to have dust to season it.  One of the mules went
+lame&mdash;thought we would never get here.  And now tell me, where'll she
+stop?"  The personification of Eastern Capital looked about him
+dubiously at the only hotel of Heart's Desire, before which the coach
+had pulled up as a matter of course.  "Any women folks in town,
+anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan
+Andersen's impassive face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was upon the point of saying, Mr. Ellsworth," replied Dan
+Anderson&mdash;and vaguely one felt that his diction was once more that of
+Princeton&mdash;"that my friend here, a prominent member of the bar, will go
+with Miss Ellsworth to the house of a nice little woman, wife of&mdash;er&mdash;a
+cow gentleman of our acquaintance.  That will be best for her.  I'll
+try to take care of you myself, sir, if you like, while the Learned
+Counsel goes with Miss Ellsworth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were introductions and further small talk, and presently Learned
+Counsel found himself climbing up to the seat beside Eve; beside the
+Temptress who, he made no manner of doubt, had come to put an end to
+Paradise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But ah! she was Eve enough for any Eden&mdash;a tall girl, rounded, firm
+formed, with a mass of good brown hair, and a frank gray eye, and a
+regular and smooth forehead.  Her garb was a cool, gray serge, and, a
+miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with
+immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman
+might tell.  A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim.  Her
+hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray.  Her foot, trim and well
+shaped,&mdash;for even a desolate pariah might note so much,&mdash;was shod in no
+ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels,
+all unsuited to gravel and slide-rock, yet exceeding good, as it seemed
+at that time.  The girl raised her eyes, smiling frankly.  There was no
+cold cream traceable.  The first thought of Learned Counsel was that
+her complexion would brown nicely under sunburn; his second thought was
+that he had on overalls,&mdash;a fact which had escaped him for more than
+four years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Eve, new come within Heart's Desire, felt any surprise, or if she
+even experienced any pique at the calm deportment of Dan Anderson, she
+masked it all and put all at ease with a few words spoken in that
+manner of voice which is an excellent thing in woman.  In a sort of
+dream the coach trundled on up the street, to pause for half an instant
+in front of the commercial emporium of Whiteman the Jew.  Whiteman came
+out with his hat above his head, and said, "Velgome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl looked backward down the street as they turned to cross the
+<I>arroyo</I> beyond which stood the house of the Kansas family, where Curly
+lived.  The off mule limped.  "Poor little fellow," she said; "I wanted
+them to stop.  They have no pity&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Learned Counsel to her, "there is no such thing as pity in
+all the world."  She fell silent at this, and looked back once more,
+unconsciously, down the street, as one who would gladly pity, or be
+pitied.  But soon the coach was at Curly's house, and there came out to
+meet it, already forewarned of her guest, the Littlest Girl, wiping her
+hands on her apron, which means Welcome on the frontier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Littlest Girl, uncertain and overawed by her visitor, came forward
+and took a first look.  Then she suddenly held out her arms; and
+Constance Ellsworth, from the East, lonely, perhaps grieved, walked
+straight into the outstretched arms and straight into the heart of the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a Craven Adam</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr.
+Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed.  The window-panes
+were very small, where any still remained.  The interior of the hotel
+consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim
+slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might
+rest if very weary from one cause or another.  The front door was
+always open.  The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but
+utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both
+hotel and bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was in Heart's Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern
+Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined
+circulating medium.  That was all the money there was.  No one could
+be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all
+wealth, as was very well known.  To many this may seem a restricting
+and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars
+is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for
+a whole town to have, as any man of Heart's Desire could have told you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the
+front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place
+devoted to the sale of firearms.  There were many nails driven into
+the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all
+these nails held specimens of weapons.  Excellent weapons they were,
+too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of
+Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends
+bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills,
+none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks.  At
+times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the
+wall at Uncle Jim's hotel.  The visible supply fluctuated somewhat.
+Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move
+up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the
+circulating medium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man.  If a man paid,
+very well.  If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him,
+for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well
+knew.  And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as
+Uncle Jim also knew very well.  There were no printed rules or
+regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel.  There was no hotel register.  There
+were no questions ever asked.  Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his
+duty, was to feed men.  For the rest, he often had to do his own
+cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in
+the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk?  Indeed, there was no
+desk.  The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was
+something never dreamed in Heart's Desire.  Yet one day a sensitive
+young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how,
+down into Heart's Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue
+shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one
+dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time
+he was very hungry.  He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask
+for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim.  The latter
+said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which
+actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed!  "Get
+'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better."  The young man
+"got 'round" the beefsteak.  Perhaps it was the feeling about the
+butter, which of itself was a thing unusual.  At any rate, as he went
+out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door.  This act
+meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer
+existed.  The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle
+Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good.  The
+intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was
+right" was silently and fully evidenced.  That a man would give up his
+gun was proof enough of that.  So this became the custom of the place,
+the unwritten law.  When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the
+three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in,
+handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one
+else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down
+the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air.  It is
+astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can
+be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general
+supply of six-shooters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious
+activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the
+night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were
+hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of
+better days.  The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had
+all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the
+guns.  Temporarily, male Heart's Desire did not exist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to
+display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man
+who&mdash;as the rapid word spread to all&mdash;had come to look into the
+gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up
+Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head
+and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso!  Humiliated,
+Heart's Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan
+Anderson, do the talking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson," said
+Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel.  "Lately organized?"  He
+swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That?  Oh, that's not the arsenal," replied Dan Anderson; "that's the
+clearing-house.  If a man's broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know.
+I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country to you
+right at once, sir.  You see, it's different.  Now, out here, a
+six-shooter is part of a man's clothes.  That's why the fellows stay
+out.  They're ashamed&mdash;don't feel properly dressed, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much law and order, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much law, but plenty of order, and not the least pretence about
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The courts&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No courts at all, or at least within sixty miles.  Why, we haven't
+even a town organization&mdash;not a town officer.  There was never even a
+town-site plat filed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellsworth turned on him suddenly.  "Where's your titles?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We haven't needed any, so far.  Now that you've come, with talk of a
+railroad and all that&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, you know, that's just talk.  I'm not responsible for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you like canned tomatoes," said Dan Anderson, "or, if you
+don't, that you're very fond of beefsteak.  There won't be much else
+till Tom Osby gets back from Las Vegas with a load of freight.  Tom
+Osby's our common carrier.  I hope the new railroad will do as well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellsworth was a gentleman, and a very hungry one, so there was no
+quarrel over the tomatoes, which were Special XXX, nor over the
+beefsteak, which might have been worse.  An hour later he went out on
+the street with his host, whose conduct thus far, he was forced to
+admit, had been irreproachable.  They strolled up the rambling street,
+past many straggling buildings, and at length paused before the little
+building, made of sun-dried brick, and plastered with mud, where Dan
+Anderson had his residence and his law office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll excuse me, Mr. Ellsworth," said that young gentleman, "for
+bringing you here, but the truth is I thought you might be thirsty and
+might get poisoned.  You have to do these things gradually, till you
+get immune.  Now, under my bed, I've got a bottle which never has been
+opened and which ought to be safe.  I don't bother corks a great deal,
+only when we are welcoming distinguished guests."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just a little soon after dinner," demurred Ellsworth, "but,
+ahem!  That dust&mdash;yes, I believe I will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a dignity about Dan Anderson now which left Ellsworth
+distinctly uncomfortable.  The latter felt himself in some fashion at
+a disadvantage before this penniless adventurer, this young man whom
+once he had not cared to have as a regular visitor at his own home
+back in the far-off East.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't mean to tell me, young man," he spoke after a long period
+of silence, "that this is the way you live?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," said Dan Anderson.  "I know I'm extravagant.  I don't
+need a place as good as this, but I always was sort of sensuous, you
+know." Ellsworth looked at him without any comprehension, from him to
+the bed with blankets, and the bare table.  "Come in," said Dan
+Anderson, "and sit down.  Better sit on the chair, I reckon.  One leg
+of the bed is sort of dicky."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So this is the way you live?" repeated Ellsworth to Dan Anderson, who
+was now on his hands and knees and searching under the bed.  "Now,
+about my daughter&mdash;is there any hotel&mdash;are there any women?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three, from Kansas," said Dan Anderson.  "That is, three real ones.
+All the female earth, Mr. Ellsworth, comes from Kansas, same as all
+the baled hay.  Oh, yes, here she is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had been speaking with his voice somewhat muffled under the bed,
+but now emerged, bearing a dusty bottle in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellsworth looked at him a bit keenly; for, after all, he was not a
+bad judge of men.  "How long has that bottle been there?" asked he,
+abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, a couple of years, maybe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you've never opened it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, why should I?  You hadn't come yet.  Of course, I knew you'd be
+along some day.  I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr.
+Ellsworth&mdash;the health of the man who told me not to come around his
+house&mdash;told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable
+company for his&mdash;why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all."  His
+voice was slow, but harder now in quality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth sat on the chair, the bottle in his hand hanging between his
+knees.  He looked at Dan Anderson steadily.  "You've got me guessing
+in a good many ways," he said; "I don't know why you came here&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor how you live, nor what encouragement or prospects you find here.
+For instance, about how much did you make last year in your business?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My law practice?  Oh, you mean down at the county-seat?  There is no
+law court here.  How much did the boys pay me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know it's a heap of money; but I made it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Enough for tobacco money!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir," said Dan Anderson, "more.  I ate frequent.  Why, sir, did you
+ever stop to think that our total circulating medium here is only
+three hundred dollars?  I had almost all of it one time or another.
+Now, not doubting your intentions in the least, did you ever come that
+near to corralling the whole visible supply of cash in your own town?
+Moreover, I am attorney for the men who own the coal-mines.  I'm the
+lawyer for both the gold mills.  We've got one or two mines here, and
+I'm in.  Besides, I've just got the law business from Pitzer Chisum,
+down on the Seven Rivers,  He's got maybe a hundred thousand head of
+cattle.  Now, I'm going to rob Pitzer, because he needs it.   He's got
+money scandalous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellsworth put the bottle down on the floor, and sat up on the
+chair with his hands in his pockets, wondering.  "But why?" he
+demanded sternly, "why?  What are you doing out here?  Why have you
+thrown away your life?  Come&mdash;you're a bright young man, and you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Friend," said Dan Anderson, with a sudden cold quality in his voice,
+"I think that'll about do.  I am no brighter than I was a few years
+ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this is no place to live."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why isn't it?  It takes a man to live here.  Do you reckon you could
+qualify?"  The older man raised his head with a snort, but Dan
+Anderson stood looking at him calmly.  "Now let me tell you one
+thing," said he.  "If you heard of our coal-mines here through me, at
+least I didn't ask you to come out here, and I didn't ask you to bring
+anybody along with you.  I've played fair with you.  You don't come
+here to do me any favor, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well,"&mdash;began the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you think there might be something here, after all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is there here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A very great deal.  There's just as much here as there is anywhere
+else in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ellsworth arose and stepped to the door.  For a moment he stood
+looking out at the twilight.  He turned suddenly to the young man.
+"I'll tell you," said he.  "There's something to you&mdash;I don't know
+what.  Drop all this.  Come on back.  I'll think it over&mdash;I'll give
+you a place in my office."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd give me <I>what</I>?  Did you ever stop to think that you can't
+give me <I>anything</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Surprise sat on his visitor's face.  "<I>Nada</I>!" cried Dan Anderson.
+"Me go back there and work on a salary for you?  Me check my immortal
+soul on your hat-rack?  Me live scared of my life, like all the rest
+of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell?  If I
+should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me
+you once expressed, before you really knew me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what have you got out here?" repeated the other, stupidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the
+mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his
+blue shirt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What made you come?" insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the
+neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know almighty well why I came.  But let that go.  Let's say I
+came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you
+buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley
+if you have luck later.  I'm going to be your kind and loving partner
+in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you.
+You watch me.  I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to work all I
+want to.  When I don't want to, there isn't any living mortal soul
+that's going to crack a whip over me and tell me I've got to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Things seem rather strange," began Mr. Ellsworth.  "You talk as
+though I were obliged to put money into these mines."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you will.  You can't help it.  You never saw a better
+opportunity for investment in all your life.  But now let me tell you
+another thing, which I oughtn't to tell you if I served you right.
+You go slow while you're here.  There is plenty of gold in this
+valley.  There isn't a fellow in this settlement who hasn't got a
+quart glass fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and
+who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like
+yourself.  You're Glad Tidings in this town.  You couldn't walk
+to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys
+would offer you.  You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes.  You
+wouldn't know where you were; and when you came to; you'd own about
+fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the
+variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid.  Now, I
+oughtn't to take care of you.  I don't owe you a thing on earth.  But
+because you brought&mdash;well, because&mdash;anyhow, I'm <I>going</I> to take care
+of you, while you're here, and see that you get a square deal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way, my daughter&mdash;" said Mr. Ellsworth, sitting up uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind," said Dan Anderson, gently.  "Miss Constance is all
+right.  They'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of
+you.  Everybody will be more sociable by about noon to-morrow.  The
+whole town's scared yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see anything very terrible about me," said Mr. Ellsworth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it isn't <I>you</I>," said Dan Anderson, calmly.  "Nobody's afraid of
+<I>you</I>.  It's your daughter&mdash;it's the woman.  Don't you reckon Adam
+was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time
+old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreading fig tree?  I don't
+know that I make myself right plain&mdash;you see, it's sort of funny here.
+We aren't used to women any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, now, my dear sir, you see, my daughter&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know all about her," said Dan Anderson, sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't doubt she thought I was a mere trifler.  She couldn't
+understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until
+he's found the right thing to stick to.  I don't blame her the least
+bit in the world.  She could only see what I <I>wasn't</I> doing.  I knew
+what I was <I>going</I> to do, and I know it now."  There was a gravity
+and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through the
+self-consciousness of the man before him.  Ellsworth looked at him
+intently.  "We'll be here for a day or so," said he, "and meantime, it
+will seem a little strange for my daughter, I suppose&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't need to tell me about anything," said Dan Anderson.  "Of
+course, her coming is a little inopportune.  You see, Mr. Ellsworth,
+the morning stars are inopportune, and the sunrise every day, and the
+dew of heaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth looked at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured
+something about going to look up his daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson.  "But I know the
+way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's,
+I am going over there&mdash;alone.  Wait till I get my coat.  I don't wear
+it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the
+evening here, the same as they do in the States."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets,
+crossed the <I>arroyo</I> alone, he met Curly coming the other way.
+Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness
+of the importance of his position in society at the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new
+girl is the absolute limit.  She dropped in just like we'd been
+expectin' her.  I was some scared; but <I>she's</I> just <I>folks</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson hardly heard him.  He passed on into the house, where he
+had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place.
+It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl.  "I was
+just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and
+everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to
+our city park.  Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and
+light."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the
+half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she
+rose and joined him.  All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening
+fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without
+possible resistance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A short distance up the <I>arroyo</I>, toward the old abandoned stamp
+mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the
+Patos spring, far up on the mountain side.  At the end of this pipe,
+where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas
+had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of
+her own.  Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose
+bush, now blossomless.  Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and
+handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed
+your stroll along the boulevard.  I hope, also, that the entertainment
+of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at
+them.  These people are genuine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not apologizing," he said quickly; "there are just a few things a
+fellow learns out here.  One is not to apologize; and another is not
+to beg.  Sit down."  There were two white boulders beside which the
+trickle of water rippled.  Obeying him, she seated herself.  Presently
+Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat
+in silence.  The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half
+darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old
+Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of
+Heart's Desire.  The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified
+into a strange, half-ghostly beauty.  The earth has few scenes more
+beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight.  These two sat and gazed
+for a time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself
+than to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the
+mountain-rimmed horizon.  "Yes, it's mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful.  Some time there'll be a
+man who'll learn something in such a place as this.  I don't know but
+I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The years!" she whispered to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems forever," said he.  "The time when a fellow's taking his
+medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life
+of five years ago&mdash;almost, except a part of it.  It's been another
+world here.  Nothing matters much, does it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could
+not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's
+Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.
+"Look!  It is unspeakable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her face instead.  "I've seen you right here," he said,
+"right at this very place, a thousand times.  It's Eden.  It's the
+Garden.  It's the Beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes&mdash;"  Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control.
+"It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete.
+Constance&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too
+often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found
+moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life.
+Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not
+served to banish it.  She had heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes
+when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered.  Now, beneath a
+limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world&mdash;in
+this Eden which they two alone occupied&mdash;she heard him, the man whom
+in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in very person, and
+speaking that very thought which was in her own heart that hour.  Her
+bosom rose tumultuously, her throat fluttered.  Instinctively she
+would have fled, but a hand on her shoulder pressed her back as she
+would have arisen, and she obeyed&mdash;as she had always obeyed him&mdash;as
+she always would.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Paradise unfinished&mdash;" he whispered, his face close to hers.  "You
+know what it is that's missing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah! could not a woman also know the longing, the vacancy, the solitude
+of an Eden incomplete!  She turned to him trembling, her lips half
+open, as though to welcome a long-hoped-for draught of happiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alas! it was not happiness, but misery that came; for Constance
+Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are
+withheld from none.  There was a sound of a distant shout&mdash;the chance
+call of some drunken reveller&mdash;far down the street, a tawdry,
+unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an
+illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just.
+Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire.
+It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm,
+another mental world.  He started, and half shivered as his hand
+dropped to his side.  His face showed haggard even in the moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God! what am I saying?" he murmured to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then presently he drew himself up, smiling bitterly.  "Some prominent
+citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodded toward
+the street.  "Don't you think you'd like Heart's Desire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The moment of Eve&mdash;the woman's moment&mdash;the instant for her happiness
+was past and gone!  The light of the moon lay ghostly over all the
+world, but there was no radiance, no joy nor comfort in it now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl herself was silent.  She sat looking out over the street
+below, instinctively following Dan Anderson's gaze.  Voices came to
+them, clamorous, strident, coarse.  There lay revealed all that was
+crude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of
+Heart's Desire.  It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in
+which he had lived.  For a woman&mdash;for her&mdash;for this sweet girl of a
+gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous.  "Be
+just!  Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he
+saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude
+which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His face was averted as he walked beside her.  There was no word that
+he could say.  Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not
+know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood
+and in some part forgave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at
+length from the door of Curly's house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Choking, he left her.  As he stumbled blindly back, over the
+<I>arroyo</I>, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a
+shooting star.  Dully he watched it, and for him it was the flaming
+sword barring the gates of Eden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hours later&mdash;for sleep was not for him&mdash;Dan Anderson stood waiting for
+the sun to rise over old Carrizo.  Far off, along the pathway of the
+morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the
+combat, and the grovelling.  "No, not for me; not there!" he said,
+conviction coming to him once more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned then and glanced down the single street of Heart's Desire, a
+street as straggling and purposeless as his own misdirected life&mdash;a
+wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion.
+Longer he looked, and stronger the conviction grew.  "No, no," he
+said, clenching his hand; "not here for her&mdash;not here!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy Legs</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Time wore on at Heart's Desire, uncalendared and unclocked.  The sun
+rose, passed through a sky impenetrably blue, and sank behind Baxter
+Peak at evening.  These were the main events of the day.  All men had
+apparently long ago forgotten the departure of the stage-coach that had
+borne away at one voyaging both Eve and Eastern Capital.  Eve had gone
+forever, as she supposed, although Capital secretly knew full well that
+it, at least, was coming back again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The population shifted and changed, coming and going, as was the wont
+of the land, but none questioned the man booted and spurred who rode
+out of town or who came into town.  Of late, however, certain booted
+and bearded men wandered afoot over the mountain sides, doing strange
+things with strange instruments.  A railroad was about to cross the
+country somewhere.  Grave and moody, Heart's Desire sat in the sun, and
+for two months did not mention the subject which weighed upon its mind.
+Curly broke the silence one morning at a plebiscite of four men who
+gathered to bask near Whiteman's corral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hit the trail of them surveyors," said he, "other side of Lone
+Mountain, day before yestiday.  They've got a line of pegs drove in the
+ground.  Looks like they was afraid their old railroad was goin' to git
+lost from 'em, unless they picketed it out right strong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Reproachful eyes were turned on Curly, but he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's goin' to run right between Carrizoso ranch and the mouth of our
+caņon," said he.  "You'll have to cross it every time you come to town,
+McKinney.  When she gits to runnin' right free and general, there'll be
+a double row of cow corpses from here to Santa Rosa.  What this here
+new railroad is a-goin' to do to your English stockholders, Mac, is a
+deep and abidin' plenty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+McKinney made no reply, but looked stolidly out across the valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Them fellers come up into town for tobacco, Doc." Curly threw out the
+suggestion cheerfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tobacco ain't <I>drugs</I>," said Doc Tomlinson, annoyed.  He was
+sensitive about allusions to his stock of drugs, which had been
+imported some years before, and under a misapprehension as to Heart's
+Desire's future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We might shoot up the surveyors," said Curly, tentatively.  But Dan
+Anderson shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the worst of it," he answered, "We might shoot any one of us
+here, and the world wouldn't care.  But if we shot even a leg off one
+of the least of these, them States folks would never rest content.  For
+me, I'm goin' in with the railroad.  Looks like I'd have to be
+corporation counsel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I reckon we won't have to drive our cows quite so far to
+market," apologized McKinney, striving to see the silver lining.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, drop it," snapped Doc Tomlinson.  "I might as well say I could get
+in my drugs easier.  Cows can walk; and as for importin' things,
+everybody knows that Tom Osby can haul in everything that's needed in
+this valley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The members of the plebiscite fell silent for a time, willing to wait
+for Tom Osby's arrival, whenever that might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, we ain't downtrod none in this country," finally began Doc
+Tomlinson, who had made political speeches in Kansas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is <I>any</I>body?" asked Curly, who had never lived anywhere but on the
+free range.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've had three squares a day," said McKinney.  "This country's just
+as good as the States."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"States!" cried Dan Anderson.  "We've got a state of our own, or did
+have, right here, the Free State of Heart's Desire.  But it ain't good
+enough for us.  We want to hitch our little wagon to the star of
+progress.  I reckon we oughtn't to holler if the star travels some
+fast.  It was ours, the Free State of Heart's Desire!  And we&mdash;well&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Curly, ruminatingly, "I don't see as ole Carrizo is
+frettin' any about these here things."  He glanced up at the big
+mountain whose shadow lay athwart the valley.  Dan Anderson gazed
+thither as well.  McKinney sat looking quietly up the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No use frettin' about it, anyhow," said he, in his matter-of-fact way.
+"And as to Tom Osby, fellers, I'll bet a plug of tobacco that's him
+pullin' in at the head of town right now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just like I said," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "He's good enough
+railroad for any one, and he's safe!  I wonder what did he bring this
+time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What Tom Osby brought this time, besides sundry merchandise for
+Whiteman the Jew, was a parrot and a pair of twins.  Neither of these
+specialties had ever before been seen in Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twins!" exclaimed Dan Anderson, when the facts were divulged, "and a
+parrot!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby, after making known the full nature of his cargo, discharged
+divers boxes, bales, and other packages at the store of Whiteman the
+Jew.  The parrot was not disposed to wait for the close of these
+formalities.  From under the white cover of the wagon there came sounds
+of profane speech.  Tom Osby paused and filled his pipe.  "Him?" said
+he, jerking his head toward the cover, as he scratched a match on the
+side of the wagon seat.  "He's a shore peach.  Talked to me all the way
+from Vegas down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quork!" said the parrot.  "Look out!  Look out!  Brrrrrrrr&mdash;awk&mdash;awk!
+Quork!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told you so," said Tom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dang it, I'm tired!" continued the bird.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," remarked Dan Anderson, "seems to be a cultivated gentleman.
+But how about the twins?  Where are they?  And might we&mdash;er&mdash;ask whose
+are they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Them?" said Tom.  "Why, they're for Curly.  They're asleep down under
+the seat here.  Now, between the parrot and them twins, my trip down
+ain't been any lonesome to speak of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All eyes were turned on Curly, the newly wedded cow puncher, who
+blushed a bright brick red to the roots of his hair.  "Wh&mdash;where did
+they come from?" stammered he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I presume, Curly," said Dan Anderson, gravely, "like enough they came
+from somewhere over on the Brazos, your earlier home.  Why didn't you
+tell us you were a married man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't&mdash;I never was!" cried Curly, hotly.  "I never did have no twins
+nowhere.  Where'd you git 'em, Tom?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The freighter threw his leg across the seat.  "Oh, they're yours all
+right, I reckon, Curly," said he.  "Mother's dead.  No relations.  They
+come from Kansas, where all the twins comes from.  I found 'em waitin'
+up there in Vegas, billed through to you.  Both dead broke, both plumb
+happy, and airy one of 'em worth its weight in gold.  Its name is
+Susabella and Aryann, or somethin' like that.  Shall I wake it up?
+It's both alike."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, why, my woman's folks," began Curly, "up there in Kansas&mdash;I
+reckon maybe <I>that's</I> how it happened!  She had a sister done married
+a Baptis' preacher, onct.  Say, now, I bet a horse that's right how
+this here happened.  Say, they was so pore they didn't have enough to
+eat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Letter come with 'em," said Tom, taking out a handful of tobacco from
+his pocket with the missive.  "I reckon, that explains it, I wouldn't
+take a thousand dollars for 'em if they was mine.  Here, you kids, get
+out of there and come and see the nice gentlemen.  Here they are,
+fellers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He haled forth from beneath the wagon cover two solemn-eyed and sleepy
+little girls, perhaps five years of age, and of so close a personal
+resemblance to each other as impressed all as uncanny.  The four men
+stepped to the wagon side, and in silence gazed at the curly-headed
+pair, who looked back, equally silent, upon the strange group
+confronting them.  At length the twins buried their faces in Tom Osby's
+overalls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, friend," said Tom Osby to Curly, with asperity, "if you
+don't want these here twins, why, I'll take 'em off your hands mighty
+damn quick.  They're corral broke and right well gentled now, half good
+stock anyway, and is due to be right free steppers.  If you don't want
+'em, they're mine for the board bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Curly stepped up and laid an awkward hand on the head of each of
+the twins.  "Fellers," said he, "I ain't got a whole lot of experience
+in this here twin game, but this goes.  These here twins is mine.  This
+is some sudden, but I expect it'll tickle the little woman about half
+to death.  I reckon I can get enough for 'em all to eat, somehow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+McKinney looked at him with anger in his gaze.  "I told you, Curly," he
+reminded the cow puncher with undue emphasis, "that you was drawin' ten
+extry from day before yestiday.  I reckon the stockholders can stand
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That'll make it about break even," Curly answered simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, "if either of them twins should need any
+drugs&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drugs!" snorted Dan Anderson.  "What would they want with drugs?
+After they've run around in here for two weeks, you couldn't kill 'em
+with an axe.  If the coyotes don't catch 'em, there's nothing else can
+happen to 'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll give you about eight dollars for the green canary, Tom," said Doc
+Tomlinson.  "I want to hang him in my store."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I want to hang him in my wagon," objected Tom Osby.  "He's
+company.  You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town."  His
+voice was plaintive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The court rules," observed Dan Anderson, judicially, "that the parrot
+goes with the twins."  And it was finally so decided by the referendum.
+Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common
+carrier, drove off with Curly across the <I>arroyo</I> in search of a new
+mother for the twins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Littlest Girl, Curly's wife, read the letter which Tom offered.
+Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the
+Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood
+at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby's
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Babies!" cried she.  "You poor little babies!  Oh!"  And so she
+gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly
+head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter
+on his wagon seat.  Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across
+the <I>arroyo</I>.  Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart's Desire
+became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within a few weeks the parrot and the twins had so firmly established
+themselves in the social system of the place as to become matters of
+regular conversation.  Curly never appeared at the forum of Whiteman's
+corral without finding himself the recipient of many queries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, them twins," he replied one day, "they're in full charge of the
+<I>rodeo</I>.  They've got me and the woman hobbled, hitched, and
+side-lined for keeps.  Dead heat between them and Bill, the parrot.
+They're in on all the plays together.  Wherever they go, he's right
+after 'em, and he night-and-day-herds 'em closer'n a Mexican shepherd
+dog does a bunch of sheep.  Now, I blew in last night, intoe their
+room, and there was old Bill, settin' on the foot of the bed, watchin'
+of 'em, them fast asleep.  'Too late now,' says he to me.  'Too late.
+All over now!' I didn't know what he meant till I looked under the
+bedclothes; and there was a pan full of ginger cakes the woman had made
+for the fam'ly.  You needn't tell me a parrot can't think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would seem," said Dan Anderson, meditatively, "that we may report
+progress in civilization."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But say, fellers," remarked Curly, taking off his hat and scratching
+his head perplexedly, "sometimes I wish Bill was a chicken hawk instead
+of a talker.  There is rats, or mice, or something, got into this
+valley at last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you want any drugs?" asked Doc Tomlinson, suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not yet," Curly shook his head.  "Never did see airy rat or mouse
+round here, but still, things is happenin' that looks right strange.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's this-a-way, fellers," he continued, "&mdash;set down here and let me
+tell you."  So they all sat down and leaned back against the fence of
+Whiteman's corral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Last Christmas," Curly began at the beginning, "why, you see, my girl,
+she got a Christmas present from some of her folks back in Kansas, in
+the States.  It was a pair of candy legs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that, Curly?" said Dan Anderson, half sitting up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Legs," said Curly, "made out of candy, about so long, or maybe a
+little longer.  Red, and white, and blue&mdash;all made out of candy, you
+know.  Shoes on the feet, buckles on the shoes, and heels.  Sort of
+frill around on top.  The feller that made them things could shore do
+candy a-plenty.  They was too pretty to eat up, so the little woman,
+she done put 'em in the parlor,&mdash;on the table like, in the middle of
+the floor; tied 'em together with a blue ribbon and left 'em there.
+Now, you all know right well that's the only pair of candy legs in
+Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's legitimate distinction, Curly," Dan Anderson decided.  "It
+entitles your family to social prominence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we wasn't stuck up none over that," laughed Curly, modestly, "but
+we always felt kind of comfortable, thinkin' them there legs was right
+there on the parlor table in the other room.  You can't help feelin'
+good to have some little ornyment like that around the place, you know,
+special if there's women around.  But now, fellers, what I was goin' to
+say is, there's mice, or rats, got in on this range some how, and
+they&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why didn't you put 'em in a box?" asked McKinney, severely.  "You
+ain't got sense enough to know the difference between a hair rope and a
+can of California apricots."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put 'em in a box?" cried Curly.  "Why?  Them was <I>ornyments</I>!  Now
+you ain't got a ornyment on your whole place, except a horned toad and
+four tarantulas in a teacup.  Now a real ornyment is somethin' you put
+on the parlor table, man, and show it free and open.  It's sort of
+sacred like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not for rats," said McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'd better keep your eye on that parrot," warned Doc Tomlinson.
+"About to-morrow, you tell us what you find out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But on the morrow the mystery remained unsolved.  "One heel's plumb
+gone," said Curly, sighing.  "And they've begun on the toe of the other
+foot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bill, the parrot, remained under increasing suspicion.  "He's got a
+wall eye," said McKinney, "and I never seen a wall eye in a man, woman,
+or mustang, that it didn't mean bad.  This here bird ain't no Hereford,
+nor yet a short-horn.  He's a dogy that ain't bred right, and he ain't
+due to act right."  All Curly could do was to shake his head,
+unpersuaded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meantime, there went on in the little cabin across the <I>arroyo</I>, a
+reproduction of an old, old drama.  Should we, after all, criticise
+these two descendants of the first sweet human woman of the world?
+Consider; to their young and inexperienced eyes appealed all the
+fascinations of this august but tempting object, new, strange,
+appealing.  For a time their hearts were strong, upon their souls
+rested the ancient mandate of denial.  They gazed, short breathed, in
+awe, upon this radiantly bestriped, unspeakably fascinating, wholly and
+resplendently pulchritudinous creation.  They must have known that it
+was a part of the family pride, a part of the parlor&mdash;a part, indeed,
+of the intermingled fabric of the civilization of Heart's Desire!  And
+yet&mdash;alas!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One morning the twins foregathered in the parlor.  The hour of
+temptation, as is always the case, found all things well ordered for
+the success of evil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everybody's gone," whispered Suzanne.  "There ain't nobody here at
+all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only Bill," said Arabella, looking at the parrot, which regarded them
+with a badly bored aspect.  "I wonder if he'd tell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dang it all!" remarked Bill; "I'm tired!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's awful," remarked Arabella.  "He swears.  Folks that swears goes
+to the bad place.  Besides, Bill wouldn't tell, would you, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'll go to sleep," said Suzanne.  "Besides, we ain't goin' to bite
+off only just a little <I>bit</I> of a <I>bite</I>!  Nobody'll never notice it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twofold Eve edged up to the centre table.  "You first," said Arabella.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You first," insisted Arabella.  "I'm afraid.  Bill, he's lookin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't afraid," Suzanne asserted boldly, and stretched out her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was the time when the first heel disappeared.  Even as Suzanne's
+white teeth closed upon it, the parrot gave a vast screech of
+disapproval.  "Quork!" cried he.  "Look out!  Look out!"  At which
+warning both the twins fled precipitately underneath the bed; whence
+presently their heads peered out, with wide and frightened eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't have my bite," whimpered Arabella.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's only Bill!"  Suzanne was disgusted with herself for running.
+"Come on.  Who's afraid?"  Arabella chose the toe of the other foot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus it was that temptation, at first insidious, at length
+irresistible, had its way.  The lustre paled and dimmed on one gaudily
+bepainted leg.  The remaining heel disappeared.  A slight nick became
+visible on the cap of the right knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'll be darned!" said Curly, scratching his head, as he observed
+these developments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So'll I," remarked Bill, in frank friendship.  "Ha!  Ha!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly looked at him pugnaciously for a moment.  "For one cent, Bill,"
+said he, "I'd wring your cussed green neck for you.  I'll bet a hundred
+you're the feller that's been a-doin' all this devilment.  Here
+you,&mdash;Susy&mdash;Airey,&mdash;have you seen Bill a-eatin' the ornyment?"  Both
+the young ladies solemnly and truthfully declared that they had never
+noticed any such thing; and pointed out that parrots, in their belief,
+did not eat candy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further.
+Only Bill was present when Arabella broke out into tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter?" asked stout-hearted Suzanne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, we&mdash;we&mdash;we&mdash;can't eat it but <I>once</I>," mourned Arabella.
+"Now&mdash;now&mdash;now it's most <I>gone</I>!  OO&mdash;oo&mdash;oo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's good," said Suzanne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suzanne evaded this question.  "How can we <I>help</I> it, when it looks so
+pretty, and tastes so good?  They ought to put 'em in a <I>box</I>.  I
+c-c-can't help it!"  And now tears broke from her eyes also.  They
+leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept.  But even as
+they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table,
+reached out toward the disfigured remnant.  A week later the last bite
+was taken.  The parlor table was bare and vacant.  Heart's Desire, in
+all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of
+Whiteman's corral.  "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he,
+gloomily.  "The finish ain't far off.  You all come on over across the
+<I>arroyo</I> with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing
+happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and
+Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the <I>arroyo</I>.  They found
+Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in aprons full of piņon
+chips for the kitchen stove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one
+in Heart's Desire.  The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of
+the other room was swept clean, spick and span.  A chair stood exactly
+against the wall.  The parlor table&mdash;ah, appalling spectacle! the
+parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any
+sort whatever!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!"  His hand instinctively
+reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the
+parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All over now!" remarked Bill.  "All over!  Too late!  Quork!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person.  We
+got to look in his teeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson.  "He hasn't got any teeth."  The
+entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon
+them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his
+honor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson, his hands in his pockets, turned and strolled alone into
+the other room, and thence out of the door into the sunlight, where the
+twins were still continuing their unwonted industry at the chip pile.
+He stood and looked at them, saying no word, but with a certain smile
+on his face.  A corner of each apron fell down, spilling the chips upon
+the ground.  The other hand of each twin was raised as though to wipe a
+furtive tear.  Dan Andersen put out his arms to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come here, little women," he said softly, and took them in his arms.
+One chubby face rested against each side of his own.  His long arms
+tightened around them protectingly.  Tears now began to wet his cheeks,
+falling from the eyes of the twins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you won't tell?" whispered Suzanne, in his right ear, and
+Arabella begged as much upon the left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Dan Anderson, hugging them the tighter, "I won't tell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's gone!" said Suzanne, vaguely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's gone."  He turned at the sound of
+voices.  Curly appeared at the door, carrying in his hand a limp,
+bedraggled figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "I take to be the remains of our late friend
+Bill, the parrot.  What made you, Curly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Curly, defensively, as he held the body of Bill suspended
+by the head between two fingers, "I was lookin' for his teeth, to see
+if he had any candy in 'em, and he bit my finger nigh about off.  So I
+just wrung his neck.  Do you reckon he'd be good fried?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'd like enough be tolerable tough," said McKinney.  "Them parrots
+gets shore old."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ought to have some drugs to tan his hide," Doc Tomlinson
+volunteered hopefully.  "It'd be right stylish on a hat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson gazed at Curly with reproach in his eyes.  "Now, I just
+wrung his neck," repeated the latter, protesting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "and you've wrung the wrong neck.  Bill was
+innocent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then who done et the legs?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "brings me again to the position which I
+enunciated this morning.  In these modern days of engineers, mining
+companies, parrots, and twins, the structure of our civilization is so
+complex as to require the services of a highly intelligent corporation
+counsel.  You ask who ate the candy ornament, representation, or image
+formerly existent on your premises.  I reply that in all likelihood it
+was done by a corporation; but these matters must appear in court at a
+later time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said McKinney, "it looks like the joke was on us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson smiled gravely.  "In the opinion of myself and the
+consolidation which I represent," said he, and he hugged the twins, who
+looked down frightened from his arms, "the joke is on Bill, the
+prisoner at the bar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The group would have separated, had it not been for a sudden
+exclamation from Curly.  "Ouch!" cried that worthy, and cast from him
+the body of Bill.  supposedly defunct.  "He bit me again, blame him!"
+said Curly, sucking his thumb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he bit you for true," said McKinney, who was of a practical turn of
+mind, "like enough he ain't been dead at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Corroboration was not lacking.  The prisoner at the bar, thrown
+violently upon the ground, now sat up, half leaning against a pinon
+log, and contemplated those present with a cynical and unfriendly gray
+eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, regarding him, "you get him a few drugs, and
+he'll be just as good as new, right soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All I got to say," grumbled Curly, "is, for a thing that ain't got no
+teeth, and that's dead, both, he can bite a leetle the hardest of
+anything I ever did see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet it is strange," remarked Dan Anderson, "that the innocent
+bystander should sit up and take notice, after all.  How are you
+feeling, friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This to Bill, who was now faintly fanning a wing and ruffling up his
+yellow crest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm mighty tired," said Bill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't blame you," remarked Dan Anderson, cheerfully, turning to put
+down Suzanne and Arabella safe within the door, "but as corporation
+counsel I am bound to protect the interests of my clients.  Run, you
+kids!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As to you, Curly," he continued, "you represent, in your ignorance,
+ourselves and all Heart's Desire.  We have intrusted to us a candy
+palladium of liberty, which, being interpreted, means a man's chance to
+be a grown man, with whiskers, in a free state of Heart's Desire.  What
+do we do then?  Ask in a railroad corporation, and shut our eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a corporation," said Curly, meditatively, "can be a shore cheerful
+performer."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and other Pastimes</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot.  Hurry up," said McKinney, who was
+nervous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former.  "This here croquet is
+a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin'
+to be hurried none."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson.
+"Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here
+balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace
+to civilization."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Pronto</I>!  <I>Pronto</I>!  Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch
+on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was
+probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and
+Rio Grande rivers.  There were certain features of the contest in
+question which were perhaps not usual.  Indeed, I do not recall ever to
+have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high
+contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls
+and blue shirts.  But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed,
+with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly
+between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the
+other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for
+arguments of counsel.  Curly, you are a disgrace.  You and McKinney
+ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of
+savvy.  Can't you hit that stake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly.  "I
+ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me.
+If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over
+Carrizy Mountain that last carrom.  You watch me when onct I get the
+hang of this thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney.  "A cow puncher
+ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly.  "Now you change
+around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you
+to a finish.  Bet you three <I>pesos</I>.  Of course, I can't play this
+thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot.  I wonder what my mammy'd
+say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little
+wooden tack hammer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an
+advertisement," said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flushing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson.  "I didn't figure on what
+it might do to our mortality tables.  You fellows can't play the game
+wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns
+on.  Here, all of you, come over here.  The umpire decides that you've
+got to check your guns during the game.  I don't mind bein' umpire in
+the ancient and honorable game of croquet, but I ain't goin' to assume
+no unpaid obligations as coroner."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-126"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-126.jpg" ALT="&quot;'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game.'&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="336" HEIGHT="405">
+<H5>
+[Illustration: "'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game.'"]
+</H5>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+With some protests all those engaged handed their belts to Dan
+Anderson, who casually flung them over a projecting cedar limb of the
+fence.  "For shame!  Curly," said he.  "Talk about tenderfeet!  Here
+you are, wearin' a pearl handle on your gun, just like a cheap Nebraska
+sheepherder with social ambitions.  I thought you was a real cowman.
+The court fines you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It ain't my fault," said Curly, blushing.  "The girl&mdash;the little
+woman&mdash;that's my wife&mdash;she done that last Christmas.  She allowed it
+was fine&mdash;and it goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and put enough money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet
+set for the family.  Ain't that awful!  All this comes of takin' a
+daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns.
+We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down in
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so," said McKinney, scratching his head.  "Times is changin'.
+That reminds me, I ordered a new suit of clothes by mail from
+Philadelphy, and they ought to be just about due when Tom Osby comes
+down; and that ought to be to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so," assented Doc Tomlinson.  "He's got a little bill of goods
+for me, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, why, oh, why this profligacy, Doc?" said Dan Anderson.  "Didn't
+you order two pounds of alum the last trip Tom made?  What do you want
+of so many drugs, anyhow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, fellers," said Curly.  "Listen a minute!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly's ears had detected the rattle of distant wagon wheels.  "That's
+Tom comin' now," said he.  "He's a heap more regular than the Socorro
+stage.  That's him, because I can hear him singin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom, he's stuck on music," said McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle
+coming down the caņon; and presently there was borne to our ears the
+sound of Tom Osby's voice in his favorite melody:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+  "I never <I>lo-o-oved</I> a fo-o-o-o-nd ga-a-a-z-elle!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He proclaimed this loudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We knew that Tom would drive up to Whiteman's store, hence we waited
+for him near the corral fence.  As he approached and observed our
+occupation he arrested his salutations and gazed for a moment in silent
+meditation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prithee, sweet sirs," said he, at length, "what in blazes you doin'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These gentlemen," said Dan Anderson from the fence, "are engaged in
+showin' the endurin' quality of the Anglo-Saxon temperament.  Wherever
+the Saxon goes he sets up his own peculiar institutions.  What!  Shall
+New Mexico be behind New York, or New England?  This croquet set cost
+eighteen dollars to get here from Chicago.  Get down, Tom, you're in on
+the game."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Tom picked up his reins and clucked to his team.  "Excuse <I>me</I>,
+fellers," said he.  "That there looks too frisky for me.  I got to
+think of my business reputation."  He passed on up the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter with Tom?" asked Curly.  "Seems like he wasn't
+feelin' right cheerful, some way."  Dan Anderson gazed after the
+teamster pensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom," said he.  "Let's
+go find out what it is, fellows."  He disengaged the respective
+six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly
+clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman's commercial emporium, where Tom
+Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon.
+This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up
+to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was
+his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers's restaurant, but to
+his own adobe down the <I>arroyo</I>.  We looked at each other in silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something on his mind," said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't bring my clothes," said McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor my drugs," said Doc Tomlinson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet," said Curly, who was observant, "he kep' one box in the
+wagon.  Couldn't see the brand, but she's there all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, "you are appointed a committee of one to
+follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom
+Osby's adobe.  The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the
+wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under
+the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters.  He then began to
+search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was
+attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not
+determine.  With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another
+at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom
+Osby's team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher
+can command on foot.  When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled
+in a frown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fellers," said he.  "I didn't think it of him!  This here ain't right.
+Tom Osby's got a baby in there, and he's squeezin' the life out of it.
+Listen!  Come on now.  Do you hear that?  How's that?  Why, I tell
+you&mdash;why, dang <I>me</I> if it ain't <I>singin'</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody,
+thin, quavering, distant, weird.  As it rose upon the hot afternoon air
+it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible.  The spine of
+each man crawled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who
+maintained his self-possession.  He smiled gently.  "Now," said he, "we
+certainly are fixed; Heart's Desire ain't benighted any after this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter with you?" Curly questioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor cow puncher," replied Dan Anderson, "I have to do the thinkin'
+for you, and I ain't paid for it.  Who, if not the Learned Counsel on
+my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this
+community?  Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city?
+Who put up the electric lightin' and heatin' plant, and installed the
+forty-eight miles of continuous trolley track all under one transfer
+system?  Who built the courthouse and the red brick schoolhouse, with
+nine school-teachers fresh from Connecticut?  Who planned the new
+depot?  Who got a new leather lounge for the managin' editor of our
+daily newspaper?  Who built the three new smelters?  Who filled our
+busy streets each evenin' with throngs of happy-faced laborers pacin'
+home at night after four hours' pleasant work each day in our elegantly
+upholstered quartz mines?  Was it you, Curly, who made these different
+and several <I>pasears</I> in progress?  Was it you, Doc, you benighted
+stray from the short-grass Kansas plains, where they can't raise Kafir
+corn?  Was it you, McKinney, you sour-dispositioned consumer of canned
+peas?  Nay, nay.  It was myself and my learned brother.  You ought to
+send us both to Congress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We gazed up the long, silent street of Heart's Desire, asleep in the
+all-satisfying sun, and it almost seemed to us that we could indeed see
+all these things that he had named.  The spell was broken by a renewal
+of the thin, high voice of this mysterious Thing in Tom Osby's house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now," resumed Dan Anderson, "as I remarked, havin' turned our
+hands to the stable things of life, and havin' builded well the
+structure of an endurin', permanent society, there remained for us no
+need save for the softenin' and refinin' touch of a higher culture.  We
+lacked nothing but Art.  Now, here she is!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What you're listenin' to, my countrymen, is music.  It ain't a baby,
+Curly.  Music, heavenly maid, is young in Heart's Desire, but it ain't
+any baby that you're listenin' to.  I told Tom Osby myself to look into
+the phonograph business some time if he got a chance.  Gentlemen, I now
+bid you follow me, to greet Art upon its arrival in our midst.  I must
+confess that Tom Osby is actin' like a blamed swine over this thing,
+tryin' to keep it all to himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The phonograph inside the adobe switched from one tune to another.
+"Don't that sound like the Plaza Major in old Chihuahua by moonlight?"
+cried McKinney, as a swinging band march came squealing out through the
+door.  "That's a piece by a Mexican band.  Can't you hear the
+choo-choo, and the wee-wee, and the bum-bum?  They're all there, sure's
+you're born!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If she plays 'La Paloma,' or that 'Golondrina' thing, I'm goin' to
+shoot," threatened Curly.  "I've done danced to them things at more'n a
+thousand <I>bailes</I> here and in Texas, and if this is Art, she's got to
+do different."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," Dan Anderson suggested, "let us go in and watch Tom Osby
+gettin' his savage breast soothed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby started as he saw shadows on the floor; but it was too late.
+He was discovered sitting on the bed, in rapt attention to the machine
+industriously grinding away upon the table.  Dan Anderson, with great
+gravity, took up a collection of four pins from each of the newcomers
+and handed them to Tom.  "No bent ones," said he.  "It's a good show;
+but, tell us, what are you doin'?  This is worse than croquet.  And we
+asked you in on our game, too.  Ain't you playin' it just a little bit
+lonesome this way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom frowned in perturbation.  "Well, I was goin' to spring her on you
+about to-night, up at the Lone Star," said he; "but I couldn't wait.
+Ain't she a yaller flower?  Say, I played her every night from Vegas
+down for five nights&mdash;Pecos Crossin', Salt Wells, Maxwell's, Hocradle
+Caņon, Jack's Peak&mdash;all the way.  After I'd get my horses hobbled out
+and get my bed made down, I'd set her up on the front seat and turn her
+loose.  Coyotes&mdash;you'd ought to heard 'em!  When you wind her up plumb
+tight and turn the horn the right direction, you can hear her about a
+mile."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "must have been a gladsome journey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For sure," said Tom Osby.  "Look at the reecords&mdash;whole box of 'em.
+Some of the stylishest singers in the business are in here.  Some of
+'em's Dago, I reckon.  Here's one, 'Ah, no Ginger.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That, probably," said Dan Anderson, "is 'Ah, non Giunge.'  Yes, it's
+Dago, but not bad for a lady with a four-story voice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here's another," said Tom; "'Down Mobile.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that one," said Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see it," said the impresario in charge.  "Ah, as I thought;
+it's 'La Donna e Mobile.'  This, bein' translated, means that any lady
+can change her mind occasionally, whether she comes from Mobile or not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's no dream," said Curly.  "Onct on the Brazos&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, Curly.  Just feed that 'Donna' into the machine, Tom, and
+let's hear how it sounds once more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so Tom Osby, proud in his new possession, played for his audience,
+there in the adobe by the <I>arroyo</I>; played all his records, or nearly
+all; played them over and over again.  It was nearly night when we left
+the place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me," said Dan Anderson to me, with a motion as though adjusting
+a cravat upon my neck, "but your white tie is slipping around under
+your ear again."  And as we walked, I was sure that I saw an opera hat
+under his arm, though sober reason convinced me that we both were
+wearing overalls, and not evening clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But did you notice," said Curly, after a while, "Tom, he's holdin' out
+on us.  That there music, it's all tangled up in my hair."  He removed
+his hat and ran a questioning hand through the matted tangle on his
+curly front.  "But," he resumed, "there was one piece he didn't play.
+I seen him slip it under the blankets on the bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could he!" said Dan Anderson.  But memories sufficient came
+trooping upon him to cause him to forget.  He fell to whistling "La
+Donna e Mobile" dreamily.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The shadows of night had fallen when at length Tom Osby crept
+stealthily to his door and looked around.  The street seemed deserted
+and silent, as usual.  Tom Osby stepped to the side of the bed and
+withdrew from under the blankets the bit of gutta-percha which Curly
+had noticed him conceal.  He adjusted the record in the machine and
+sprung the catch.  Then he sat and listened, intent, absorbed,
+hearkening to the wonderful voice of one of the world's great
+contraltos.  It was an old, old melody she sang,&mdash;the song of "Annie
+Laurie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby played it over again.  He sat and listened, as he had, night
+after night, in the moonlight on the long trail from Las Vegas down.
+The face of a strong and self-repressed man is difficult to read.  It
+does not change lightly under any passing emotion.  Tom Osby's face
+perhaps looked even harder than usual, as he sat there listening, his
+unlit pipe clenched hard between his hands.  Truant to his trusts,
+forgetful of the box of candy which regularly he brought down from
+Vegas to the Littlest Girl, Curly's wife; forgetful of many messages,
+commercial and social,&mdash;forgetful even of us, his sworn cronies,&mdash;Tom
+Osby sat and listened to a voice which sang of a Face that was the
+Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-136"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-136.jpg" ALT="&quot;A voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and
+of a Dark blue Eye.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="442" HEIGHT="333">
+<H5>
+[Illustration: "A voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye."]
+</H5>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The voice sang and sang again, until finally four conspirators once
+more approached Tom Osby's cabin.  He had forgotten his supper.  Dinner
+was done, in Heart's Desire, soon after noon.  Dan Anderson stood
+thoughtful for a time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him alone, fellows," said he.  "I savvy.  That fellow's in love!
+He's in love with a Voice!  Ain't it awful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silence met this remark.  Dan Anderson seated himself on a stone, and
+we others followed his example, going into a committee of the whole,
+there in the night-time, on the bank of the <I>arroyo</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you notice, Curly," asked Dan Anderson&mdash;"did you get a chance to
+see the name on the record of the singer who&mdash;who perpetrated this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Curly.  "I couldn't get a clean look at the brand, owin' to
+Tom's cuttin' out the thing so sudden from the bunch.  It was somethin'
+like Doughnuts&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly&mdash;Madame Donatelli!  I thought I rather recognized that voice
+my own self."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dago!" said McKinney with scorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By trainin', though not by birth," admitted Dan Anderson.  "Georgia
+girl originally, they tell me, and Dagoized proper, subsequent.  All
+Yankee girls have to be Dagoized before they can learn to sing right
+good and strong, you know.  They frequent learn a heap of things
+besides 'Annie Laurie'&mdash;and besides singin'.  Oh, I can see the Yankee
+Dago lady right now.  Fancy works installed in the roof of her mouth,
+adjacent and adjoinin' to her tongue, teeth, and other vocal outfit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, this here Georgia girl, accordin' to all stories, has sung
+herself into about a quarter of a million dollars and four or five
+different husbands with that voice of hers; and that same 'Annie
+Laurie' song was largely responsible.  Now, why, <I>why</I>, couldn't she
+have taken a fellow of her size, and not gone and made trouble for Tom
+Osby?  It wasn't fair play.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn.  What
+does he see?  Madame Donatelli?  Does he see her show her teeth and bat
+her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers?
+Nay, nay.  What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whoa!  Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney.  "This
+country's just as good as&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, let him go on," said Curly to McKinney.  "Onct over on the
+Brazos&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes I think you fellows are inclined to be provincial," said Dan
+Anderson, calmly.  "Now, I'm not goin' to talk if you don't leave me
+alone.  Listen.  What does Tom Osby see in that horn that he's lookin'
+into?  I'll tell you.  He sees a plumb angel in white clothes and a
+blue sash.  She's got gray eyes and brown hair, and she's just a little
+bit shorter than will go right under my arm here when I stretch it out
+level."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's about right!" said McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's got on white," resumed Dan Anderson, casting a glance about him
+in the dusk of the evening.  "The girl's got to have on white.  There
+ain't no man can hold out when they come in white and have on a blue
+sash&mdash;it's no use tryin' then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, there she is, a-settin' at the piano in there in the front
+parlor; daddy's gone out into the country after a load of wood, like
+enough; old lady's gone to bed, after a hard day's labor.  Honeysuckles
+bloomin' all around, because in New Jersey&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wasn't in New Jersey," said Learned Counsel, hastily, before he
+thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, it was in New York," said McKinney, boldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're all liars," said Curly, calmly; "it was onct on the Brazos."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," said Dan Anderson, "you are right.  It was once on the
+Brazos, and in Iowa, and in New York, and in New Jersey, and in
+Georgia.  Thank God, it was there, once upon a time, in all those
+places. . . .  And, as I was sayin', the birds was just twitterin' in
+the evergreen trees along the front walk, some sleepy, because it was
+just gettin' right dark.  Vines, you know, hangin' over the edge of the
+front porch, like.  Few chairs settin' around on the porch.  Just a
+little band of moonlight layin' there on the front steps, leadin' up
+like a heavenly walk, like a white path to Paradise&mdash;which was there in
+the front parlor, with the best angel there at home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The high angel of this here Heaven, like I told you, she's a settin'
+there in white," he went on; "and with a blue sash&mdash;it was blue, now,
+wasn't it, fellows?  And she's lettin' her fingers, God bless 'em, just
+tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la, up and down the keys of the piano her
+dad gave her when she graduated.  And now she's sort of singin' to
+herself&mdash;half whisperin', soft and deep&mdash;I hate a thin-voiced woman, or
+a bad-tempered one, same as you do&mdash;she's just singin' about as loud as
+you can hear easy down as far as the front gate.  And&mdash;why, she's a
+singin' that same tune there, of 'Annie Laurie'! . . .  And in your
+heart you know it's true, every word of it, all the time, and at any
+station!" said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At any station!" said Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At any station!" said McKinney,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At any station!" said Learned Counsel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were no hats on at that moment.  To be sure, the evening air was
+a trifle warm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now," said Dan Anderson, after a while, "it's got Tom.  Now, why
+couldn't it have been a man-Dago to sing that air into the tuneful horn
+of the mechanical heavenly maid yonder?  No reason, only it's got to be
+a woman to sing that man's song of 'Annie Laurie.'  A man couldn't any
+more sing 'Annie Laurie' than you could make cocktails without bitters.
+The only way we can get either one of them here is in bulk, which we
+have done.  It's canned Art, that's all.  Owin' to our present
+transportation facilities, everything has to come here in cans."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson arose and stretched out his arm.  "Gentlemen," said he, "I
+present to you Art!"  He raised before him an imaginary glass, which we
+all saw plainly.  "I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored
+combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it.
+Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art!  We are not quite provincial.  Listen
+at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . .  Shoot him up,
+boys!" he cried suddenly.  "I'm damned if I'm going to look all my days
+on the picture of a girl in a blue sash!  The chief end of man is to
+witness an ecru coyote and a few absolute human failures like you and
+me.  Down with the heavenly maid!  Shoot him up!  He's a destroyer of
+the peace!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So we shot up Tom's adobe for a time, joyously peppering the thick
+walls, until at length that worthy came out annoyed, a phonograph
+record in one hand and a gun in the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, fellers," said he.  "You might break something."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come out," said Dan Anderson.  "Not even grand opera lasts all night.
+Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant.  Come on.  Get ready
+to play croquet to-morrow.  It's safer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening.  Our
+little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson turned in at the post-office to see if the daily
+paper from El Paso had come in that month.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was something that Dan Anderson saw in the daily paper that caused
+him on the following day to lead Tom Osby aside.  "Did you know, Tom,"
+said he, "that that opera singer you've got in your box, the 'Annie
+Laurie' artist, is goin' to be down in this part of the world before
+long?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never <I>loved</I> a fo-o-o-nd ga-aze-ll-lle!" began Tom Osby,
+defensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's true."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you tellin' me?" said Tom, scornfully.  "Comin' down here?
+Why, don't it say that them things is all sung by <I>artists</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, a artist," said Tom Osby argumentatively, "ain't never
+comin' within a thousand miles of this here country.  Besides, a
+<I>artist</I> is somebody that's <I>dead</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson.  "You've got to be
+dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art,
+of course.  It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will
+be just what it is to-day.  That's Art.  But I'm tellin' you the truth,
+Tom.  The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day.  She
+belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the
+name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life,
+but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything
+but boiled continuous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season.  They
+are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a
+moment, to catch a little of their financial breath.  The Southern
+Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad
+fares.  Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on
+the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the
+idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to
+sidetrack his whole <I>rodeo</I> for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at
+the Sky Top hotel,&mdash;that new railroad health resort some Yankees have
+just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure
+in livin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know <I>she'll</I> be there?" asked Tom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it.  They
+think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both
+happy.  And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be
+down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby was silent.  The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a
+hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail.  "It ain't so," said Tom,
+at length.  "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso.  The
+dust's a fright."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson.  "Now, the bull-ring over at
+Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera&mdash;especially for
+'Carmen'&mdash;which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight,
+anyway.  Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over
+there.  I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim
+smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension.  If
+Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso.
+He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But now," resumed he, "after they get done at El Paso, whatever they
+sing, the grub wagon will be located in the Sacramentos, while old
+Blauring, he goes on in advance and rides a little sign out near
+'Frisco and other places, where Art is patronized copious.  Yes,
+friend, 'Annie Laurie,' she'll be up in Sacramentos; and from all I can
+figure, there'll be trouble in that particular health resort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes I think you're <I>loco</I>," said Tom Osby, slowly; "then again I
+think you ain't, quite.  The man who allows he's any better than this
+country don't belong here; but I didn't think you ever did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" cried Dan Anderson.  "Don't ever say that of me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I know folks is different," went on Tom Osby, presently.
+"They come from different places, and have lived different ways.  Me, I
+come from Georgy.  I never did have much chanct for edication, along of
+the war breakin' out.  My folks was in the fightin' some; and so I
+drifted here,"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You came from Georgia?" asked Dan Anderson.  "I was born farther
+north.  I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in
+all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart's Desire.
+The only real friends I ever had are here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," he went on, "it's because I feel that way, and because you're
+going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next
+week to see if you can get a look at that 'Annie Laurie' woman&mdash;it's
+because of those things that I want to help you if I can.  And that's
+the truth&mdash;or something resemblin' it, maybe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now listen, Tom.  Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she's not dead.
+She was a Georgia girl herself&mdash;Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she
+had naturally a wonderful voice.  She went to Paris and Italy to study
+long before I came out West.  She first sang in Milan, and her
+appearance was a big success.  She's made thousands and thousands of
+dollars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About how old is she?" asked Tom Osby.
+
+"I should think about thirty-five," said Dan Anderson.  "That is,
+countin' years, and not experience."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, she came from Georgia&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson was troubled.  His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly
+understanding.  "I can make it in less'n a week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom," cried Dan Anderson, "don't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never
+formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a
+country which held real men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know, Dan," said he, "if I could just onct in my life hear that
+there song right out&mdash;herself singin', words and all&mdash;fiddles, like
+enough; maybe a pianny, too&mdash;if I could just hear that!  If I <I>could</I>
+just hear&mdash;<I>that</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke.  "There is
+some folks," said he, "that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of
+the folks that can't do things for keeps.  Some fellers has to just
+drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else
+common and useful&mdash;world's sort of fixed up that way, I reckon.  But
+folks that can do things for <I>keeps</I>&mdash;I reckon they're right proud,
+like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if they really do the things that keep.  That sort ain't proud,"
+said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I can just see her a-settin' there," went on the freighter.  "It
+sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was maybe standin' up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a-settin' there," said Tom Osby, frowning; "right there at the
+pianny herself.  Can't you see her?  Don't you ever sort of imagine
+things yourself, man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God forbid!" said Dan Anderson.  "No, I can't imagine things.  That's
+fatal&mdash;I try to forget things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Tom Osby, "I reckon I've been imaginin' things.  Now,
+there she's settin', right at the pianny, and sort of lettin' her
+fingers run up and down&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la?" said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure.  That's just it.  Tra-la-la-loo, loo-la-la-la, up and down the
+whole shootin' match.  And she sings!  Now what does she sing?  That
+song about Gingerbread?  That Mobile song?  No, not none.  It's 'Annie
+Laurie' she sings, man, it's 'Annie Laurie'!  Now, I freighted to El
+Paso before the railroad, and I know them boys.  They'll tear up the
+house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She'll be wearin' black lace and diamonds," said Dan Anderson,
+irrelevantly; "and when she breathes she'll swell up like a toy
+balloon.  She'll bat her eyes.  They got to do those things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Man," said Tom Osby, "there's times when I don't like you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, cut out the lace.  I'll even leave off the diamonds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's settin' right there," said Tom Osby, wagging his forefinger,
+"and she's dressed in white&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With a blue sash&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure!  And she sings!  And it's 'Annie Laurie'!  And because I want my
+own share of things that's for keeps, though I ain't one of the sort
+that can do things for keeps, why, I want&mdash;why, you see&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Tom," said Dan Anderson, gently, "I see.  Now, as you said, it's
+only a few days' drive, after all.  I'm goin' along with you.  There's
+watermelons near there&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>are loco</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet," said his friend.  "I only meant to point out that the best
+melons these embalmed Greasers raise in their little tablecloth farmin'
+operations is right down there in the valley at the foot of the
+Sacramentos.  Now, you may have noticed that sometimes a fellow ought
+to cover up his tracks.  What's to hinder you and me just takin' a
+little <I>pasear</I> down in toward the Sacramentos, on the southeast side,
+after a load of melons?  They're better than cactus for the boys here.
+That's straight merchandisin', and, besides, it's Art.  And&mdash;well, I
+think that's the best way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We don't all of us always get our share, Tom," resumed Dan Anderson;
+"we don't always get our share of the things that are for keeps; but
+it's the right of every man to try.  Every once in a while, by just
+tryin' and pluggin' along on the dead square, a fellow gets something
+which turns out in the clean-up to be the sort that was for keeps,
+after all, even if it wasn't just what he thought he wanted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you'll go along?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Si, amigo</I>!  Yes, I'll go along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They parted, Dan Anderson to seek his own lonely adobe.  There he
+closed the door, as though he feared intrusion.  The old restlessness
+coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room.
+Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and
+stood looking into it intently.  "Fool!" he muttered.  "Liar, and fool,
+and coward&mdash;you, you!  You'll take care of Tom, will you?  But who'll
+take care of <I>you</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He seated himself on the blanketed bed, and picked up the newspaper
+which he had brought home with him.  He gazed long and steadily at it
+before he tore it across and flung it on the floor.  It held more news
+than he had given to Tom Osby.  In brief, there was a paragraph which
+announced the arrival in town of Mr. John Ellsworth, President of the
+new A. P. and S. E. Railway, his legal counsel, Mr. Porter Barkley,
+also of New York, and Miss Constance Ellsworth.  This party was bound
+for Sky Top, where business of importance would in all likelihood be
+transacted, as Mr. Ellsworth expected to meet there the engineers on
+the location of the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ought not to go," said Dan Anderson to himself, over and over again.
+"I <I>must</I> not go . . .  But I'm going!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with a Side-tracked Star</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top,
+by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hills
+of the Sacramentos.  The silence was unbroken by any music from the
+"heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did the
+two occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from the
+reticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent,
+and mountains ever looking down.  The team of gnarled gray horses kept
+on their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouac
+after bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piled
+up at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tiny
+circle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire.  At last
+the line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavily
+timbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountain
+caņons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the country
+of old.  "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've built
+their fool log hotel.  It beats the dickens how these States folks,
+that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way of
+livin'.  Why didn't they build it out of boards?  They've got a
+saw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in these
+mountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with.  Folks
+that builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain't
+got no boards.  But these States folks always was singerler."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwing
+out the blanket rolls upon the ground.  "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie'
+machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattling
+of brass against the wagon box.  But his companion heeded him little,
+casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great horn
+swung wide, disconsolately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'.  It ain't the
+real thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to do
+like you said you would.  Of course, I know melons don't grow up here
+in the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you was
+comin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.  "Wait," said he; "it'll be night
+before long.  Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around a
+little.  If you get scared, come back, and I'll&mdash;I'll take care of you.
+I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right on
+in alone, you know.  Tell her you know her preserved songs, and liked
+them so much you just had to come down here.  Tell her about the
+watermelons.  Tell her&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're actin' a <I>leetle</I> nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby,
+keenly.  "But you watch Papa.  I been married four times, or maybe
+five, so what's a woman here or there to me?  What is there to any
+woman to scare a feller, anyway?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;&mdash;"there isn't&mdash;of course
+there isn't, of course not.  You're perfectly safe.  Why, just go right
+on up.  Have your sand along!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure," said Tom Osby.  "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trail
+after a while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on
+the wagon tongue.  "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back.
+"If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and
+view the remains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat
+dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top.
+She was in effect a prisoner.  El Paso seemed like a dream, San
+Francisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spot
+upon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space.
+She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face that
+which boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor.  Unhappy Peruchini!  He
+started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep
+cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now
+resumed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How dare you!" cried the <I>diva</I>.  "How dare you intrude on me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini.  "What service is zere here?  I
+knock, but you do not hear.  Madame, what horror is zis place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage.  "The beast!
+How dare he bring me here&mdash;<I>me</I>!" (she smote her bosom)&mdash;"who have
+sung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent&mdash;in Italy, Paris,
+London, St. Petersburg!  I shall not survive this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Perfide</I>!" cried Peruchini, in assent.  "<I>Perfide</I>!  R-r-rascal!
+<I>Cochon</I>!  Pig unspikkab'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for
+the scene.  "Behole!  It is I who have lofe you so long.  To lofe&mdash;ah,
+it is so divine!  How can you riffuse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity.  "Never!" she
+cried.  "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this.  I bid you go.
+Begone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands
+first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly
+tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling.  "I vill not be teniet!  Your
+puty, it is too much!  Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret?  Py
+Heaven, I&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a swift motion he grasped her wrists.  Color rose to the Donatelli
+cheek.  Her eyes flashed.  She was about to sing.  She checked herself
+in time.  "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined.  And now the
+log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to
+light for them this unusual stage.  They did not hear the door open
+behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as
+there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack
+servant been directed thither.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door did open.  In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced.  He was dressed
+in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which
+did not disguise him nor the region which was his home.  His boots were
+new, sharp at toe and heel.  His hat, now removed, was new, but wide
+and white.  His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat,
+neither did white collar confine his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A quick glance took in the scene before him.  A little dark man was
+contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty
+that he had ever seen or dreamed.  Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into
+the room.  There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice
+that brought an instant conviction.  This&mdash;this was the Voice that he
+had worshipped!  This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen
+in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights
+afar in the desert lands.  She was assailed.  She was beset.  There
+swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life
+in that comer of the world.  In a flash his weapon leaped from its
+scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of
+this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby.  "Leggo!  What are you doin'
+there?  Break, now, and git out.  This ain't right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter
+sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion.  Tom Osby from that
+instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence.
+Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for
+warlike action rather than that now grown needful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards
+of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than
+actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of
+wide-eyed astonishment.  She had read in certain journals wild stories
+of doings of wild men.  Was that sort of thing actually true?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir," she said, "how dare you!"  At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length.  "I didn't know anybody
+was in here.  I just come in lookin' for somebody."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep,
+dark eye, studying him curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom.  "I'm camped down the hill by
+the spring.  I left my <I>compadre</I> there.  I&mdash;I belong to Heart's
+Desire, up north of here.  I&mdash;I come along in here this mornin'.  They
+said there wasn't any one in the parlor&mdash;they said there might be some
+one in the parlor, though, maybe.  And I was&mdash;I was&mdash;ma'am, I was
+lookin'&mdash;I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand against
+its edge.  "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice.  "From Heart's Desire?  What
+an exquisite name!  Where is it?  What is it?  That sounds like
+heaven," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't.  The water
+supply ain't reg'lar enough.  It's just a little place up in the
+mountains.  Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something like
+a hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!"  And he laughed so sudden and
+hearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out of
+all her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing.  It
+seemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matter
+where one found them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was her
+habit when perturbed.  "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much.
+It's mostly men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how do you live?  What do you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that.  But now you mention it, I
+can't say I really know.  The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me?  I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire.
+There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon.  We held a
+co'te there, onct.  You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for a
+good many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of the
+country.  Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to the
+States.  Some stayed.  And it's&mdash;why, I can't rightly explain it to
+you, ma'am&mdash;but it's&mdash;it's Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The face of the woman before him softened.  "It's a beautiful name,"
+said she.  "Heart's Desire!"  She said it over and over again,
+wistfully.  The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocable
+loss.  "Heart's Desire!" she whispered&mdash;"I wonder&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what do
+you do at Heart's Desire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing," said Tom Osby.  "I just told you, I reckon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you have any amusements?  Are there ever any entertainments?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She threw back her head and laughed.  There rose before her the picture
+of a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart,
+saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't do
+no good.  Why&mdash;I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'ry
+singers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more.  We
+couldn't afford it.  Onct we had a singin'-school teacher.  Fellow by
+the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music.  He
+used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.'  Used to have a
+daughter, and she sung, too.  Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the
+Prairie Flower.'  They made quite a lot of money holdin'
+singin'-school.  The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and
+that broke up the singin'-school.  There ain't been any kind of show at
+Heart's Desire for five years.  But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about
+that feller that had hold of you when I come in.  Did he hurt you any?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini!  He's a great artist."
+She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter.  "No, don't bother
+him.  We'll need him out on the Coast.  Don't you know, we are just
+here in the mountains for a little while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking back
+into his seat.  "I always did.  They always remind me of the Smokies,
+in Car'lina, back South."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You came from the South?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Georgy, ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Georgia!  So did I!  We should be friends," she said, and, smiling,
+held out her hand.  Tom Osby took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you.  I've not been
+back home for a good many years.  I've been all over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly.  "I've been all over, too.
+But now, what brought you here?  Tell me, did you want to see me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply.  "I said that's why I come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing?  Ah, I wish that
+were not impossible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby.  "Though, of course, the
+boys would do anything for you they could.  What we want in Heart's
+Desire&mdash;why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again,
+everything.  Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe we
+was just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled.
+"Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it.  Up at Vegas
+I heard a funny sort of singin' machine.  It had voices in it.  Ma'am,
+it had a Voice in it.  It&mdash;it sung&mdash;" he choked now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And some of the songs?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes.  She flushed
+like a girl as he nodded gravely.  "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath.  "It reconciles me to
+selling my art in that way.  No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he.  "I knew you sung it.  Ma'am, I
+played her all the way from Vegas down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why did you come?"  She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll.
+The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you.  I just come to see you, or to
+hear you, I can't rightly tell which.  It must have been both."  Now he
+arose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently.  "Ma'am," he went
+on, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me.  And I knowed
+that a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spot
+in her heart.  I come to hear you sing.  There's things that us fellers
+want, sometimes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on.  "You'll have to
+sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct,
+before I went away from home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it
+herself, unconsciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My friend," said she, "you're right.  I reckon I'll have to sing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When?" said Tom Osby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Alice Strowbridge.  She rose and stepped toward the piano
+open near the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a
+deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion.  A splendid creature,
+bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the
+less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands
+twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang
+in public as a child.  The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught
+a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land.  The
+red rose at her hair&mdash;the rose got from some mysterious source&mdash;half
+trembled.  Fear, a great fear&mdash;the first stage fright known in
+years&mdash;swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman.  There
+sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this
+lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire&mdash;a place where
+men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that
+which was not theirs.  She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how
+she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her,
+what she had done for the heart of humanity.  Halfway across the floor
+she stopped, her hand at her throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding,
+"for me to do this-a-way.  It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you
+to try to oblige a feller like me.  But, ma'am, all I can say is, all
+the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it.  Tom Osby grew more
+confident, more bold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I
+reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort
+of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the
+things you are singin' right then.  Ain't that so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have many costumes," said she, simply.  "We play many parts.
+Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume
+to go along with that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always
+seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right
+<I>white</I>."  He blushed and hastened to apologize.  "Not sayin' anything
+against that dress you've got on," he said.  "I never saw one as fine
+as that in all my life.  I never saw any woman, never in all my life,
+like you.  I&mdash;I&mdash;ma'am"&mdash;he flushed, but went on with a Titanic
+simplicity&mdash;"I <I>worship</I> you, right where you stand, in that there
+dress; but&mdash;could you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are an artist yourself!" cried she.  "Yes!  Wait!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at
+the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening.
+In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared.  The rich black
+laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone.
+She was clad in simple white&mdash;and yes! a blue sash was there.  The
+piled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids.  By
+the grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her that
+night.  For once in many years she was sincere.  Now she was a girl
+again, and back at the old home.  Those were the southern mountains
+half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days,
+swinging up again.  There was the gallery at the window of the old
+Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the
+trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth&mdash;Youth, the
+unspeakable glory of Youth&mdash;it all was hers once more!  The souls of a
+thousand Georgia mocking-birds&mdash;the soul of that heritage which came to
+her out of her environment&mdash;lay in her throat that hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor&mdash;nay, perhaps, after all,
+to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls&mdash;she
+sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat
+crumpled up, shaken, undone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she
+could not deprive herself of her own little triumph.  Or perhaps,
+deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it
+would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear.  She
+sang first the leading <I>arias</I> of her more prominent operatic roles.
+She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance
+on a critical stage.  "<I>Nobil signors</I>," she sang, her voice
+lingering.  And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling
+measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in
+her rendition.  Melody after melody, score after score, product of the
+greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never
+definitely realized what privilege had been his.  She slipped on and
+on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least
+of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her
+fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no
+florid triviality from any land.  With a voice which had mastered the
+world, she sang the best of the masters of the world.  So music, with
+all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a
+time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later
+comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there
+in the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano
+broke, dropped, and paused.  And then, with no more interlude, that
+great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect
+human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie
+Laurie."  At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and
+a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with
+bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who
+approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery.
+Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to
+the hotel.  Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never
+got even so far as the door.  The voice of Donatelli caught and held
+him as it had her other auditor.  He stopped midway of the gallery,
+listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away,
+returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines.  He started even at
+the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the
+little fire.  He could not sleep.  A face looked at him out of the
+dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.
+The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached
+him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he
+admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a
+Face that was the Fairest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time.  It was Tom Osby,
+who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a
+crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure
+on the camper's bed.  Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that
+his companion was not asleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head
+as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very
+much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back
+home with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Passengers?"  A voice came from the blankets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin'
+train from El Paso.  Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow,
+Barkley, I believe his name is.  I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Deep silence greeted this.  Tom reached forward and picked up a brand
+to light his pipe more thoroughly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to
+take care of me."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In the morning the travellers arose with the sun, and after breakfast
+Tom Osby began methodically to break camp as though preparing for the
+return up-country.  Neither made reference to any event occurring since
+their arrival, or which might possibly occur in the near future.  Dan
+Anderson silently watched his partner as he busied himself gearing up
+his horses.  All was nearly ready for the start on their journey down
+the east side of the Sacramentos, when they heard afar a faint and
+wheezy squeak, the whistle of a railway train climbing up the opposite
+slope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's the choo-choo cars," said Tom, "comin' a-rarin' and
+a-pitchin'.  The ingine has to side-step and back-track about eight
+times to get up the grade.  Didn't notice my old grays a-doin' that
+none, when we come up, did you?  I'm the railroad for our town, and
+I've got that one beat to a frazzle.  Now listen to that thing, Dan;
+that's the States comin' to find us out."  Dan Anderson made no reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, let her come," Tom resumed cheerfully; "I come from Georgy, and
+in that country, it ain't considered perlite to worry if you've got one
+square meal ahead.  Which, by the way, reminds me that that's about all
+we've got ahead now.  You just set here with the team a while, while I
+take a <I>pasear</I> down the caņon to see if I can get a deer for supper
+to-night.  I hope the old railroad ain't scared 'em all away.  Besides,
+we might as well stay here for a hour or so anyway, now, and see what
+the news is, since the cars has got in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tapped the muzzle of his old rifle against the wagon wheel to shake
+out the dust, and then took a squint into the barrel.  "I can see
+through her," he said, "or any ways, halfway through, and I reckon
+she'll go off."  Next he poked the magazine full of cartridges, and so
+tramped off down the mountain side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson sat down on a bundle of bedding, and fell into a half
+dream in the warm morning sun.  There was time even yet for him to
+escape, he reflected.  He had but to step into the wagon, and drive on
+down the caņon.  Constance Ellsworth&mdash;if indeed it were true that she
+had come again so near to him&mdash;need never know that he had been there.
+How could he learn if she had indeed come?  How could he ever face her
+now?  Surely she could never understand.  She could only despise him.
+Dan Anderson sat, irresolute, staring at the breakfast dishes piled
+near the mess-box ready for packing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meantime, in the dining room at Sky Top hotel, there was a certain
+flutter of excitement as there entered, just from the train, the party
+of Mr. Ellsworth, president of the new railway company now building
+northward.  Ellsworth beckoned Porter Barkley to him for talk of
+business nature, so that Constance sat well-nigh alone when Madame
+Alicia Donatelli came sweeping in, tall, comely, sombre, and, it must
+be confessed, hungry.  Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made
+room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli
+hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of class
+other than her own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli,
+catching a remark made by one of the men.  "I wish I could go as well.
+You go by buckboard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance nodded.  "I like it," said she.  "I am sure we shall enjoy
+the ride up to Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heart's Desire?" repeated the diva, with an odd smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance saw the smile and challenged it.  "Yes," she replied briefly,
+"I was there once before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it like?" asked Donatelli.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like nothing in the world&mdash;yet it's just a little valley shut in by
+the mountains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A man was here from Heart's Desire last night," began Donatelli.  "You
+know, I am a singer.  He had heard in some way.  My faith!  He came
+more than a hundred miles, and he said from Heart's Desire.  I've
+wondered what the place was like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Donatelli face flushed hotly in spite of herself.  A queer
+expression suddenly crossed that of Constance Ellsworth as well.  She
+wondered who this man could be!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was just a couple of campers who travelled down by wagon,"
+explained the diva.  "Only one of them came up to the house.  Their
+camp is by the springs, a half mile or so down the east side.  He told
+me they had no music at Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the heart of Constance Ellsworth there went on jealous questionings.
+Who was this man from Heart's Desire, who had come a hundred miles to
+hear a bit of music?  What other could it be than one?  And as to this
+opera singer, surely she was beautiful, she had charm.  So then&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance excused herself and returned to her room.  She did not even
+descend to say farewell to Donatelli and her bedraggled company, who
+steamed away from Sky Top slopes in the little train whose whistlings
+came back triumphantly.  She admitted herself guilty of ignoble joy
+that this woman&mdash;a singer, an artist, a beautiful and dangerous woman
+as she felt sure&mdash;was now gone out of her presence, as indeed she was
+gone out of her life.  But as to this man from Heart's Desire, how came
+it that he was not here at the hotel, near to his operatic divinity?
+Why did he not appear to say farewell?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth and Barkley betook themselves to the gallery after breakfast,
+and paced up and down, each with his cigar.  "I ordered our head
+engineer, Grayson, to meet us," said Ellsworth, "and he ought to be
+camped not far away.  I told him not to crowd the location so that
+those Heart's Desire folks would get wind of our plans.  For that
+matter, we don't want to take those men for granted, either.  Somehow,
+Barkley, I believe we've got trouble ahead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense!" said Barkley.  "The whole thing's so easy I'm almost
+ashamed of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That last isn't usually the case with the Hon. Porter Barkley,"
+Ellsworth observed grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley laughed a strong, unctuous laugh.  He was a sturdy, thick-set
+man, florid, confident, masterful, with projecting eyebrows and a chin
+now beginning its first threat of doubling.  Well known in Eastern
+corporation life as a good handler of difficult situations, Ellsworth
+valued his aid; nor could he disabuse himself of the belief that there
+would be need of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I don't put it through, Ellsworth," reiterated Barkley, biting a
+new cigar, "I'll eat the whole town without sugar.  If I failed, I'd be
+losing more than you know about."  He turned a half glance in
+Ellsworth's way, to see whether his covert thought was caught by the
+suspicion of the other.  The older man turned upon him in challenge,
+and Barkley retreated from this tentative position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe you can do it," said Ellsworth, presently, "but I want to say,
+if I'm any judge, you've got to be mighty careful.  Besides, you've
+never been out here before.  We'll have to go slow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why'll we have to?  I tell you, we can go in and take what we want of
+their blasted valley, and they can't help themselves a step in the
+road."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," demurred Ellsworth.  "They're there, and in possession."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense!" snorted Barkley.  "How much title have they got?  You say
+yourself they've never filed a town-site plat.  We can go in there and
+take the town away from under their feet, and they can't help
+themselves.  More than that, I'll bet there's not one mining claim out
+of fifty that we can't 'adverse' in the courts and take away from its
+dinky locater.  These fellows don't work assessments.  They never
+complete legal title to a claim.  There never was a mine in the Rocky
+Mountains that was located and proved up on without a fight, if it was
+worth fighting for.  Bah! we just walk in and see what we want, and
+take it, that's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Ellsworth, "it's the best-looking deal I've seen for a
+long while, that's sure, and I don't see how it's been covered up so
+long.  And yet if you come to talk of law-suits, I've noticed it a
+dozen times that when Eastern men have gone against these Western
+propositions, they've got the worst of it.  They're a funny lot, these
+natives.  They'll live in a shirt and overalls, without a <I>sou marqué</I>
+to bless 'emselves with.  They'll holler for Eastern Capital, and
+promise Eastern Capital the time of its life, if it'll only come; and
+when Eastern Capital does come&mdash;why, then they <I>give</I> it the time of
+its life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense," rejoined Barkley, walking up and down with his hands under
+the tails of his coat.  "We'll eat 'em up.  I'm not afraid of this
+thing for a minute.  What I want to do now is to get in touch with that
+Grayson fellow, the head engineer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not so sure about that," commented Ellsworth, seating himself in
+the sun at the edge of the gallery.  "If you want to see the real head
+engineer of this whole Heart's Desire situation, the man you want isn't
+Grayson, but a young fellow by the name of Anderson, a lawyer up there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lawyer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and I shouldn't wonder if he was a pretty goodish one, too.  Oh,
+don't think these people are all easy, Barkley, I tell you.  This isn't
+my own first trip out here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about this lawyer of yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he's a young man that I knew something about before he went
+West.  He knows every foot of the ground up there, and every man that
+lives there, and I want to tell you, he's got the whole situation by
+the ear.  That gang will do pretty hear what he tells them to do.  He's
+got nerve, too.  He's the most influential man in that town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, ho!  Well, that's different.  I'm always right after the man who's
+got the goods in his pocket.  We'll trade with Mr. Anderson mighty
+quick, if he can deliver the goods.  What does he hold out for?  What
+does he want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't know.  He talked to me rather stiff, up there, and we
+didn't hitch very well.  He sort of drifted off, and I didn't see him
+at all the day I left, when I'd laid out to talk to him.  He's the
+fellow that put me on to this deal, too.  It was through him I got word
+there was coal in that valley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would it do to charter him for our local counsel?  Is he strong
+enough man for that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strong enough!  I'm only afraid he's <I>too</I> strong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, let's not take everything for granted, you know.  Let's go
+at this thing a little at a time.  There's got to be a system of courts
+established in here, and we've got to know our judiciary, as a matter
+of course.  Then we've got to know our own lawyers, as another matter
+of course.  Did you say you knew him before, that is, to get a line on
+him, before he came out here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth colored just a trifle.  "Well, yes," he admitted.  "He's a
+Princeton man.  He comes of good family&mdash;maybe a little wild and
+headstrong&mdash;wouldn't settle down, you know.  Why, I offered him a place
+in my office once, and he&mdash;well, he refused it.  He started out West
+some five years ago.  Of course&mdash;well, you know, in a good many cases
+of this sort, there's a girl at the bottom of the Western emigration."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What girl?" asked Porter Barkley, sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One back East somewhere," said Ellsworth, evasively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley came and seated himself beside the older man, leaning
+forward, his elbows resting on his knees, meditatively crumbling a bit
+of bark in his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was just going to say, Mr. Ellsworth," said he, "that a girl in a
+case like this&mdash;always provided that this man is as influential as you
+think&mdash;may be a mighty useful thing.  Maybe you couldn't buy the man
+for himself, but you could buy him for the girl.  Do you see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth did not answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley.  "He wants to go
+back East with a little roll.  Now, we give him a chance to make good.
+We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him
+up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing.  For the sake of going
+back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap
+of things for us.  You've seen it a thousand times yourself.  A woman
+can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work.  Now, Ellsworth, you
+furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me.  I'll deliver Heart's
+Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to
+think he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly
+and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling
+his bits of bark in the sunshine.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way with a Maid</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the
+dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred piņon sticks.  So deep was
+his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet
+approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to
+his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the
+camp and come in on that side of the mountain.  Then he looked up.  It
+was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries
+by day, the face that he had seen but now&mdash;the "face that was the
+fairest"!  He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him
+once more for his unreadiness.  Then he sprang up and stared the
+harder&mdash;stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her
+father and a well-groomed stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley
+discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and
+heightened color upon another man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the
+engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a
+walk in the morning's sun.  If it had been in her mind to discover the
+mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself.  But
+now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this
+stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva
+of the stage!  The consciousness flashed upon her sharply.  Despite her
+traitorous coloring, she greeted him but coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley, noticing some things and suspecting others, drew a breath
+of sudden conviction.  With swift jealousy he guessed that this could be
+none other than the man to whom Ellsworth had referred,&mdash;Anderson, the
+lawyer of Heart's Desire.  Why had not Ellsworth told him that Constance
+also knew him?  Porter Barkley ran his eye over the tall strong figure,
+the clean brown jaw, the level eyes, sizing up his man with professional
+keenness.  He instantly rated him as an enemy dangerous in more ways than
+one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the first jumbled speeches of surprise, Ellsworth introduced the
+two.  Maugre his coatless costume, Dan Anderson was Princeton man upon
+the moment, and Barkley promptly hated him for it, feeling that in the
+nature of things the stranger should have been awkward and constrained.
+Yet this man must, for business reasons, be handled carefully.  He must
+be the business friend, if the personal enemy, of Hon. Porter Barkley,
+general counsel for the A. P. and S. E. Railway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The States had come to Sky Top, as Tom Osby had said, and this group,
+gathered around a mountain fireside, became suddenly as conventional as
+though they had met in a drawing-room.  "Who could have suspected that
+you were here, of all places, Mr. Anderson?" Constance remarked with
+polite surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, now, Dolly," blundered Mr. Ellsworth, "didn't the hotel fellow tell
+you that some one had come down from Heart's Desire to hear the latest
+from grand opera&mdash;private session&mdash;chartered the hall, eh?  You might
+have guessed it would be Mr. Anderson, for I'll warrant he's the only man
+in Heart's Desire that ever heard an opera singer before, or who would
+ride a hundred miles&mdash;that is&mdash;anyhow, Mr. Anderson, you are precisely
+the man we want to see."  He finished his sentence lamely, for he
+understood in some mysterious fashion that he had not said quite the
+right thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am very glad to hear that," replied Dan Anderson, gravely, "I was just
+sitting here waiting for you to come along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Mr. Anderson," resumed Ellsworth, "Mr. Barkley, here, is our
+general counsel for the railroad.  He's going up to Heart's Desire with
+us in a day or so to look into several matters.  We want to take up the
+question of running our line into the town, if proper arrangements can be
+made."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take chairs, gentlemen," said Dan Andersen, motioning to a log that lay
+near by.  He had already seated Constance upon the corded blanket roll
+from which he himself had arisen.  "I will get you some breakfast," he
+added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," Mr. Ellsworth declined courteously.  "We just came from
+breakfast.  We were moving around trying to find our engineer's camp;
+Grayson, our chief of location, was to have been here before this.  By
+the way, how did you happen to come down here, after all, Anderson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a
+pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue.  He glanced
+at the battered phonograph which leaned dejectedly against a tree.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As near as I can figure," said he, "I made this pilgrimage to hear a
+woman's voice."  Saying which he leaned over and deliberately kicked the
+phonograph down the side of the hill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you enjoyed it," commented Constance, viciously, her cheeks
+reddening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very much," replied Dan Anderson, calmly, and he looked squarely at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley, quiet and alert, once more saw the glance which passed
+between these two.  Into his mind, ever bent upon the business phase of
+any problem, there flashed a swift conviction.  This was the girl!  Here,
+miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in
+the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom
+her father had referred!  If so, there was certainly a solution for the
+riddle of Heart's Desire.  Piqued as he was, his heart exulted.  For the
+time his own jealousy must be suppressed.  His accounting with Dan
+Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must
+handle the situation carefully&mdash;literally for what it is worth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I was saying," continued Dan Anderson, "what's a breakfast or two
+among friends?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it is among friends," replied Ellsworth, "and if you'll remember
+that, we'll eat with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In answer Dan Anderson began to kick together the embers of the fire and
+to busy himself with dishes.  He was resolved to humiliate himself before
+this girl, to show her how absolutely unfit was the life of this land for
+such as herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly he stopped and listened, as there came to his ear the distant
+thin report of a rifle.  Ellsworth looked inquiringly at his host.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's my friend, Tom Osby," explained Dan Anderson, "He went out after
+a deer.  Tom and I came down together from the town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I presume you do have some sort of friends in here," began Barkley,
+patronizingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never found any in the world worth having except here," replied
+Dan Anderson, quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, now, don't say that.  Mr. Ellsworth tells me that he has known you
+for a long time, and has the greatest admiration for you as a lawyer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Mr. Ellsworth is very fond of me.  He's one of the most passionate
+admirers I ever had in my life," said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley looked at him again keenly, realizing that he had to do with a
+quantity not yet wholly known and gauged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Socially the situation was strained, and he sought to ease it after his
+own fashion.  "You see," he resumed, "Mr. Ellsworth seems to think that
+he can put you in a way of doing something for yourself up at Heart's
+Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was an ugly thing for him to do under the circumstances, but if he had
+intended to humiliate the other, he met his just rebuke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't often talk business at breakfast in my own house," said Dan
+Anderson.  "Do you use tabasco with your <I>frijoles</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we'll get together, we'll get together," Barkley laughed, with an
+assumed cordiality which did not quite ring true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," Dan Anderson remarked curtly; "you bring me joy this
+morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not relish this sort of talk in the presence of Constance
+Ellsworth.  Disgusted with himself and with all things, be arose and made
+a pretence of searching in the wagon.  Rummaging about, his hand struck
+one of the round, gutta-percha plates which had accompanied the
+phonograph.  With silent vigor he cast it far above the tree tops below
+him on the mountain side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," he explained to Constance as he turned, "is the 'Annie Laurie'
+record of the Heart's Desire grand opera.  The season is now over." The
+girl did not understand, but he lost the hurt look in her eyes.
+Irritated, he did not hear her soul call out to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the luckiest thing in the world that you happen to be here."  Mr.
+Ellsworth took up again the idea that was foremost in his mind.  "You fit
+in like the wheels in a clock.  We're going to run our railroad up into
+your town&mdash;I don't mind saying that right here&mdash;and we're going to give
+you plenty of law business, Mr. Anderson; that is to say, if you want it,
+and will take it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, quietly.  But now in spite of himself he
+felt his heart leap suddenly in hope.  Suppose, after all, there should
+be for him, stranded in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, a chance
+for some sort of business success?  Suppose that there should be, after
+all, some work for him to do?  Suppose that, after all, he should
+succeed&mdash;that, after all, life might yet unfold before him as he had
+dreamed and planned!  Unconsciously he stole a glance at the gray-clad
+figure on the blanket roll.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance sat cool, sweet, delicate but vital, refreshing to look upon,
+her gray skirt folded across her knees, the patent-leather tips of her
+little shoes buried in the carpet spread by the forest conifers.  He
+could just catch the curve of her cheek and chin, the droop of the long
+lashes which he knew so well.  Ah, if he could only go to her and tell
+her the absolute truth&mdash;if only it could be right for him, all his life,
+to tell her the truth, to tell her of his reverence, his loyalty, his
+love, through all these years!  If, indeed, this opportunity should come
+to him, might not all of this one day be possible?  He set his mind to
+his work, even as the girl held her heart to its waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came the sound of a distant whistle approaching up the trail, and
+ere long Tom Osby appeared, stumbling along in his pigeon-toed way, his
+rifle in the crook of his arm.  Tom saluted the strangers briefly, and
+leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel.  Dan Anderson made known the
+names of the visitors, and Tom immediately put in action his own notions
+of hospitality.  Stepping to the wagon side he fished out a kerosene can,
+stoppered with a potato stuck on the spout.  He removed the potato,
+picked up a tin cup, and proceeded calmly to pour out a generous portion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I always carry my liquor this way, gentlemen," said he, "because it's
+convenient to pour in the dark, and ain't so apt to get spilled.  This
+here liquor sometimes makes folks forget their geogerphy.  'Missin' me
+one place, search another,' as Walt Whitman says.  If a fellow gets a
+drink of this, he may take to the tall trees, or he may run straight on
+out of the country.  You never can tell.  Drink hearty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth and Barkley, for the sake of complacency, complied with such
+show of pleasure as they could muster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Tom, "I'll cook you a real breakfast.  My <I>compadre</I>, here,
+can't drink and he can't cook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three breakfasts before ten o'clock?" protested Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Tom was inexorable.  "Eat when you get a chanct," he insisted.
+"That's a good rule."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley drew Ellsworth to one side.  "I can't figure these people out,"
+he complained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth chuckled.  "I told you you'd need help, Barkley," he said.
+"They've got ways of their own.  You can't come in here and take that
+whole town without reckoning with the people that live there.  Now
+suppose we get Anderson to himself and talk things over with him a
+little?  We may not have another chance so good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth beckoned to Dan Anderson, and he readily joined them.  The
+three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy
+of Tom Osby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the
+knives by sticking them into the sand.  "I don't reckon you do that way
+back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So this is the way men live out here?" mused Constance, half to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mostly.  You ought to see him"&mdash;he nodded toward Dan Anderson&mdash;"cook
+flap-jacks.  The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home.
+We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance missed the irrelevance of this.  "I wonder," said she, gently,
+"how he happened to come out here&mdash;how any one happened to come out here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as
+far away from Washington as he could&mdash;his mileage will amount to more.
+This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to
+Congress from."  Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every
+feller come out here because of a girl somewheres.  They allow that a
+woman sent most of us out here.  For me, it was my fifth wife, or my
+fourth, I don't remember which.  She never did treat me right, and her
+eyes didn't track.  Yes, I'll bet, ma'am, without knowing anything about
+it, there was a girl back somewhere in Dan Anderson's early ree-cords,
+though whether it was his third or fourth wife, I don't know.  We don't
+ask no questions about such things out here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went on rubbing sand around in the bottom of the frying-pan, but none
+the less caught, with side-long glance, the flush upon the brown cheek
+visible beneath its veil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm mighty glad to see you this mornin', ma'am," he went on; "I am, for
+a fact.  It more'n pays me&mdash;it more'n pays him&mdash;" and he nodded again
+toward Dan Anderson, "for our trip down here.  We wasn't expectin' to
+meet you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you happen to come?" asked Constance, feeling as she did so that
+she was guilty of treachery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby again looked her straight in the face.  "Just because we was
+naturally so blamed lonesome," said he.  "That is to say, I was.  I
+allowed I wanted to hear a woman sing.  It wasn't him, it was me.  He
+come along to take care of me, like, because he's used to that sort of
+thing, and I ain't.  He's my chaperoon.  He didn't know, you know&mdash;didn't
+either of us know&mdash;but what I might be took advantage of, and stole by
+some gipsy queen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but the phonograph&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom looked around.  "Where is it?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Anderson kicked it down the hill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he?  Good for him!  I was goin' to do it my own self.  You see,
+ma'am, I come down here to hear a song about Annie Laurie.  I done so.
+Ma'am, I heard about a 'face that was the fairest.'  Him?  Was he
+surprised to see you-all this morning?  Was, eh?  Well, he didn't seem so
+almighty surprised, to my way of thinkin', last night when I told him you
+was comin' up here from El Paso.  I don't know how he knowed it, and I
+ain't sayin' a word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strange lightening came to Constance Ellsworth's heart.  The droop at
+the corners of her mouth faded away.  She slid down off the blanket roll
+and edged along across the ground until she sat at his side.  She reached
+out her hand for the skillet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That spider isn't clean in the least," said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," apologized Tom Osby, leaning back against the wagon wheel and
+beginning to fill a pipe.  "I suppose there might be just a leetle sand
+left in it, but that don't hurt.  Do you want a dish towel?  Here's one
+that I've used for two years, freightin' from Vegas to Heart's Desire.
+Me and it's old friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let your dishes dry in the sun if you can't do better than that,"
+reproved Constance.  "Ah, you men!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're right hard to get along with, ma'am.  Us gettin' you two
+breakfasts, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They looked into each other's faces and Constance laughed.  "The air is
+delightful&mdash;isn't it a beautiful world?" she exclaimed joyously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so.  It's all in
+the way you look at things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully
+explanatory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know.  You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good
+pasture.  Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you
+out for a lunger.  You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is
+very good, either.  He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She froze at this.  "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's
+affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly.  "Here's me and him
+have flew down here as a bird to our mountings.  We was wantin' to hear
+about a 'face that was the fairest.'  We was a-settin' here, calm and
+peaceful, eating <I>frijoles</I>, who intruded?  Was it us?  Or, what made us
+intrude?"  He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here.  If I come and
+set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name
+of your pet dog.  Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes,
+and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that
+time.  That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any <I>other</I>
+fellow what I may think.  It <I>does</I> mean that I'm goin' to see fair
+play."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even
+voice went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How I know things is easy," he continued.  "If you think he"&mdash;once more
+nodding his head toward the group beyond&mdash;"come down here to hear a op'ry
+singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't.  That was me.  He come to give
+me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see
+that he gets fair play in them same circumstances&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly
+thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why.  "He's been ill a great
+deal.  I've been alarmed about him.  I <I>always</I> go with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course.  I noticed that.  Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into
+Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after.  You come along just
+to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or
+cerebrus meningittus, or something else.  I understood all that
+perfectly, ma'am.  And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued,
+tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States,
+somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he
+allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and
+ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know,
+ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of
+reasonin'; for <I>yore</I> own face, ma'am,&mdash;and I ain't sayin' this with any
+sort of disrespect to any of my wives,&mdash;is about the fairest that Dan
+Anderson ever did or could see&mdash;or me either.  I don't reckon, ma'am,
+that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance Ellsworth turned squarely and gazed hard into the eyes of the
+man before her.  She drew a breath in sharply between her lips, but it
+was a sigh of content.  She felt herself safe in this man's hands.  Again
+she broke into laughter and flung herself upon the convenient frying-pan,
+which she proceeded to scrub with sudden vigor.  Tom Osby's eyes twinkled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whenever you think that skillet's clean enough, us two will set up and
+cook ourselves some breakfast right comfterble.  As for them fellers over
+there, they don't deserve none."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So presently they two did cook and eat yet again.  A strange sense of
+peace and content came to Constance, albeit mingled with remorse.  She
+had suspected Dan Anderson of worshipping at the shrine of an operatic
+star, whereas he had made the long journey from Heart's Desire to see
+herself!  She knew it now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm goin' to take you up to the hotel, ma'am," said Tom Osby, after
+Constance had finished her third breakfast, "and then, after that, I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson back home to Heart's Desire.  We'll see you up
+there after a while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One thing I want to tell you, ma'am, is this.  We've got along without a
+railroad, all right, and we ain't tearin' our clothes to have one now.
+If that railroad does get into our town, it's more'n half likely that
+it'll be because the boys has took a notion to you.  I never did see you
+before this mornin'; but the folks has told me about you&mdash;Curly's wife,
+you know, and the rest.  We'd like to have you live there, if only we
+thought the town was good enough for you.  It's been mostly for men, so
+far."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby and Constance walked up the trail toward the hotel, and Dan
+Anderson from a distance saw them pass.  He watched the gray gown move
+through sun and shadow, until it was lost beyond the thickening boles
+of mountain pines.  She turned once and looked back, but he dared not
+appropriate the glance to himself, although it seemed to him that he
+must rise and follow, that he must call out to her.  She had been
+there, close to him.  He had felt the very warmth of her hand near to
+his own.  There flamed up in his soul the fierce male jealousy.  He
+turned to this newcomer, this man of the States, successful, strong,
+fortunate.  In his soul was ready the ancient challenge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But&mdash;the earth being as it is to-day, a compromise, and love being
+dependent upon property, and chastity upon chattels, and the stars of
+the Universe upon farthing dips&mdash;though aching to rise and follow the
+gray gown, to snatch its wearer afar and away into a sweet wild forest
+all their own, Dan Anderson must sit silent, and plan material ways to
+bring the gray gown back again to his eyes according to the mandates of
+our society.  Because the gray gown was made in the States, he must
+forget the lesson of Curly and the Littlest Girl.  Because the wearer
+of the gown lived in the States, he must pull down in ruins the temple
+of Heart's Desire.  Such is the sweet logic of these days of modern
+progress, that independence, friendship, faith, all must yield if need
+be; even though, and after all, man but demands that himself and the
+woman whom he has sought out from all the world may one day be savage
+and sweet, ancient and primitive, even as have been all others who have
+loved indeed, in city or in forest, from the beginning of the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As Mr. Ellsworth has told me," went on Porter Barkley, "you are an
+able man, Mr. Anderson,&mdash;far too able to be buried down here in a
+mountain mining town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, sweetly; "that's very nice of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I don't know what induced you to hide yourself out here&mdash;" went
+on Barkley, affably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied Dan Anderson, "you don't.  As for myself personally, it's
+no one's damned business.  I may say in a general way, however, that
+the prevailing high prices of sealskins and breakfast food in the
+Eastern States have had a great deal to do with our Western
+civilization.  The edge of the West is mostly inhabited by fools and
+philosophers, all mostly broke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I follow you," assented Barkley; "but I'd rather classify you
+as a philosopher."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps.  At least I am not fool enough to talk about my own affairs.
+You say you are here to talk business.  It is your belief that I
+understand some of the chemical constituents of the population of
+Heart's Desire.  Now, in what way can we be useful to each other?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth broke in, "It's as Barkley says; I've been watching you, Mr.
+Anderson, and I've had an interest in you for quite a while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I have.  I want to see you win out.  Now, if you won't go to the
+mountain, the mountain will have to come to you.  If you won't go back
+and live in the States, we will have to bring the States to you; and
+they'll follow mighty quick when the railroad comes, as you know very
+well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My friend Tom Osby used those very words this morning, when he heard
+the whistle of your esteemed railroad train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely," Ellsworth went on.  "We'll give you a town to live in.
+We'll give you professional work to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work?  That's very nice
+of you, indeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested
+Ellsworth, testily.  "Have we asked you to do anything but straight
+business?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly," said Barkley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face
+did not show it.  They were putting him in the balance against Heart's
+Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it.  They were making
+Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did
+not divulge it, as he sat and looked at them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," said he, at length, "I am a lawyer, the best one in
+Heart's Desire.  The law here is complex in practice.  The titles are
+very much involved.  Between Chitty on Pleading and the land grants of
+the Spanish crown, the law may be a very slow and deliberate matter in
+this country.  Now, I understand the practice.  I speak the language&mdash;I
+don't need an interpreter&mdash;so that I am probably as good as any lawyer
+you can secure at this time.  In straight matters of business I am open
+for employment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you are beginning to talk," said Barkley.  "And just to get right
+<I>down</I> to business, and show you we're not all talk, I want to give
+you a little retainer fee.  I'm sorry it isn't larger, but it'll grow,
+I hope."  He drew a goodly wallet from his breast pocket, and counted
+out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, which he threw down carelessly on the
+pine needles in front of Dan Anderson.  "Is that satisfactory?" he
+asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the latter; but he did not take up the money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, there'll be more," suggested Mr. Ellsworth.  "This business ought
+to net you between five and ten thousand dollars this year.  It might
+mean more than that if we got into town without a fight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be about the only way you would get in at all," and Dan
+Anderson smiled incomprehensibly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly!  And now, since you are our counsel&mdash;" Barkley spoke with an
+increased firmness&mdash;"we want to know your idea on the right-of-way
+question.  What's the nature of the titles in that town, anyhow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As near as I can tell," replied Dan Anderson, "since you retain me and
+ask my legal opinion, the fundamental title to the valley of Heart's
+Desire lies in the ability of every fellow there to hit a tin can at
+forty yards with a six-shooter.  There's hardly a tin can in the street
+that you could cook a meal in," he added plaintively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Barkley, his laughter a little forced.  "But now, I heard
+there never was a town site filed on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a story," replied Dan Anderson, ruminatingly, "that Jack
+Wilson laid out a town there soon after he made the Homestake strike.
+He had McDonald, the deputy surveyor, plat it out on a piece of brown
+paper,&mdash;which was the only sort they had,&mdash;and Jack started over with
+the plat to file at the county seat.  He got caught in a rain and used
+the paper to start a fire with.  After that he forgot about it, and
+after that again, he died; so there never was any town site.  The boys
+just built their houses where they felt like it; and since then they
+have been so busy about other things&mdash;croquet, music, embroidery,
+antelope hunting, and the like&mdash;that they haven't had time to think
+about town lots or town sites, or anything of that sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley's eyes gleamed.  "That will simplify matters very much," said
+he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You really do need local counsel," Dan Anderson observed.  "On the
+contrary of that, it will complicate matters very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we'll see about that," rejoined Barkley, grimly.  "We'll see if
+a little mining camp can hold up a railroad corporation the size of
+this!  But why don't you put your money in your pocket?  It's yours,
+man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson slowly picked up the bills, folded them, and tucked them
+into a pocket.  "This," said he, "is a great deal more than the entire
+circulating medium of Heart's Desire.  I'm likely to become a
+disturbing factor up there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what we want you to become," said Barkley.  "We know there're a
+lot of good mining claims in there, especially the coal lands on the
+east side of the valley.  It isn't the freight and passenger traffic
+that we're after&mdash;we want to get hold of those mines.  Why, the inside
+gang of the Southern Pacific&mdash;you'll keep this a professional secret,
+of course&mdash;has told us that they'll take coal from us for their whole
+system west of Houston.  In a couple of years there'll be a town there
+of eight or ten thousand people.  Why, man, it's the chance of your
+life.  And here's Mr. Ellsworth putting you in on the ground floor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way," began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer's
+blue-print map, "one of the first things we want to settle is the
+question of our depot site.  The only place we can lay out our side
+tracks is just at the head of the caņon, and at the lower end of the
+valley.  Do you know anything about this house here?  It's the first
+one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson bent over the map.  "Yes, I know it perfectly," said he.
+"That's the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down
+with me from Heart's Desire.  He just went up the trail with your
+daughter, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The yards'll wipe him out," said Barkley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The valley is so narrow," went on Ellsworth, "according to what our
+engineers say, that we've got to clean out the whole lower part of the
+town, in order to lay out the station grounds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson started.  The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The trouble with your whole gang," resumed Barkley, striking a match
+on a log, "has been that you've been trying to stop the world.  You
+can't do that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many
+months, the crack of the whip of modern progress.  Yet, before his eyes
+he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the
+beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his
+young manhood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen," said he, at length,
+rising; "we'll talk it over up at the town itself.  I don't know just
+what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my
+opinion force isn't the way to go about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we'll use force if need be; you can depend on that!" said
+Barkley, harshly.  "I've got to get back home before long, and it will
+be up to you after that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the
+clinging dust and pine needles.  The three turned towards the trail and
+walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky
+Top edifice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite a house, isn't it?" said Ellsworth, admiringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson did not look at the building.  Constance was sitting alone
+at the edge of the gallery.  Wishing nothing so much in the world as to
+go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him.  They
+seemed to call out to him to pause, to return.  The whispering of the
+pines called over and over to him, "Constance!  Constance!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still
+whispering.  At the edge of the opening he paused unseen.  He saw the
+girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley,
+laughing gayly and walking across the gallery.  Each had offered her an
+arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most
+natural one in the world.  Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose,
+solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very
+end of all the world.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed Horse</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"That old railroad'll shore bust me up a heap if it ever does git in
+here," remarked Tom Osby one morning in the forum of Whiteman's corral,
+where the accustomed group was sitting in the sun, waiting for some one
+to volunteer as Homer for the day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was little to do but listen to story telling, for Tom Osby dwelt
+in the tents of Kedar, delaying departure on his accustomed trip to
+Vegas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A feller down there to Sky Top," he went on, arousing only the most
+indolent interest, "one of them spy-glass ingineers&mdash;tenderfoot, with
+his six-shooter belt buckled so tight he couldn't get his feet to the
+ground&mdash;he says to me I might as well trade my old grays for a nice new
+checkerboard, or a deck of author cards, for I won't have nothing to do
+but just amuse myself when the railroad cars gets here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one spoke.  All present were trying to imagine how Heart's Desire
+would seem with a railroad train each day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Things'll be some different in them days, mebbe so."  Tom recrossed
+his legs with well-considered deliberation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a heap of things different already from what they used to be
+when I first hit the cow range," said Curly.  "The whole country's
+changed, and it ain't changed for the better, either.  Grass is longer,
+and horns is shorter, and men is triflin'er.  Since the Yankees has got
+west of the Missouri River a ranch foreman ain't allowed to run his own
+brandin' iron any more, and that takes more'n half the poetry out of
+the cow business, don't it, Mac?"  This to McKinney, who was nearly
+asleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything else is changing too," Curly continued, gathering fluency
+as memories began to crowd upon him.  "Look at the lawyers and doctors
+there is in the Territory now&mdash;and this country used to be respectable.
+Why, when I first come here there wasn't a doctor within a thousand
+miles, and no need for one.  If one of the boys got shot up much, we
+always found some way to laundry him and sew him together again without
+no need of a diplomy.  No one ever got sick; and, of course, no one
+ever did die of his own accord, the way they do back in the States."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's it all about, Curly?" drawled Dan Anderson.  "You can't tell a
+story worth a cent."  Curly paid no attention to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first doctor that ever come out here for to alleviate us fellers,"
+he went on, "why, he settled over on the Sweetwater.  He was a allopath
+from Bitter Creek.  What medicine that feller did give!  He gradual
+drifted into the vet'inary line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then there come a homeopath&mdash;that was after a good many women folks
+had settled in along the railroad over west.  Still, there wasn't much
+sickness, and I don't reckon the homeopath ever did winter through.  I
+was livin' with the Bar T outfit on the Oscura range, at that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Next doctor that come along was a ostypath."  Curly took a chew of
+tobacco, and paused a moment reflectively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said the first feller drifted into vet'inary lines, didn't I?" he
+resumed.  "Well, the ostypath did, too.  Didn't you never hear about
+that?  Why, he ostypathed a horse!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did <I>what</I>?" asked Tom Osby sitting up; for hitherto there had seemed
+no need to listen attentively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," he went on, "he ostypathed a horse for us.  The boys they
+gambled about two thousand dollars on that horse over at Socorro.  It
+was a cross-eyed horse, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" Doc Tomlinson objected.  "There never was such a thing
+as a cross-eyed horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, there wasn't, wasn't there?" said Curly.  "Well, now, my friend,
+when you talk that-a-way, you simply show me how much you don't know
+about horses.  This here Bar T horse was as cross-eyed as a saw-horse,
+until we got him ostypathed.  But, of course, if you don't believe what
+I say, there's no use tellin' you this story at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, go on, go on," McKinney spoke up, "don't pay no attention to Doc."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," Curly resumed, "that there horse was knowed constant on this
+range for over three years.  He was a outlaw, with cream mane and tail,
+and a <I>pinto</I> map of Europe, Asia, and Africa wrote all over his ribs.
+Run?  Why, that horse could run down a coyote as a moral pastime.  We
+used him to catch jack rabbits with between meals.  It wasn't no
+trouble for him to <I>run</I>.  The trouble was to tell when he was goin'
+to <I>stop</I> runnin'.  Sometimes it was a good while before the feller
+ridin' him could get him around to where he begun to run.  He run in
+curves natural, and he handed out a right curve or a left one, just as
+he happened to feel, same as the feller dealin' faro, and just as easy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom Redmond, on the Bar T, he got this horse from a feller by the name
+of Hasenberg, that brought in a bunch of has-beens and outlaws, and
+allowed to distribute 'em in this country.  Hasenberg was a foreign
+gent that looked a good deal like Whiteman, our distinguished
+feller-citizen here.  He was cross-eyed hisself, body and soul.  There
+wasn't a straight thing about him.  We allowed that maybe this Pinto
+<I>caballo</I> got cross-eyed from associatin' with old Hasenberg, who was
+strictly on the bias, any way you figured."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ain't so bad, after all, Curly," said Dan Andersen, sitting up.
+"You're beginning now to hit the human interest part.  You ought to be
+a reg'lar contributor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up!" said Curly.  "Now Tom Redmond, he took to this here Pinto
+horse from havin' seen him jump the corral fence several times, and
+start floatin' off across the country for a eight or ten mile sasshay
+without no special encouragement.  He hired three Castilian busters to
+operate on Pinto, and he got so he could be rode occasional, but every
+one allowed they never did see any horse just like him.  He was the
+most aggravatinest thing we ever did have on this range.  He had a sort
+of odd-lookin' white eye, but a heap of them <I>pintos</I> has got glass
+eyes, and so no one thought to examine his lookers very close, though
+it was noticed early in the game that Pinto might be lookin' one way
+and goin' the other, at the same time.  He'd be goin' on a keen lope,
+and then something or other might get on his mind, and he'd stop and
+untangle hisself from all kinds of ridin'.  Sometimes he'd jump and
+snort like he was seein' ghosts.  A feller on that horse could have
+roped antelopes as easy as yearlin' calves, if he could just have told
+which way Mr. Pinto was goin'; but he was a shore hard one to estermate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At last Tom, why, he suspected somethin' wasn't right with Pinto's
+lamps.  If you stuck out a bunch of hay at him, he couldn't bite it by
+about five feet.  When you led him down to water, you had to go
+sideways; and if you wanted to get him in through the corral gate, you
+had to push him in backward.  We discovered right soon that he was born
+with his parallax or something out of gear.  His graduated scale of
+seein' things was different from our'n.  I don't reckon anybody ever
+will know what all Pinto saw with them glass lamps of his, but all the
+time we knowed that if we could ever onct get his lookin' outfit tuned
+up proper, we had the whole country skinned in a horse race; for he
+could shore run copious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was why he had the whole Bar T outfit guessin' all the time.  We
+all wanted to bet on him, and we was all scared to.  Sometimes we'd
+make up a purse among us, and we'd go over to some social getherin' or
+other, and win a thousand dollars.  Old Pinto could run all day; he can
+yet, for that matter.  Didn't make no difference to him how often we
+raced him; and natural, after we'd won one hatful of money with him,
+we'd want to win another.  That was where our judgment was weak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never could tell whether Pinto was goin' to finish under the wire,
+or out in the landscape.  His eyes seemed to be sort of moverble, but
+like enough they'd get sot when he went to runnin'.  Then he'd run
+whichever way he was lookin' at the time, or happened to think he was
+lookin'; and dependin' additional on what he thought he saw.  And law!
+A whole board of supervisors and school commissioners couldn't have
+looked that horse in the face, and guessed on their sacred honor
+whether he was goin' to jump the fence to the left, or take to the high
+sage on the outside of the track.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Onct in a while we'd git Pinto's left eye set at a angle, and he'd
+come around the track and under the wire before she wobbled out of
+place.  On them occasions we made money a heap easier than I ever did
+a-gettin' it from home.  But, owin' to the looseness of them eyes, I
+don't reckon there never was no horse racin' as uncertain as this here;
+and like enough you may have observed it's uncertain enough even when
+things is fixed in the most comf'terble way possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A deep sigh greeted this, which showed that Curly's audience was in
+full sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You always felt like puttin' the saddle on to Pinto hind end to, he
+was so cross-eyed," he resumed ruminatingly, "but still you couldn't
+help feelin' sorry for him, neither.  Now, he had a right pained and
+grieved look in his face all the time.  I reckon he thought this was a
+hard sort of a world to get along in.  It is.  A cross-eyed man has a
+hard enough time, but a cross-eyed <I>horse</I>&mdash;well, you don't know how
+much trouble he can be for hisself, and every one else around him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, here we was, fixed up like I told you.  Mr. Allopath is over on
+Sweetwater creek, Mr. Homeopath is maybe in the last stages of
+starvation.  Old Pinto looks plumb hopeless, and all us fellers is
+mostly hopeless too, owin' to his uncertain habits in a horse race, yet
+knowin' that it ain't perfessional for us not to back a Bar T horse
+that can run as fast as this one can.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About then along comes Mr. Ostypath.  This was just about thirty days
+before the county fair at Socorro, and there was money hung up for
+horse races over there that made us feel sick to think of.  We knew we
+could go out of the cow-punchin' business for good if we could just
+only onct get Pinto over there, and get him to run the right way for a
+few brief moments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was he game?  I don't know.  There never was no horse ever got clost
+enough to him in a horse race to tell whether he was game or not.  He
+might not get back home in time for supper, but he would shore run
+industrious.  Say, I talked in a telyphome onct.  The book hung on the
+box said the telyphome was instantaneous.  It ain't.  But now this
+Pinto, he was a heap more instantaneous than a telyphome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I was sayin', it was long about now Mr. Ostypath comes in.  He
+talks with the boss about locatin' around in here.  Boss studies him
+over a while, and as there ain't been anybody sick for over ten years
+he tries to break it to Mr. Ostypath gentle that the Bar T ain't a good
+place for a doctor.  They have some conversation along in there,
+that-a-way, and Mr. Ostypath before long gets the boss interested deep
+and plenty.  He says there ain't no such a thing as gettin' sick.  We
+all knew that before; but he certainly floors the lot when he allows
+that the reason a feller don't feel good, so as he can eat tenpenny
+nails, and make a million dollars a year, is always because there is
+something wrong with his osshus structure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He says the only thing that makes a feller have rheumatism, or
+dyspepsia, or headache, or nosebleed, or red hair, or any other
+sickness, is that something is wrong with his nervous system.  Now,
+it's this-a-way.  He allows them nerves is like a bunch of garden hose.
+If you put your foot on the hose, the water can't run right free.  If
+you take it off, everything's lovely.  'Now,' says Mr. Ostypath, 'if,
+owin' to some luxation, some leeshun, some temporary mechanical
+disarrangement of your osshus structure, due to a oversight of a
+All-wise Providence, or maybe a fall off'n a buckin' horse, one of them
+bones of yours gets to pressin' on a nerve, why, it ain't natural you
+ought to feel good.  Now, is it?' says he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He goes on and shows how all up and down a feller's backbone there is
+plenty of soft spots, and he shows likewise that there is scattered
+around in different parts of a feller's territory something like two
+hundred and four and a half bones, any one of which is likely any
+minute to jar loose and go to pressin' on a soft spot; 'In which case,'
+says he, 'there is need of a ostypath immediate.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For instance,' he says to me, 'I could make quite a man out of you in
+a couple of years if I had the chanct.'  I ast him what his price would
+be for that, and he said he was willin' to tackle it for about fifty
+dollars a month.  That bein' just five dollars a month more than the
+boss was allowing me at the time, and me seein' I'd have to go about
+two years without anything to wear or eat&mdash;let alone anything to
+drink&mdash;I had to let this chanct go by.  I been strugglin' along, as you
+know, ever since, just like this, some shopworn, but so's to set up.
+There was one while, I admit, when the Doc made me some nervous, when I
+thought of all them soft spots in my spine, and all them bones liable
+to get loose any minute and go to pressin' on them.  But I had to take
+my chances, like any other cow puncher at forty-five a month."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ought to raise his wages, Mac," said Doc Tomlinson to McKinney,
+the ranch foreman, but the latter only grunted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Ostypath, he stayed around the Bar T quite a while," began Curly
+again, "and we got to talkin' to him a heap about modern science.  Says
+he, one evenin', this-a-way to us fellers, says he, 'Why, a great many
+things goes wrong because the nervous system is interfered with, along
+of your osshus structure.  You think your stomach is out of whack,'
+says he.  'It ain't.  All it needs is more nerve supply.  I git that by
+loosenin' up the bones in your back.  Why, I've cured a heap of
+rheumatism, and paralysis, and cross eyes, and&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's that?' says Tom Redmond, right sudden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You heard me, sir,' says the Doc, severe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tom, he couldn't hardly wait, he was so bad struck with the idea he
+had.  'Come here, Doc,' says he.  And then him and Doc walked off a
+little ways and begun to talk.  When they come up toward us again, we
+heard the Doc sayin': 'Of course I could cure him.  Straybismus is dead
+easy.  I never did operate on no horse, but I've got to eat, and if
+this here is the only patient in this whole blamed country, why I'll
+have to go you, if it's only for the sake of science,' says he.  Then
+we all bunched in together and drifted off toward the corral, where old
+Pinto was standin', lookin' hopeless and thoughtful.  'Is this the
+patient?' says the Doc, sort of sighin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways,
+sideways, and all around.  Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks
+Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd
+'a' been lookin' him full in the face.  Doc he stands thoughtful for
+quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down
+along Pinto's spine.  He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful
+subject,' says he.  'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject!  Whole osshus
+structure exposed!'  And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful
+in the game."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is
+full of little humps&mdash;you can see that easy in the springtime.  Now old
+Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky
+Mountain range.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he,
+'Just like I thought,' says he.  'The patient has suffered a distinct
+leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore
+scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more.  'Now, here is a
+distant luxation in the lumber regions.'  He talked like Pinto had a
+wooden leg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced
+ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now look here, Doc,' says Tom Redmond to him then.  'You go careful.
+We all know there's something strange about this here horse; but now,
+if he's got any bone pressin' on him anywhere that makes him <I>run</I> the
+way he does, why, you be blamed careful not to monkey with that there
+particular bone.  Don't you touch his <I>runnin'</I> bone, because
+<I>that's</I> all right the way it is.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Don't you worry any,' says the Doc.  'All I should do would only be
+to increase his nerve supply.  In time I could remedy his ocular
+defecks, too,' says he.  He allows that if we will give him time, he
+can make Pinto's eyes straighten out so's he'll look like a new rockin'
+horse Christmas mornin' at a church festerval.  Incidentally he
+suggests that we get a tall leather blinder and run it down Pinto's
+nose, right between his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This last was what caught us most of all.  'This here blinder idea,'
+says Tom Redmond, 'is plumb scientific.  The trouble with us cow
+punchers is we ain't got no brains&mdash;or we wouldn't be cow punchers!
+Now look here, Pinto's right eye looks off to the left, and his left
+eye looks off to the right.  Like enough he sees all sorts of things on
+both sides of him, and gets 'em mixed.  Now, you put this here harness
+leather between his eyes, and his right eye looks plumb into it on one
+side, and his left eye looks into it on the other.  Result is, he can't
+see nothing at <I>all</I>!  Now, if he'll only run when he's <I>blind</I>, why,
+we can skin them Socorro people till it seems like a shame.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, right then we all felt money in our pockets.  We seemed most too
+good to be out ridin' sign, or pullin' old cows out of mudholes.  'You
+leave all that to me,' says Doc.  'By the time I've worked on this
+patient's nerve centres for a while, I'll make a new horse out of him.
+You watch me,' says he.  That made us all feel cheerful.  We thought
+this wasn't such a bad world, after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We passed the hat in the interest of modern science, and we fenced off
+a place in the corral and set up a school of ostypathy in our midst.
+Doc, he done some things that seemed to us right strange at first.  He
+gets Pinto up in one corner and takes him by the ear, and tries to
+break his neck, with his foot in the middle of his back.  Then he goes
+around on the other side and does the same thing.  He hammers him up
+one side and down the other, and works him and wiggles him till us cow
+punchers thought he was goin' to scatter him around worse than
+Cassybianca on the burnin' deck after the exploshun.  My experience,
+though, is that it's right hard to shake a horse to pieces.  Pinto, he
+stood it all right.  And say, he got so gentle, with that tall blinder
+between his eyes, that he'd 'a' followed off a sheepherder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All this time we was throwin' oats a-plenty into Pinto, rubbin' his
+legs down, and gettin' him used to a saddle a little bit lighter than a
+regular cow saddle.  Doc, he allows he can see his eyes straightenin'
+out every day.  'I ought to have a year on this job,' says he; 'but
+these here is urgent times.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should say they was urgent.  The time for the county fair at Socorro
+was comin' right clost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair,
+and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the
+racin' book.  My friends, you would 'a' shed tears of pity to see them
+folks fall down over theirselves tryin' to hand us their money against
+old Pinto.  There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds
+of fancy riders, and money&mdash;oh, law!  Us Bar T fellers, we took
+everything offered&mdash;put up everything we had, down to our spurs.  Then
+we'd go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn.  We was gettin'
+rich so quick we felt almost scared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There come nigh to bein' a little shootin' just before the horses was
+gettin' ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half.  We
+led old Pinto out, and some feller standin' by, he says, sarcastic
+like, 'What's that I see comin'; a snow-plough?'  Him alludin' to the
+single blinder on Pinto's nose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I reckon you'll think it's been snowin' when we get through,' says
+Tom Redmond to him, scornful.  'The best thing you can do is to shut
+up, unless you've got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar
+T festerval.'  But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the
+post, and there wasn't no more talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the
+starter didn't have no trouble with him at all.  At last he got them
+all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the
+whole bunch.  Say, man, that was a fine start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he'd come out on the track
+that day just standin' on the edges of his feet, he was feelin' that
+fine.  We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up
+on Pinto for to ride him.  Now a Greaser ain't got no sense.  It was
+that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was tellin' you that there horse was ostypathed, so to speak, plumb
+to a razor edge, and I was sayin' that he went off on a even start.
+Then what did he do?  Run?  No, he didn't <I>run</I>.  He just sort of
+passed <I>away</I> from the place where he started at.  Our Greaser, he
+sees the race is all over, and like any fool cow puncher, he must get
+frisky.  Comin' down the homestretch, only needin' about one more
+jump&mdash;for it ain't above a quarter of a mile&mdash;Jose, he stands up in his
+stirrups and pulls off his hat, and just whangs old Pinto over the head
+with it, friendly like, to show him there ain't no coldness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We never did rightly know what happened at that time.  The Greaser
+admits he may have busted off the fastenin' of that single blinder down
+Pinto's nose.  Anyhow, Pinto runs a few short jumps, and then stops,
+lookin' troubled.  The next minute he hides his face on the Greaser and
+there is a glimpse of bright, glad sunlight on the bottom of Jose's
+moccasins.  Next minute after that Pinto is up in the grandstand among
+the ladies, and there he sits down in the lap of the Governor's wife,
+which was among them present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was time, even then, to lead him down and over the line, but
+before we could think of that he falls to buckin' sincere and
+conscientious, up there among the benches, and if he didn't jar his
+osshus structure a heap <I>then</I>, it wasn't no fault of his'n.  We all
+run up in front of the grandstand, and stood lookin' up at Pinto, and
+him the maddest, scaredest, cross-eyedest horse I ever did see in all
+my life.  His single blinder was swingin' loose under his neck.  His
+eyes was right mean and white, and the Mexican saints only knows which
+way he <I>was</I> a-lookin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So there we was," went on Curly, with another sigh, "all Socorro
+sayin' bright and cheerful things to the Bar T, and us plumb broke, and
+far, far from home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We roped Pinto, and led him home behind the wagon, forty miles over
+the sand, by the soft, silver light of the moon.  There wasn't a horse
+or saddle left in our <I>rodeo</I>, and we had to ride on the grub wagon,
+which you know is a disgrace to any gentleman that wears spurs.  Pinto,
+he was the gayest one in the lot.  I reckon he allowed he'd been Queen
+of the May.  Every time he saw a jack rabbit or a bunch of sage brush,
+he'd snort and take a <I>pasear</I> sideways as far as the rope would let
+him go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'The patient seems to be still laborin' under great cerebral
+excitation,' says the Doc, which was likewise on the wagon.  'I ought
+to have had a year on him,' says he, despondent like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Shut up,' says Tom Redmond to the Doc.  'I'd shoot up your own osshus
+structure plenty,' says he, 'if I hadn't bet my gun on that horse race.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we got home, the wagon-load of us, in the mornin' sometime,
+every one of us ashamed to look the cook in the face, and hopin' the
+boss was away from home.  But he wasn't.  He looks at us, and says he;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Is this a sheep outfit I see before me, or is it the remnants of the
+former cow camp on the Bar T?'  He was right sarcastic.  'Doc,' says
+he, 'explain this here to me.' But the Doc, he couldn't.  Says the boss
+to him at last, 'The <I>right</I> time to do the explainin' is before the
+hoss race is over, and not after,' says he.  'That's the only kind of
+science that goes hereafter on the Bar T,' says he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reckon the boss was feelin' a little riled, because he had two
+hundred on Pinto hisself.  A cross-eyed horse shore can make a sight of
+trouble," Curly sighed in conclusion; "yet I bought Pinto for four
+dollars, and&mdash;sometimes, anyway&mdash;he's the best horse in my string down
+at Carrizosy, ain't he, Mac?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the thoughtful silence following this tale, Tom Osby knocked his
+pipe reflectively against a cedar log.  "That's the way with the
+railroad," he said.  "It's goin' to come in herewith one eye on the
+gold mines and the other on the town&mdash;and there won't be no
+blind-bridle up in front of old Mr. Ingine, neither.  If we got as much
+sense as the Bar T feller, we'll do our explainin' before, and not
+after the hoss race is over.  Before I leave for Vegas, I want to see
+one of you ostypothetic lawyers about that there railroad outfit."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE PARTITION OF HEARTS DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable Considerations</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You see, it's just this-a-way," began Tom Osby, the morning after
+Curly's osteopathic horse saga; "I've got to go on up to Vegas after a
+load of stuff, and I'll be gone a couple of weeks.  Now, you know, from
+what we heard down at Sky Top about this railroad, a heap of things can
+happen in two weeks.  Them fellers ain't showin' their hands any, but for
+all we know their ingineers may come in any day, and start in to doin'
+things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They've got to make arrangements first," replied Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right; and so ought we to make arrangements.  We seen this
+place first.  Now, Dan&mdash;" and he extended a gnarled and hairy
+hand&mdash;"you've always done like you said you would.  You took care of me
+down there to Sky Top.  I want you to keep on a-takin' care of me,
+whether I'm here or not.  Now, there's my house and yard, right at the
+head of the caņon, where they've got to come if they get in.  That little
+old place, and my little old team, is about all I've got in the world.
+If old Mr. Railroad comes up this <I>arroyo</I>, what happens to me?  You
+tell 'em to go somewheres else, because I seen this place first, and I
+like it.  Ain't that the law in this country?  Ain't it <I>always</I> been
+the law?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson nodded.  He held out his hand to Tom Osby and looked him
+straight in the eye.  "I'll take care of you, Tom," he promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then that'll be about all," said Tom; "giddup, boys!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In some way news of the early advent of the railroad had gotten about in
+Heart's Desire, and Dan Anderson found talk of it on every tongue, talk
+very similar to that of Tom Osby.  Uncle Jim Brothers, owner of the
+one-story hotel and restaurant, the father and the feeder of all Heart's
+Desire when the latter was in financial stress, was the next to come to
+him; and Uncle Jim was grave of face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here, man," said he, "how about this here new railroad?  Do we want
+it, or <I>do</I> we?  Seems to me like we always got along here pretty well
+the way things was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson nodded again.  Uncle Jim shifted from one large foot to the
+other, and thrust a great hand into the pocket of one trouser leg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All I was going to say to you, Dan," he went on, "is, if it comes to
+takin' any sides, we all know which side you're on.  You're with <I>us</I>.
+Now, there's my place down there, where you've et many a time with the
+rest of the boys.  You've helped me build the tables in the dining
+room&mdash;done a lot of things which makes me feel obliged to you."  (Ah!
+lovable liar, Uncle Jim, who could feed a man broke and hungry, and still
+let him feel that the operation was a favor to the feeder!) "Now, I just
+wanted to say, Dan, I was sure, in case any railroad ever did come
+cavortin' around here, you'd sort of look after the old place.  Will you
+do that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course he will," broke in Doc Tomlinson, who had strolled down the
+street and overheard the conversation.  "Dan Anderson, he's our lawyer.
+We've got him retained permanent, ain't we, Dan?  Now, there's my old
+drug store&mdash;ain't much in it, but it's where I settled when I first driv
+into the valley, and I like the place.  Ain't no railroad going to boost
+me out without a scrap."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson turned away, sick at heart.  For three days he kept to his
+cabin on the far side of the <I>arroyo</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if hesitation sat on the soul of any man of the community, if doubt
+or questionings harassed the minds of any, there was no uncertainty on
+the part of the management of the railroad, whose coming was causing this
+uneasiness.  One day Dan Anderson was startled to hear a knock at his
+door, and to see the dusty figure of Porter Barkley, general counsel of
+the A. P. and S. E., just from a long buckboard ride from the head of the
+rails.  With him came Grayson, chief engineer.  Dan Anderson invited them
+in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Mr. Anderson," said Barkley, "here we are, close after you.  We're
+following up the right-of-way matters sharp and hard now.  We can't hold
+back our graders, and before the line gets abreast of this caņon, we've
+got to know what we can do here.  Now, what can you tell us by this time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can tell you, as I said, the status of every town lot and every mining
+claim in this valley," replied Dan Anderson.  "It's all simple so far as
+that is concerned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about that town site?  Grayson, here, is ready to go ahead with the
+new plat.  If you never had any town site filed, how were real-estate
+transfers made?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There never were any transfers made.  There has not been a town lot sold
+in ten years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Real estate just a little dull?" laughed Barkley, sarcastically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We hadn't noticed it," said Dan Anderson, simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how about your courts?  Next thing you'll be telling me there wasn't
+any court."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There never was, except when we acquitted a man for shooting a pig.  I
+was his counsel, by the way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor any town election?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should there be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No government&mdash;no nothing? for five years?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Over twelve years altogether, to be exact.  I'm rather a newcomer
+myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No organization&mdash;no government&mdash;" Barkley summed it up.  "Good God!
+what kind of a place is this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Heart's Desire," said Dan Anderson.  No man of that valley was ever
+able to say more, or indeed thought it needful to say more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley gave a contemptuous whistle, as he turned on his heel,
+hands in pockets, his bulky form filling the doorway as he looked out.
+"So you were a lawyer here," he said.  "You must have had rather more
+leisure than law practice, I should think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It left me all the more time for my reading," said Dan Anderson,
+gravely.  "You've no idea how much a law practice interferes with one's
+legal studies."  Barkley looked at him, but could discover no sign of
+levity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there is one thing mighty sure," said he, shutting his heavy jaws
+tight; "this valley is, or was, open to settlement under the United
+States land laws."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," assented Dan Anderson.  "The first men in here were mining
+men from every corner of the Rockies, and they knew their business.  All
+these mountains were platted, and 'adversed,' and litigated.  Then,
+before the second discoveries, and before any coal veins were located on
+the other side of the valley, the gold veins pinched out.  Everybody got
+broke, and nearly everybody got up and walked away.  Meantime, the courts
+had only been sitting over at Lincoln once in a while&mdash;when Billy the Kid
+allowed it.  I'll have to admit that things were a trifle tangled as to
+title."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I should say so!"  Barkley was irritable, Grayson, the engineer,
+silent and smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was so much room after the mining boom broke, that nobody cared
+for a town lot.  Every fellow just picked out the place he liked, built
+where he liked, and went in as his own butler, chambermaid, and cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are seeing this country now, gentlemen," he went on, "pretty much as
+God made it, and as Coronado saw it three hundred years ago.  I deprecate
+any undue haste on your part.  We've been three hundred years in getting
+this far along.  We've done very well without either a town site or a
+city council."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley was utterly unable to comprehend either Dan Anderson or Heart's
+Desire.  "This is the absolute limit!" he rapped out.  "At least we'll
+end this now.  Come on, Grayson, we three'll go out and have a look at
+the place, and see what is the best way to lay out the streets.  I
+suppose, Anderson, you can tell us how we can get title under government
+patent&mdash;mineral lands&mdash;coal lands&mdash;desert lands&mdash;homestead&mdash;whatever we
+can dig out the quickest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," said Dan Anderson, "but don't dig too deep, or you may run
+against a land grant from Ferdinand and Isabella to some well-beloved
+<I>hidalgo</I> whose descendants may now be herding sheep on the Pecos, or
+owning the earth along the Rio Grande.  Cabeza de Vaca may own this
+valley, for all I know.  Maybe Coronado owns it.  <I>Quien sabe</I>?  We only
+borrowed the place.  We thought that probably Charles IV, or Philip II,
+or whoever it was, wouldn't mind very much, seeing that he's dead anyhow,
+in case we returned the valley in good condition, reasonable wear and
+tear excepted, after we were dead ourselves.  Of course, this railroad
+coming in complicates matters a good deal.  Do I make all this clear to
+you, gentlemen?  I never did see a place just like this, myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?" snapped Barkley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So we called it Heart's Desire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll call it Coalville now," retorted Barkley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They passed out into the bright sunlit street of Heart's Desire.
+Stern-browed Carrizo, guardian through centuries of calm and secrecy,
+gazed down on them unwinking.  Dan Anderson looked up at the grim
+sentinel of the valley, and mockery left his speech.  He looked about at
+the wide and vacant spaces of the little settlement, lying content,
+secure, and set apart, and a horror came upon his soul.  He was about to
+be a traitor, a traitor to Heart's Desire!  Law&mdash;title&mdash;security&mdash;what
+more of these could these men bring to Heart's Desire than it had long
+had already?  What wrong here had ever been left unrighted?  Truth, and
+justice, and fairness, and sincerity, those priceless things&mdash;why, he had
+known them here for years.  Were they now to be made more obvious, or
+more strong?  He had believed his friends, had had friends to believe;
+would these walking at his side be better friends?  These men of Heart's
+Desire, these simple children who had left the smother of civilization to
+seek out for themselves a place of strength and simplicity, these strong
+and fearless giants, these friends of his&mdash;had he not promised them that
+they would be safe in his hands?  Hitherto there had never been a traitor
+among all the men of Heart's Desire.  Was he, their accepted friend, to
+be the first?  Dan Anderson passed his hand over a forehead suddenly
+grown moist.  He dared not look up at the chiding front of old Carrizo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was saying," said Porter Barkley, turning from the taciturn engineer
+as they walked along the hillside, "that this place seems to have been
+laid off with a circular saw.  I can't see any idea of streets at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a sort of a street along the <I>arroyo</I>," said Dan Anderson,
+dully.  "There never were any cross streets.  The boys just built where
+they felt like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And great builders they were!  I didn't know men ever lived in such
+places.  What's that joint there?"  He pointed out a ruined <I>jacal</I> of
+upright mud-chinked logs, now leaning slantwise far to one side.  "Was
+that a house, too?  It hasn't even a chimney,"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was the residence and law office of a former supreme judge of the
+State of Kansas," replied Dan Anderson.  "He didn't need any chimney.
+You've no idea how useless a chimney really is.  He never stopped to cut
+any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and
+let the smoke go out the window.  He had a pet wildcat that shared his
+legal studies&mdash;oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to you,
+just fresh from New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But didn't you live in New York once yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What made you come away?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Objected to, as irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; and objection
+sustained," replied Dan Anderson.  "The first thing I learned in this
+country was not to inquire about any man's past.  That's a useful thing
+for <I>you</I> to learn, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley, accustomed to dominating those around him, flushed red,
+but managed to suppress his rising choler for the time.  "And by the way,
+what's that old shell over there, across the ditch?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I regret your irreverence," said Dan Anderson.  "That's the New Jersey
+Gold Mills.  Eighty thousand of Eastern Capital went in there at one
+time.  They didn't understand the ways of the country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph!  Well, it's a more practical layout you've got in here this time.
+You can gamble that Ellsworth and our gang are not going to sink their
+roll here, by a long ways, unless they get something for it."
+
+"You'll get a run for your money, in all likelihood," remarked Dan
+Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I said, now, Grayson, don't pay any attention to this gully here,"
+went on Barkley.  "We'll fill this ditch and put in drains at the
+crossings, and run the main street north and south.  We'll take the
+ramshorn crooks out of this town in about two days, when we get started."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see no reason why we could not run the cross streets at right angles,"
+said Grayson, the constructive.  "Of course, we'll catch a good many of
+these buildings&mdash;" he hesitated, pointing at the time to Doc Tomlinson's
+drug store.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The corner of this fence would be inside the line of the main street,"
+he went on, sighting along his lead pencil to the angle of Whiteman's
+corral.  It was the very spot where Dan Anderson had sat in council with
+his cronies many a time.  He bit his lip now as he followed the gaze of
+the engineer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about the stone house down the <I>arroyo</I>?" asked he of Grayson.
+This was Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, sanctuary for the homeless of
+Heart's Desire, a temple of refuge, a place where the word "Friendship,"
+unspoken, never written, was known and understood among men gathered from
+all corners of this unfriendly world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would have to go," replied Grayson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As to that shanty down below, at the head of the caņon," growled
+Barkley, pointing to Tom Osby's adobe, "that's going to be the first
+thing we'll tear down, street or no street.  We need that place for our
+depot yard, and we're going to take it.  Besides, there was something
+about that Osby fellow I didn't like when we met him over at Sky Top.
+He's too damned independent to suit me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson straightened up as though smitten, his face a dull red.  The
+dancing heat mist blurred before his eyes.  He said nothing.  They turned
+presently and strolled down toward the foot of the <I>arroyo</I>.  Barkley
+pushed his hat back on his furrowed forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a lot in this thing for me, Andersen," said he, "and there'll
+be a lot in it for you.  Have you got any claims of your own in here?
+Mineral, I mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Dan Anderson replied.  "We all have claims.  This is the
+only valley in the West, so far as I know, where there is good coal on
+one side, and paying gold quartz on the other.  But that's the case here.
+We haven't overlooked it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley whistled.  "I wouldn't ask a better show than you'll have here,"
+said he, contemplatively.  "The only wonder to me is that some one hasn't
+broken into this long ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There might be some few difficulties," suggested Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Difficulties!  What do you care about that?  We'll wear 'em out, pound
+'em out, break 'em up, I tell you.  We're the first ones to find this
+country&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except maybe Coronado, De Vaca and Company."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who were they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The same as you and me," replied Dan Anderson, enigmatically.  "Ask the
+mountains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, rot!" said Barkley.  "I'll tell you, once for all, I'm not
+interested in dreams or foolishness.  Now, if you want to go in with us,
+that's one thing.  If you don't, we want to find it out mighty quick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might do worse," said Dan Anderson.  "The other lawyer is worse than
+myself.  At times I suspect him of being lazy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well, let's get together," urged Barkley, impatiently.  "Now,
+Grayson thinks it will take about three hundred and fifty acres for the
+first plat, without additions; we'll supersede the old Jack Wilson
+patent.  He's dead, you say?  Never left a will, or any heirs?  Never did
+get his town site platted and filed?  Well, he never will, now.  You go
+with Grayson to-morrow and run out these lines quietly, and help him get
+an idea of the best mining claims on both sides of the valley, too.
+There'll be plenty for you to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson nodded, but made no comment.  Many things were revolving in
+his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meantime," concluded Barkley, "I've got to get back down the line to
+meet Mr. Ellsworth.  We'll come up again.  You can readily see that we've
+got to have a town meeting before very long.  Get things in line for it.
+Will you attend to this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Dan Anderson, slowly and musingly; "yes, I'll attend to
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley looked once more upon the impassive face of his local counsel,
+and departed more than ever puzzled and exasperated.  He liked Dan
+Anderson as little as he understood him.  "I'll handle him, though," he
+muttered to himself.  "There's a way to handle every man, and I rather
+think that this one'll come to his feed before we get done with him."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
+and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Learned Counsel," said Dan Anderson on the morning following the
+preliminary survey of Heart's Desire, "I want you to take my case."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's up?" asked Learned Counsel.  Dan Anderson pointed down the
+street, where a group stood talking among themselves, casting
+occasional side-long glances in his direction.  "They're milling like a
+bunch of scared longhorns," he said.  "Something's wrong, and I know it
+mighty well.  I want you to take my case.  Come along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Contrary to the ancient custom of the forum at Whiteman's corral, the
+group did not move apart to admit them to the circle.  "The gentleman
+from Kansas was addressing the meeting," said Dan Anderson.  Doc
+Tomlinson continued speaking, but still the circle made no move.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say it!" burst out Dan Anderson.  "Tell it out!  What's on your minds,
+you fellows?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We don't like to believe it," McKinney began, facing toward him.  "We
+hope it ain't true."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's not true?" he demanded, looking from one averted face to
+another.  At length Doc Tomlinson resumed his office as spokesman.
+"They say you've sold us out.  They say you're bought by the railroad
+to clean us out; that the scheme is to steal the town, and you're in
+the steal.  Is that so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it true?" asked McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We want to <I>know</I> if it's true," insisted Doc Tomlinson.  "You was
+all over town with them fellers.  Now they've let it out they're goin'
+to grab the town site and make a re-survey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We know there wasn't ever any town site here," added Uncle Jim
+Brothers, "but what need was there?  Wasn't there plenty of room for
+everybody?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't try any hurrah game on us fellers here," said McKinney,
+facing Dan Anderson squarely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor you with me," retorted Dan Anderson.  "Don't any of you undertake
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on there," called Learned Counsel, lifting his hand for
+attention.  "This man is my client!  You're not hearing both sides."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell the other side, Dan," said Uncle Jim Brothers.  Dan Anderson
+shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why can't you?" asked Uncle Jim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't!" broke from Dan Andersen's dry lips.  "If you knew, you
+wouldn't ask me to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's no argument," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "What we do know is
+that you were figurin' to run the street right past here, maybe through
+my store and Uncle Jim's place, maybe takin' Tom's place for depot
+yards.  That outfit's been all over the hills lookin' for claims to
+jump.  It's a case of gobble and steal.  They say you're hired to help
+it on, and are gettin' a share of the steal.  Now, if that's so, what
+would you do if you was in our place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd run the fellow out of town," said Dan Anderson.  "If there was
+that sort of a traitor here, by God! I'd kill him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We never did have no man go back on us here," Uncle Jim Brothers
+remarked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't say that to me!" Dan Andersen's voice was shaken.  "You've fed
+me, Uncle Jim.  Don't say that to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then what <I>shall</I> we say, man?" replied Uncle Jim.  "We want to be
+fair with you.  But let me tell you, <I>you</I> don't own this valley.
+<I>We</I> own it.  There's other places in the world besides the States,
+and don't you forget that.  We didn't think you'd ever try to bring
+States ways in here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To hell with the States!" said McKinney, tersely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And States ways with them!" added Doc Tomlinson.  "I'd like to see any
+railroad, or any States, or any United States government, try to run
+this place."  Unconsciously he slapped his hand upon the worn scabbard
+at his hip, and without thought others in the group eased their pistol
+belts.  It was the Free State of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, by God!" said Uncle Jim Brothers, snapping and throwing away the
+piņon twig which he had been fumbling, "if we don't want no railroad,
+we don't <I>have</I> it, and that goes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," broke in Learned Counsel.  "We all know that.  That's a
+small thing.  The big question is whether or not we've been fair to my
+client.  I've not had time yet to go fully into his case.  We'll have
+to continue this trial.  We've got to have fair play."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right enough," assented McKinney, and the others nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then wait a while.  You can't settle this thing until my client has
+had time to talk with me.  I'll find out what he ought to tell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right for that, too," agreed Uncle Jim Brothers.  "But about that
+railroad, we'll hold court right here.  We'll send out a summons to
+them folks, and have a meetin' here, and we'll see which is which and
+what is what in this town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's fair enough," assented Learned Counsel.  "We'll try the
+railroad, and we'll try my client at the same time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Write out the summons," said Doc Tomlinson.  "Send word down to them
+railroad folks to come up here and be tried.  It's time we knew who was
+boss, them or us.  Go ahead, you're a lawyer; fix it up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They ignored Dan Anderson, their long-time leader in all matters of
+public interest!  Eventually it was Doc Tomlinson himself who drafted
+the document, one of the most interesting of the Territorial records&mdash;a
+summons whereby civilization was called before the bar of primitive
+man.  These presents being signed and sealed, a messenger was sought
+for their delivery.  None better offered than a half-witted sheepherder
+commonly known as Willie, who chanced to be in town by buckboard from
+the lower country.  This much accomplished, the meeting at Whiteman's
+corral broke up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Learned Counsel took his client by the arm and led him away.  "You need
+not say much to your lawyer," he remarked; "but while I don't ask you
+to incriminate yourself even with your counsel, I only want to say that
+a Girl is, in a great many decisions of the upper courts, held to be an
+extenuating circumstance."  He watched the twitch of Dan Anderson's
+face, but the latter would not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know just where the girl exists now in this case," went on
+Learned Counsel, "or how; but she's somewhere.  It is not wholly
+necessary that you should specify."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" broke out Dan Anderson.  "I wanted&mdash;I hoped so much?  It was
+my opportunity, my first&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's enough," said Learned Counsel.  "You needn't say any more.
+Every fellow has something of that sort in his life.  What brought
+McKinney here, and Doc Tomlinson, and all the rest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ribbons!" said Dan Anderson.  "Tintypes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely.  And who shall cast the first stone?  If the boys knew&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they don't know, they can't know.  Do you think I'd uncover her
+name, even among my friends&mdash;make her affairs public?  No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then your only defence cannot be brought into court."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  So what do you advise?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you advise your counsel to advise you?" asked Learned Counsel,
+bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing.  I'm done for, either way it goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson turned a drawn face.  "What shall I do?" he asked at
+length again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For once Learned Counsel was wise.  "In this sort of crisis," said he,
+"one does not consult a lawyer.  He decides for himself, and he lives
+or dies, succeeds or fails, wins or loses forever, for himself and by
+himself, without aid of counsel or benefit of clergy."  He stood and
+watched the iron go home into the soul of a game man.  Dan Anderson was
+white, but his reply came sharp and stern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're right!  Leave me alone.  I'll take the case now myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They shook hands and separated, not to meet again for days; for Dan
+Anderson shut himself up in his cabin and denied himself to all.  Gloom
+and uncertainty reigned among his friends.  That a crisis of some sort
+was imminent now became generally understood.  At length the crisis
+came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There arrived in town, obedient to the summons of Heart's Desire, the
+dusty buckboard driven by Willie the sheepherder.  Upon the front seat
+with him was Mr. Ellsworth; on the back seat sat Porter Barkley and
+Constance.  The chief actors in the impending drama were now upon the
+stage, and all Heart's Desire knew that action of some sort must
+presently follow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With due decorum, however, all Heart's Desire stood apart, while the
+three travellers, dusty and weary, buried themselves in the privacy of
+Uncle Jim Brothers's best spare rooms.  Then Heart's Desire sought out
+Willie the sheepherder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Willie," said Doc Tomlinson, "look here&mdash;you tell us the truth
+for once.  There's a heap of trouble goin' on here, and we want to get
+at the bottom of it.  Maybe you heard something.  Now, say, is this
+here railroad figurin' on comin' in here, or not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore it'll come," said Willie, sagely.  "Them folks has got money to
+do just what they want.  Railroad'll be here in a few days if they feel
+like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe <I>we</I> don't feel like it," said Doc Tomlinson, grimly.  "We'll
+see about that to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The girl, she's the one," said Willie, vaguely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that you mean?" commanded Doc Tomlinson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The funniest thing," said Willie, "is how things is mixed.  Lord John,
+he rides on the front seat; and Lord Peter Berkeley,&mdash;that's the lawyer
+for the railroad,&mdash;he rides on the back seat with her, and he sues for
+her hand, he does, all the way up from the Sacramentos.  Says he to
+Lord John, says he, 'Gimme the hand of this fair daughter of thine, and
+the treasure shall be yours,' says he."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, ha!" said Doc Tomlinson.  "I shore thought that girl was mixed up
+in this somehow.  But I didn't understand.  Wonder if Dan Anderson told
+us everything he knew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They set on the back seat," continued Willie, glancing importantly at
+the listeners to his romance, "a-lookin' into each other's eyes.  And
+says the bold juke, to her, says he, 'Constance!' like that.
+'Constance,' says he, 'I've loved you these many years agone.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did she say then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't ketch what she said.  But by'm by the proud earl&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said the bold juke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the same thing.  The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint,
+like earls always is, and says he agin, 'Lord John, the treasure shall
+be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of
+thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,' says he.  From that I
+thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn't ketch.  Of
+course, I was busy drivin' the coach."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men of Heart's Desire looked from one to the other.  "Well, I'll be
+damned!" said Doc Tomlinson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly chewed tobacco vigorously.  "To me," he said, "it looks like Dan
+was throwed down.  That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn't
+think that of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Throwed down hard," affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; "but now, hold on
+till we get all this straight.  Maybe Dan wouldn't work for this outfit
+if he knew all that's goin' on.  Seems to me like, one way or another,
+the girl's kind of up at auction.  If she's part of the railroad's
+comin' into Heart's Desire, why, then, we want to know about it.  I
+wish 't Dan Anderson was here,"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his
+<I>casita</I> across the <I>arroyo</I>.  As fate would have it, he had caught
+Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own
+account.  Willie escaped alive, and presently left town.  Whereafter
+Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the
+court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised;
+and that of the woman as well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him.
+Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself,
+and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation.  Then, in his
+loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him,
+conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Far up on the flank of Carrizo he sat and looked down upon the little
+straggling town in the valley below.  These hills, he thought, with all
+their treasures, were to be sold and purchased for a price, for a
+treasure greater than all their worth,&mdash;the hand of the woman whom he
+loved.  She had consented to the bargain.  She had been true to the
+States, and not to Heart's Desire.  She had been true to her class, and
+not to him, who had left her class.  She had been true to her sex, and
+not to him, her unready lover.  Ah, he had not deserved her
+remembrance; but still she ought to have remembered him!  He had not
+been worthy of her, but still she ought to have loved him!  He had
+offered her nothing, he had evaded her, shunned her, slighted her&mdash;but
+in spite of that she ought to have waited for him, and to have loved
+him through all, and believed in him in spite of all!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat, befooled and befuddled, arguing, accusing, denying, doubting,
+until he knew not where treachery began or faith had ended.  It was
+late when he descended the mountain and walked dully down the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this time Constance, in ignorance of everything except the absolute
+truth, sat in the meagre room of the little stone hotel.  She wondered
+if there would ever be any change in her manner of life, if there would
+ever be anything but this continuous following of her father from one
+commercial battle into another.  She wondered why Dan Anderson did not
+come.  Surely he was here.  Surely his business was with his employers;
+and more surely than all, and in spite of all, his place was here with
+her; because her heart cried out for him.  In spite of all, he was her
+heart's desire.  Why did he not come?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She arose, her hands clenched; she hated him, as much as she had longed
+for him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There are two problems in life, and only two: food and love.
+Civilization offers us no more, nor indeed does barbarism; for
+civilization and barbarism are not far apart.  The great metropolis
+which sent its emissaries out to the little mountain hamlet never held
+within its teeming confines any greater or graver questions than those
+which were now to come before the town meeting of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Down at the stone hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers the tables had been
+cleared away to make room for this event, the first of its kind ever
+known in that valley.  Heretofore there had been no covenant among
+these men, no law save that which lay in leather on each man's thigh.
+It was a land of the individual; and a sweeter land than that for a man
+was never known in all the world.  Now these men were coming together
+to debate what we call a great question, but what is really a small
+question&mdash;that of an organization under the laws of what is denominated
+civilization; that compact which the world devised long ago, when first
+man's flocks and herds became of value, and against which the world has
+since then rebelled, and ever will rebel, until there is no longer any
+world remaining, nor any worth the name of man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The long room, low and bare, was filled with silent, bearded men.  Two
+or three smoky little lamps but served to emphasize the gloom.  At the
+farther end, on chairs raised a few inches above the level of the
+floor, sat John Ellsworth and Porter Barkley.  The latter was the first
+to address the meeting, and he made what might have been called an able
+effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ignoring the fact that civilization had been summoned to the bar of
+Heart's Desire for trial, and assuming that barbarism was put upon its
+defensive, he pointed out to the men of Heart's Desire that they had
+long been living in a state of semi-savagery.  To be sure, they had not
+yet had among them men of executive and organizing minds, but the
+fulness of years had now brought this latter privilege.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, waiting a space for applause, but no applause came.  He felt
+upon him scores of straight-forward eyes, unwavering, steady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The town, in its new shape, he hurried on to explain, ought, of course,
+to wipe out and forget its past.  Even the name, "Heart's Desire," was
+an absurd one, awkward, silly, meaning nothing.  They had tremendous
+coal-fields directly at their doors.  He suggested the name of
+Coalville as an eminently practical one for the reconstructed
+community.  His suggestion brought out a stir, a shuffle, a sigh; but
+no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Barkley declared that there must be a fundamental revolution as to
+the old ideas of Heart's Desire.  There had been no courts.  There had
+been no government, no society.  It was time that the old days of the
+mining camp and cow town were done, time that miner's law and no law at
+all should give way to the laws of the Territory, to the laws of the
+United States government, and to the greater law of industrial progress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He additionally, and with a hardening of his voice, pointed out that,
+under the provisions of the laws of society and civilization, property
+belonged only to the man who held the legal title to it.  The gentlemen
+representing this new railroad were the first to assume legal title to
+this town site; they had taken all necessary steps, and intended to
+hold this town site in the courts as their own.  Their expenses would
+be very large, and they proposed to be repaid.  They felt that their
+holdings in the valley would warrant them in going ahead rapidly with
+their plans of development.  They had bought some few claims in the
+coal-fields, had filed on others for themselves, and had taken over
+other and abandoned claims on both sides of the valley.  Their
+disposition was not to be hostile.  They hoped, after the preliminary
+organization of the town government should have been completed, to have
+the unanimous ratification of all their actions.  They felt most
+friendly, most friendly indeed, toward the hardy citizens of this
+remote community.  They proposed to help them all they could.  He felt
+it a distinguished privilege for himself to be the man to take the
+first steps for the organization of the new commercial metropolis of
+Coalville.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was distinctly to be understood by all that the gentlemen whom
+he represented did not propose to entertain, and would not tolerate,
+any interference with their plans.  He begged, in conclusion, to
+present to them, with the request for a respectful and intelligent
+hearing, that able, that distinguished, that benevolent gentleman, well
+known in financial circles of the East, Mr. John Ellsworth of New York,
+who would now address them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barkley sat down, and, with customary gesture of the orator, passed his
+handkerchief across his brow.  Then he gazed up, surprised.  The
+applause was long in coming.  He straightened in his chair.  The
+applause did not come at all.  The men of Heart's Desire sat hard and
+grim, each silent, each looking straight ahead, nor asking any counsel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth felt the chill which lay upon the audience, and understood
+its meaning.  He stood before them, a rather portly figure, clean,
+ruddy, well clad, fully self-possessed, and now, by intent,
+conciliatory.  With hands behind his back, he told a certain funny
+little story with which he had been wont to conquer, at least in social
+gatherings.  No ripple came in response.  The eyes of the men of
+Heart's Desire looked as intolerably keen and straight at him as they
+had at his predecessor.  He could feel them plainly in the gloom beyond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Unconsciously on the defensive now, he explained in detail the
+undeniable advantages which would accrue to Heart's Desire on the
+advent of this railroad and the carrying out of the plans that had been
+outlined.  He did not deny that he considered the opinion of his
+counsel valid; that the valley was in effect open to settlement; that
+they had taken steps to put the first legal possession in their own
+names.  Yet, he stated, although they had taken over a number of claims
+to which there seemed to be no legal title, they did not propose to
+interfere, if it could be avoided, with the holdings of any man then
+living in Heart's Desire.  The re-survey of the town would naturally
+make some changes, but these should sit as lightly as possible upon
+those affected.  Of course, the railroad company could condemn and
+confiscate, but it did not wish to confiscate.  It desired to take the
+attitude of justice and fairness.  The gentlemen should bear in mind
+that all these improvements ran into very considerable sums of money.
+A hundred miles of the railroad below them must pass over a barren
+plain, a cattle country and not an agricultural region, and hence
+offering relatively small support to a railroad enterprise.  As yet,
+artesian water was unknown in that country, and might remain always a
+problem.  No natural streams crossed that great dry table land which
+lay to the west, or the similar plateau to the east.  All their hopes
+lay in this one valley and its resources, and while without doubt those
+resources were great, while the coal-fields upon the one side of the
+valley and the gold claims upon the other had been proved beyond a
+peradventure to be of value, the gentlemen should nevertheless remember
+that all this road building and mine developing cost money, a great
+deal of money.  Of course, no capital could be invested except under
+the protection of a stable and adequate system of the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These gentlemen before him, Ellsworth said in conclusion, had chosen
+for their habitation one of the most delightful localities he had ever
+seen in all his travels.  He congratulated them.  He looked forward to
+seeing a prosperous city built up in this happy valley.  The country
+was changing, and it must change, the line of the frontier passing
+steadily from the east to the west across the continent.  They could
+not forever escape civilization.  Indeed, it had now come to them.  He
+hoped that they would receive it, and that they would receive him as
+their friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he closed, Ellsworth found himself not dictating, but almost
+pleading.  The stern gravity of his audience removed the edge of any
+arrogance he might have felt.  He sat down and in turn passed his hand
+across his forehead, as perplexed as had been Barkley before him.  Both
+grew uneasy.  There was a shifting in the seats out in the half-lighted
+interior before them, but there came no sound of applause or comment.
+Ellsworth leaned over and whispered to his associate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's something up," said he.  "We haven't got them going.  What's
+on their minds?  Where's Anderson?  He ought to be here.  Get him, and
+let's nominate him for mayor, or something.  This thing's going to
+split!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll go out and find him," whispered Barkley, and so slipped out of
+the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did find him, aloof, alone, pacing slowly up and down the street,
+the one man needed by both divergent interests, and the one man absent.
+"Good God!  Anderson," protested Barkley.  "What are you doing out here
+by yourself?  We need you in there.  They're like bumps on a log.  We
+can't get them started at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's funny," said Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Funny!  I don't <I>think</I> it's very funny.  You are the one supposed to
+understand these men, and we want you now to deliver the goods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will pardon me, sir," said Dan Anderson, facing him with his
+hands in his pockets, "I don't exactly like that expression."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like it or not," retorted Barkley, hotly.  "You belong in there, and
+not out here in the moonlight studying over your maiden speech.  What
+are you afraid of?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of nothing," said Dan Anderson, simply.  "Or, of nothing but myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But we need another strong talk to stir them up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go make it, then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that!" cried Barkley, sharply; "you'll not come in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I'm done with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, damn your soul! man, you don't mean to tell me that you've
+flunked&mdash;that you've gone back on us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson bit his lip, but continued silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've taken our money!" exclaimed Barkley.  "We've hired you, bought
+you!  We won't stand for any foolishness, and we won't put up with any
+treachery, I want you to understand that.  Your place is in there, at
+the meeting&mdash;and here you are standing around as though you were
+mooning over some girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hadn't noticed the moonlight," said Dan Anderson.  "As to the rest
+of it, the street of this town has usually been free for a man to think
+as he pleased."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a traitor and a squealer!" cried Barkley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a damned cad!" retorted Dan Anderson, calmly.  He stepped close
+to the other now, although his hands remained in his pockets.  "I
+dislike to make these remarks to an oiled and curled Assyrian ass," he
+went on, smiling, "but under the circumstances, I do; and it goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley, dominant, arrogant, aggressive, for years accustomed to
+having his own way with men, felt a queer sensation now&mdash;a replica,
+fourfold intensified, of that he had experienced before the silent
+audience he had left within.  He was afraid.  Dan Anderson stepped
+still closer to him, his face lowered, his lips smiling, his eyes
+looking straight into his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just what I said," began Barkley, desperately, "I told
+Constance&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wonder was that Barkley lived, for the resort to weapons was the
+only remedy known in that land, and Dan Anderson knew the creed, as
+Barkley should have known it.  His weapon leaped out in his hand as he
+drew back, his lean body bent in the curve of the fanged rattler about
+to strike.  He did strike, but not with the point of flame.  The heavy
+revolver came to a level, but the hooked finger did not press the
+trigger.  Instead, the cylinder smote Porter Barkley full upon the
+temple, and he fell like a log.  Dan Anderson checked himself, seeing
+the utter unconsciousness of the fallen man.  For a moment he looked
+down upon him, then walked a few steps aside, standing as does the wild
+stag by its prostrate rival.  The fierce heats of that land, still
+primitive, now flamed in his soul, gone swiftly and utterly savage.  It
+was some moments before he thrust the heavy weapon back into its
+scabbard, and, turning, strode toward the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he entered the crowded room he was recognized, and heard his name
+called again and again.  The audience had wakened, was alive!
+Ellsworth, sitting, alone and anxious, looked up hopefully and beckoned
+Dan Anderson to his side.  The latter seemed scarce to know him, as he
+walked to the end of the hall and, without preliminary, began to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," said he,&mdash;"boys&mdash;I am glad to answer you.  I have twice
+been invited to speak at this meeting.  Rather I should say that I am
+now invited by you.  A moment ago I was commanded, ordered to speak, by
+a man who seemed to think he was my owner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He thought himself my owner by reason of this!"  He drew from his
+pocket the roll of bills which had been untouched since he had received
+them at Sky Top.  "Here's my first fee as a lawyer.  It's a thousand
+dollars.  I wanted the money.  My business is that of the law.  I am
+open to employment.  You ought not to blame me&mdash;you shall not blame
+me."  He held the money in his hand above his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silent audience looked at him gravely, with eyes level and
+straight, as it had regarded the speakers preceding him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;" and here he stiffened&mdash;"I did not know I was asked to help
+steal this town, to help rob my friends.  These men have proposed to
+take what was not theirs.  They have wanted no methods but their own.
+They have not asked, but ordered.  If this is their way, they'll have
+to get some other man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men of Heart's Desire still looked at him gravely, silently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Dan Anderson, "I've had my chance to choose, and I've
+chosen.  The choice has cost me much, but that has been my personal
+cost, with which you have nothing to do.  I am throwing away my chance,
+my future, but I do throw them away!"
+
+As he spoke he flung at Mr. Ellsworth's feet the roll of bills.  "Sir,"
+said he, "it is the sense of this meeting that the railroad shall not
+come into Heart's Desire.  Is it so?" he asked of the eyes and the
+darkness; and a deep murmur said that it was so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson stepped down from the little platform out into the room.
+Hands were thrust out to him, but he seemed not to see them.  He pushed
+on out, haggard; and presently the assemblage followed, breaking apart
+awkwardly, and leaving Ellsworth standing alone at the rear of the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth was now wondering what had become of Barkley, and in his
+discomfiture was turning around in search, when he heard a voice behind
+him, and passing back encountered Barkley, staggering and bloody, as he
+entered through a side door of the building.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great God! man, what's the matter?" exclaimed Ellsworth.  "What's
+happened to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That fellow struck me with a gun.  Let me in!  Let me get fixed for
+him!  By God!  I'll kill him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kill whom?  Who did it?  Wait!  Wait, now!" expostulated Ellsworth,
+following him toward his room; but Barkley still fumed and threatened.
+"That fellow Anderson&mdash;" Ellsworth caught.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sound of their voices reached other ears.  Constance came running
+from her own room, questioning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barkley's been hurt," explained her father, motioning her away.  "Some
+mistake.  He and Anderson have had trouble over this railroad business,
+some way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By God!  I'll kill him!" shrieked Barkley again, in spite of her
+presence, perhaps because of it.  "Where can I get a gun?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You forget&mdash;my daughter&mdash;" began Ellsworth.  But Constance avenged the
+discourtesy for herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, papa," she said coldly.  "Mr. Barkley, you look
+ridiculous.  Go wash your face; and then, if you want a gun, go get one
+in the front room.  The wall's full of them."  A glint of scorn was in
+her eyes, which carried no mercy for the vanquished, nor any concern
+for the victor.  She drew her father with her into her own room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the Lord! girl," exclaimed he, "things have come out different from
+what we expected.  I never thought&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Constance, "you never thought.  You didn't know."  She spoke
+bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth sank down in a chair, his hands in his pockets.  "Well, we're
+whipped," said he.  "The game's up.  That fellow Anderson did us up,
+after all,&mdash;and look here, here's the money he threw back, almost in my
+face.  They went with him like so many lambs.  Confound it all, I don't
+more'n half believe I ever understood that fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you never did," said Constance, slowly.  She was sitting upon the
+edge of the bed, gazing at her father quietly.  "And so he threw away
+his chance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what he did.  Said it meant a lot for him to throw away his
+future, but he was going to do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he say that?" asked the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure he said it!  There's not going to be any railroad at Heart's
+Desire; and incidentally Mr. Daniel Anderson isn't going to be mayor,
+or division counsel with a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.  Oh,
+well, to-morrow we'll pull out of here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance was deliberate with her reply.  "One thing, dad, is sure,"
+said she; "when we go, you and I go together.  Let Porter Barkley take
+the stage to-morrow if he likes.  You and I'll go back by way of Sky
+Top; and we'll go alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth pursed his lips into a whistle, many things perplexing him.
+"He's lucky to get away at all," he remarked at length.  "From what he
+said, it looks like there'd be more trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trouble!"  She flung out her hand in contempt.  "There'll be no
+trouble if it waits for him to make it.  If I know Porter Barkley,
+he'll know enough to stay right there in his room.  If he does not&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jinks!  Dolly," exclaimed her father, "you remind me all the time
+of your mother.  I never could fool that woman; and no one ever could
+scare her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him without reply, and though he stroked her hair softly,
+he departed in discontent, his own head bowed in reflection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile, out in the long street of Heart's Desire, little groups of
+men gathered; but they held to the sides of the street, within the
+shelter of angles and doorways.  In the centre of the street there
+paced slowly up and down, his hands behind his back and not fumbling
+his weapon, a tall figure, with head bent slightly forward as in
+thought, although with eyes keenly watching the door of the hotel.
+Uncle Jim Brothers himself had brought out word of Barkley's
+threatenings, and according to the only known creed there was but one
+issue possible.  That issue was now awaited decently and in order.  The
+street was free and fair.  Let those concerned settle it for
+themselves.  Incidentally, Heart's Desire was willing that its question
+should be settled at the same time.  Here was its champion, waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The watchers in the street grew restless, but nothing happened to
+interrupt their waiting.  Upon the side of the house nearest them,
+lights shone from three windows.  Presently one of these, that in the
+room of Constance Ellsworth, was extinguished.  A second window
+blackened; Mr. Ellsworth had retired.  The third light disappeared.
+Porter Barkley, not yet exactly of the proper drunkenness to find
+courage for his recently declared purpose, had concluded to go to sleep
+instead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the street Heart's Desire waited patiently, gazing at the darkened
+house, at the shaded door.  Half an hour passed, an hour.  Dan
+Anderson, without speech to any one, walked slowly up the street and
+across the <I>arroyo</I>.  The light in his own casita flickered briefly
+and then vanished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told you all along he was game!" said Curly, emerging from the
+corner of Whiteman's store and offering everybody a chew from his plug
+of tobacco.  "They ain't runnin' him any, I reckon.  Huh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shucks!" remarked Uncle Jim, disgustedly.  "From the way that feller
+Barkley roared around, I shore thought he was a-goin' to tear up the
+earth.  He's so yellow that in the mornin' I'm goin' to tell him to
+move on out of town.  I've always kep' a respectable house before now,
+and I never did harbor a man who wouldn't shoot <I>some</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the mornin'," added Doc Tomlinson, as the group broke up, "I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson that saddle of mine that's layin' around in
+my store.  Why, what does a man want of a <I>saddle</I> in a drug store?  I
+just want to <I>give</I> the boy something."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman the Jew</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There was a barber at Heart's Desire, a patient though forgotten man,
+who had waited some years in the belief that eventually a patron would
+come into his shop in search of professional services.  No one did
+come, but still the barber hoped.  He was one of those who had clamored
+most loudly for Eastern Capital.  After the town meeting the courage of
+the barber failed him.  He declared himself as at length ready to
+abandon his faith in Heart's Desire, and to depart in search of a
+community offering conditions more encouraging.  In this determination
+he was joined by Billy Hudgens of the Lone Star, a man also patient
+through long years of adversity, who now admitted that he might be
+obliged to close up and move to Arizona.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The news of these impending blows fell upon a community already gloomy
+and despondent.  Some vague, intangible change had come over Heart's
+Desire.  The illusion of the past was destroyed.  Men rubbed their
+eyes, realizing that they had been asleep, that they had been dreaming.
+There dawned upon them the conviction that perhaps, after all, the old
+scheme of life had not been sufficient.  The lotus plant was robbed of
+its potency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was at this time that McGinnis came to town.  His advent was the
+most fortunate thing that could have happened.  Certainly, it was
+hailed with joy and accepted as an omen; for, as was known of all men
+over a thousand miles of mining country in the Rockies, McGinnis was
+the image and emblem of good luck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not that this meant prosperity for McGinnis himself, for that gentleman
+continued in a very even condition as to worldly goods, being steadily
+and consistently broke,&mdash;a sad state of affairs for one who had brought
+so much happiness to others.  History proved to the point of proverb
+that whenever McGinnis visited a camp,&mdash;and he had followed scores of
+strikes and stampedes in all the corners of the metalliferous
+world,&mdash;that camp was destined to witness a boom at no distant day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+McGinnis was not actually a newcomer at Heart's Desire, but upon the
+contrary one of the autochthones of that now decadent community.  He
+was a friend and former bunk-mate of old Jack Wilson, discoverer of the
+Homestake mine.  Five years ago, however, at the breaking of the
+Heart's Desire boom, he had silently stolen away, whether for Alaska or
+the Andes no one knew nor asked.  Returning now as though from
+temporary absence, he punched an ancient and subdued burro into town,
+and unrolled his blankets behind Whiteman's corral, treating his
+return, as did every one else, entirely as a matter of course.  Seeing
+these things, a renewed cheerfulness came to the lately despondent.
+Whiteman the Jew, ever a Greatheart, openly exulted, and voiced again
+his perennial confession of commercial faith in Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keep your eye on Viteman," said he.  "Der railroat may go, der barber
+may go, der saloon may go, but not Viteman.  My chudgment is like it
+vas eight years ago.  Dis stock of goots is right vere I put it.  If no
+one don't buy it, I keeps it.  I know my pizness.  Should I put in
+twenty thousand dollars' vort of goots, and make a mistake of der blace
+vere a town should be?  I guess not!  Viteman stays.  By and by der
+railroat comes to Viteman.  You vatch.  Keep your eye on Viteman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood in the door of his long log store building, squat, stocky,
+bristling, blue shirted like the rest, and cast his eye down counters
+and shelves piled with clothing and hats, boots and gloves, pick-axes,
+long-handled shovels, saddles, spurs, wagon bows, flour, bacon, and all
+manner of things which come in tin cans.  Dust was over all; but above
+the dust was expectancy and not despair.  The Goddess of Progress had
+her choicest temple in the frontier store.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I toll you poys years ago," Whiteman went on, "you should blat der
+town.  Ve blat it oursellufs now.  Ve don't act like childrens no more.
+Ve meet again.  Ve holt a election.  Ve make Viteman gounty dreasurer.
+Dan Anderson should be mayor, and McGinney glerk.  Ve make a town
+gouncil, and ve go to vork like ve should ought to did.  Ve move
+Nogales City over here and make dis der gounty seat.  Ve bedition for a
+new gounty&mdash;ve don't vant to belong to dot Becos River gow outfit.  Ve
+make a town for oursellufs.  Viteman didn't put in dis stock of goots
+for noddings.  You vatch Viteman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This speech turned the tide, coming as it did with the arrival of
+McGinnis.  Billy Hudgens decided to wait for a few more days, although
+for the time he was out of business for lack of liquids.  It was
+fortunate that McGinnis did not know this latter fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The capital of McGinnis, aside from his freckles and his thirst, was
+somewhat limited.  His blankets were thin and ragged, his pistol minus
+the most important portion of a revolver&mdash;to wit, the cylinder&mdash;and
+withal so rusted that even had it boasted all the component parts of a
+six-shooter, it could not have been fired by any human agency.  He had
+a shovel, a skillet, and a quart tin cup.  He had likewise a
+steel-headed and long-handled hammer, in good condition; this being,
+indeed, the only item of his outfit which seemed normal and in perfect
+repair.  McGinnis was a skilled mechanic and a millwright and could use
+a hammer as could but few other men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the morning after his arrival McGinnis rolled early out of his
+blankets, ate his breakfast of flapjacks and water, and put his hammer
+in his hip pocket, where some men put a gun who do not know how to
+carry a gun.  McGinnis spoke to no one in particular, but headed up
+into the mouth of the curving valley where stood the silent works of
+the New Jersey Gold Mills Company.  He was not cast down because he
+found no one whom he could ask for work.  He whistled as he walked
+through the open and barn-like building, looking about him with the eye
+of a man who had seen gold mills before that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They've got their plates fixed at a lovely angle!" said he; "and
+there's about enough mercury on 'em to make calomel for a sick cat.
+There's been <I>talent</I> in this mill, me boy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He crawled up the ore chute into the bin, and cast a critical gaze upon
+the rock heaped up close to the crusher.  Then he examined the battery
+of stamps with silent awe.  "This," said McGinnis, softly to himself,
+"is the end of the whole and intire earth!  Is it a confectionery shop
+they've got, I wonder?  They do well to mash sugar with them lemon
+squeezers, to say nothing of the Homestake refractories."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed on about the mill in his tour of inspection, still whistling
+and still critical, until he came to the patent labor-saving ore
+crusher, which some inventor had sold to the former manager of the New
+Jersey Gold Mills Company, along with other things.  McGinnis drifted
+to this instinctively, as does the born mechanician, to the gist of any
+problem in mechanics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take shame to ye fer this, me man, whoivver ye were," said McGinnis,
+and the blood shot up under his freckles in indignation.  "This is so
+bad it's not only unmechanical and unprofissional&mdash;it's absolutely
+unsportsmanlike!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His ardor overcame him, and, hammer in hand, he swung down into the ore
+bin underneath the crusher.  "Here's where it is," said he to himself.
+"With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this
+stuff&mdash;especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss
+was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry!  Yer little donkey
+injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a
+crusher&mdash;yah!  It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill.
+Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, man; loose her off!"
+
+McGinnis was a man of action.  In a moment he was tapping at the
+clenched bolt with the head of his bright steel hammer.  Slowly at
+first, and sullenly, for it had long been used to treatment that
+McGinnis called "unsportsmanlike"; then gently and kindly as it felt
+the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at
+length the workman was satisfied.  Then he turned also the
+corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great
+steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast
+again.  "She's but a rat-trap," said he to himself, "but it's only fair
+to give the rat-trap its show."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+McGinnis went out and sat down upon a pile of ore.  It was a bright and
+cloudless morning, such as may be seen nowhere in the world but in
+Heart's Desire.  The Patos Mountains, across the valley, seemed so
+close that one might lay his hand upon them.  The sun was bright and
+unwinking, and all the air so golden sweet that McGinnis pushed back
+his hat and gloried simply that he was alive.  He did not even note the
+cottontail that came out from behind a bush to peer at him, nor mark
+the sweeping shadow of a passing eagle that swung high above the little
+valley.  His eye now and again fell upon the abandoned mill, gaunt,
+idle and silent; yet he regarded it lazily, the spell of the spot and
+the languor of the air filling all his soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at last the sun grew more ardent, and McGinnis, knowing the secret
+of the dry Southwest, sought shade in order that he might be cool.  He
+rose and strolled again into the mill, looking about him as before,
+idly and critically.  "Av ye was all me own, it's quite a coffee mill I
+cud make of ye, me dear," said he, familiarly.  And at this moment a
+thought seemed to strike him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has always been me dream to be a captain of industhry,"
+soliloquized McGinnis.  "I've always longed to hear the busy hum of me
+own wheels, and to feel that I was the employer and not merely the
+employeed."  He mused for a few moments, too lazy to think far at one
+flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wud be nice," he resumed later, "to see the smoke of your own
+facthory ascendin' to the sky, and to feel that yerself 'uz the whole
+affair, cook and captain bold, ore shoveller, head ingineer,
+amalgamator and main squeeze."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All capital," continued McGinnis, "is too much depindent upon labor.
+The only real solution&mdash;" he paused to feel his pockets for a
+match&mdash;"the only real solution is to be <I>both</I> capital and labor.
+Then, av ye've anny kick, take it to yourself, and settle it fair fer
+both!"  He paused again, and again the light of his idea showed upon
+his countenance.  "This," said McGinnis, "is Accajyun!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wandered over to the little boiler which drove the engine, and took
+inventory of the pile of crooked piņon wood that lay heaped up near by.
+He sounded the tank on top of the engine house, and found that it was
+half full.  Then, calmly and methodically, he took off his coat, folded
+it, and laid it across a bench.  He picked up a piece of board,
+whittled a little pile of shavings, thrust them into the ashy grate,
+and piled some wood above them.  Then he scraped a match, and turning a
+cock or so to satisfy himself that the boiler would not go out through
+the roof in case he did get up steam, sat down to await developments.
+"She'll steam for sure," he ruminated.  "She'll steam as much as wud do
+for a peanut wagon, av ye give her time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the morning was gone the little boiler began to thump and churn
+and threaten.  McGinnis ran the belt on to the stamp shaft.  He went up
+and connected the crusher and shovelled a few barrows of ore into the
+hopper.  Not long afterwards there was a dull and creaking rumble.  The
+shaft of the stamps turned half around, slipped and stopped with a
+rusty squeak.  Then came further creaks, groans, and rumbles.  McGinnis
+walked calmly from place to place, tightening, loosening, shaking,
+testing, shovelling, and watching.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's wonderful," said he to himself, softly.  "It's just wonderful
+what human bein's can do!  If I, hadn't ever seen this mill, I wuddn't
+have believed it!  But I'll say at this point meself, that I'm not
+looking a gift mill in the mouth.  Moreover, this runnin' of your own
+mill, not bein' beholden to any sordid capitalist, nor yet depindent on
+anny inefficient labor, is what I may call a truly ijeel situation in
+life.  I'll stay here till the wood runs out.  Not that I'll cut wood
+for annybody.  Capital must draw the line somewhere!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one noticed the smoke from the abandoned gold mill.  McGinnis ran it
+by himself and undisturbed until his woodpile waned.  Then he
+disconnected, blew off, and set to work to scrape his plates, whereon
+to his experienced eye there now appeared a gratifying roughness in the
+coating.  He got off a lump of amalgam as big as his fist, and was
+content.  "It's ojus there's no retort here," said he, "but like enough
+I'll find some way to vollituize this mercury."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He crossed the <I>arroyo</I>, and went to the cabin which had once been the
+office of the assayer.  The latter was now an <I>emigré</I>, but he had left
+his crucibles and his furnace behind him; because it is not convenient
+to carry such things when one is afoot.  McGinnis found a retort,
+adjusted it, set it going, volatilized the mercury from his amalgam,
+and in time had his button of dirty but quite valid gold.  It lay heavy
+in his hand and rested heavy in his pocket.  "As a captain of
+industhry," said he, "I must see what I can do for poor sufferin'
+humanity."  He chuckled, and passed out into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As capital," said McGinnis to himself, walking on in the moonlight, "I
+am entitled to the first drink meself, and after that to one or two as
+a laborer.  Then, if there's anny left, after treatin' all round, I'll
+buy the town a public liberry, pervidin' the town'll make it
+sufficiently and generally understood that I'm a leadin' and
+public-minded citizen that has reached success by the grace of God and
+a extraordinary brain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But McGinnis in his philanthropic intentions met difficulty.  He
+wandered into the Lone Star, and placing his crude bullion upon the
+counter, swept about him a comprehensive hand.  To his wonder there was
+no response.  A few of the assembled populace shifted uneasily in their
+seats, but none arose.  "Do you take this for a low-down placer camp?"
+asked Billy Hudgens, with a dull show of pride, when McGinnis demanded
+the gold scales.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said McGinnis, "it's a quartz camp right enough, and all it needs
+is developin'.  At this speakin', I'm capital and labor both, and crew
+of the <I>Nancy Brig</I>.  What's the matter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sigh escaped from the audience, as Billy Hudgens made reply.  "Not a
+drop," said he; "all gone.  Nothing till Tom Osby gets back from Vegas,
+and maybe not then.  I owe Gross & Blackwell over two hundred now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+McGinnis's voice dropped into a low, intent whisper.  "Do you mean to
+tell me that?" he said.  "Me, with my thirst?"  He laid a hand on
+Billy's shoulder.  "Friend," said he, "I've walked two hundred miles.
+I've developed your place.  I'm in a position to give this town a
+public liberry worth maybe forty dollars.  Now, do you mean to say to
+me&mdash;do you mean&mdash;"  He gulped, unable to proceed.  Hudgens nodded.
+McGinnis let fall his hand from the counter, turned and silently left
+the place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moved up the street to the adobe where the barber had his shop.  The
+barber was gloomily sitting inside, waiting.  McGinnis entered, and
+looked about him with the ease of one revisiting familiar scenes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a case upon the wall were rows of shaving mugs, now dusty and
+abandoned, mute witnesses of a former era of glory.  Indeed, they
+remained an historical record of earlier life in Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once there had been rivalry between McGinnis and Tom Redmond for the
+affections of a widow who kept a boarding-house in Heart's Desire, the
+same long since departed.  There came by express one day, addressed to
+Tom Redmond, a shaving mug of great beauty and considerable size,
+whereon the name of Tom Redmond, handsomely emblazoned, led all the
+rest.  The fame of this work of art so spread abroad that Tom Redmond,
+as befitted one who had attained social distinction, became the
+recipient of increased smiles from the widow aforesaid.  McGinnis bided
+his time.  Thirty days later, there arrived by stage for him a shaving
+mug of such stature and such exceeding art as cast that of Tom Redmond
+completely in the shade!  Thenceforth the widow smiled upon McGinnis.
+Tom Redmond, unable to endure this humiliation, and in the limitation
+of things wholly unable to raise the McGinnis ante in shaving mugs, was
+obliged to leave the town.  McGinnis hung upon the handle of the
+Redmond mug a goodly card bearing the legend, "Gone, but not
+forgotten."  Shortly after that McGinnis himself left town.  Alas! at
+the instance of the widow the barber hung upon the McGinnis mug a
+similar card; it having appeared that McGinnis had emigrated without
+paying either his board bill or his barber's bill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This evidence of his early delinquency now confronted McGinnis as he
+stepped into the shop for the first time in these years.  He regarded
+it with displeasure.  "Take it off," said he to the barber, sternly.
+"I paid the widdy in Butte, two years ago.  As for yourself, I have
+come six hundred miles to pay my bill to you.  Take it out of that."
+He presented his heavy button of gold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The barber protested that he could not make change on this basis, but
+cheerfully extended the credit.  He was glad to see McGinnis back
+again, for he was most promisingly hairy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am back, but I'll not be stayin' long," said McGinnis.  "Have ye
+annything to drink?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The barber mournfully shook his head, even as had Billy Hudgens.
+McGinnis, refusing to believe such heavy news, walked up to the mantle,
+picked up a tall bottle labelled "Hair tonic," smelled of it, and
+without asking leave, raised it to his lips and drained it to the
+bottom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For industhrial purposes, friend," said he.  In twenty minutes he was
+lying in a deep and dreamless sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In some ways this fellow has talent," said Billy Hudgens, as he looked
+in on McGinnis later; "but like enough he's come to a show-down now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until noon the next day McGinnis slept soundly.  Then he sat up on the
+floor.  "How're you feelin' now, man?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Friend," said McGinnis, "I'm feelin' some dark and hairy inwardly; but
+I'm a livin' example of how a man can thriumph over circumstances."
+Wherewith he smiled gently, sank back, and slept again till dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wud have been too bad," said McGinnis to the barber when he awoke,
+"if you had left this town before I came.  What ye've all been needin'
+is some one to give ye a lesson in not gettin' discouraged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As for combinin' hair tonic and strong drink into one ingradyint, if
+anny one tells you it's a good thing, you may say for me the report
+lacks confirmashun.  But we'll not despair.  Aside from the proverb
+about the will and the way, 'tis well known that no disgrace can come
+to a real captain of industhry through a timporary change in the
+industhrial conditions.  I'm sayin' to you, get in a new chair, and get
+ready for the boom."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Even as the stouter-hearted captains of Heart's Desire began to voice
+their confidence, a sudden sense of helplessness, of personal inadequacy,
+came upon Porter Barkley, erstwhile leader of the forces of the A. P. and
+S. E. Railway Company.  With emotions of chagrin and humiliation he found
+himself obliged wholly to readjust his estimate of himself and his
+powers.  He had come hither full of confidence, accustomed to success,
+animated by a genial condescension toward these benighted men; and now,
+how quickly had the situation been reversed!  Nay, worse than reversed.
+He, Porter Barkley, a man who had bought a legislature in his time, was
+ignored, forgotten by these strangers, as though he did not exist!  More
+than that, Ellsworth was reticent with him; and worst of all, when he met
+Constance at the table she gave him no more than a curt nod and a polite
+forgetfulness of his presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porter Barkley wished nothing so much as speedily to get away from the
+scene of his twofold defeat, although he knew that farewell meant
+dismissal.  He knew also that he could restore himself to the respect of
+Heart's Desire in only one way; but he did not go out on the street in
+search of that way, although the Socorro stage was a full day late in its
+departure, and he was obliged to remain a prisoner indoors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Indeed, Constance and her father were little better than prisoners as
+well, for no possible means of locomotion offered whereby they could get
+out of town; and all Heart's Desire remained aloof from them, not even
+the Littlest Girl coming across the <I>arroyo</I> to call on Constance at the
+hotel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to have her come over to see the twins," said Curly to his
+spouse, "but I reckon like enough she's sore."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd be mighty glad to have a good square talk with some woman from the
+States," rejoined the Littlest Girl, hesitatingly.  "I'd sort of like to
+know what folks is wearin' back there now.  Besides that&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't more'n half believe her and Dan Anderson is gettin' along very
+well, someway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That so?  Well, I don't see how they can, the way he throwed the spurs
+into her pa the other night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He just worships the ground that girl walks on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You oughtn't to talk so much.  That ain't our business&mdash;but how do you
+know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, because I <I>do</I> know," responded the Littlest Girl, warmly.  "Don't
+you suppose I can see?  I've talked with Dan every time he come up here
+to buy a pie&mdash;talked about that girl.  He buys more pies now than he used
+to.  I reckon I <I>know</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That may all be.  Question is, how's she a-feelin' toward <I>him</I> these
+days?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly," after a little silence, "I'm going to put on my bonnet and go
+over there and see that girl.  She's all alone.  I'll take her a pie.  I
+always did think she was nice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, all right.  There's Bill Godfrey drivin' the stage out of his barn
+now.  I'll go over to the post-office and help the old man with the mail.
+May ride out as far as the ranch with Bill and see if Mac has anything
+special to do.  There was talk of that Nogal sheep outfit gettin' in on
+the lower end of our range.  If they do, something'll pop for sure.  You
+go on over to the hotel if you want to.  Ma'll take care of the twins."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The departure of the stage for Socorro occurred once a week or so, if all
+went well, and the event was always one of importance.  Even Mr.
+Ellsworth and Constance found themselves joining the groups which
+wandered now toward the post-office, next door to Whiteman's store, in
+front of which Bill Godfrey regularly made his first stop preparatory to
+leaving town.  As they two passed up the street from the hotel, they
+missed the Littlest Girl, who crossed the <I>arroyo</I> above them by a
+quarter of a mile; Heart's Desire being, in view of its population, a
+city of magnificent distances.
+
+The man from Leavenworth, postmaster, had nearly finished the solemn
+performance of locking up the emaciated mail-bag for Socorro, and Bill
+Godfrey was looking intently at his watch&mdash;which had not gone for six
+months&mdash;when all at once the assemblage in and around the post-office was
+startled by shrieks, screams, and calls of the most alarming nature.
+These rapidly approached from the direction of the <I>arroyo</I>, beyond
+which lay the residence portion of Heart's Desire.  Presently there was
+to be distinguished the voice of a woman, raised in terrified
+lamentations, accompanied with the broken screams of a child in evident
+distress.  There appeared, hastening toward the group in front of the
+store, Curly's mother-in-law, wife of the postmaster of Heart's Desire,
+and guardian as well of the twins of Heart's Desire.  It was one of these
+twins, Arabella, whom she now hurried along with her, at such speed that
+the child's feet scarce touched the ground.  When this latter did happen,
+Arabella seemed synchronously to catch her breath, becoming thus able to
+emit one more spasmodic wail.  There was pain and fright in the cries,
+and the whole attitude of the woman from Kansas was such that all knew
+some tragedy had occurred or was impending.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Lord!" cried Curly, "I'll bet a thousand dollars the kid's got my
+strychnine bottle this time!  I left it in the window.  There was enough
+to poison a thousand coyotes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sprang forward to catch the other arm of the sobbing child.  The man
+from Kansas, postmaster of Heart's Desire, hastened to join his wife in
+the street, wagging his gray beard in wild queries.  In half a moment all
+the population was massed in front of Whiteman's store, incoherent,
+frightened, utterly helpless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's dyin'!" cried the woman from Kansas.  "Poison!  Oh, Willyam, what
+shall we do?"  But the postmaster was unable to offer any aid or counsel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just left it there in the window," explained Curly, excitedly; "I was
+goin' to put out some baits around a water hole, about to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it's awful!" sobbed the woman from Kansas.  "What shall we do?  What
+shall we do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doc," said Curly to Doc Tomlinson, "you run the drug store&mdash;ain't you
+got no anecdote for this?"  Doc Tomlinson could only shake his head
+mournfully.  A ring of bearded, beweaponed men gathered about the little
+sufferer, hopeless, at their wits' end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance and her father, hurrying to learn the cause of the commotion,
+received but incoherent answers to their questions.  "Good Lord! girl,
+that child's hurt!" cried Ellsworth, helpless as the others.  "What'll we
+do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance did not even reply to him.  Without his assistance, indeed
+without looking to right or left, she made straight through the circle of
+men, who gave way to admit her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the trouble here?  What's wrong?" she demanded sharply, catching
+the weeping woman by the arm, even as she reached out a hand toward the
+suffering Arabella.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poison!" wailed the woman from Kansas again.  "She's goin' to die!
+There ain't no way to help it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What poison&mdash;what has the child taken?" asked Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was strychnine, ma'am, like enough," ventured Curly.  "There was
+some&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense!  It's not strychnine," cried the girl.  In an instant her eye
+had caught what every other individual present had overlooked, although
+it was certainly the most obvious object in all the landscape,&mdash;the
+half-empty can which still remained tightly clutched in Arabella's free
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, here it is!" she exclaimed.  "The child has eaten concentrated lye.
+Quick!  Get her in somewhere.  What are you standing around here for&mdash;get
+out of the way, you men!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They scattered, and Constance glanced about her.  "Where's some
+grease&mdash;some lard?  Quick!" she called out to Whiteman, who was looking
+on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In here, lady&mdash;dis vay," he answered eagerly; but she outfooted him to
+the rear of the store, carrying Arabella in her arms.  Spying a lard tin,
+she thrust off the cover, and plunged in a hand.  Immediately the sobs of
+Arabella changed to sputterings, for the physician in charge had covered
+her face, lips, and a goodly portion of the interior of her mouth and
+throat with the ameliorating unguent!  At this act of first aid, the
+wails of the woman from Kansas ceased also, and a vast sigh of relief
+arose from the confederated helplessness of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she going to die?" gasped the woman from Kansas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Constance, scornfully.  "I've seen much worse burns.  The lye
+has perhaps lost a little of its strength, too.  The burns are all well
+in the front of the mouth and tongue, and I don't think she swallowed any
+of it.  Lard is as good as anything to stop the burn.  Why didn't you
+think of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know, ma'am," confessed the woman from Kansas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sudden loquacity now seized upon all those recently perturbed and
+silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Curly, "it's this-a-way; the women they must have left that
+can of lye settin' around.  It's mighty careless of 'em.  I <I>needed</I> my
+strychnine, but there ain't no <I>sense</I> in leavin' lye settin' around.
+Them twins was due to eat it, shore.  Why, they was <I>broke</I> to eat
+anything that comes in tin cans!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance gathered Arabella in her arms.  The tailored gown was ruined
+now.  One hand remained gloved, but both were grease-laden to the wrists.
+She was unconscious of all this.  Her gaze, frowning, solicitous,
+maternal, bent itself upon the face of her patient.  The men of Heart's
+Desire looked on, silent, relieved, adoring.  A few began to edge toward
+the open air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ain't no kind of a drug-store man," said the postmaster, scornfully,
+to Tomlinson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why ain't I?" retorted the latter, hotly.  "What <I>chance</I> does a
+merchant get in this town?  What do I get for carrying a full line of
+drugs here for years?  Now, <I>lard</I> ain't drugs.  It ain't in the
+pharmacopy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know but it's a good thing for that kid," said Curly.  "She
+ought to be plumb soft-spoken all her life, after all that lard in her
+frontispiece.  But it won't do 'em no good,&mdash;they'll eat my strychnine
+next.  This here stage-coach&mdash;with her along," jerking his thumb towards
+the physician in charge, "won't be any more'n out of sight before that
+twin corporation will be fryin' dynamite on the kitchen stove.  I shore
+thought that set of twins was busted this time for keeps.  Unless there's
+two of 'em, twins ain't no good!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am, your dress is just ruined," said the woman from Kansas; "you are
+lard clean from head to foot!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it," cried Constance, gayly, the color coming to her cheeks; "but
+never mind, the baby's all right now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you've got to come over to our house and get fixed up.  Was you
+goin' out on the stage?  You stay here for a day or so and watch that
+child; we'd like it mighty well if you would."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a flag of truce from Heart's Desire.  Nevertheless, Constance
+seemed to hesitate.  Ah! wily Constance.  A great many things might
+happen which had not yet happened, but which ought to happen.  And in all
+that group Dan Anderson was nowhere to be seen.  Perhaps after a time he
+might come!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance hesitated just long enough.  The dignity of Bill Godfrey had to
+be sustained.  His stagecoach had not started on the appointed and
+stipulated time any day these many months; yet for that stage, ready
+equipped for its journey, to stand waiting idly upon the convenience of
+any mortal after the "mails" had been brought out from the post-office
+and placed safely in the boot, was mortal affront to any stage-driver's
+reputation.  Bill Godfrey again looked solemnly at his watch and gathered
+up the reins.  "All aboard!" he cried.  "Git up!" and so swung a wide
+circle and headed down the street to the hotel.  Presently he departed.
+He carried a solitary passenger.  Constance and her father were still
+prisoners, or guests, in Heart's Desire for an indefinite time!  And in
+an indefinite time many things may occur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his house across the <I>arroyo</I> Dan Anderson endured the silence and
+loneliness as long as he could, turning over and over again in his mind
+the old questions to which he had found no answer.  Most of all, one
+question was insistent.  Had he been just to her, to Constance, in
+allowing himself to accept her alleged conduct as a motive for his own
+actual conduct?  He had taken for granted much&mdash;all&mdash;and upon what manner
+of testimony?  The babblings of a half-witted herder!  He had asked the
+men of Heart's Desire to hear both sides of his own case.  The men of
+Heart's Desire had heard both sides of the railroad's case.  But he had
+condemned without trial the woman whom he loved&mdash;her&mdash;Constance!  It was
+impossible, unbelievable of any man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the horror of this thought broke upon him fully, Dan Anderson sprang
+up, caught his hat, and started fast as he might for the hotel.  He
+crossed the <I>arroyo</I> below the post-office, and so did not know, at the
+time, of the peril and rescue of Arabella.  Nor did he know that all of
+Heart's Desire was penitent regarding her and her father; nor that both
+were to remain for yet a little time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson approached the stone hotel in time to watch the stage
+depart, himself unobserved.  Then he stepped farther toward the hotel
+door.  He met the Littlest Girl just emerging from the building, whither
+she had gone upon the same errand as his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She ain't here, Mr. Anderson," explained the Littlest Girl; "her and her
+pa has just went to the post-office."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her silently.  "Oh, I know who you come to see," asserted
+the Littlest Girl, "and I don't blame you.  It's <I>time</I> you did, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a word he turned and walked with her up the street, there to miss
+Constance by three moments, which, potentially, might have been a
+life-time.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work, and a Man's Medicine</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Dad, you've been drinking!" burst out Constance as her father met her
+at the door of Curly's house.  She had heard footsteps, and hastened to
+meet the visitor.  Perhaps it was disappointment, perhaps indignation
+with herself that she had listened, that she had waited, which caused
+her to greet her parent with such asperity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wrong me, daughter!" protested Mr. Ellsworth, solemnly; "only took
+one or two little ones, to celebrate the saving of the twin.  You've
+made a great hit with those people over there.  They'd all celebrate,
+if there was anything to drink.  I had to stock the Lone Star myself
+out of my valise.  They won't have anything in till Tom Osby comes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say," he resumed, taking his daughter's arm with genial gallantry as
+they stepped out into the sunlight together, "these people are not so
+bad.  They're warming up right along now.  If you and I could stay here
+awhile, we'd get along with 'em all right&mdash;better understanding all
+around."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face brightened.  "Then you don't give up the railroad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; by no means.  I never give up a thing I want.  Besides, I wouldn't
+mind coming here to live for a while.  The climate's glorious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You live here?  You'd look well in a wide hat and a blue shirt,
+wouldn't you, dad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More irreverence!  Of course I'd look well.  And it's worth something
+to eat the way I do here.  I'm getting better every day.  Why, they
+tell me no one has died out here in a hundred years.  A man can eat
+anything from cactus to sole leather, and keep hearty.  I saw a lot of
+fellows over there just now, sitting flat on the ground in the sun out
+in the middle of the street, eating dried beef and canned tomatoes, and
+they looked so happy that I sat down and took a bite with them.  They
+are just travelling through,&mdash;sheriff's party from somewhere, going
+somewhere after somebody."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that, Mr. Ellsworth?" the woman from Kansas came out and
+inquired; for she knew better than he what that meant.  "Sheriff?  Was
+he a tall, slim man, longish mustache, sorter thin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth nodded; the woman wiped her hands on her blue-checked apron.
+Constance glanced at her serious face, and wondered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it's Ben Stillson," the woman from Kansas said, "the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He's after somebody.  Did he summons any of our men along?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know, madam," answered Ellsworth.  The woman said no more; she
+only watched and listened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was this posse, headed by the sheriff of Blanco, that Dan Anderson
+and the Littlest Girl saw when they reached a point midway between
+Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel and the post-office.  The little group of
+riders, dusty and travel-stained, had come at a steady trot down the
+street.  Stillson, tall, grim-featured, and bronzed, looked neither to
+the right nor to the left.  He stopped, and ordered his men to dismount
+and eat.  They swung out of their saddles without a word, loosening the
+cinches to breathe their horses.  The men of Heart's Desire began to
+gather around them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's up, Ben?" asked McKinney, the one most apt to be concerned; for
+cow men had borne the brunt of outlawry in that land for more than a
+generation.  "Has Chacon come across from Arizona, or has the Kid broke
+out again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sheriff looked at him gravely.  "The Kid's out," said he.  "We had
+him and two others at Seven Rivers, but he broke out four days ago.  He
+killed the jailer and a couple of Mexicans farther up the river.
+There's four in his bunch now, and we've trailed them this far.
+They're likely headed for Sumner.  We dropped in here, across the
+Patos, to get a couple of men or so.  How are you fixed here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait till I get a Winchester," said McKinney, briefly, and started
+down the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whiteman," Doc Tomlinson volunteered, "you 'tend to my drug store
+while I'm away, and if anybody wants any drugs, you go get 'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You all hold on a minute," said Curly, hurrying forward, "while I run
+over home and git saddled up."  He did not see the Littlest Girl
+approaching, but the sheriff did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, Curly," said the sheriff, quietly, pointing to her.  "I
+want one more man, a single man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You, Curly!" interrupted his spouse, "you stay right where you are.
+You get some one else, Mr. Stillson.  He's got a family, and besides,
+he's <I>such</I> a fool."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly flushed.  "Was it <I>my</I> fault I got married?" he began hotly.
+"And them twins, was they mine, real?  Now look here&mdash;"  But the
+sheriff shook his head.  He looked at Dan Anderson inquiringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly I'll go," said he.  "Wait till I get fixed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's as many as I'll need," said Stillson.  "Hurry up, all of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson hastened across the <I>arroyo</I> to his house, first asking
+Curly to get him a horse.  Curly departed to his own home with the
+Littlest Girl; so that Constance presently got fuller news of the
+arrival of the sheriff's party, and learned also that Dan Anderson was
+to join them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Curly," cried Constance, "isn't it dangerous?  Won't some one get
+hurt?"  She winced.  The steady flame of her own brave heart flickered
+at this new terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Kin savvy</I>?" grinned Curly.  "The Kid's gang shore'll fight.  A good
+many fellers has got hurt goin' after him.  But what you goin' to do?
+Let 'em steal all the cows they want, and kill everybody they feel
+like?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's work for the officers," insisted Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There ain't no police out here," Curly replied, "and not sherfs enough
+to go around; so a feller sorter has to go when he's asked.  They won't
+let me, because I got twins&mdash;though they ain't mine.  But, now, I've
+got to take this here horse over to Dan Anderson."  He mounted and rode
+away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Dan Anderson himself who presently came at a gallop across the
+<I>arroyo</I>.  A heavy revolver swung at his hip, a rifle rested in the
+scabbard under his leg, and a coat was rolled behind his saddle,
+plainsman fashion.  Constance noted these details, but passed them in
+her eagerness and pleasure that he should come at least to say good-by.
+Something of the joy faded from her eyes as he approached.  She had
+seen his face wear this same expression before,&mdash;fierce, eager,
+forgetful of all but a purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not smile.  He stooped from his saddle and grasped her hand.  He
+looked squarely into her eyes, but said no word of salutation or
+farewell.  He did not look back, as upon the instant, he whirled and
+galloped away!  For her there were to be yet more days of waiting; for
+him the relief of action and of danger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That afternoon Tom Osby drove into town from the northern trail.  Mr.
+Ellsworth welcomed him and his rude vehicle as the first feasible means
+of getting back to Sky Top.  By noon of the following day they were
+well upon their way, leaving behind them problems enough unsolved, and
+breaking touch with pending events which might cut short all problems
+for at least one loyal heart.  It was a sad and silent Constance who
+looked back and said good-by to the rambling street of Heart's Desire,
+lying in the sun empty, empty!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for the sheriff of Blanco and his men, they trotted on steadily
+toward the northeast, hour after hour.  They crossed the Patos divide,
+and a few miles beyond took up the trail of their quarry, at the point
+where Stillson had earlier left it.  This they followed rapidly,
+crossing wide plains of sage brush and cactus throughout the day.  They
+slept in their saddle-blankets that night, and were up and off again by
+dawn for the second day of steady travel.  There were seven men in the
+posse, three besides Stillson from the Seven Rivers country, employees
+of the cow men on the Pecos,&mdash;slim, brown, thin-featured fellows, who
+talked little either in the saddle or at the bivouac fire by night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The second night out they spent by a water hole in the desert; and on
+the morning of the third day they ran into their game, earlier than
+they had expected.  The sheriff, riding in advance, suddenly pulled up
+at the crest of a low ridge which they were ascending, and came back
+motioning to his men to remain under cover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the Piņos Altos ranch house just ahead," he explained, "and
+there's smoke coming out of it.  Old Frazee's friendly enough with the
+Kid, and more'n likely the bunch has stopped in there to get something
+to eat.  Hold on a little till I have a look."  He took a pair of
+field-glasses from his saddle, and crawling to the top of the ridge lay
+examining the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's them, all right," he said when he returned.  "I know some of the
+horses.  It's the Kid and about three others.  They are all saddled
+up&mdash;probably stopped in to cook a meal.  We'll get 'em sure.  Now, all
+of you hitch back here, and crawl around to the <I>arroyo</I> below, there.
+That'll put us within a hundred yards or so of the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each man, dismounting, hitched his horse, then quietly ran over the
+cylinder of his revolver, blew the dust out of the rear sight of his
+Winchester, tested the magazine, and cleared the breech action.  This
+done, each crept to the place assigned to him.  Dan Anderson found
+himself moving mechanically, dully, with a strange absence of
+excitement.  He almost felt himself looker-on at what other men were
+doing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some time Stillson lay behind a little bush at the edge of the
+gully, peering critically at the house, from which came nothing to
+indicate that their approach had been discovered.  At length, without a
+word, he slowly raised his short-barrelled rifle and fired.  One of the
+horses hitched to the beam above the door stumbled forward and sank
+across the opening, blocking it.  The bullet had caught it at the butt
+of the ear, and it fell stone dead, its neck bent up by the shortened
+rein.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In response, without a word of parley, a thin cloud of smoke gushed out
+of the only window facing the attack.  Puffs of sand arose along the
+front of the <I>arroyo</I>, searching out each little bush top which might
+possibly offer cover.  Stillson heard a smothered spat and a short
+sound, and turned his head quickly.  He saw Jim Harbin, one of the boys
+from the lower range, turn over with a sigh, and lie with arms spread
+out.  He had been shot straight through the neck.  Dan Anderson, the
+man nearest to him, drew him back.  He would have raised the head of
+the wounded man, but the choking warned him.  Harbin lay out on his
+back, looking up, his breath gurgling in his throat.  "No use," he
+whispered thickly.  "Leave me alone.  I've got to take my medicine."
+In ten minutes he was dead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The day's work went on.  The sheriff fired three or four more
+deliberate shots, but finally turned around.  At each shot, the other
+horse tied to the beam sprang back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't you hit it?" grinned McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't want to kill the horse," said Stillson; "I know that horse,
+and it's a good one.  I want to turn it loose.  Here you, Anderson, can
+you see that rope from where you are?  Shoot it off, if you can, close
+up to the beam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson, in spite of Stillson's hasty warning to keep down, rose
+at full height at the edge of the cover, and took a deliberate off-hand
+shot.  They saw him whirl half around, and look down at his left arm;
+but as he dropped lower, he rested his rifle on a bit of sage brush,
+and fired once more.  With a snort the horse, which had been pulling
+back wildly on its lariat, now broke free and went off, saddled as it
+was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good shot!" commented the sheriff.  "That'll about put 'em on foot.
+What, did they get you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Anderson drew back from the crest and rolled up his shirt-sleeve
+above an arm now wet with blood.  A bullet had cut through the upper
+arm above the elbow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Serves you mighty near right," called McKinney to him, "standing up,
+like a blamed fool!  You suppose them fellers can't shoot, same as us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doc Tomlinson crawled over to him and examined the hurt.  "It's all
+right," said he.  "Bone ain't touched.  Let me tie her up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A half hour passed without further firing.  Stillson edged around to
+the point nearest the house.  "Here you, Kid," he called out.  "Come on
+out.  We've got you on foot, and you might as well give up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dirty rag was thrust out of a window at the end of a rifle-barrel.
+"That you, Ben?" called a muffled voice from the adobe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know it is, Kid.  Drop it, and come on out.  We've got you sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The day's work was over.  Dan Anderson remembered afterward how matter
+of fact and methodical it all had seemed.  A few moments later a short,
+dirty young man appeared at the door, crawling over the prostrate
+horse.  He held up his hands, grinning.  He was followed by two others,
+both chewing tobacco calmly.  The sheriff ordered down his men to meet
+them.  McKinney unbuckled the belts.  The captives seated themselves a
+few feet apart on the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This all the men you've got?" asked the Kid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sheriff nodded.  "You've killed Jim Harbin," he added, jerking a
+thumb toward the <I>arroyo</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why didn't he stay home, then?" said the Kid, peevishly.  No one
+seemed disposed again to mention an unpleasant subject.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where you goin' to take us?" the Kid inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Vegas.  It's a United States warrant, and you go dead or alive, either
+way you want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that's all right, Ben.  We'll take the chance of stayin' alive a
+while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stillson now appeared to experience his first concern in regard to his
+casualties.  "Doc," said he, "you take the ranch wagon here and carry
+Jim back to the settlements.  You go along, Anderson.  Doc, you drive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You busted up our breakfast," said the Kid, in an aggrieved tone.
+"Don't we eat?"  He spoke complainingly.  The day's work was thus
+concluded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a long ride back for Dan Anderson, lying part of the time
+himself prone at the bottom of the wagon, too faint to sit with comfort
+on the narrow, jolting seat.  The long, muffled body of the dead man,
+wrapped tightly in its blankets, at times rolled against him as the
+wagon tilted, and he pushed it back gently.  The day's work had been
+savage, stern, and simple.  The lesson of the landscape, the lesson of
+life, came to him as he had never felt it before.  He saw now how
+little a thing is life, how easy to lay down&mdash;gayly, bitterly, lightly,
+or quietly perhaps; but not cheaply.  He remembered the last words of
+the boy who now lay there, shrouded and silent,&mdash;"I've got to take my
+medicine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not a question of being happy," thought Dan Anderson, "but of
+doing your work, and taking your medicine."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience in Foreign Parts</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In the absence of McKinney with the sheriff's posse, Curly became, by
+virtue of seniority, acting foreman on the Carrizoso ranch.  Grieving
+over the edict which held him home from sheriffing, and disconsolate
+now that Ellsworth and Constance had departed, he sought an outlet for
+his feelings.  "I'll show folks what a real cow foreman is like," he
+asserted, and forthwith began plans which, in his opinion, had been too
+long deferred by the more conservative McKinney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wagons of the Carrizoso cow outfit came into town one morning, with
+a requisition for all the loose .44-caliber ammunition that could be
+bought, begged, or commandeered under the plea of urgent necessity.
+Whiteman burrowed through his stock from top to bottom, but still the
+new foreman growled at the insufficiency.
+
+"There's more'n five thousand sheep in that bunch that has just crossed
+the Nogales," said he, "and we've got to kill 'em, every one.  Do you
+suppose my men is goin' to take to clubs, like Digger Injuns?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whiteman could only shrug.  There had always been ammunition in Heart's
+Desire sufficient for all benevolent and social purposes.  No one had
+suspected sheep.  The Carrizoso plateau had been sacred ground, and it
+was unsupposable that it could ever be desecrated by the trampling
+hoofs and scissor noses of these woolly abominations.  Grumbling, Curly
+rode away with his wagons, surrounded by a group of be-Winchestered cow
+punchers, not unlike that which had accompanied Stillson out at the
+other end of the town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was two days before they returned.  When they did so, two of the men
+were not in their saddles, but at the bottom of a wagon.  Beside them,
+bucked up and bound, lay a strange and long-haired figure, at which the
+new foreman occasionally looked back with a gaze of mingled curiosity
+and respect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It appeared that Carrizoso cow honor had been maintained.  The five
+thousand sheep had been rounded up in a box caņon, and scrupulously
+killed to the last item, while two herders went flying westward in
+fright such as might have warranted euchre upon their stiffly extended
+coat-tails.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Willie, the half-wit, one of the sheep outfit, had readily taken the
+oath of allegiance; beyond that, however, there had been a hitch in the
+proceedings.  The man causing this hitch&mdash;the long-haired figure at the
+bottom of the wagon&mdash;had been presumptuous enough to make a stand
+against the lords of the earth!  The men of Heart's Desire, confident
+that the new foreman understood his business, asked few questions as
+they gathered about the wagon and gazed at the silent captive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was a singular-looking man, tall, lean, sinewy, with a high, thin
+nose and a square chin which seemed not in keeping with his calling.
+His left nostril was indented by a scar which ran across his cheek, and
+one ear was notched well-nigh as deeply as that of a calf at a spring
+branding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This feller," said Uncle Jim Brothers, "looks like he come from
+Arkansaw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe <I>so</I>," answered Curly.  "Anyhow, he shot up two of the boys and
+killed a horse for us before we got at him.  We was out of
+ammunition&mdash;I told you we didn't have enough.  After we killed the
+woollies, and run off them two herders, we rid up the caņon.  There was
+him, a-settin' in the door of his ole Kentucky home, with a Winchester
+that'd go off&mdash;which it stands to reason couldn't have happened if he
+was a real sheepherder.  I can't figure that out."  Curly scratched his
+head dubiously, and looked again at his prisoner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He ain't saying a vort alretty," said Whiteman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's happy enough without.  He was livin' like a lord there, in his
+shack&mdash;four hundred paper-back novels, a keg of whiskey and a tin cup,
+and some kind of 'hop' that we brung along, and which was the only
+thing he hollered over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prisoner sat up in the wagon.  "If you'd be so good as to give me
+the packet you've in your pocket," said he to Curly, "I'd be awfully
+obliged to you, old fellow, I would indeed."  Curly drew a paper
+package from his pocket and passed it to the speaker, who opened it
+with eager fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks, my good man," he remarked, "thank you awfully."  They led him
+into the deserted Lone Star for further deliberations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the snuff he's been takin'," Curly explained aside.  "I know.
+It's 'hop.'  Sheep, 'hop,' and whiskey!  With that for a life and them
+for a steady diet, I don't believe our friend here'd last more'n about
+thirty years more."  He turned to the captive, who by this time was
+leaning back against the wall in his chair, the central figure of
+present affairs, but apparently quite unconcerned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How you feelin' now?" Curly asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Much better," replied the prisoner.  "Thank you awfully.  I was
+beginning to feel deucedly seedy, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to know," inquired Curly, bluntly, "what in merry-hell you're
+doing down in here, anyhow.  Where'd you come from?  Where've you been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A half-humorous smile came to the face of the captive.  "You seem not
+to know a Sandhurst man, gentlemen, when you see one," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said he was from Arkansaw," remarked Uncle Jim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No foolin' now, young feller," said Curly, frowning.  "You may have
+more trouble than you're lookin' for.  What's your name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really forget my first name," replied the prisoner, blandly, but not
+discourteously.  "Of late I have been customarily addressed as the King
+of Gee-Whiz."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, King," suggested the acting foreman, grimly, "you'd better turn
+loose and tell us your story, about as soon as you know how."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very gladly," responded the other, "very gladly.  You seem a good
+sort, and you fought fair.  I'll tell you the absolute truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came from England originally, and not from Arkansaw, as my friend
+supposes, although I don't know where Arkansaw is, I'm sure.  I was
+long in the British Army, or Navy, I cawn't remember which.  I'm quite
+sure it was one or the other, possibly both."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't kid too much, friend," said Curly, warningly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beg pardon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drop the foolishness!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You misunderstand me, I'm sure," said the King of Gee-Whiz.  "At that
+time it was quite customary, indeed very fashionable, for young
+gentlemen to belong both to the Army and the Navy.  Now, I remember
+with perfect distinctness that I shipped before the mast on her
+Majesty's submarine, the <I>Equator</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Uncle Jim drew a long breath.  "A submarine ain't <I>got</I> no mast," said
+he.  "It crawls, on the bottom of the ocean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mind him, friend," interrupted Curly.  "He come from the
+short-grass country of Kansas, and he don't know a submarine from a
+muley cow.  Go on, King."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I was saying," continued the latter, somewhat annoyed, "I shipped
+before the mast on her Majesty's submarine, the <I>Equator</I>, Captain
+Harry Oglethorpe commanding,&mdash;a great friend of mine, and a very brave
+and clever fellow.  I knew him well before I got so deucedly down on my
+luck.  But what was I saying?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About submarines&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes, I remember; we left Portsmouth Harbor the 12th of August,
+1357.  It seemed a gruelling hard thing to us to sail just on the
+opening of the shooting season, but the wuzzies were troubling a bit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One day, as Sir Harry and I were sitting on deck before the mast,
+having a cigarette&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the bottom of the sea&mdash;on deck!" gasped Uncle Jim Brothers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pray don't interrupt me, or I'll never get on," chided the King of
+Gee-Whiz, politely.  "We were smoking, as I said, awfter dinner.  I was
+remarking to Sir Harry that we were having a very good voyage over,
+when, as he turned to reply, an orderly rode up to us and saluted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rode&mdash;rode&mdash;rode up!" murmured Curly.  "How could he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him alone," said Uncle Jim.  "Didn't he say he couldn't remember
+whether he was in the Army or the Navy?  The horse goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The orderly saluted," resumed the King of Gee-Whiz, "and said he, 'I
+beg pardon, but the officer of the day presents his compliments, and
+begs to report that the ship's a-fire, and upon the point of exploding.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Harry looked at his watch.  'Thanks,' said he.  'Present my
+compliments to the officer of the day, and ask how long it will be
+before the explosion occurs.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I beg pardon,' replied the orderly, 'but the officer of the day
+presents his compliments, and begs to say that the explosion will occur
+in about three minutes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Very well,' said Sir Harry, 'you may go.'&mdash;'That will give us time to
+finish our cigarettes,' said he to me.  The orderly saluted and rode
+away.  We never saw him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The officer of the day was a very accurate man, very accurate indeed.
+In three minutes to the dot the explosion did occur.  We never knew
+what caused it.  No doubt the Admiralty Board determined that, but we
+were not present at the session.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The explosion was most violent, and no doubt the submarine was quite
+destroyed by it.  Sir Harry and I were blown to an extraordinary
+distance from the spot.  I remember saying to him, as we reached the
+surface and started upward, that it seemed quite too bad that we'd not
+had time to get together our personal kit for the journey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no use my mentioning how long we travelled thus, for I'm not in
+the least clear about it myself.  All I can say is that in course of
+time we descended, and that we found ourselves on solid ground, on the
+island of Gee-Whiz.  That, you will understand, was an uncharted and
+hitherto undiscovered land, lying near the 400th parallel west of
+London and somewhere below Sumatra&mdash;several weeks' march from Calcutta,
+I should say.  We'd never seen the place nor heard of it, but were
+jolly well pleased to alight upon it, under the circumstances.  Of the
+rest of the ship's company we never heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a baddish fix, I must say, for to be marooned on a desert
+island is serious; and it's still more serious to lose one's ship in
+the British Army.  Presently, however, we composed ourselves.  'I say,'
+said Sir Harry, 'this is a great go, isn't it?  Here I am with no
+luggage whatever except one bar of soap!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Presently I saw approaching a band of natives, headed by a large
+person, who was apparently their leader or king."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then that was the real King of Gee-Whiz?" asked Doc Tomlinson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At that time, but not permanently, as I shall presently show you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I explained the situation to the King, who turned out to be a very
+good sort.  'God bless my soul!' said he.  'My dear sir, there's not
+the slightest occasion for uneasiness, there really isn't, indeed.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may fawncy the situation!  As it was, Sir Harry and I were obliged
+to make the best of it.  We concluded to remain and to take possession
+of the region in the name of her Britennic Majesty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the most natural part of your story!" affirmed Uncle Jim, with
+conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you.  But I must tell you of the complications which now arose.
+You will see that all these people were sun-worshippers, or something
+of the sort, and they'd a beastly unpleasant habit, you know, of
+offering up a sacrifice now and again to appease the spirits, or the
+like.  We learned they'd a valley of gold hidden away somewhere back in
+the island, and from this the King got all his gold, though even under
+these circumstances not so much as he wanted at all times.  He'd the
+trouble of most royal families.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The ruler of this golden valley was some sort of a princess, and she
+was downright niggardly with her money, as some of these heiresses are,
+you know.  She'd promise the King to bring him an apronful of gold if
+he'd give her a sacrifice to offer up, but he had no way of providing
+an offering.  No one had come for years in the line of a sacrifice,
+excepting ourselves.  You can imagine the awkwardness this created.
+The King wanted to sacrifice us, one or both, directly.  The princess,
+who by the by was a regular ripper in her way, was quite gone on Sir
+Harry, and he on her as well.  At this point my own personal fortunes
+were much involved, as you may understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Harry explained that while he wished to be quite the gentleman
+about it, and accord me every courtesy, he'd be obliged if I'd be the
+sacrifice, and leave him to represent her Majesty in the new territory.
+We talked it over a bit, but came to no conclusion about the matter.
+It was at this time that one of the most remarkable portions of our
+experience occurred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One morning Sir Harry and I were standing in front of our residence,
+in our part of the island, talking over matters.  Sir Harry was taking
+a bawth in a wash-hand basin&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" asked Uncle Jim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reckon he means a wash-pan," explained Billy Hudgens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At least, Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and
+he'd the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles.  Just then the King of
+Gee-Whiz came by, and chawnced to notice the bubbles.  You should have
+seen his expression!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must remember he'd never seen a bit of soap in all his life; and
+no one who has been without it&mdash;like the King and myself&mdash;can tell what
+that means.  He was deucedly infatuated with the bubbles.  In short, he
+valued them at once far more than all the gold in the valley; and he
+wound up by telling us flat, that so long as we could make bubbles for
+him, there would be no sacrifice.  He commanded us to appear before him
+every day and make these bubbles&mdash;Sir Harry showed him how to do it
+with his pipe&mdash;every morning and awfternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awfter he'd gone, Sir Harry and I looked at each other.  'It's death
+or bubbles,' said he to me.  I pointed out to him that it was either
+death or no bawth.  He was much shocked.  Evidently the thing could not
+go on, for our soap was already very near exhausted.  Sir Harry was a
+sad dog.  Said he to me, 'While there is soap there is life,' meaning
+to say, you see, that while there was life there was hope.  Ha, ha!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave that out," admonished Curly.  "Go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About now there went ashore on the island the private yacht of a
+gentleman whom we found to be Sir Isaac Morgenstern.  He was a retired
+soap-maker, of wealth and station, and was on a voyage to Samoa with
+his daughter, his household servants, and the like.  He'd with him, as
+chaplain, a missionary, William Cook, a person of very fat habit of
+body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When the boat went ashore, Sir Isaac, his daughter, Lady Sophie, her
+maid, a Miss Eckerstrom, Mr. Cook, and one or two others were saved,
+together with certain of their effects&mdash;an auto car or so, a piano, a
+harp, some books, pictures, and a number of other items which made our
+life much pleasanter.  We all settled down together in a bit of colony,
+and we got on well enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The King by this time was becoming most unpleasant again about his
+sacrifice.  Sir Harry was a sad dog.  'Sacrifice Morgenstern,'
+suggested he, 'he's used to sacrifice.'  You see, in the retail
+business&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind dot," said Whiteman.  "Tell vot happenet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great many things happened.  For one thing, the death of Sir Isaac."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How come that?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+
+"One day Sir Harry met Sir Isaac in the woods, and they'd a bit of
+talk.  Without thinking much about it, Sir Harry explained that he was
+called on to blow soap bubbles for the King, and that he was in great
+need of soap, which at that time was worth far more than gold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unt Morgenstern a retiret soap-mager" exclaimed Whiteman,
+involuntarily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now that was shore hard luck for <I>him</I>," added Uncle Jim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may quite believe so," said the teller of the story, gently.  "And
+the saddest part of it, he'd nearly solved our problem before he left
+us.  At once Sir Harry began talking of soap, Sir Isaac began wondering
+how he could make soap.  Ere long he thought of Mr. Cook, the
+missionary.  'Soap making is simple,' said he, 'if one has fat and a
+bit of alkali.'  The water there was most alkaline, I may add.  'Now
+there is Mr. Cook?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You cawn't have the missionary,' interrupted Sir Harry, 'until after
+he has married me and the princess.  Then I don't mind.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've every reason to believe that Mr. Cook was made over into soap.
+But for once Sir Isaac was wrong.  He oversold the market, and that was
+his mistake.  As soon as the King of Gee-Whiz found that there was
+abundance of soap he lost his fawncy for bubbles.  The shock of this
+lost opportunity prostrated Sir Isaac, and he presently passed away.
+We mourned him for a time, but presently other events occurred which
+deadened the loss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will understand that the King of Gee-Whiz was a deucedly good
+sort.  He'd take a nip now and again, of course.  The only thing he had
+to drink was palm wine, which he got by chopping a notch in a tree and
+catching the juice in a cup."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That sounds like wood alcohol," said Billy Hudgens, in a professional
+tone of voice.  "It ain't safe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite right.  It wasn't safe.  The palm wine itself caused the King to
+cut a pretty caper now and then; but awfter his mistake, he was far
+worse&mdash;far, far worse.  He never got over that, never."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What happened to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A most extraordinary thing.  I never knew of anything like it in all
+the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, there were two trees which grew close together near the royal
+palace.  One of these was his Majesty's private drinking tree.  The
+other, as it chawnced, was a rubber tree."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly deliberately removed his hat and placed it on his knee, wiping,
+as he did so, a brow dotted thick with moisture.  No one broke the
+silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will easily understand," resumed the speaker, "that when the King
+of Gee-Whiz had chopped into the rubber tree with his little gold axe,
+drinking awfterwards a cupful of pure caoutchouc, it did not take him
+long to repent of his inadvertence.  The results were what I may call
+most extraordinary.  I should judge the rubber juice to have been of
+very high proof indeed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be brief, I give you my word of honor, the King was turned into an
+absolutely elastic person on the spot!  When he stamped his foot he
+bounded into the air.  'He's a regular bounder, anyway,' said Sir
+Harry, who would always have his joke.  'And,' said he to me, as I
+remember distinctly, 'if his conscience becomes elastic, we're gone,
+the same as Cook and Morgenstern.'  Sir Harry was a great wit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, the more furious the King became, the more helpless he became as
+well.  He simply bounced up and down and around and about.  Reigning
+monarch, too&mdash;lack of dignity&mdash;all that sort of thing&mdash;must have been
+most annoying to him.  We could do nothing to calm him.  In all my
+travels, I have never seen such a state of affairs; I haven't, really."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor me neither," said Billy Hudgens, sighing, "and I've kept bar from
+Butte to El Paso."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then what happened?" demanded Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything that could happen," said the other, bitterly.  "Lady Sophie
+and her maid, Sir Harry and the princess&mdash;the entire household suite of
+the King of Gee-Whiz&mdash;were mad enough to taste also of the juice of
+this rubber tree.  It had the same effect upon them!  I say to you,
+positively and truthfully, that then and there the island of Gee-Whiz
+was inhabited by the maddest population ever known in any possession of
+her Britannic Majesty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Reckon they was a pretty lively bunch to hold," suggested Curly; "but
+what happened next?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not quite clear as to all that transpired awfter that.  I know
+that I was the only sane man left on the island."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," remarked Curly, with conviction, taking a huge chew off his
+plug, "then that must shore have been one hell of a island!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the narrator went on unmoved: "I reproved the others, and they
+resented it.  There was a great battle with the natives one day, of
+which I remember but little.  I seem to have been left insensible on
+the field.  When I recovered, I saw dawncing off across the sea the
+figures of all these different persons except Sir Harry&mdash;who, of
+course, was with me in the battle.  Sir Harry was still with me, quite
+sober at lawst, and quite dead, I do not know from what cause.  I was
+left alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was thus, gentlemen, that I acquired, by right, as I think, my
+title which I assumed&mdash;awfter acting for a time as Viceroy for her
+Britannic Majesty&mdash;as the King of Gee-Whiz.  For a while I lived there
+alone.  Awfterwards, in some way, which I do not quite call to mind at
+present, I appear to have been discovered.  It was shortly awfter that
+I received my decoration&mdash;I beg your pardon."  He flushed a dull red.
+"It was nothing, of course," said he.  "As to saving Sir Harry, it was
+only what any other fellow would have done in the Army or the Navy&mdash;I
+don't remember which.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So, gentlemen, I've told you my story as a gentleman should.  I've
+been deucedly down on my luck ever since then, and I cawn't tell you,
+really I cawn't, how I happened to be here and in this business as you
+found me.  There's many a younger son, in the Army or the Navy, who
+knocks about and gets a bit to the bad.  I hope you'll not lay it up
+against me, I do indeed!"  His head dropped forward on his chest.  "I
+was stone broke," he whispered, "and I'd not a friend on earth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so you drifted here," said Curly.  "Well, it's about the right
+place.  Heart's Desire's wide open."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wasn't so bad," resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand
+across his forehead; "it wasn't so bad down here for a time.  I didn't
+mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on
+the island for so long.  But the trouble was that I was followed all
+the time&mdash;have been for more than a year now&mdash;by that cursed King&mdash;that
+damned fiend that I thought I'd left long ago!  I'd go out into the
+sunshine, and there he'd be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along,
+anyway I'd look!  He'd follow me like a&mdash;look! look! there he is now.
+See!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open
+door.  A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight
+which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look!" cried the King of Gee-Whiz.  "He's there!  He's there!"  He
+slipped and sank to the floor, rolling over into an utter
+insensibility.  Curly put on his hat and stood looking down at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sand, sunshine, and sheep herdin'," said he, "will do up any man in
+time.  I'd 'a' made a good cow puncher out of this fellow, too, if I'd
+got him in time.  By Golly!  I'll do it anyhow.  I'll have Mac get him
+a horse and saddle and put him to work.  Any feller that kin shoot and
+lie as good as him has got the makin' of a good cow puncher in him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They turned over the King of Gee-Whiz gently, that he might rest more
+easily, where he lay.  His coat and waistcoat fell open.  Underneath
+them, upon the left side of his chest, appeared a small, dull-colored
+cross of metal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For Valor"; Curly read the inscription with difficulty.  "I knowed it;
+I knowed he'd been a cow puncher sometime, and just went wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great Scott!" exclaimed Uncle Jim Brothers, "that's the Victoria
+Cross!  This here's a V. C. man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know that brand.  It ain't registered for this range," said
+Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Billy Hudgens, philosophically gazing at the sleeper, "I
+reckon 'D. T.' would be easier to understand, all things considered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he ever comes to," said Curly, as he cast away through the open
+door the contents of the pockets of the King of Gee-Whiz, "we'll try to
+get him through the D. T. stage as well as the V. C., whatever that is,
+and I reckon he's good for a job on the Carrizoso range.  This country
+can't afford to be too damned particular about a feller's past."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby's freight wagon made not so bad a conveyance after all.  The
+first fifty miles of the journey were passed in comparative silence,
+Constance and her father for the most part keeping to the shelter of
+the wagon tilt.  Tom Osby grew restless under solitude ere long, and
+made friendly advances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You come up here and set by me on the seat," said he to Constance,
+"and let the sun shine on you.  The old man can stay back there on the
+blankets with my kerosene can of whiskey if he still thinks his health
+ain't good.  Like enough he'll learn to get the potato off'n the snoot
+of the can before long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," he went on, "I don't make no extry charge for whiskey or
+conversation to my patients.  Far's I know, I'm the only railroad that
+don't.  I got a box of aigs back there in the wagon, too.  Ever see ary
+railroad back in the States that throwed in ham and aigs?  I reckon
+not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty dollars extra!" remarked Ellsworth, "You've made the girl
+laugh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Man, hush!" said Tom Osby.  "Go on to sleep, and don't offer me money,
+or I'll make you get out and walk."  This with a twinkle which robbed
+his threat of terror, though Ellsworth took the advice presently and
+lay down under the wagon cover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mind him, Miss Constance," apologized Tom Osby.  "He's only your
+father, anyhow, if it comes to the worst.  But now tell me, what ails
+<I>you</I>?  Say, now, you ain't sick, are you?"  He caught the plaintive
+droop of the girl's mouth; but, receiving no answer, he himself evaded
+the question, and began to point out antelope and wolves, difficult for
+the uneducated eye to distinguish upon the gray plains that now swept
+about them.  It was an hour before he returned to the subject really
+upon his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was hearin' a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a
+feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he
+began tentatively.  "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't
+have more'n half time enough to git the news."  From the corner of his
+eye he watched the face of his passenger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great way to do, wasn't it!" exclaimed Constance, in sudden
+indignation.  "I asked them why they didn't hire men to do such work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby; "I used to think you had some sense.  You
+ain't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't think of no way but States ways, can you?  I s'pose you
+think the <I>po</I>lice ought to catch a bad man, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's officer's work, going after a dangerous man.  Wasn't this
+man dangerous?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He noted her eagerness, and hastened to qualify.  "Him?  The Kid?  No,
+I don't mean him.  <I>He's</I> plumb gentle.  I mean a <I>real</I> bad man&mdash;if
+there was any out here, you know.  Now, not havin' any <I>po</I>lice, out
+here, the fellers that believes in law and order, why, onct in a while,
+they kind of help go after the fellers that don't.  It works out all
+right.  Now I don't seem to just remember which ones it was of our
+fellers that Stillson took with him the other day, along of your
+hurrying me out of town so soon after I got in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Mr. Tomlinson, and Mr. McKinney from the ranch, you know; and
+Curly wanted to go, but they wouldn't let him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why wouldn't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because he was a married man, they said.  And yet you say this
+criminal is not dangerous?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'd ought to been glad to go, him a married man.  I've been married a
+good deal myself.  But was them two the only ones that went?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They two&mdash;and Mr. Anderson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom smoked on quietly.  "Well, I don't see why they'd take a tenderfoot
+like him," he remarked at length, "while there was men like Curly
+standin' around."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you were his friend!" blazed the girl, her cheeks reddening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby grinned at the success of his subterfuge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he wasn't a good man, Ben Stillson wouldn't 'a' took him along,"
+admitted he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it <I>is</I> dangerous?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, tapping his pipe against the side of the wagon
+seat, "they're about even, a half dozen good ones against about that
+many bad ones.  They're game on both sides, and got to be.  And we all
+know well enough that Dan Anderson's game as the next one.  The boys
+figured that out the other night.  Why, he'll come back all right in a
+few days; don't worry none about <I>that</I>."  He looked straight ahead of
+him, pretending not to notice the little gloved hand that stole toward
+his sleeve.  In her own way, Constance had discovered that she might
+depend upon this rough man of the plains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," he went on after a while, "not apropy of nothing, as they say
+in the novels, I wish you and your dad would hurry and get your old
+railroad through here.  Us folks may some of us want to go back to the
+States sometime, and it's a long way to ride from Heart's Desire to any
+railroad the way it is, unless you've got mighty good company, like I
+have, this trip.  I get awful lonesome sometimes, drivin' between here
+and Vegas.  I had a parrot onct, and a phonygraph, as you may remember,
+but the fellers took 'em both away from me, you know.  I'm thinkin' of
+makin' up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin' down.  She makes
+fine pies.  I've knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles&mdash;all
+the way up to Vegas&mdash;they're that permernent.  She reminds me a heap of
+my third wife.  Now, allowin' I did take one more chanct, and make up
+to that oldest girl, we'd look fine, wouldn't we, takin' a weddin' trip
+in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance was smiling now.  "I've got her gentled and comin' along
+right easy now," thought Tom Osby to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct," he went on, "got married and went
+plumb to New York, towering around.  He got lost on a ferry-boat down
+there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me,
+'Blamed if every man in that town didn't get his boots blacked every
+day.'  That's foolish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and
+taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she
+had felt for days.  Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a
+deep snore from the rear of the wagon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Tom Osby, "sounds like the old man had got the potato
+loose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm ashamed of him," declared Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Natural," said Tom; "but why special?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He oughtn't to touch that whiskey.  I hate it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So do I, when it ain't good.  That in the can is good.  It's only fair
+your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone
+Star.  They didn't have a drop when I got in.  Now, that's another
+reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart's Desire.  It might
+prevent a awful stringency, sometime.  There's Dick McGinnis, why, he
+nearly&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it's not coming.  It will not be built.  They wouldn't let us in.
+We couldn't get the right of way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now listen at you!  You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer
+couldn't.  Of course not.  But you haven't tried it your own self yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you'd a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa
+did.  The boys told me all about what happened.  A man out here don't
+holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that's
+different.  Dan Anderson done just right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He broke up all our plans," Constance retorted hotly; and at once
+flushed at her own speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was he to do?  Sell out?  Turn the whole town over to you folks?
+Soon as he knows what's up, he throws back the money and tells the road
+to go to hell.  He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers
+that had spoke to him about lookin' after their places.  He done right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon.  At length
+she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby's eyes.  "Yes, he was right,"
+she said.  "He did what was right."  But she drew a long breath as she
+spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, "not referrin' to the
+fact that you're squarer than your men folks, I want to say that,
+speakin' of game folks, you're just as game as any man I ever saw.
+Lots of women is.  Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin'
+on, sometimes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt his eyes upon her, and this time turned away her own.  For a
+time they were silent, as the well-worn wagon rolled along behind the
+long-stepping grays; but Tom Osby was patient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A while ago," he resumed after a time, "you said 'we,' and 'our
+railroad.'  That's mighty near right.  You two folks right here in this
+wagon, yourself particular, can save that there railroad, and save
+Heart's Desire, both at the same time.  And that's something, even if
+them was all that was saved."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite see what you mean," answered Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, now, look here," said Tom, filling another pipe, "I ain't so
+foolish.  I ain't goin' to say that the old days'll last forever.  We
+all know better'n that when it comes right down to straight reasonin'.
+A country'll sleep about so long, same as a man; and then it'll wake
+up.  I've seen the States come West for forty years.  They're comin'
+swifter'n ever now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When we first came here," said Constance, "I thought this was the very
+end of all the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has been.  And the finest place in all the world, ma'am, is right
+at the end of the world.  That's where a man can feel right
+independent.  A woman can't understand that, no way on earth.  A man's
+a right funny thing, ma'am.  He's all the time hankerin' to git into
+some country out at the end of the world, where there ain't a woman
+within a thousand miles; and then as quick as he gets there, he begins
+to holler for some woman to come out and save his life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned upon him again, smiling in spite of herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The boys have been mighty slow to let go of the old days," he went on.
+"In some ways there won't never be no better days.  We never had a
+thief in our valley, until your pa come in here last summer.  There
+ain't been a lock on a door in four hundred miles of this country in
+the last twenty years.  When the railroad comes the first thing it'll
+bring will be locks and bolts.  At the same time, it's got to come&mdash;I
+know that.  We've about had our sleep and our dream out, ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was beautiful," Constance murmured vaguely; and he caught her
+meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, plumb beautiful.  Folks that hasn't tried it don't know.  A man
+that's lived the old life here, with a real gun on him as regular as
+pants, why, in about three years he gets what we call galvanized.
+He'll never be the same after that.  He'll never go back to the States
+no more.  That's hard for you to understand, ain't it?  And yet that
+sort of feelin' catches almost any man out here, sooner or later, if
+he's any good.  It's the country, ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strange spell seemed now to fall upon Constance herself, as she sat
+gazing out in the sunlight.  She felt the fatalism, the unconcern of a
+child, of a young creature.  She understood perfectly all that she had
+heard, and was ready to listen further.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," continued Tom, "this, bein' South, and bein' West, it
+ain't really a part of the United States; so I can't save the whole
+country.  But, such as this part of the country is, I reckon I'll have
+to save it.  You'll see my name wrote on tablets in marble halls some
+day; because I've got a hard job.  I've got to reconcile these folks to
+your dad!  And yet I'm going to make 'em say, 'Now is the winter of our
+discontent made glorious summer by this son-of-a-gun from New York.'
+You didn't know I read Shakespeare?  Why, I read him constant, even if
+I do have to wear specs now for fine print."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance, in spite of herself, laughed outright with so merry a peal
+that she wakened her father from his slumber.  "What's that?  What's
+that?" broke in Mr. Ellsworth, suddenly sitting up on his blankets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, friend," said Tom Osby, "you go back to sleep again; me
+and Miss Constance is savin' things.  I was just talkin' to her about
+her railroad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth rubbed his eyes.  "By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly, "that's a
+good idea.  It shall be hers if she says so.  I'll give her every share
+I own if that road ever runs into the valley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you are beginnin' to <I>talk</I>," said Tom Osby, calmly.  "Not that
+you'd be givin' her much; for you and your lawyer wouldn't be able to
+get the railroad in there in a thousand years.  The girl can play a
+heap stronger game than both of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if she can," responded Ellsworth, "she's going to have a good
+chance to do it.  We're going to build the railroad on north, and we
+don't feel like hauling coal down that caņon by wagon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby seemed to have pursued his game as far as he cared to do at
+this time.  "S'pose we stop along somewhere in here," he suggested,
+"and eat a little lunch?  My horses gets hungry, and thirsty, the same
+as you, Mr. Ellsworth.  Whoa, boys!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Descending from his high seat, he now unhitched his team and strapped
+on their heads the nose-bags with the precious oats, after a pail of
+not less precious water from the cask at the wagon's side.
+Methodically he kicked together a little pile of greasewood roots.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're to have some tea, you know," he remarked.  "I don't charge
+nothin' extry for tea, whiskey, or advice on this railroad of mine.
+Get down now, ma'am," he added, reaching up his arms to assist
+Constance from her place.  "Come along, set right down here on the
+ground in the sun.  It's good for you.  Ain't it nice?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's the back of old Carrizy just beginnin' to show," he explained;
+"and there's the Bonitos comin' up below.  That's Blanco Peak beyond,
+the tallest in the Territory; and them mountings close in is the
+Nogales.  There ain't a soul within many and many a mile of here.  And
+now, with them old mountings a-lookin' down at us on the strict
+<I>cuidado</I>, not botherin' us if we don't bother them, why, ain't it
+comfortable?  This country'll take hold of you after a while, ma'am.
+It's the oldest in the world; but somehow it seems to me onct in a
+while as if it was about the youngest, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full
+glare of the Southwestern sun.  She looked about her and felt an
+unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle
+and under some watchful eye.  "Dad," said she, quietly, "I'm not going
+home.  I'm going to spend a month at Sky Top."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has it caught <I>you</I>, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be
+taken care of," grumbled her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, now, interests ain't exclusive for the States," said Tom Osby.
+"You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn't do it.
+Give the girl a month, an' she'll just about have the town&mdash;or her and
+me together will.  You settin' there talkin' about goin' home!  Go on
+home if you feel like it.  Me and Miss Constance will stay out here,
+and take care of the business interests ourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're personally conducted, dad," laughed Constance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen," said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon
+his knee.  "Now, you folks has got money behind you that's painful.
+You don't <I>have</I> to steal, Mr. Ellsworth.  It's only a <I>habit</I> with
+you.  Now s'pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin' that God can plat
+a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin' that the first fellers that
+finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones&mdash;which she <I>does</I>
+allow, and <I>know</I>.  Now, here's what she says.  Says she, 'We'll go in
+with this outfit, and we won't try to steal the landscape.  We'll pay
+for every foot of ground that's claimed by anybody that seen it first.
+We won't try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates
+back to Jack Wilson.  We'll put in the yard at the lower end of the
+town, provided that Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, gives his
+permission&mdash;always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr.
+Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he
+feels like goin' there.  Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas
+Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," assented Constance; and her father nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That'd be fair, and it'd be easy," went on Tom.  "We'll fix it up
+that-a-way, me and Miss Constance&mdash;not you.  And as soon as we get to a
+telegraft office, we fire the general counsel, Mr. Barkley; don't we,
+Miss Constance?"  The girl nodded grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's fired," said Tom.  "You can take care of that the first thing you
+do, Mr. Ellsworth.  Then you can make out my papers as yardmaster and
+general boss of the deepot.  You can be clerk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now here we go, the railroad cars a choo-chooin' up our caņon, same as
+down here at Sky Top.  In the front car is the president, which is Miss
+Constance, with me clost along, the new yardmaster.  Your pa is
+somewhere back on the train, Miss Constance, with the money to pay off
+the hands.  He's useful, but not inderspensible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on!" applauded Constance.  "Who besides us and poor old dad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby turned and looked at her gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And there comes down to meet us at the station," he concluded, "the
+only man we needed to help us put this thing through."  Tom Osby
+finished his tea in silence.  Constance herself made no comment.  Her
+gaze was on the far-off mountains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That there man," he resumed, shaking out the grounds from his tea-cup,
+"is the new division counsel for the road, the first mayor of Heart's
+Desire,&mdash;after Miss Constance,&mdash;and mighty likely the next
+Congressional delergate from this Territory.  Now can you both guess
+who that man is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll admit he's a bigger man than Barkley," said Ellsworth, slowly.
+"That boy would make a grand trial lawyer.  They couldn't beat him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Tom Osby, "they'd think he was square, and that means a lot.
+They <I>do</I> think he's square; and the boys are goin' to do something
+for him if they can.  Now if he gets back&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance turned upon him with a glance of swift appeal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I was sayin', <I>when</I> he gets back," resumed Tom, "some of us
+fellers may perhaps take it up with him, and tell him what Miss
+Constance wants to have done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was too much.  The girl sprang to her feet.  "You'll tell him
+nothing!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth turned to Tom Osby with a sober face.  "Young Anderson rode
+away from us the other morning," said he, "and he hardly troubled
+himself to say good-by.  We used to know him back East; and he needn't
+have taken that affair of the railroad meeting so much to heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come!" called Constance, "get ready and let's be going.  I'm sick of
+this country!"  She walked rapidly away from the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A woman can change some sudden, can't she, Mr. Ellsworth?" remarked
+Tom Osby, slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Miss Constance," said he, presently, when he came nearer to
+her, standing apart from the wagon, "there's been mistakes and busted
+plans enough in here already.  Now don't get on no high horse and break
+up my scheme."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't talk to me!"  She stamped her foot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am! ain't you ashamed to say them words?"  She did not answer, and
+Tom Osby took the step for which he had been preparing throughout the
+entire morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said he, "one word from you would bring that feller to you on
+the keen lope.  He'd fix the railroad all right mighty soon.  Then
+besides&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned away.  "The question of the railroad is a business one, and
+nothing else; talk to my father about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom went silently about his preparations for resuming the journey.
+When he came to put the horses to the wagon tongue, he found Constance
+sitting there, staring with misty eyes at the distant hills beyond
+which lay Heart's Desire.  Tom Osby paused at the shelter of the wagon
+cover and backed away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something has got to be did," he muttered to himself, "and did mighty
+blame quick.  If we don't get some kind of hobbles on that girl,
+<I>she's</I> goin' to jump the fence and go back home."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-326"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-326.jpg" ALT="&quot;'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="333" HEIGHT="470">
+<H5>
+[Illustration: "'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'"]
+</H5>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When Tom Osby came back to Heart's Desire, he drew Curly to one side,
+and the two walked over to a shady spot at the side of Whiteman's
+corral, seating themselves for what was evidently to be an executive
+session.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby continued to stuff tobacco into his pipe with a stubby
+forefinger, and Curly's hat was pushed back from a forehead wrinkled in
+deep thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a good deal like you say, Tom," he assented; "I know that.
+Unless we can get Dan Anderson and that girl to some sort of an
+understandin', the jig's up, and there ain't a-goin' to be no railroad
+at Heart's Desire.  But how're you a-goin' to <I>do</I> that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I done told you what I thought," said Tom Osby.  "I'm a married
+man, been married seven times, or maybe six.  There's just two things I
+understand, and them is horses and women, which I ought to, from
+associatin' with them constant.  Now, I tell you, if I'm any judge of
+women, that girl thinks a heap of Dan Anderson, no matter what she lets
+on.  It's her that's got the railroad up her sleeve.  The old man just
+thinks she's a tin angel with fresh paint.  Why, he's done <I>give</I> her
+the whole railroad.  He don't want it.  He's got money now that's
+sinful.  Now, I say, she's got the railroad.  Dan Andersen's chances,
+they go with the railroad.  If she could just get <I>him</I> to go with the
+business <I>chances</I>, that'd about fix things; and I more'n half believe
+she'd drop into line right free and gentle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, why don't she <I>say</I> so, then," grumbled Curly, "and stop this
+foolishness?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now there you go!" replied Tom.  "Can't you see that any woman on
+earth, even a married woman, is four-thirds foolishness and the rest
+human?  With girls it's still worse'n that.  If I'm any judge, she's
+wishin' a certain feller'd come along and shake the tree.  But she
+ain't goin' to fall off until the tree's done shook.  Consequently,
+there she is, still up the tree, and our railroad with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looks like <I>he</I> ought to make the first break," observed Curly,
+sagely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course he ought.  But <I>will</I> he, that's the question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he won't," admitted Curly, pushing his hat still farther back on
+his head.  "He's took his stand, and done what he allowed was right.
+After that, he ain't built to crawfish.  He's passed up the girl, and
+the railroad, too, and I reckon that settles it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yet he thinks a heap of the girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Natural?  Of course he does.  How can he help it?  That's where the
+trouble is.  I tell you, Tom, these here things is sort of <I>personal</I>.
+If these two folks is havin' trouble of their own, why, it's <I>their</I>
+trouble, and it ain't for us to square it, railroad or no railroad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When two people is damn fools," commented Tom Osby, gravely, "it's all
+right for foreign powers to mediate a-plenty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what you goin' to do?  She won't bat a eye at him, and he ain't
+goin' to send for her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes he <I>is</I>," corrected Tom Osby; and the forefinger, crowding
+tobacco into his pipe, worked vigorously.  "He's <I>got</I> to send for
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looks to me like we can't do nothin'," replied his friend,
+pessimistically.  "I like that girl, too.  Say, I'll braid her a nice
+hair rope and take it down to her.  Maybe that'll kind o' square things
+with her for losin' out with Dan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," scoffed Tom Osby, "that's all the brains a fool cow puncher has
+got.  Do you reckon a hair lariat, or a new pair of spurs, is any
+decent remedy for a girl's wownded affections?  No, sir, not none.  No,
+you go on down and take your old hair rope with you, and give it to the
+girl.  That's all right; but you're goin' to take something else along
+with you at the same time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" "Why, you're goin' to take a letter to her,&mdash;a letter
+from Dan Andersen's death-bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who&mdash;me?  Death-bed?  Why, he ain't <I>on</I> no death-bed.  He's eatin'
+three squares a day and settin' up readin' novels.  Death-bed nothin'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," said Tom Osby, "that's where you're mistaken.  Dan Anderson
+<I>is</I> on his death-bed; and he writes his dyin' confession, his message
+in such cases made and pervided.  He sends his last words to his own
+true love.  Says he, 'All is forgiven.'  Then she flies to receive his
+dyin' words.  You ain't got no brains, Curly.  You ain't got no
+imagi<I>na</I>tion.  Why, if I left all this to you, she'd get here too
+late for the funeral.  You're a specialist, Curly.  You can rope and
+throw a two-thousand-pound steer, but you can't handle a woman that
+don't weigh over a hundred and twenty-five.  Now, you watch your Pa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly sat and looked at him in silence for a few minutes, but at last a
+light seemed to dawn upon him.  "Oh, I <I>see</I>," said he, smiling
+broadly.  "You mean for us to get up a letter for him&mdash;write it out and
+send it, like he done it hisself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby nodded.  "Of course&mdash;that's the only way.  There wouldn't
+either of them write to the other one.  That's the trouble with these
+here States girls, and them men from the States, too.  You have to take
+care of 'em.  You and me has got to be gardeens for these two folks.
+If we don't, they're goin' to make all kinds of trouble for theirselves
+and each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kin you disguise your handwritin' any, Tom?" asked Curly.  "I can't.
+Mine's kind of sot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curly," answered Tom, with scorn, "what you call your brains is only a
+oroide imitation of a dollar watch.  Why, of course we can't write a
+letter and sign his name to it deliberate.  That's forgery, and we'd
+get into the penitentiary for it.  That ain't the way to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now look here.  Dan Anderson may be lookin' right well for a dyin'
+man, but he's on his death-bed just the same.  That's needful for the
+purposes of dramatic construction.  He's a-layin' there, pale and wore
+out.  His right arm is busted permernent, and it's only a question of
+time when he cashes in&mdash;though he <I>might</I> live a few days if he was
+plumb shore his own true love was a-hastenin' to his bedside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it was his <I>left</I> arm that got shot," argued Curly; "and it
+didn't amount to a whole lot at that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's you go," jeered Tom, in answer, "with them imitation brain
+works of yours.  It's his <I>right</I> arm that's busted.  Now, him
+a-layin' there plumb helpless, his thoughts turns to his bride that
+might 'a' been, but wasn't.  With his last dyin' words he greets her.
+If she would only hasten to his deathbed, he could die in peace.
+That's what he writes to her.  'Dear Madam,' says he, 'Havin' loved you
+all my life, I fain would gaze on you onct more.  In that case,' says
+he, 'the clouds certainly would roll away!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That shorely would <I>fetch</I> her," said Curly, admiringly, "but how you
+goin' to fix it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, how?  There ain't but one way.  The dyin' man has his dear friend
+Curly, or Tom Osby, or some one, write his last words for him.  That
+ain't counterfeitin'.  That's only actin' as his literary amanyensis,
+and that's plumb legal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Things may be legal, and not <I>safe</I>," objected Curly.  "Supposin' he
+finds out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, then, we'll be far, far away.  This letter has got to be wrote.
+I can't write it myself, and you can't; but maybe several of us could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't in on writin' the letter," Curly decided; "I'll carry it, but
+my writin' is too sot, and so's my thinker."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I ain't used my own thinker in this particular way for about
+twenty years," said Tom Osby, "although I did co'te two of my wives by
+perlite correspondence, something like this; and I couldn't see but
+what them wives lasted as good as any."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's too bad Dan Anderson ain't in on this play hisself," Curly
+resumed.  "Now if it was us that was layin' dead, and him writin' the
+letter, he'd have us both alive, and have the girl here by two o'clock
+to-morrer, and everything 'd be lovely.  But us!  We don't know any
+more about this than a pair of candy frogs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fewer there is in on a woman deal the better," said Tom Osby, "and
+yet it looks like we needed help right now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two sat gazing gloomily down the long street of Heart's Desire, and
+so intent were they that they did not see the shambling figure of
+Willie the sheepherder coming up the street.  Then Tom Osby's gaze
+focussed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now there's that damned sheepherder that broke us up in business,"
+said he.  "It was him that got us into this fix.  If he hadn't lied
+like a infernal pirate, and got Dan Anderson to thinkin' that the girl
+and this lawyer feller Barkley was engaged to each other on the side,
+why Dan wouldn't have flared up and busted the railroad deal, and let
+the girl get away, and gone and got hisself shot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"S'posin' I shoot Willie up just for luck," suggested Curly.  "He's got
+it comin' to him, from the way that Gee-Whiz friend of his throwed lead
+into our fellers, time we was arguin' with them over them sheep.  This
+country ain't got no use for sheep, nor sheepherders either, specially
+the kind that makes trouble with railroads, and girls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, hold on a minute," interrupted Tom Osby.  "You wait&mdash;I've got a
+idea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a minute.  How saith the psalmist?  All men is liars; and
+sheepherders special, natural, eighteen-karat, hand-curled liars&mdash;which
+is just the sort we need right now in our business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly slapped his thigh in sudden understanding.  The two sat, still
+watching Willie as he came rambling aimlessly up the street, staring
+from side to side in his vacant fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sheepherder, as you know, Curly," went on Tom, "has three stages in
+his game.  For a while he's human.  In a few years, settin' round on
+the hills in the sun, a-watchin' them damned woolly baa-baa's of his,
+he gets right nutty.  He sees things.  Him a-gettin' so lonesome, and
+a-readin' high-class New York literature all the time, he gets to
+thinkin' of the Lady Eyemogene.  You might think he's seein' cactus and
+sheep, but what is really floatin' before him is proud knights, and
+haughty barons, and royal monarchs, and Lady Eyemogenes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It ain't sinful for Willie to lie, like it is for us, because life is
+one continuous lie to him.  He's seen a swimmin' picture of
+hand-painted palaces, and noble jukes, and stately dames out on the
+Nogal flats every day for eight years.  That ain't lyin'&mdash;that's
+imagination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now this feller's imagination is just about ripe.  Usual, at the end
+of about seven years, a sheepherder goes plumb dotty, and we either
+have to shoot him, or send him to Leavenworth.  Your Gee-Whiz man can
+maybe take to cow punchin' and prosper, but not Willie.  His long suit
+is imaginin' things, from now on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, that feller is naturally pinin' to write this here particular
+letter we've got on our minds.  You watch Willie compose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here you, Willie, come over here!" Curly called out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The herder started in fright.  Timid at best, he was all the more so
+since the raid of the Carrizoso stock men.  His legs trembled under
+him, but he slowly approached in obedience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, sternly, "I'm some hardened as a sinner my own
+self, but the kind of way you do pains me.  What made you tell that lie
+about seein' the lady and that lawyer feller makin' love to each other,
+on the back seat of the buckboard, behind the old man's back?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I <I>thought</I> I seen 'em," pleaded Willie.  "I&mdash;I <I>thought</I> I heard
+'em talkin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, sufferin' saints!  Listen to that!  You <I>thought</I>!  Of course you
+did.  You and that Gee-Whiz friend of yours ought to turn yourselves
+into a symposium and write for the papers.  Now look here.  Have you
+got a copy of the 'Proud Earl's Revenge,' in your pocket?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Willie tremulously felt in his clothing, and did produce a dog-eared
+volume to somewhat that effect.  Tom Osby turned over a few of the
+pages thoughtfully, and then sat up with a happy smile.  "There ain't
+no trouble about that letter <I>now</I>!" said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;what&mdash;what do you want?" asked Willie.  Then they told him.
+Willie radiated happiness.  He sat down beside them, his hands
+trembling with joy and eagerness&mdash;conspirator number three for the
+peace and dignity of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go get some paper, Curly," said Tom Osby, and Curly departed.  Willie
+remained wrapped in thought, his mind confused at this sudden
+opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all about Lancelot," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What brand did Lancelot ride under?  Now, no foolin', Willie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why&mdash;why&mdash;why," said Willie, "Lancelot, he's at a tournyment.  Now, he
+loves a beautiful queen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore he does!  That goes.  What's the queen's name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her name&mdash;her name&mdash;her name's Guinevere," replied Willie.  "And the
+proud king, he brooks it ill.  The proud king's name is Arthur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, it <I>ain't</I>!" said Tom Osby.  "There ain't no man who's name
+is <I>Arthur</I> that has no scrap to him.  It ain't <I>Arthur</I> that goes on
+no war-path."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he did," insisted Willie.  "Lancelot gets herded out.  He gets
+shot up some at the tournyment, so he leaves the beautiful queen, and
+he rides off for the range all alone by himself.  He's like a
+sheepherder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on with the paper, Curly," called Tom Osby.  "This feller's
+thinker is workin' fine.  Go on, Willie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Lancelot, he's layin' at the point of death, and he's thinkin'
+all the time of Guinevere.  I reckon he writes her a letter, and he
+says, says he, 'Dear Lady, I send thee my undyin' love,' says he.  'I
+kiss the picture which is a-layin' on my breast,' says he; 'and with my
+last breath,' says he, 'I shorely yearn for thee!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanin' Guinevere?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shore!  Says Lancelot, 'Fair queen, thou didst me a injury onct; but
+couldst thou but come and stand at my bedside, I hadst new zeal in
+life,' says he."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meanin' he'd get well?" asked Curly.  "That's the same as Dan
+Anderson!  <I>This</I> feller's a peach!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up!" admonished Tom Osby.  "Go on, Willie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's always that-a-way," said Willie.  Tears stood in his eyes.  He
+looked vaguely out over the blue hills which hedged in the enchanted
+valley of Heart's Desire.  "It's always that-a-way," he repeated.
+"Somehow, somewhere, there's always a beautiful queen, for every
+fellow, just over the mountains.  It's always that-a-way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby reached out a hand and gently shook him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Set up, Willie," said he.  "Come down now, till we get this business
+fixed.  Now, what happens after that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Willie winked his eyes and smiled amiably.  "The sick knight, he writes
+a missive to the beautiful queen," he went on.  "He sets his signet
+ring on to the missive, and he hands it to his trusted henchman, and
+his trusted henchman flies to do his bidding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's you, Curly," nodded Tom Osby.  "You're the trusted henchman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm damned if I am!" replied Curly.  "I'm nothin' but a plain cow hand
+from the Brazos; but I don't take 'henchman' from nobody!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush!" said his friend.  "This feller's a genius.  If he don't get
+side-tracked on Dead Shot Dick, or something of that kind, this letter
+is just as good as wrote, right now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The good knight presses his signet ring on to the missive," resumed
+Willie, "and his trusted cow hand wraps the missive in the folds of his
+cloak, and climbs on to his trusted steed, and flies far, far away, to
+the side of the beautiful queen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's good!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and
+says she, 'My Gawd!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>now</I> we're gettin' at it!" said Tom Osby.  "Say, this is pretty
+<I>poor</I>, ain't it, Curly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then," went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, "the
+beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the
+distant bedside of the sufferin' knight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She'll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely," said Tom Osby.  "You
+got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly?  But we'll let it go at that.
+She's got to fly to the distant bedside somehow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that'll be all right," agreed Willie, sweetly.  "She'll fly.
+She'll come.  It's always the same.  It's always the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Write it down, Willie," ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before
+him.  Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The latter balked in turn.  "What!  Have I got to start it for you?
+Well, then, begin it, 'Dear Madam!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly shook his head.  "You couldn't never marry a woman writin' to her
+that-a-way."  And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the
+justice of the assertion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave it to Willie," suggested Curly.  "He'll get it started after a
+while.  Go ahead, Willie.  How did he say it to her, now, when he sent
+for the beautiful queen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tom Osby's pencil followed rapidly as it might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He writes," said Willie, "like they always do.  He says: 'Light of my
+heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.
+I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know
+with no proof but my word.  If I have drawn apart from you, 'twas
+through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe.  If I have
+not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, 'tis for that reason
+I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the
+same.  If I have missed the dear sight of your face, 'twas because I
+could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea
+on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor.  Heart's
+Heart, and life of my life, could you not see?  I could not doom you to
+a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he
+heard speaking; but he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now I lie here hurt to death,' says the good knight Lancelot.  'This
+is the end.  Now, at the time when truth must come from the soul, I say
+to you, my queen'&mdash;she's always queen to him&mdash;'I say to you, I have
+loved you more than I have loved myself.  But if you could come, if you
+could stand at my bedside before it is too late, before it is too
+late&mdash;too late&mdash;'"  Willie's voice broke into a wail.  The ray of light
+was almost fading from his clouded brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," whispered Tom Osby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'My queen, my darling&mdash;' says Lancelot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Willie's hands, trembling, fell into his lap.  "It's always
+that-a-way," he whimpered vaguely, coming now to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, gently, "I ain't right sure I've got it all
+down straight, but I think I have.  You read her over, and touch her up
+here and there where she needs it.  Curly, look here.  I don't believe
+Dan Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if he saw it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They sign it with their hearts," said Willie, vaguely.  "They always
+do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He signs it with his heart," said Tom Osby, "and it goes!"  He folded
+the paper and handed it to Curly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can," said he, "and make the
+run to Sky Top as fast as God'll let you.  This letter's all right, and
+it goes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So presently there rode down the long sunlit street of Heart's Desire,
+mounted upon the mad horse Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a
+message from a mad brain and two simple hearts,&mdash;a courier bound upon a
+strange and kindly errand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign, looked gently
+down, and the stern walls of the caņon seemed to widen and make room
+for the messenger as he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent
+knight to his distant queen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's like he said," mused Curly to himself, feeling in his pocket for
+tobacco as he rode.  "It's that-a-way, and I reckon it always has been.
+I've felt like that myself sometimes.  <I>Ola, Pinto</I>!  <I>Vamos</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap25"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an Ananias with Spurs</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the
+bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and
+hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed.  The mad horse,
+Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears
+back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an
+antelope.  The two swept down the long caņon from Heart's Desire,
+traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed
+then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle
+thieves and those who pursued them.  At last they swung down into the
+beautiful valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to the
+southward, until at length they reached the defiles of the Sacramentos.
+They pulled up after more than a day and a night of travel, weary but
+not hopelessly the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up the
+mountains to the Sky Top hotel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly, a trifle gaunt, gave his first attention to his horse, which he
+unsaddled with a slap of approval, and turned loose to feed as best it
+might on the coarse herbage of the upper heights.  His next thought was
+for himself, and he realized that he was hungry.  Immediately there
+dawned upon his mind another great conviction.  He was scared!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked about at the long galleries of the ornate modern log house,
+wherein civilization sought to ape the wilderness; but it was not the
+arrogant pretentiousness of the building itself which caused him to
+shift his glance and stand dubiously upon one foot.  It was the thought
+of what the edifice might contain.  There, as he began too late to
+reflect, was the queen!  He, the trusted henchman, was bearing to her a
+missive regarding whose nature he now experienced sudden misgivings.
+Suppose Willie, the sheepherder, had not, after all, been able to meet
+the requirements of a situation so delicate and so important!  Curly
+had known the plains and the mountains all his life.  He had ridden in
+the press of the buffalo herd in the Panhandle, had headed cattle
+stampedes in the breaks of the Pecos, had met the long-toed cinnamon
+bear all over these mountains that lay about him&mdash;had even heard the
+whisper of hostile lead as part of his own day's work,&mdash;but never
+before had his heart failed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless, his face puckered into a frown of determination, he
+stumbled, a trifle pigeon-toed in his high-heeled boots, across the
+floor of one gallery after another, and knocked at one door after
+another, until finally, by aid of lingering Mexican servants, he found
+himself in the presence of the beautiful queen whom he had sought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ratified her title when she came toward him where he stood, twirling
+his hat in his hands; so tall was she, so grave and dignified, yet so
+very sweet and simple.  Curly was a man, and he felt the spell of
+smooth brown hair and wide brows, and straight, sincere eyes; not to
+speak of a queen's figure clad in such raiment as had not often been
+given Curly to look upon.  He gazed in a frank admiration which
+lessened his fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance Ellsworth held out her hand, with questions for his own
+household at Heart's Desire.  Was everything right with them?  Was
+Arabella quite well of her accident?  Was his wife well?  And so on.
+But all the time she questioned him deeper with eyes large, wistful,
+eager.  She had had no news since leaving Heart's Desire, and now she
+dreaded any.  This, then, she said with tightening heart, was news, but
+fatal news, long withheld.  Had Dan Anderson come back unhurt from his
+sheriff's errand, there would have been no message at all, and silence
+would have been sweeter than this certainty of evil.  This messenger,
+reticent, awkward, embarrassed, brought her news of Dan Anderson&mdash;of
+the boy whom she had loved, of the man she loved, debonair, mocking,
+apparently careless, but, as she herself knew, in his heart indomitably
+resolved.  Now he was gone forever from her life.  He was dead!  She
+could never see him again.  Ah! why had they not used the days of this
+life, so brief, so soon ended?  It was of his death that the messenger
+must speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly, already sufficiently perturbed, witnessed all this written on
+her face, stumbled, stammered, but was unable to find coherent speech;
+although he saw plainly enough the subterfuge with which even now the
+girl sought to hedge herself against prying eyes that would have read
+her secret.  She began again, to ask him of his family, the same
+questions.  "Is anything wrong?" she demanded.  In some way they were
+seated before he could go on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It ain't the twins, ma'am," he began.  "I got&mdash;I got a letter for you.
+It's from him&mdash;from us&mdash;that is, I got a letter from Mr. Anderson&mdash;Dan
+Anderson, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fumbled in his pocket.  The girl, thoroughbred, looked him straight
+in the face, pale, meeting what she felt to be the great moment of her
+life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he's alive!  He must be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly shook his head; meaning that he was feeling in the wrong pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is dead!  And I did not see him.  He&mdash;went away&mdash;"  Her chin
+quivered.  "Tell me," she whispered, "tell me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly, busy in his search for the letter, lost the tragedy of this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me, <I>tell</I> me, how did it happen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, ma'am, he ain't hurt so awful," remarked Curly, calmly.  "He
+just got a finger or so touched up a little, so's he couldn't write
+none to speak of, you see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her heart gave a great bound.  She feared to hope, lest the truth might
+be too cruel; but at length she dared the issue.  "Curly," said she,
+firmly, "you are not telling me the truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it, ma'am," replied Curly, amiably; he suddenly realized that
+he was not making his own case quite strong enough.  "The fact is, he
+got hurt a <I>leetle</I> bit worse'n that.  His hand, his <I>left</I>&mdash;no, I
+mean his <I>right</I> hand got busted up plenty.  Why, he couldn't cut his
+own victuals.  The fact is, it's maybe even a little worse'n that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me the truth!" the girl demanded steadily.  "Is his arm gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure it is," replied Curly, cheerfully, glad of assistance.  "Do you
+reckon Dan Anderson would be gettin' <I>anybody</I> to write to <I>you</I> for
+him if he had even a piece of a arm left in the shop?  I reckon not!
+He ain't that sort of a <I>man</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly's sudden improvement gave him courage.  "The fact is, ma'am,"
+said he, "I got to break this thing to you kind of gentle.  You know
+how that is yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know all about it now," she said calmly.  "I knew he would not come
+back&mdash;I saw it in his face.  It was all because of that miserable
+railroad trouble that he went away&mdash;that he didn't ever come.  It was
+all my own fault&mdash;my fault,&mdash;but I didn't mean it&mdash;I didn't&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an
+important emotional situation.  He rose and gazed down at her with
+solemn pity written upon his countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on.  I wish't you
+wouldn't.  Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean
+through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six
+weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He <I>will</I> live?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>well</I>," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say
+about <I>that</I>.  He <I>might</I> live.  You see, there ain't no doctor at
+Heart's Desire.  The boys just took care of him the best they could.
+They brung him home from quite a ways off.  They&mdash;they cut his arm off
+easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors.  They&mdash;they sewed
+him up fine.  He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to
+the Piņos Altos ranch.  The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man
+as ever throwed a leg over a saddle.  When he got back from takin' the
+Kid up to Vegas, the sherf&mdash;that's Ben Stillson&mdash;he starts down to
+Cruces.  Convention there this week, ma'am.  Ben, he allowed he'd get
+Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress&mdash;that is, if he hadn't 'a' got
+killed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly.  "I've known that
+a long time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly.
+"There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on
+leather than him.  He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we
+all wouldn't let go of.  Some of 'em goes back home.  He didn't.  What
+there was here he could have.  For one while we thought he was throwin'
+us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't.  We done
+elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something
+better'n that&mdash;if they ain't started it already over to Cruces&mdash;that
+is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely&mdash;him bein' dead.
+Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this
+letter.  But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any
+feller could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights.
+"Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do.  We all
+know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along.
+<I>You</I> got no right to cry.  You got no right to let on what you don't
+really feel.  I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am.  Now I'm&mdash;I'm
+plumb sincere and <I>truthful</I>.  No frills goes."  There was the
+solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm this much of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you
+don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson.  That's everdent.  I
+ain't in on that side of the play.  I'm just here to say that, so far
+as he's concerned <I>hisself</I>, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any
+minute of his life for <I>you</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that's
+all," said Curly, firmly.  "He don't talk of nothing else but you,
+ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How dare he talk of me!" she flashed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that is&mdash;well, that is, he don't talk so blamed much, after
+<I>all</I>," stammered Curly.  "Leastwise, not none now.  He's out of his
+head most of the time, now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you've not told me everything, even yet," exclaimed she,
+piteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not quite," said Curly, with a long breath; "but I'm a-comin' along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's dying!" she cried with conviction.  Curly, now taking an
+impersonal interest in the dramatic aspect of the affair, solemnly
+turned away his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said he, at length, "he thought a heap of you when he was
+alive.  We&mdash;we all did, but <I>he</I> did special and private like.  Why,
+ma'am, if you'd come and stand by his grave, he'd wake up <I>now</I> and
+welcome you!  You see, I am a married man my own self, and Tom Osby,
+he's been married copious; and Tom and me, we both allowed just like I
+said.  We knew the diseased would have done that cheerful&mdash;if he had
+any sort of chanct."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl sprang up.  "He's not dead!" she cried, and her eyes blazed,
+her natural courage refusing to yield.  "I'll not believe it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't ast you to, ma'am," said Curly.  "He ain't plumb dead; he's
+just threatened.  Oh, say, you've kind of got me rattled, you see.
+I've got a missage&mdash;I mean a missive&mdash;anyways a letter, from him.  I
+had it in my pants pocket all the time, and thought it was in my coat.
+Them was the last words he wrote."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She tore the letter from his hand, and her eyes caught every word of it
+at the first glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is not his letter!" she exclaimed.  "He never wrote it!  It's not
+in his hand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma'am," said Curly, virtuously grieved, "how could you!  I didn't
+<I>say</I> he wrote it.  He had to have a amanyensis, of course,&mdash;him
+a-layin' there all shot up.  Nobody <I>said</I> it was his handwriting It
+<I>ain't</I> his handwritin'.  It's his <I>heart</I>writin'.  They sign it with
+their <I>hearts</I>, ma'am!  Now I tell you that for the truth, and you can
+gamble on <I>that</I>, anyways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I had better go away.  I'm hungry, anyhow," he added, turning
+away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Soon!" she said, stretching out her hand.  "Wait!" her other hand
+trembled as she devoured the pages of the message to the queen.  Her
+cheeks flushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>read</I> it, ma'am!" said Curly, querulously.  "Read it and get
+sorry.  If you can read that there letter from Dan Anderson&mdash;signed
+with his heart&mdash;and not hit the trail for his bedside, then I've had a
+almighty long ride for nothing."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap26"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+</H3>
+
+<H4>
+<I>The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+As Curly stumped away, his spurs clinking on the gallery floor, he
+encountered Mr. Ellsworth, who held out his hand in recognition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just heard some one was down from the town," he began.  "How are you,
+and what's the news?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mighty bad," said Curly, "mighty bad."  Then to himself: "O Lord!  I'm
+in for it again, and worse.  I'd a heap rather lie to a woman than a
+man&mdash;it seems more natural."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring any word down with you from up there?" asked Ellsworth.  Curly
+nodded.  "I brung a letter," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That so?  What's it about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, sir, it bein' a letter to a lady&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean my daughter?  Now, what&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it's for her," admitted Curly; "but it's personal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I didn't know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson.
+You know he went with the posse.  Do you happen to know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ask her.  It is, though."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he send you down here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm almighty hungry; I ain't had no breakfast, nor nothing."  Whereupon
+Curly bolted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance.  He found her, a
+crumpled and pathetic figure.  The news then had, indeed, been bad!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, now, child," he began, "what's up here?  You've a letter, the man
+tells me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap.  "Is it from him,
+young Anderson?" he asked.  She nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's written by a friend of his," she answered presently.  "He himself
+couldn't write.  He was too&mdash;ill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sent for you?" His voice was grave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she whispered, "when it was too late."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll go," he said with decision.  "Get ready.  Maybe there is some
+mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't," she begged, "there is no mistake.  I knew it would happen; I
+felt it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove, I hope it's not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of
+that boy myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room.  She
+turned and blazed at him.  "Then why didn't you talk that way before?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the
+Sky Top caņon, bound for the northern trail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse,
+which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been
+left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and
+dragging on the ground.  Curly seated himself on the ground near by and
+addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pinto," said he, "you remind me of a heap of folks I know.  You think
+them reins holds you, but they don't.  They ain't tied to nothing.
+You're just like them, hitched tight to a fool notion, that's all.  If I
+don't take your bridle off, you'll stand there and starve to death, like
+a good many fool folks I've heard of.  You've got to eat, Pinto."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly arose and with a meditative finger traced the outlines of the
+continental maps displayed on Pinto's parti-colored flanks.  That
+cynical beast, with small warning, kicked at him viciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, there you go!" remonstrated Curly; "can't you get tired enough to
+be decent?  Git on away&mdash;<I>vamos</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stripped off the bridle from Pinto's head, and again gave him a
+friendly slap, as he drove him off to graze, without any precaution to
+prevent his running away.  As for himself, Curly lay down upon the
+ground, his face on his arm, and was soon fast asleep in the glaring
+sun.  Pinto, misanthropic as he was, did not abuse the confidence
+reposed in him.  He walked off to a trickle of water which came down
+from a mountain spring, and grazed steadily upon the coarse mountain
+grass, but every now and then, under the strange bond which sometimes
+exists between horse and man, wandered around to look inquiringly at his
+sleeping master, whom he would gladly have brained upon occasion, but
+upon whom, none the less, he relied blindly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were long shadows slanting toward the eastward when Curly arose
+and again saddled up his misfit mount.  He knew that the buckboard was
+well in advance of him in time, but it must take the longer wagon trail
+to the westward of Sky Top, while for himself there were shorter paths
+across the mountains.  He rode on until night fell, and the moon arose,
+flooding all the mountain range with wondrous silvery light, which grew
+the plainer as he left the whispering pines and came into the dwindled
+piņons of the lower levels.  Then up and down, over and over, he crossed
+the edges of other spurs, coming down from the great backbone of the
+range.  It was past midnight when he reached the flat-topped mesa near
+the Nogales divide, where there were no trees at all, and where ancient
+pottery, relics of a forgotten Heart's Desire of another race and time,
+crumbled beneath his horse's hoofs.  Here Curly loosened the saddle
+cinches, flung down the bridle-rein over Pinto's head again, and himself
+lay down to sleep, uncovered, but hardy as any mountain bear that roamed
+the hills.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he awoke the red sun hung poised on the shoulder of Blanco, far
+away, as though to receive the ghostly worship of those who once lived
+and loved, and prayed here, in the long ago.  So now he ate as he might,
+and drank at the Rio Bonito, a dozen miles farther on, and went his way
+comforted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dropping down rapidly on the farther side of the Nogales, Pinto
+shambling along discontentedly but steadily, Curly at length came to the
+wagon trail which led along the edge of the plain on the western side of
+these ranges which he had threaded.  He leaned forward and examined the
+trail for wheel marks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jinks!  Pinto," he muttered, "the old man and the girl is shore
+hittin' the trail hard for that there death-bed.  I'll bet that pore
+girl's tired, for they must have made a short camp last night.  <I>Vamos,
+caballo</I>!" and so he spurred on to the northward along the hot low
+flats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By noon he sighted a dust cloud on ahead, which told him that he had the
+other party well in hand if he liked, in spite of the speed they were
+making.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They travelled all night, that's what they did!  If that Mexican don't
+kill his team, it's a lucky thing."  He did not seek to close the gap
+between them, but on the other hand pulled up and rode more slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Pinto," he pondered, "whatever in the world am I goin' to do when
+we all pull into town?  Deathbed&mdash;and him like enough settin' up and
+playin' solitaire, or out pitchin' horse shoes.  Shucks!  If I could git
+around behind Dan Anderson's house, I believe I'd shoot him a few for
+luck, so's to make some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the
+small bills.  We've been playin' it low down on them two folks, and for
+one, I wish't I was out of it.  Pinto, this here particular trusted
+henchman has shore got cold feet right here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He trailed behind the buckboard hour after hour, dropping back into a
+gully for concealment now and then, and putting off the unpleasant hour
+of meeting as long as possible.  He kept in the rear until the vehicle
+turned in at the mouth of the caņon which led up to the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Then Curly hastened, and so finally clattered up
+alongside the buckboard.  Ellsworth was gray with fatigue, and Constance
+worn and pale; seeing which Curly cursed himself, Tom Osby, and all
+animate and inanimate things.  "It's a shame, that's what it is!" he
+muttered to himself reproachfully, and averted his face when Constance
+smiled at him bravely and disclaimed fatigue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun was beginning to sink beyond Baxter peak as they came in view of
+the little straggling town, clinging hard to the earth as it had through
+so many years of oblivion.  It was an enchanted valley upon which they
+gazed.  The majestic robes of the purple shadows, tremendous,
+wide-spreading, yet soft as the texture of thrice-piled velvet, were
+falling upon the shoulders of the hills.  An unspeakable, stately calm
+came with the hour of evening.  It was a world apart, beautiful, unreal,
+sweet and full of peace.  Far, far from here were all the tinselled
+trappings of an artificial world, distant the clamorings of a disturbing
+civilization with its tears and terrors.  Battle and striving, anxiety
+and doubt, apprehension and repinings&mdash;the envy and the jealousies and
+little fears of life&mdash;none of these lay in the lap of old and calm
+Carrizo.  Peace, rest, and pause,&mdash;these things were here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ravens of the Lord had cared for those who had come hither, pausing,
+dreaming, for a pulse-beat in a frenzied century of rapacity and greed.
+Would the ravens care for a now pale-faced, trembling girl?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's perty, ain't it, ma'am?" said Curly.  She looked at him and
+understood many things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Curly left them traitorously, almost as soon as they entered the
+lower end of the street, intent upon plans of his own.  Those in the
+slower buckboard, whose tired team could ill afford any gait beyond a
+walk, saw him set spurs to his horse and dash ahead.  There came more
+and more plainly to their ears the sound of a vast confused shouting,
+mingled with rapid punctuation of revolver fire.  As they came into full
+view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the
+entire population of Heart's Desire, all apparently gone mad with some
+incomprehensible emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter?  What's the matter?"  Mr. Ellsworth called out to
+one man after another as they passed; but none of them answered him.
+Coherent speech seemed to have deserted all.  "Here, you, Curly!" he
+shouted.  "What's all this about?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curly, after a swift dash up the street, was now spurring back madly,
+his hat swinging in the air, himself crazed as the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's in!" he yelled.  "We done it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who's in?  What've you done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan Anderson&mdash;nomernated him for Congress&mdash;day 'fore yestidday, over to
+Cruces.  Whole convention went solid&mdash;Cruces and Doņa Ana, Blanco&mdash;whole
+kit and b'ilin' of 'em.  Ben Stillson done it&mdash;boys just heard&mdash;heard
+the news!"  After which Curly relapsed into a series of yells which
+closed the incident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance listened, open-eyed and silent.  So then, he had succeeded!
+The joy in his success, the pride in his victory, brought a flush to her
+cheek; but in the same moment the light faded from her eye.  She caught
+her father by the shoulder almost fiercely.  "Look at them!" she
+exclaimed.  "They're proud of their victory, but they do not think of
+<I>him</I>.  See!  He is not here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her father, sniffing politics, was forgetting all else; but sobered at
+this speech, he now motioned the driver to move on.  McKinney was there,
+Doc Tomlinson, Uncle Jim Brothers&mdash;the man from Leavenworth&mdash;many whom
+they knew, but not Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they turned from the street to cross the <I>arroyo</I>, they saw
+following at a respectful distance both Curly and Tom Osby, the latter
+walking at Curly's saddle-skirt, for reasons not visible at a distance.
+Tom Osby was still continuing his protestations.  "You go on over,
+Curly," said he.  "You've done mighty well; now go on and finish up.  I
+ain't in on the messenger part."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe not," replied Curly, "but both halfs of this here amanyensis is
+goin' over there together.  I told that girl that Dan Anderson was shot
+to a finish and just about to cash in.  Now here's all this hoorah about
+his bein' put up for Congress!  I dunno <I>what</I> she'll find when she
+gets into that house, but whichever way it goes, she's due to think I'm
+a damned liar.  You come along, or I'll take <I>you</I> over on a rope."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two conspirators crossed the <I>arroyo</I> and paused at the path which
+led up to Dan Anderson's little cabin.  They saw Mr. Ellsworth and
+Constance leave the buckboard and stop uncertainly at the door.  They
+saw him knock and step half within, then withdraw and gently push his
+daughter ahead of him.  Then he stood outside, his hat in hand,
+violently mopping his brow.  As he caught sight of the two laggards he
+beckoned them peremptorily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Lord!" moaned Tom Osby; "now here's what that sheepherder done to us,
+with his missive and his signet ring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance Ellsworth had grown deadly pale as she approached the
+dwelling.  The open door let in upon a darkened interior.  There was no
+light, no ray of hope to comfort her.  There, as it seemed to her, in
+that tomblike abode, lay the end of all her happiness.  In her heart was
+only the prayer that she might find him able, still to recognize her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At her father's gesture she stepped to the door&mdash;and stopped.  The blood
+went first to her heart, and then flamed back into her face.  Her cheeks
+tingled.  Her hand fell lax from the door jamb, and she half staggered
+against it for support, limp and helpless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There before her, and busily engaged in writing&mdash;so busy that he had
+merely called out a careless invitation to enter when he heard the knock
+of what he presumed to be a chance caller&mdash;there, perhaps a trifle pale,
+but certainly well, and very much himself, sat Dan Anderson!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's alive!" whispered Constance to her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's going to live!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The future delegate from the Territory had slunk away from the noisy
+street to pen some line of acknowledgment to his friend the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He had succeeded, so he reasoned with himself insistently; and
+yet a strange apathy, a sadness rather than exultation, enveloped him.
+The world lay dull and gray around him.  The price of his success had
+been the sight of a face worth more to him than all else in the world.
+He had won something, but had lost everything.  His hand stopped, his
+pencil fell upon the paper.  He looked up&mdash;to see <I>her</I> standing at his
+door!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dumb, unbelieving, he gazed and gazed.  She turned from red to pale,
+before his eyes, and still he could not speak.  He knew that in an
+instant the vision would fade away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, why, hello!" said he at last, weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;that is, how do you do?" Constance said, flushing adorably again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't expect&mdash;I didn't know you were coming," stammered Dan Anderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She chilled at this, but went on wonderingly.  "I got your letter&mdash;" she
+began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Letter?  My letter&mdash;<I>what</I> letter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Constance looked at him fairly now, agitation sufficiently gone to
+enable her to notice details.  She saw that Dan Anderson's left arm was
+supported upon the table, but apparently not seriously injured.  And he
+had been writing&mdash;with his <I>right</I> hand&mdash;at this very moment!  She
+almost sank to the ground.  There had been some cruel misunderstanding!
+Was she always to be repudiated, shamed?  She stood faltering, and would
+have turned away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But by this time Dan Anderson's own numbed faculties came back to him
+with a rush.  With a bound he was at her side, his right arm about her,
+holding her close, strong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Constance!" he cried.  "Constance!  You!  You!"  He babbled many
+things, his cheek pressed against hers.  She could not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see&mdash;you see&mdash;" exclaimed Dan Anderson, at length, half freeing her
+to look the more directly into her eyes, and to assure himself once more
+that it all was true&mdash;"I didn't understand at first.  Of <I>course</I>, I
+sent the letter.  I wrote it.  I couldn't wait&mdash;I couldn't endure it any
+longer.  Darling, I couldn't <I>live</I> without you&mdash;and so I wrote, I
+wrote!  And you've come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But your handwriting&mdash;" she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course!  of course!" said Dan Anderson.  He was lying beautifully
+now.  "But of course you know I'm left-handed, and my left arm got hurt
+a while ago, so I couldn't use that hand.  I don't suppose my
+handwriting did look quite natural to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes were solemn but contented as she looked into his face, and saw
+that in spite of his words he was as much mystified as herself.  Slowly
+she presented to him the letter which he had never seen.  His face grew
+grave and tender as he read it line for line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is mine!" he said.  "I wrote it.  I sent it.  I've sent it a
+thousand times to you before now, across the mountains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it signed with your heart, Dan?" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With my heart&mdash;yes, yes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is beautiful," said she, simply.  And so they dropped between them
+the letter to the queen.  Hand in hand they stepped to the door, the
+room too small now to contain their happiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two stumbling figures fleeing, pigeon-toed and sharp-heeled, on the
+further side of the <I>arroyo</I> meant much to Dan Anderson.  A laugh
+choked in his throat as he caught her once more in his arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It looks like Willie had made good!" said Tom Osby to Curly, as he took
+a swift glance back over his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Constance and her lover had forgotten all the world, as they stepped
+out now into the glory of the twilight of Heart's Desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You remember," said he&mdash;"up there&mdash;the other time?"  He nodded toward
+the head of the <I>arroyo</I>, where lay the garden of the Littlest Girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You broke my heart," she murmured.  "I loved you, Dan.  What could I
+do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't!" he begged as he tightened his arm about her.  "I loved <I>you</I>,
+Constance&mdash;what could <I>I</I> do?  We've been through the fire together.
+It has all come right.  It's all so beautiful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stood together at the little garden spot.  Two brave red roses now
+blossomed there, and he plucked them both, pinning them at her throat
+with hands that trembled.  They turned and looked out over the little
+valley, and to them it seemed a golden cup overrunning with joy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heart's Desire," he murmured, and once more his cheek rested against
+hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she whispered vaguely, "all, all&mdash;your Heart's Desire, I
+hope&mdash;and mine&mdash;<I>mine</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the world," he murmured.  "It is the Beginning.  We are the very
+first.  Oh, Eve!  Eve!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+<hr noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 15159-h.txt or 15159-h.zip *******</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Heart's Desire, by Emerson Hough
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Heart's Desire
+
+Author: Emerson Hough
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15159]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 15159-h.htm or 15159-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/5/15159/15159-h/15159-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/5/15159/15159-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+HEART'S DESIRE
+
+The Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two
+Fortunate Lovers
+
+A Novel by EMERSON HOUGH
+
+Author of _The Mississippi Bubble_, _The Law of the Land_, _The Girl at
+the Half Way House_, etc
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"]
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1905, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1903, BY OUT WEST COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY.
+Copyright, 1905, BY EMERSON HOUGH.
+Copyright, 1905, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+Set up and electrotyped.  Published October, 1905.  Reprinted November,
+1905: January, April, 1907; November, 1908.
+Norwood Press
+J. B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas_
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas; and introducing Others_
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
+of the Man from Kansas_
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
+his Taking Off_
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
+Loneliness of Adam_
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
+the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some_
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
+Craven Adam_
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
+Legs_
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and Other Pastimes_
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie_
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by Mere Chance collided with a
+Side-tracked Star_
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
+with a Maid_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel_
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
+Horse_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PARTITION OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
+Considerations_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
+and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator_
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events_
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
+the Jew_
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work,
+and a Man's Medicine_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
+in Foreign Parts_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
+Ananias with Spurs_
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much
+Better_
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"
+
+"'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the
+game.'"
+
+"A voice which sang of a face that was the fairest, and of a dark blue
+eye."
+
+"'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'"
+
+
+
+
+HEART'S DESIRE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas_
+
+"It looks a long ways acrost from here to the States," said Curly, as
+we pulled up our horses at the top of the Capitan divide.  We gazed out
+over a vast, rolling sea of red-brown earth which stretched far beyond
+and below the nearer foothills, black with their growth of stunted
+pines.  This was a favorite pausing place of all travellers between the
+county-seat and Heart's Desire; partly because it was a summit reached
+only after a long climb from either side of the divide; partly,
+perhaps, because it was a notable view-point in a land full of noble
+views.  Again, it may have been a customary tarrying point because of
+some vague feeling shared by most travellers who crossed this
+trail,--the same feeling which made Curly, hardened citizen as he was
+of the land west of the Pecos, turn a speculative eye eastward across
+the plains.  We could not see even so far as the Pecos, though it
+seemed from our lofty situation that we looked quite to the ultimate,
+searching the utter ends of all the earth.
+
+"Yours is up that-a-way;" Curly pointed to the northeast.  "Mine was
+that-a-way."  He shifted his leg in the saddle as he turned to the
+right and swept a comprehensive hand toward the east, meaning perhaps
+Texas, perhaps a series of wild frontiers west of the Lone Star state.
+I noticed the nice distinction in Curly's tenses.  He knew the man more
+recently arrived west of the Pecos, possibly later to prove a
+backslider.  As for himself, Curly knew that he would never return to
+his wild East; yet it may have been that he had just a touch of the
+home feeling which is so hard to lose, even in a homeless country, a
+man's country pure and simple, as was surely this which now stretched
+wide about us.  Somewhere off to the east, miles and miles beyond the
+red sea of sand and _grama_ grass, lay Home.
+
+"And yet," said Curly, taking up in speech my unspoken thought, "you
+can't see even halfway to Vegas up there."  No.  It was a long two
+hundred miles to Las Vegas, long indeed in a freighting wagon, and long
+enough even in the saddle and upon as good a horse as each of us now
+bestrode.  I nodded.  "And it's some more'n two whoops and a holler to
+my ole place," said he.  Curly remained indefinite; for, though
+presently he hummed something about the sun and its brightness in his
+old Kentucky home, he followed it soon thereafter with musical allusion
+to the Suwanee River.  One might have guessed either Kentucky or
+Georgia in regard to Curly, even had one not suspected Texas from the
+look of his saddle cinches.
+
+It was the day before Christmas.  Yet there was little winter in this
+sweet, thin air up on the Capitan divide.  Off to the left the Patos
+Mountains showed patches of snow, and the top of Carrizo was yet
+whiter, and even a portion of the highest peak of the Capitans carried
+a blanket of white; but all the lower levels were red-brown, calm,
+complete, unchanging, like the whole aspect of this far-away and
+finished country, whereto had come, long ago, many Spaniards in search
+of wealth and dreams; and more recently certain Anglo-Saxons, also
+dreaming, who sought in a stolen hiatus of the continental conquest
+nothing of more value than a deep and sweet oblivion.
+
+It was a Christmas-tide different enough from that of the States toward
+which Curly pointed.  We looked eastward, looked again, turned back for
+one last look before we tightened the cinches and started down the
+winding trail which led through the foothills along the flank of the
+Patos Mountains, and so at last into the town of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Lord!" said Curly, reminiscently, and quite without connection with
+any thought which had been uttered.  "Say, it was fine, wasn't it,
+Christmas?  We allus had firecrackers then.  And eat!  Why, man!"  This
+allusion to the firecrackers would have determined that Curly had come
+from the South, which alone has a midwinter Fourth of July, possibly
+because the populace is not content with only one annual smell of
+gunpowder.  "We had trees where I came from," said I.  "And eat!  Yes,
+man!"
+
+"Some different here now, ain't it?" said Curly, grinning; and I
+grinned in reply with what fortitude I could muster.  Down in Heart's
+Desire there was a little, a very little cabin, with a bunk, a few
+blankets, a small table, and a box nailed against the wall for a
+cupboard.  I knew what was in the box, and what was not in it, and I so
+advised my friend as we slipped down off the bald summit of the
+Capitans and came into the shelter of the short, black pinons.  Curly
+rode on for a little while before he made answer.
+
+"Why," said he, at length, "ain't you heard?  You're in with our rodeo
+on Christmas dinner.  McKinney, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, the
+other lawyer, and me,--we're going to have Christmas dinner at
+Andersen's 'dobe in town to-morrer.  You're in.  You mayn't like it.
+Don't you mind.  The directions says to take it, and you take it.  It's
+goin' to be one of the largest events ever knowed in this here
+settlement.  Of course, there's goin' to be some canned things, and
+some sardines, and some everidge liquids.  You guess what besides that."
+
+I told him I couldn't guess.
+
+"Shore you couldn't," said Curly, dangling his bridle from the little
+finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match.  He
+had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
+_cigarrillo_.  These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
+from somewhere near the Rio Grande.
+
+"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
+paper going.  "I reckon not in a hundred years.  Champagne!  Whole
+quart!  Yes, sir.  Cost eighteen dollars.  Mac, he got it.  Billy
+Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
+the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
+railroad, which there wasn't.  But Lord! that ain't all.  It ain't the
+beginnin'.  You guess again.  No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
+scornfully.  "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next.  We got
+a _cake_!"
+
+"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
+of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
+cake.  Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
+Dutch oven--they had to know how to do that or starve.  But as to cake,
+there was none could compass it.  And I knew there was not a woman in
+all Heart's Desire.
+
+Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
+trail among the pinons.  "Heap o' things happened since you went down
+to tend co'te," said he.  "You likely didn't hear of the new family
+moved in last week.  Come from Kansas."
+
+"Then there's a girl," said I; for I was far Westerner enough to know
+that all the girls ever seen west of the Pecos came from Kansas, the
+same as all the baled hay and all the fresh butter.  Potatoes came from
+Iowa; but butter, hay, and girls came from Kansas.  I asked Curly if
+the head of the new family came from Leavenworth.
+
+"'Course he did," said Curly.  "And I'll bet a steer he'll be
+postmaster or somethin' in a few brief moments."  This in reference to
+another well-known fact in natural history as observed west of the
+Pecos; for it was matter of common knowledge among all Western men that
+the town of Leavenworth furnished early office-holders for every new
+community from the Missouri to the Pacific.
+
+Curly continued; "This feller'll do well here, I reckon, though just
+now he's broke a-plenty.  But what was he goin' to do?   His team
+breaks down and he can't get no further.  Looks like he'd just have to
+stop and be postmaster or somethin' for us here for a while.  Can't be
+Justice of the Peace; another Kansas man's got that.  As to them two
+girls--man!  The camp's got on its best clothes right this instant,
+don't you neglect to think.  Both good lookers.  Youngest's a peach.
+I'm goin' to marry _her_."  Curly turned aggressively in his saddle
+and looked me squarely in the eye, his hat pushed back from his tightly
+curling red hair.
+
+"That's all right, Curly," said I, mildly.  "You have my consent.  Have
+you asked the girl about it yet?"
+
+"Ain't had time yet," said he.  "But you watch me."
+
+"What's the name of the family?" I asked as we rode along together.
+
+"Blamed if I remember exactly," replied Curly, scratching his head,
+"but they're shore good folks.  Old man's sort o' pious, I reckon.
+Anyhow, that's what Tom Osby says.  He driv along from Hocradle canon
+with 'em on the road from Vegas.  Said the old man helt services every
+mornin' before breakfast.  More services'n breakfast sometimes.  Tom,
+he says old Whiskers--that's our next postmaster--he sings a-plenty,
+lifts up his voice exceeding.  Say," said Curly, turning on me again
+fiercely, "that's one reason I'd marry the girl if for nothing else.
+It takes more'n a bass voice and a copy of the Holy Scriptures to make
+a Merry Christmas.  Why, man, say, when I think of what a time we all
+are going to have,--you, and me, and Mac, and Tom Osby, and Dan
+Anderson, with all them things of our'n, and all these here things on
+the side--champagne and all that,--it looks like this world ain't run
+on the square, don't it?"
+
+I assured Curly that this had long been one of my own conclusions.
+Assuredly I had not the bad manners to thank him for his invitation to
+join him in this banquet at Heart's Desire, knowing as I did Curly's
+acquaintance with the fact that young attorneys had not always
+abundance during their first year in a quasi-mining camp that was
+two-thirds cow town; such being among the possibilities of that land.
+I returned to the cake.
+
+"Where'd we git it?" said Curly.  "Why, where'd you s'pose we got it?
+Do you think Dan Anderson has took to pastry along with the statoots
+made and pervided?   As for Dan, he ain't been here so very long, but
+he's come to stay.  We're goin' to send him to Congress if we ever get
+time to organize our town, or find out what county we're in.  How'd our
+Delergate look spreadin' jelly cake?   Nope, he didn't make it.  And
+does it look any like Mac has studied bakery doin's out on the
+Carrizoso ranch?  You know Tom Osby couldn't.  As for me, if hard luck
+has ever driv me to cookin' in the past, I ain't referrin' to it now.
+I'm a straight-up cow puncher and nothin' else.  That cake?   Why, it
+come from the Kansas outfit.
+
+"Don't know which one of 'em done it, but it's a honey," he went on.
+"Say, she's a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over.  She's
+soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a
+little.  We just got it recent and we're night-herdin' it where it's
+cool.  Cost a even ten dollars.  The old lady said she'd make the price
+all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we'd
+drop about a ten in their recep_ti_cle when we come to pay for that
+cake.  This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim
+Bond left when they went away,--it's right acrost the 'royo from Dan
+Anderson's office, where we're goin' to eat to-morrer.
+
+"Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them
+narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens--no stove at all--no nothing--say,
+that's some like adoptin' yourself to circumstances, ain't it?   Why,
+man, I'd marry intoe that fam'ly if I didn't do nothing else long as I
+lived.  They ain't no Mexican money wrong side of the river.  No
+counterfeit there regardin' a happy home--cuttin' out the bass voice
+and givin' 'em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh?   Well, I
+reckon not.  Watch me fly _to_ it."
+
+The idiom of Curly's speech was at times a trifle obscure to the
+uneducated ear.  I gathered that he believed these newcomers to be of
+proper social rank, and that he was also of the opinion that a certain
+mending in their material matters might add to the happiness of the
+family.
+
+"But say," he began again shortly, "I ain't told you half about our
+dinner."
+
+"That is to say--" said I.
+
+"We're goin' to have oysters!" he replied.
+
+"Oh, Curly!" objected I, petulantly, "what's the use lying?   I'll
+agree that you may perhaps marry the girl--I don't care anything about
+that.  But as to oysters, you know there never was an oyster in Heart's
+Desire, and never will be, world without end."
+
+"Huh!" said Curly.  "Huh!"  And presently, "Is that _so_?"
+
+"You know it's so," said I.
+
+"Is that so?" reiterated he once more.  "Nice way to act, ain't it,
+when you're ast out to dinner in the best society of the place?  Tell a
+feller he's shy on facts, when all he's handin' out is just the plain,
+unfreckled truth, for onct at least.  We got oysters, four cans of 'em,
+and done had 'em for a month.  They're up there."  He jerked a thumb
+toward the top of old Carrizo Mountain.   I looked at the snow, and in
+a flash comprehended.  There, indeed, was cold storage, the only cold
+storage possible in Heart's Desire!
+
+"Tom Osby brought 'em down from Vegas the last time he come down," said
+Curly.  "They're there, sir, four cans of 'em.  You know where the
+Carrizo spring is?   Well, there's a snowbank in that canon, about two
+hundred yards off to the left of the spring.  The oysters is in there.
+Keep?   They got to keep!
+
+"Them's the only oysters ever was knowed between the Pecos and the Rio
+Grande," he continued pridefully.  "Now I want to ask you, friend, if
+this ain't just a leetle the dashed blamedest, hottest Christmas dinner
+ever was pulled off?"
+
+"Curly," said I, "you are a continuous surprise to me."
+
+"The trouble with you is," said Curly, lighting another cigarette, "you
+look the wrong way from the top of the divide.  Never mind about home
+and mother.  Them is States institooshuns.  The only feller any good
+here is the feller that comes to stay, and likes it.  You like it?"
+
+"Yes, Curly," I replied seriously, "I do like it, and I'm going to stay
+if I can."
+
+"Well, you be mighty blamed careful if that's the way you feel about
+it," said Curly.  "I got my own eye on that girl from Kansas, and I
+serve notice right here.  No use for you or Mac or any of you to be
+a-tryin' to cut out any stock for me.  I seen it first."
+
+We dropped down and ever down as we rode on along the winding mountain
+trail.  The dark sides of the Patos Mountains edged around to the back
+of us, and the scarred flanks of big Carrizo came farther and farther
+forward along our left cheeks as we rode on.  Then the trail made a
+sharp bend to the left, zigzagged a bit to get through a series of
+broken ravines, and at last topped the low false divide which rose at
+the upper end of the valley of Heart's Desire.
+
+It was a spot lovely, lovable.  Nothing in all the West is more fit to
+linger in a man's memory than the imperious sun rising above the valley
+of Heart's Desire; nothing unless it were the royal purple of the
+sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling
+hills, which guarded it round about.  In Heart's Desire it was so calm,
+so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring.  Perhaps
+the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the
+early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands.  Perhaps again he
+named it at sunset, and did so reverently.  God knows he named it right.
+
+There was no rush nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor
+thieving there.  Heart's Desire!  It was well named, indeed; fit
+capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they
+might, that Life can be left aside when one grows weary of it;
+dreaming--ah! deep, foolish, golden dream--that somewhere there is on
+earth an Eden with no Eve and without a flaming sword!
+
+The town all lay along one deliberate, crooked street, because the
+_arroyo_ along which it straggled was crooked.  Its buildings were
+mostly of adobe, with earthen roofs, so low that when one saw a
+rainstorm coming in the rainy season (when it rained invariably once a
+day), he went forth with a shovel and shingled his roof anew, standing
+on the ground as he did so.  There were a few cabins built of logs, but
+very few.  Only one or two stores had the high board front common in
+Western villages.  Lumber was very scarce and carpenters still scarcer.
+How the family from Kansas had happened to drift into Heart's
+Desire--how a man of McKinney's intelligence had come to settle
+there--how Dan Anderson, a very good lawyer, happened to have tarried
+there--how indeed any of us happened to be there, are questions which
+may best be solved by those who have studied the West-bound, the
+dream-bound, the malcontents.  At any rate, here we were, and it was
+Christmas-time.  The very next morning would be that of Christmas Day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
+Girl from Kansas; and Introducing Others_
+
+There were no stockings hung up in Heart's Desire that Christmas Eve,
+for all the population was adult, male, and stern of habit.  The great
+moon flooded the street with splendor.  Afar there came voices of
+rioting.  There were some adherents to the traditions of the South in
+regard to firecrackers at Yuletide, albeit the six-shooter furnished
+the only firecracker obtainable.  Yet upon that night the very shots
+seemed cheerful, not ominous, as was usually the case upon that long
+and crooked street, which had seen duels, affairs, affrays,--even riots
+of mounted men in the days when the desperadoes of the range came
+riding into town now and again for love of danger, or for lack of
+_aguardiente_.  It was so very white and solemn and content,--this
+street of Heart's Desire on Christmas Eve.  Far across the _arroyo_,
+as Curly had said, there gleamed red the double windows of the cabin
+which had been preempted by the man from Leavenworth.  To-night the man
+from Leavenworth sat with bowed head and beard upon his bosom.
+
+Christmas Day dawned, brilliant, glorious.  There was not a Christmas
+tree in all Heart's Desire.  There was not a child within two hundred
+miles who had ever seen a Christmas tree.  There was not a woman in all
+Heart's Desire saving those three newcomers in the cabin across the
+_arroyo_.  Yet these new-comers were acquainted with the etiquette of
+the land.  There was occasion for public announcement in such matters.
+
+At eleven o'clock in the morning the man from Leavenworth and the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas came out upon the street.  They were
+ostensibly bound to get the mail, although there had been no mail stage
+for three days, and could be none for four days more, even had the man
+from Leavenworth entertained the slightest thought of getting any mail
+at this purely accidental residence into which the fate of a tired team
+had thrown him.  Yet there must be the proper notification that he and
+his family had concluded to abide in Heart's Desire; that he was now a
+citizen; that he was now entitled by the length of his beard to be
+called "'Squire," and to be accepted into all the councils of the town.
+This walk along the street was notice to the pure democracy of that
+land that all might now leave cards at the cabin across the _arroyo_.
+One need hardly doubt that the populace of Heart's Desire was lined up
+along the street to say good morning and to receive befittingly this
+tacit pledge of its newest citizen.  Moreover, as to the Littlest Girl,
+all Heart's Desire puffed out its chest.  Once more, indeed, the camp
+was entitled to hold up its head.  There were Women in the town!
+_Ergo_ Home; _ergo_ Civilization; _ergo_ Society; and ergo all the
+rest.  Heretofore Heart's Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized
+section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has
+no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in
+his aeon of the world no real content or peace.
+
+"I reckon the old man is goin' to take a look at the post-office to see
+how he likes the place," said Curly, reflectively, as he gazed after
+the gentleman whom he had frankly elected as his father-in-law.  "He'll
+get it, all right.  Never saw a man from Leavenworth who wasn't a good
+shot at a postoffice.  But say, about that Littlest Girl--well, I
+wonder!"
+
+Curly was very restless until dinner-time, which, for one reason or
+another, was postponed until about four of the afternoon.  We met at
+Dan Anderson's law office, which was also his residence, a room about a
+dozen feet by twenty in size.  The bunks were cleaned up, the blankets
+put out of the way, and the centre of the room given over to a table,
+small and home-made, but very full of good cheer for that time and
+place.  At the fireplace, McKinney, flushed and red, was broiling some
+really good loin steaks.  McKinney also allowed his imagination to soar
+to the height of biscuits.  Coffee was there assuredly, as one might
+tell by the welcome odor now ascending.  Upon the table there was
+something masked under an ancient copy of a newspaper.  Outside the
+door of the adobe, in the deepest shade obtainable, sat two soap boxes
+full of snow, or at least partly full, for Tom Osby had done his best.
+In one of these boxes appeared the proof of Curly's truthfulness--three
+cans of oysters, delicacies hitherto unheard of in that land!  In the
+other box was an object almost as unfamiliar as an oyster can,--an
+oblong, smooth, and now partially frost-covered object with tinfoil
+about its upper end.  A certain tense excitement obtained.
+
+"I wonder if she'll get _frappe_ enough," said Dan Anderson.  He was a
+Princeton man once upon a time.
+
+"It don't make no difference about the frappy part," said Curly, "just
+so she gets _cold_ enough.  I reckon I savvy wine some.  I never was
+up the trail, not none!  No, I reckon not!  Huh?"
+
+We agreed on Curly's worldliness cheerfully; indeed, agreed cheerfully
+that all the world was a good place and all its inhabitants were
+everything that could be asked.  Life was young and fresh and strong.
+The spell of Heart's Desire was upon us all that Christmas Day.
+
+"Now," said Curly, dropping easily into the somewhat vague position of
+host, when McKinney had finally placed his platter of screeching hot
+steaks upon the table.  "Now, then, grub pi-i-i-i-le!"  He sang the
+summons loud and clear, as it has sounded on many a frosty morning or
+sultry noon in many a corner of the range.  "Set up, fellers," said
+Curly.  "It's bridles off now, and cinches down, and the trusties next
+to the mirror."  (By this speech Curly probably meant that the time was
+one of ease and safety, wherein one might place his six-shooter back of
+the bar, in sign that he was in search of no man, and that none was in
+search of him.  It was not good form to eat in a private family in
+Heart's Desire with one's gun at one's belt.)
+
+We sat down and McKinney uncovered the cake which had been made by the
+wife of the man from Leavenworth.  It appeared somewhat imposing.
+Curly wanted to cut into it at the first course, but Dan Anderson
+rebelled and coaxed him off upon the subject of oysters.  There was
+abundance for all.  The cake itself would have weighed perhaps five or
+six pounds.  There was a part of a can of oysters for each man, any
+quantity of wholesome steaks and coffee, with condensed milk if one
+cared for it, and at least enough champagne for any one who cared for
+precisely that sort of champagne.
+
+It was nightfall before we were willing to leave the little pine table.
+Meantime we had talked of many things; of the new strike on the
+Homestake, of the vein of coal lately found in the Patos, of Apache
+rumors below Tularosa, and other matters interesting to citizens of
+that land.  We mentioned an impending visit of Eastern Capital bent
+upon investigating our mineral wealth.  We spoke of the vague rumor
+that a railroad was heading north from El Paso, and might come close to
+Heart's Desire if all went well; and, generous in the enthusiasm of the
+hour, we builded upon that fancy, ending by a toast to Dan Anderson as
+our first delegate to Congress.  Dan bowed gravely, not knowing the
+future any more than ourselves.  Nor should it be denied that there was
+talk of the new inhabitants across the arroyo.  The morning promenade
+of the man from Leavenworth had been productive of results; add to
+these the results of so noble a feast as this Christmas dinner of ours,
+and it was foregone that our hearts must expand to include in welcome
+all humanity west of the Pecos.
+
+
+After all, no man is better than the prettiest woman in his
+environment.  As to these girls from Kansas, it is to be said that
+there had never before been a real woman in Heart's Desire.  You, who
+have always lived where there is law, and society, and women, and
+home,--you cannot know what it is to see all these things gradually or
+swiftly dawning upon your personal horizon.  Yet this was the way of
+Heart's Desire, where women and law and property were not.
+
+It was perhaps the moon, or perhaps youth, or perhaps this state of
+life to which I have referred.  Assuredly the street was again flooded
+with a grand, white moonlight, bright almost as a Northern day, when we
+looked out of the little window.
+
+Dan Anderson was the first to speak, after a silence which had fallen
+amidst the dense tobacco smoke.  "It cost us less than fifteen dollars
+a plate," said he.  "I've paid more for worse--yes, a lot worse.  But
+by the way, Mac, where's that other can of oysters?  I thought you said
+there were four."
+
+"That's what I said," broke in Tom Osby.  "I done told Mac I ought to
+bring 'em all down, but he said only three."
+
+"Well," said McKinney, always a conservative and level-headed man, "I
+allowed that if they would keep a month, they would keep a little
+longer.  Now you all know there's goin' to be a stage in next week, and
+likely it'll bring the president of the New Jersey Gold Mills, who's
+been due here a couple of weeks.  Now here we are, hollerin' all the
+time for Eastern Capital.  What's the right thing for us to do when we
+get any Eastern Capital into our town?  This here man comes from
+Philadelphy, which I reckon is right near the place where oysters
+grows.  What are you goin' to _do_?  He's used to oysters; like enough
+he eats 'em every day in the year, because he's shore rich.  First
+thing he hollers for when he gets here is _oysters_.  Looks like you
+all didn't have no public spirit.  Are we goin' to give this here
+Eastern man the things he's used to, kinder gentle him along like, you
+know, and so get all the closeter and easier to him, or are we goin' to
+throw him down cold, and leave him dissatisfied the first day he
+strikes our camp?  It shore looks to me like there ain't but one way to
+answer that."
+
+"And that there one answer," said Tom Osby, "is now a-reclinin' in the
+snowbank up on Carrizy."
+
+"I reckon that's so, all right, Mac," assented Curly, reflectively.  "I
+_could_ have et one more oyster or so, but I can quit if it's for the
+good of the country."
+
+"Well, I'm feeling just a little bit guilty as it is," said Dan
+Anderson, who was in fairly good post-prandial condition.  "Here we
+are, eating like lords.  Now who knows what that poor family from
+Kansas is having for Christmas dinner?  Mac, I appoint you a committee
+of one to see how they are getting along.  Pass the hat.  Make it about
+ten for the cake.  Come on, now, let's find out about these folks."
+
+Curly was distinctly unhappy all the time McKinney was away.  It was
+half an hour before the latter came back, but the look on his face
+betrayed him.  Dan Anderson made him confess that he still had the ten
+dollars in his pocket, that he had been afraid to knock at the door,
+and that he had learned nothing whatever of the household from Kansas.
+McKinney admitted that his nerve had failed, and that he dared not
+knock, but he said that he had summoned courage enough to look in at
+the window.  The family had either finished its dinner long ago, had
+not eaten, or did not intend to eat at all.  "The table looked some
+shy," declared McKinney.  Beyond this he was incoherent, distressed,
+and plainly nervous.  Silence fell upon the entire group, and for some
+time each man in Dan Andersen's salon was wrapped in thought.  Perhaps
+each one cast a furtive look from the tail of his eye at his neighbors.
+Of all present, Curly seemed the happiest.  "Didn't see the Littlest
+Girl?" he asked.  McKinney shook his head.
+
+"Well, I guess I'll be gettin' up to see about my wagon before long,"
+said Tom Osby, rising and knocking his pipe upon his boot-heel.  "I've
+got a few cans of stuff up here in my load that I don't really need.
+In the mornin', you know--well, so long, boys."
+
+"I heard that Jim Peterson killed a deer the other day," suggested Dan
+Anderson.  "I believe I'll just step over and see if I can't get a
+quarter of venison for those folks."
+
+"Shore," said McKinney, "I'll go along.  No, I won't; I'll take a
+_pasear_ acrost the street and have a look at a little stuff I brung
+up from the ranch yesterday."
+
+"No Christmas," said Curly, staring ahead of himself into the tobacco
+smoke, and indulging in a rare soliloquy.  "No Christmas dinner--and
+this here is in Ameriky!"
+
+It is difficult to tell just how it occurred; but presently, had any
+one of us turned to look about him, he must have found himself alone.
+The moonlight streamed brilliantly over the long street of Heart's
+Desire. . . .  The scarred sides of old Carrizo looked so close that
+one might almost have touched them with one's hand. . . .
+
+It was about three miles from the street, up over the foot-hills, along
+the fiat canon which debouched below the spring where lay the snowbank.
+There were different routes which one could take. . . .
+
+I knew the place very well from Curly's description, and found it easy
+to follow up the trickle of water which came down the canon from the
+spring.  Having found the spring, it was easy to locate the spot in the
+snowbank where the oysters had been cached.  I was not conscious of
+tarrying upon the way, yet, even so, there had been feet more swift
+than mine.  As I came up to the spring, I heard voices and saw two
+forms sitting at the edge of the snowbank.
+
+"Here's another one!" called out Dan Anderson as I appeared; and
+forthwith they broke into peals of unrighteous laughter.  "You're a
+little slow; you're number three; Mac was first."
+
+"I thought I heard an elk as I came up," said I, as I sat down beside
+the others and tried to look unconcerned, although plainly out of
+breath.
+
+"Elk!" snorted McKinney, as he arose and walked to the other edge of
+the snowbank.  "Here's your elk tracks."  McKinney, foreman on
+Carrizoso, was an old range-rider, and he was right.  Here was the
+track, plunging through the snow, and here was a deep hole where an
+elk, or something, had digged hurriedly, deeply, and, as it proved,
+effectively.
+
+"Elk!" said McKinney again, savagely.  "Damn that cow puncher!  He took
+to his horse, 'course he did, and not one of us thought of ridin'.
+Who'd ever think a man would ride up here at all, let alone at night?
+Come on, fellers, we might as well go home."
+
+"Well, I'm pleased to have met you, gentlemen," said Anderson, lighting
+a philosophic pipe, "and I don't mind walking back with you.  It's a
+trifle lonesome in the hills after dark.  Why didn't you tell me you
+were coming up?"  He grinned with what seemed to us bad taste.
+
+When we got down across the foot-hills and into the broad white street
+of Heart's Desire, we espied a dark figure slowly approaching.  It
+proved to be Tom Osby, who later declared that he had found himself
+unable to sleep.  He had things in his pockets.  By common consent we
+now turned our footsteps across the _arroyo_, toward the cabin where
+dwelt the family from Kansas.
+
+The house of the man from Leavenworth was lighted as though for some
+function.  There were no curtains at the windows, and even had there
+been, the shock of this spectacle which went on before our eyes would
+have been sufficient to set aside all laws and conventions.  With hands
+in pockets we stood and gazed blankly in at the open window.  There was
+a sound of revelry by night.  The narrow Mexican fireplace again held
+abundance of snapping, sparkling, crooked pinon wood.  The table was
+spread.  At its head sat the next postmaster; near him a lately
+sorrowful but now smiling lady, his wife, the woman from Kansas.  The
+elder daughter was busy at the fire.  At the right of the man from
+Leavenworth sat none less than Curly, the same whose cow pony, with
+bridle thrown down over its head, now stood nodding in the bright flood
+of the moonlight of Heart's Desire.  At the side of Curly was the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas, and she was looking into his eyes.
+
+It was thus that the social compact was first set on in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.
+
+A vast steaming fragrance arose from the bowl which stood at the head
+of the table.  In the home of the girl from Kansas there was light,
+warmth, comfort, joy.  It was Christmas, after all.
+
+"By the great jumpin' Jehossophat!" said Tom Osby, "them's _our_
+oysters!"
+
+"And to think," mused Dan Anderson, softly, as we turned away,--"we
+_fried_ ours!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
+of the Man from Kansas_
+
+A great many abdomens have been injured in the pastime known as the
+"double roll."  Especially has this been the case with persons not
+native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof.  Even
+those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast
+landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man
+seized with a purpose of attaining speed and efficiency with firearms,
+did not always reach that smoothness and precision in the execution of
+this personal manoeuvre which alone could render it safe to themselves
+or impressive to the beholder.  The owner of this accomplishment was
+never apt to find himself much crowded with company, in the way either
+of participants or spectators.  Yet the art was a simple and harmless
+one, pertaining more especially to youth, enthusiasm, and the fresh air
+of high altitudes, which did ever evoke saltpetreish manifestations.
+
+The evolution of the "double roll" is executed by taking a
+six-shooter--let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the
+East--upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the
+trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn
+about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant
+discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it
+shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is
+pointed away from the operator's person and not toward it.
+
+It is best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty
+weapon.  Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is
+all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way,
+and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the
+weight of the heavy gun being commonly sufficient to pull back the
+trigger and so discharge the piece.  When the ambitious soul has
+learned to do this "roll" with one empty gun, he may try it with two
+empty guns.  If he finds it possible thus to content himself, it will
+perhaps be all the better for him.  To stand upright, with a gun in
+each hand, even an empty gun, and so revolve the same while its own
+cylinder is revolving, is not wholly easy, though when one has finally
+gotten both hemispheres of his brain into accord with his forefingers,
+he will ever thereafter be able to understand fully the double
+revolution of the earth upon its axis and around the sun; provided
+always that he is able to perform the "double roll" without hitch or
+break, pulling right and left forefinger alternately and rapidly until
+he has heard what in his tentative case must be a series of six double
+clicks.
+
+This performance with an empty six-shooter is but a pale and spiritless
+form of the sport of high altitudes.  Instead there should be twelve
+reports, so closely sequent as to sound as one string of explosion.
+Thus executed the game is a fine one, the finer for being risky.  So to
+stand erect, with an eight-inch Colt in either hand, each arm at full
+length, one gun shooting joyously down the centre of the street of your
+chosen town, the other shooting as cheerfully up the same street--to do
+this actually, with bark of powder and attending puffs of dust
+cut--this is indeed delightsome when the heart is full of red blood,
+and the chest swells with charged wine o' life, and the eyes gleam and
+the muscles harden for very search of some endeavor immediate and
+difficult!  It is the more delightsome when this moment of man-frenzy
+finds one in such a town as was this of Heart's Desire; where, indeed,
+a man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted
+wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so
+of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of
+the joy of living.  To own this little world, to live free of touch or
+taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of
+the free sky--to live in Heart's Desire and be a man--ah! would that
+were possible for all of us to-day!  Were it so, then assuredly we
+should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain,
+perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll."
+
+Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous
+appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee
+simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had
+prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a
+salary of forty-five dollars a month.  He had already, less than two
+months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his
+friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the
+happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town
+and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.
+
+Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom,
+as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more
+persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the
+public that all was well.  Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear
+to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly,
+pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow
+advance--ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the
+bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,--a grunting, fat, conceited
+pig,--arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's
+fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn--tell me,
+if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the
+"double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if
+while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek
+pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over
+its back, what, as a man, would you do?  What, as a man, _could_ you
+do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a
+court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been
+known?  Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this
+matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that
+the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig--but then,
+the matter is absurd!  There is but one answer.  It was right--indeed,
+it was inevitable--that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the
+first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second
+place he felt like it.
+
+And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose
+the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook
+that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened
+its very continuance.  Ah, well! perhaps the time had come.  Perhaps
+the sun was now to set over all the valleys of Heart's Desire.  Perhaps
+this was the beginning of the end.  The law, they say, must have its
+course.  It had its course in Heart's Desire.
+
+But not without protest, not without struggle.  There were two factions
+from the start.  Strange to say, that most bitterly opposed to Curly
+was headed by no less a person than his own intended father-in-law, the
+man from Leavenworth.  It was his pig.  The rest of us had lived at
+Heart's Desire for a considerable time, but there had hitherto seemed
+no need for law.  Order we already had in so far as order is really
+needed; though the importance of order, or indeed the importance of
+law, is a matter very much overrated.  No man at Heart's Desire ever
+dreamed of locking his door.  His horse might doze saddled in the
+street if he liked.  No man spoke in rudeness or coarseness to his
+neighbor, as do men in the cities where they have law.  No man did
+injustice to his neighbor, for fair play and an even chance were gods
+in the eyes of all, eikons above each pinon-burning hearth in all that
+valley of content.  The speech of man was grave and gentle, the
+movements of man were easy and unhurried; neither did any man work by
+rule, or by clock, or by order.  There was no such thing as want or
+hunger; for did temporary poverty encompass one, was there not always
+the house of Uncle Jim Brothers, and could not one there hang up his
+gun behind the door and so obtain credit for an indefinite length of
+time, entitling him to eat at table with his peers?  Had there been
+such a thing as families in Heart's Desire, be sure such a thing as a
+woman or child engaged in any work had been utterly unknown.  It was a
+land of men, big, grave, sufficient men, each with a gun upon his hip,
+and sometimes two, guaranty of peace and calm and content.  And any man
+who has ever lived in a Land Before the Law knows that this is the only
+fit way of life.  Alas! that this scheme, this great, happy simple,
+perfect scheme of society should be subverted.  And, be it remembered,
+this was by reason of nothing more than a pig, an artless, lissom pig,
+it is true; an infrequent, somewhat prized, a little petted and perhaps
+spoiled pig, it is true; yet, after all, no fit cause of elemental
+strife.
+
+But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil,
+bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization,
+seeds of discontent.  He wailed aloud that the pride of the community,
+meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of
+the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught
+left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the
+mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of
+his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large
+designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking
+off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and
+one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his
+neighbor.
+
+Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed
+black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but
+the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the
+town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population,
+began to attract attention.  It began to play upon the nicely attuned
+instrument of Public Spirit.  What, indeed, asked the community
+gravely, was to separate Heart's Desire in the eye of Eastern Capital,
+from any other camp in the far Southwest?  Once the town could claim a
+pig, which no other camp of that district could do.  Now it could do so
+no more forever.  This began to put a different look upon the face of
+things.
+
+"It seems like the ole man took it some hard," said Curly, lighting a
+_cigarrillo_.  "He don't seem to remember that I was due to be a
+member of the family right soon, same as the pig.  I don't like to
+think I'm shy when it comes to comparison with a shoat.  Gimme time,
+and I reckon I could take the place of the pig in my new dad's
+affections.  But I say deliberate that pigs has got no call to be in a
+cow country, not none, unless salted.  Say, can't we salt this one?
+Then, who's the worse _off_ for it?  What's all this furse about,
+anyway?"
+
+"That's right, Curly," said Dan Anderson, who stood with hands in
+pockets and pipe in mouth, leaning against the door-jamb in front of
+his "law office."  "You have enunciated a great principle of law in
+that statement.  They have got to prove damages.  Moreover, you have
+got a counter-claim.  It's laceratin' to be compared to a shoat."
+
+"And me just goin' to be married," said Curly.
+
+"Sure, it ain't right."
+
+"Andersen," said I, moving up to the group, "did you ever hear of such
+things as champerty and maintenance?  The first thing you know, you'll
+get disbarred for stirring up litigation."
+
+"Keep away from my client," said Dan Anderson, grinning.  "You're
+jealous of my professional success, that's all.  Neither of us has had
+a case yet, and now that it looks like I was going to get one, you're
+jealous.  Do you want to pass up the first lawsuit ever held in the
+county?  Come now, I'm bored to death.  Let's have some fun."
+
+Curly began to shift uneasily on his feet.  His hat went still farther
+back on his red, kinky curls.
+
+"Law!" said he.  "Law!  You don't mean--"  For the first time in his
+life Curly grew pale.  "Why, I'll clean out the hull bunch!" he said,
+the red surging back in his face and his hand instinctively going to
+his gun.
+
+"No, you won't," said Dan Anderson.  "Do you want to bust up your
+marriage with the girl from Kansas?"
+
+"Sho'!" said Curly, and fell thoughtful.  "This looks bad," said he;
+"mighty bad."  He sat down and began to think.  I do not doubt that Dan
+Anderson at that moment was a disgrace to his profession, though later
+he honored it.  He winked at me.
+
+"Don't you tamper with my client," said he; and then resumed to Curly;
+"What you need is a lawyer.  You've got to have legal advice.  It
+happens that the full bar of Heart's Desire is now present talking to
+you.  Take your pick.  I've got a mighty good idea which is the best
+lawyer of this bar, but I wouldn't tell you for the world that I'm the
+one.  Take your pick.  Here's the whole legal works of the town, us
+two.  Try the Learned Counsel on my right."
+
+"Law!" said Curly.  "Why--law--lawyers!  Then who--say, now, I'll
+_pay_ for the pig.  I didn't mean nothing, no way."
+
+Then Dan Anderson rose to certain heights.  "You can't settle it that
+way," said he.  "That's too easy.  Oh, you can pay for the _pig_ easy
+enough; but how about the majesty of the law?  Where is the peace and
+dignity of the commonwealth to come in?  This is criminal.  Nope, you
+choose.  You need a lawyer."
+
+"You--you-all got me _locoed_," said Curly, nervously.  "Law!  Why, I
+don't want no law.  There ain't never been no co'te set here.  Down to
+the county-seat, over to Lincoln, that's all right; but here--why, they
+don't _want_ no law here.  Besides, I can't choose between you two
+fellers.  I like you both.  You're both white men.  Ef you could rope
+and shoot better, I could git either one of you a job cowpunchin' any
+day, and that's a heap better'n practisin' law.  I couldn't make no
+choice between you fellers.  Say, I'll have you _both_."  This with a
+sudden illumination of countenance.
+
+"That would be unconstitutional," said Dan Anderson, solemnly, "and
+against public policy as well.  That would be cornering the whole legal
+supply of the community, Curly, and it wouldn't leave anybody for the
+prosecution."
+
+"Sho'!" said Curly.  Then suddenly he added: "There's the old man.
+Don't you never doubt he'd prosecute joyful.  And there never was a man
+from Kansas didn't know some law.  Why, onct, down on the Brazos--"
+
+"He can't act as attorney-at-law," said Anderson.  "He's never been
+admitted to the bar.  Say, you flip a dollar."
+
+The thought of chance-taking appealed to Curly.  He flipped the dollar.
+
+"Heads, me," said Dan Anderson; and so it fell.  That young man smiled
+blithely.  "We'll skin 'em, Curly," said he.  "You'll be as free as air
+in less'n a week."
+
+"Now," said Dan Anderson to me, "it's all right thus far.  Next we have
+got to get a Justice of the Peace, and then we've got to get the
+prisoner arrested."
+
+"'Rested!" said Curly.  "Who?  Me?"
+
+"Of course," drawled his newly constituted attorney.  "Didn't you kill
+the pig?  You just hang around for a little, for when we need you, we
+don't want to have to hunt all over the country."
+
+"All right," said Curly, dubiously.
+
+"Where's Blackman?" said Dan Anderson, again addressing me.  "We have
+got to have a judge, or we can't have any trial.  Come on and let's
+hunt him up.  Curly, don't you run away, mind.  You trust to me, and
+I'll get you clear, and get you married, both."
+
+"All right," said Curly again, "I'll just sornter down to the Lone
+Star, and when you-all want me I'll be in there, either takin' a drink
+or playin' a few kyards."
+
+"Let's get Blackman now," said Curly's lawyer.  Blackman was the duly
+constituted Justice of the Peace in and for Heart's Desire.  Nobody
+knew precisely when or how he had been elected, and perhaps indeed he
+never was elected at all.  There must be a beginning for all things.
+The one thing certain as to Blackman was that he had once been a
+Justice of the Peace back in Kansas, which fact he had not been slow to
+announce upon his arrival in Heart's Desire.  Perhaps from this arose
+the local custom of calling him Judge, and perhaps from his wearing the
+latter title arose the supposition that he really was a judge.  The
+records are quite silent as to the origin of his tenure of office.  The
+office itself, as has been intimated, had hitherto been one purely
+without care.  At every little shooting scrape or other playfulness of
+the male population Blackman, Justice of the Peace, became inflated
+with importance and looked monstrous grave.  But nothing ever came of
+these little alarms, so that gradually the inflations grew less and
+less extensive.  They might perhaps have ceased altogether had it not
+been for this malignant zeal of Dan Anderson, formerly of Princeton,
+and now come, hit or miss, to grow up with the country.
+
+Blackman was ever ready enough for a lawsuit, forsooth pined for one.
+Yet what could he do?  He could not go forth and with his own hands
+arrest chance persons and hale them before his own court for trial.
+The sheriff, when he was in town, simply laughed at him, and told his
+deputies not to mix up with anything except circuit-court matters,
+murders, and more especially horse stealings.  Constable there was
+none; and policeman--it is to wonder just a trifle what would have
+happened to any such thing as a policeman or town marshal in the valley
+of Heart's Desire!  In short, there was neither judicial nor executive
+arm of the law in action.  One may, therefore, realize the hindrances
+which Dan Anderson met in getting up his lawsuit.  Yet he went forward
+in the attempt patiently, driven simply by ennui.  He did not dream
+that he was doing something epochal.
+
+Blackman, Justice of the Peace, was sitting in the office of the
+_Golden Age_ when we found him, reading the exchanges and offering
+gratuitous advice to the editor.  He was a shortish man, thick in body,
+with sparse hair and hay-colored, ragged mustache.  His face was
+florid, his pale eyes protruded.  He was a wise-looking man,
+excellently well suited in appearance for the office which he filled.
+We explained to him our errand.  Gradually, as the sense of his own new
+importance dawned upon him, he began to swell, apparently until he
+assumed a bulk thrice that which he formerly possessed.  His spine
+straightened rigidly; a solemn light came into his eye; a cough that
+fairly choked with wisdom echoed from his throat.  It was a great day
+for Blackman, J. P.
+
+"Do I know this man, this cow puncher?" said he.  "Of course I know
+him, damn him, and I know what he done, too.  Such a high-handed act
+never ought to be tolerated, sir!  Destroyin' property--why,
+a-destroyin' of life _and_ property, for he killed the pig--and this
+new family of citizens dependin' in part on the pig fer their
+sustenances this comin' season; to say nothin' of his nigh shootin' me
+up as I was crossin' the street from the post-office!  Try him!  Why,
+of _course_ we ought to try him.  What show have we got if we go on
+this lawless way?  What injucement can we offer Eastern Capital to
+settle in our midst if, instead of bein' quiet and law-abidin', we go
+on a-rarin' and a-pitchin' and a-runnin' wide open, every man for
+hisself?  What are we here for, you, and you, and me, if it ain't to
+set in trile over such britches of the peace?"
+
+"You're in," said Dan Anderson, succinctly.  "Get over to your 'dobe.
+We'll hold this trial right away.  I reckon all the boys'll know about
+it by this time.  I'll go over and get the prisoner.  But, hold on!  He
+ain't arrested yet.  Who'll serve the warrant?  Ben Stillson (the
+sheriff) is down on the Hondo, and his deputy, Poe, is out of town.
+There ain't a soul here to serve a paper.  Looks like the court was
+some rusty, don't it?"
+
+"Warrant!" said the Justice, "warrant!  You don't need no warrant.
+Wasn't he seen a-doin' the act?"
+
+"Oh, but it wasn't a real first-class felony," demurred Dan, with some
+shade of conscience left.
+
+"Well, I'll arrest him myself," said the Justice.  "He's got to be
+brought to trile."
+
+"Well, now," I ventured to suggest, "that doesn't look exactly right,
+either, since you are to try the case, Judge.  It's legal, but it isn't
+etiquette."
+
+Blackman scratched his head.  "Maybe that's so," said he.  Then turning
+to me, "S'pose _you_ arrest him."
+
+"He can't," said Dan Anderson.  "He's the prosecuting attorney--only
+other lawyer in town.  It wouldn't look right for either the judge or
+prosecutor to make the arrest.  Curly might not like it."  This all
+seemed true enough, and we fell into a quandary.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Dan Anderson at length.  "I'd better arrest him
+myself.  I'm going to defend him, so it would look more regular for me
+to bring him in.  Looks like he wasn't afraid of the verdict.  We
+ain't, either.  I want you to remember, Judge, if you don't clear him--"
+
+Here counsel for the Territory interrupted, feeling that the majesty of
+the law was not fully observed by threatening the trial judge in
+advance.
+
+"Well, come along, then," said Anderson.  "Let that part of it go.
+Come over and let's get out the warrant."
+
+I was not with them when the warrant was issued, though that part of
+the proceeding might naturally have seemed rather the duty of the
+prosecution than of the defence.  Dan Anderson afterward told me that
+Blackman could not find his law book (he had only one, a copy of the
+statutes of Kansas) for a long time, and then couldn't find the proper
+place in it.  Legal blanks did not exist in Heart's Desire, and all
+legal forms had departed from Blackman's mind in this time of
+excitement.  Dan Anderson himself drew the warrant.  As it was read
+later by himself to Curly at the Lone Star, it did not lack a certain
+charm.  It began with "Greeting," and ended with, "Now, therefore, in
+the name of God and the Continental Congress."  Anderson did not crack
+a smile in reading it, and so far as that is concerned, the warrant
+worked as well as any and better than some.  Curly, because he felt
+that he was in the hands of his friends, made no special demurrer to
+the terms of the "writ," and in a few moments the Lone Star was empty
+and Blackman's adobe was packed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
+his Taking Off_
+
+"Order! order! gentlemen!" called Blackman, Justice of the Peace,
+clearing his throat.  "This honorable justice court is now in session.
+Gentlemen, what is your pleasure?"
+
+He was a little confused, but he meant well.  It seemed incumbent upon
+the prosecutor to make some sort of a statement, but the attorney for
+the defence interposed.  He moved for the discharge of the prisoner on
+the ground that there was no Territorial law and no city ordinance
+violated; he pointed out that Heart's Desire was not a city, neither a
+town, but had never been organized, established, or begun, even to the
+extent of the filing of a town site plat; he therefore denied the
+existence of any municipal law, since there had never been any
+municipality; he intimated that the pig had perhaps been killed
+accidentally, or perhaps in self-defence; it was plain that the
+prisoner was wrongfully restrained of his liberty, etc.
+
+The ire of Blackman, J. P., at all this was something to behold.  He to
+be deprived of his opportunity thus lightly?  Hardly!  He overruled the
+objections at once, and rapped loudly for order.
+
+"The trile will go on," said he.
+
+"Then, your Honor," cried Dan Andersen, springing to his feet, "then I
+shall resort to the ancient bulwark of our personal liberties.  I shall
+sue out a writ of _habeas corpus_, and take this prisoner out of
+custody.  I'll sue this court on its bond!  I'll take a change of
+venue!  We'll leave no stone unturned to set this innocent man free and
+restore him to the bosom of his family!"
+
+This speech produced a great effect on the audience, as murmurs of
+approbation testified, but the doughty Justice of the Peace was not so
+easily to be reckoned with.  He pointed out that there was no officer
+to serve a writ of _habeas corpus_; that the court had given no bond
+to anybody and did not propose to do so; that there was no other court
+to which to apply for a change of "vendew," as he termed it; and
+reiterated once more that the "trile must go on."  The prosecution was,
+therefore, once more called upon to state the case.  Again the attorney
+for the defence protested, a foreshadowing of his fighting blood
+reddening his face.
+
+"I call for a jury," said he.  "Does this court suppose we are going to
+leave the liberty of this prisoner in the hands of a judge openly and
+notoriously prejudiced as to the facts of this case?  I demand a trial
+by a jury of the defendant's peers."
+
+Blackman reddened, but was game.  "Jury goes," said he.  "Count out
+twelve fellers there, beginnin' next the door."
+
+"Twelve!" said Dan Andersen, for the moment almost losing his gravity.
+"I thought this court might be content with six for a justice's jury;
+but realizing the importance of this court, we are willing to agree on
+twelve."
+
+It was so agreed.  The jury took in every man in the little room but
+three.  "They'll do for a veniry," said Blackman, J. P., learnedly.
+Under the circumstances, one can perhaps forgive him for becoming at
+times a trifle mixed as to the legal proceedings.
+
+At least, it was easy to agree as to the jury; for obviously the
+population of the place was fully acquainted with all the facts in the
+case, and each one had freely expressed his opinion upon the one side
+or the other.  There seemed to be no reason for excusing any juror for
+cause; and upon the other hand, there are often very good reasons in a
+Land Before the Law for not bringing up personal matters of this kind.
+Indeed, the trial judge settled all that.  He looked over the twelve
+good men and true thus segregated, and remarked briefly: "They're his
+peers, all right.  The trile will now proceed."
+
+Whereupon he swore them solemnly and made a record in his fee book, to
+the later consternation of his jurors.  "Ain't this court a notary,
+too?" said Blackman later.  "And ain't a notary entitled to so much fee
+for administerin' a oath?  And didn't I administer twelve oaths?"
+There was small answer to this, after all.  The laborer is worthy of
+his hire; and Blackman really labored in this case as in all likelihood
+few justices have before or since.
+
+The prosecuting attorney, who, it may be seen, held his office much as
+did the justice of the peace, by the doctrine of _nemine
+contradicente_, now arose and made the opening statement.  There, was
+some doubt as to whether this was a civil or criminal trial, but there
+was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither
+did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case
+the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts.  It
+was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college
+"orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July
+speech, which might have been better for more memorizing.  The attorney
+for the prosecution, however, arose to the occasion--at least to a
+certain extent.  He spoke in low and feeling tones of the struggling
+little community of hardy souls thus set down apart in the far-off
+mountain country of the West; of its trials, its hopes, its ambitions,
+of its expectations of becoming a mountain emporium which should be the
+pride of the entire Territory; he went on to mention the necessity for
+law and order, pointing out the danger to the public interests of the
+community which must lie in a general reputation for ruffianism and
+lawlessness, showing how Eastern Capital must ever be timid in visiting
+a town of such reputation, apart from investing any money therein;
+then, changing to the personal phases of the case, he spoke of the
+absolute disregard of law shown in the act charged, mentioned the
+red-handed deed of this lawless and dangerous person who had thus slain
+a pig, no less the pride of the community than the idol of the family
+now bereft.
+
+At this point the jury began to look much perturbed and solemn, and the
+prisoner very red and uneasy.  Prosecution closed by offering to prove
+all charges by competent testimony.  This latter was a dangerous
+proposition to advance.  We could not well ask the jurymen to testify,
+and of the "veniry," more than half had now slipped out for a hurried
+and excited visit to the Lone Star, there to advise any possible new
+arrivals of what was going on at Blackman's adobe.
+
+Counsel for the defence arose calmly to make his opening statement.
+The man was a natural trial lawyer.  It was simply destiny which had
+driven him into this comedy, as destiny had driven him to Heart's
+Desire.  It was not comedy now, when Dan Anderson faced judge and jury
+here in Blackman's adobe.  There came a swift, sudden chill, a gripping
+as of iron, a darkening, a shrinking of the heart of each man in that
+little room.  It was the coming of the Law!  Ah!  Dan Anderson, you
+ruined our little paradise; and now its walls are down forever, even
+the walls of our city of content.
+
+Dan Anderson stood, young, tall and grave, one hand in the bosom of his
+shirt, for hardly one present wore a coat.  He had his audience with
+him before he spoke.  When he began he caught them tighter to his
+cause, using not merely flowing rhetoric of speech, but the close-knit,
+advancing, upbuilding argument of a man able to "think on his
+feet,"--that higher sort of oratory which is most convincing with an
+American audience or an American jury.
+
+The statement of the prosecution, said Dan Anderson, was on the whole a
+fair one, and no discredit to the learned brother making it.  None
+would more readily than himself yield acquiescence to the statement
+that law and order must prevail.  Without law there could be nothing
+but anarchy.  Under anarchy progress was at an end.  The individual
+must give up something of his rights to the state and the community.
+He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an
+equivalent in protection.  The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no
+monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown.
+The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the
+other hand, it was nothing to be scorned.
+
+There must be a beginning, continued Dan Anderson.  There must be
+something established.  The pound measure was one pound, the same all
+over the country; a yard measure was a yard, and there was no guesswork
+about it.  It was the same.  It was a unit.  So with the law.  It must
+be the same, a unit, soulless, unfeeling, just, unchangeable.  There
+was nothing indeterminate in it.  The attitude of the law was thus or
+so, and not otherwise.  It was not for the individual to pass upon any
+of these questions.  It was for the courts to do so, the approved
+machinery set aside, under the social compact, for reducing the
+friction of the wheels of society, for securing the permanency of
+things beneficial to that society, and for removing things injurious
+thereto.  The Law itself was immutable.  The courts must administer
+that Law without malice, without feeling, impersonally, justly.
+
+In so far as there had hitherto been no Law in Heart's Desire, went on
+the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed
+been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud
+title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as
+well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world.  The
+time had now come for the establishment in this community of the Law,
+that beneficent agency of progress, that indispensable factor, that
+inseparable attendant upon civilization.  Upon the sky should blaze no
+more the red riot of anarchy and barbarism.  Upon the summit of the
+noble mountain overtopping this happy valley there should sit no more
+the grinning figure of malevolent and unrestrained vice, but the pure
+form of the blind Goddess of Justice, holding ever aloft over this
+happy land the unfaltering sword and the unwavering scales, so that all
+might look thereon, the rightdoers in smiling security, the wrong-doing
+in terror of their deeds.  This was the Law!
+
+"And now, gentlemen of this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here
+before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the
+way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the
+time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law.  I say to
+you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned
+above us.  The Law is not to come--it has come, it is here!"
+
+The old days were, therefore, done, he went on.  Henceforth we must
+observe the Law.  We were here now with the intention of observing that
+Law.  Should we therefore fear it?  Should we dread the decision of
+this distinguished servant of the Law?  By no means.  To show that the
+Law was no dragon, no demon, he would now, in the very face of that
+Law, proceed to clear this innocent man of that cloud of doubt and
+suspicion which for a brief moment the social body had cast upon him.
+He would show to the gentlemen of this jury and to this honorable court
+that there had been no violation of the Law through any act of this
+honest, open-faced, intelligent young gentleman, long known among them
+as an upright and fair-dealing man.  The Law, just and exact, would now
+protect this prisoner.  The Law was no matter of haphazard.  The
+prosecution must show that some specific article of the Law had been
+violated.
+
+"Now," continued Dan Anderson, casting an eye about him as calmly as
+could have done any old trial lawyer examining the condition of his
+jury, "what are the charges made by the Territory?  The prosecution
+specifies no section or paragraph of the statutes of this Territory
+holding it unlawful to shoot any dangerous wild beast at large in this
+community.  But we do not admit that this prisoner shot anything, or
+shot at anything whatever.  We shall prove that at the time mentioned
+he was engaged in a simple, harmless, and useful pastime, a pastime
+laudable of itself, since it tends to make the participant therein a
+better and more useful citizen.  There is no Territorial law forbidding
+any act which he is here charged with committing.  Neither has the body
+social in this thriving community placed upon its records any local
+law, any indication that a man may not, without let or hindrance, do
+any act such as those charged vaguely against this good young man, who
+has only availed himself of his right under the Constitution to bear
+arms, to assemble in public, and to engage in the pursuit of happiness."
+
+The prosecution, he said, had introduced reference to a certain pig,
+alleging that it was slain by the act of the prisoner.  He would not
+admit that there had been any pig, since no _corpus delicti_ was
+shown; but in any event this was no civil suit now in progress.  We
+were not here to assess value upon a supposititious pig, injured in a
+supposititious manner, and not represented here of counsel.  No law had
+been violated.  Why, then, his client had been thus ruthlessly dragged
+into court, to his great personal chagrin, his loss of time, his mental
+suffering, the attorney for defence could not say.  It was injustice of
+a monstrous sort!  Prosecution might well feel relieved if no
+retaliatory action were later taken against them for false
+imprisonment.  This innocent young man must at once be discharged from
+custody.
+
+When Dan Anderson sat down there was not a man in the jury who was not
+bathed in perspiration.  Abstruse thought was hard at work.  Blackman,
+J. P., perspiring no less than any member of the jury, drew himself up,
+but he was troubled.
+
+"Evidence f'r the State," the Judge finally managed to stammer, turning
+to the attorney for the prosecution.
+
+But it never came so far along as that.  There was a sound of many
+footsteps; voices came murmuring, growing louder.  The door was pushed
+open from without, and in came much of the remaining population of
+Heart's Desire, so far as it could gain room.  The man from Leavenworth
+was there, his whiskers wagging unintelligibly.  McKinney was there,
+and Doc Tomlinson and Tom Osby, and everybody else; and, pushing
+through the crowd, there came the Littlest Girl from Kansas, her apron
+awry, her hair blown, her face flushed, her eyes moist with tears.
+
+"Curly!" cried she as at last her eyes caught sight of him.  "Come
+right on out of here, this minute!  Come along!"
+
+What would you have?  The Law is the Law; but there are such things as
+supreme courts.  It was useless for Blackman, J. P., to rap and call
+for order.  It had probably been useless for any man to undertake to
+stop the prisoner at the bar, thus adjured.  At any rate he arose and
+said politely to the jurors, "Fellers, I got to go"--and so went, no
+man raising hand to restrain him.
+
+As to Dan Anderson, he himself admitted his wish that the case had gone
+on.  "I wanted to cross-examine," said he.
+
+That night, over by the _arroyo_, we met Curly and the Littlest Girl
+walking in the moonlight.  Curly was quiet.  The Littlest Girl was
+tremulous, content.  Curly, pausing as we approached, mumbled some
+shamefaced thanks.
+
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, his voice queer, "I didn't do it for pay.
+I did it--I don't know why--"
+
+A new mood was upon him.  A lassitude as of remorse appeared to relax
+him, body and mind.  An hour later he and I sat in the glorious flood
+of the light of the moon of Heart's Desire, and we fell silent, as was
+the way of men in that place.  At length Dan Anderson turned his face
+to the top of old Carrizo, the restful, the impassive.  He gazed long
+without speaking, as though he plainly saw something there at the
+mountain top.
+
+"Listen," he whispered to me, a moment later, and his eyes did not
+quite keep back the tears.  "She's there--the Goddess.  The Law has
+come to Heart's Desire.  May God forgive me!  Why could we not have
+stayed content?"
+
+But little did Dan Anderson foresee that day how swiftly was to come
+further ruin for the kingdom of oblivion which we thought that we had
+found.
+
+"There'll be _women_ next!" I said to him bitterly; though this was a
+vague threat of a thing impossible.
+
+His reply was a look more than half frightened.
+
+"Don't!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
+Loneliness of Adam_
+
+Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl,
+and nothing further had happened in the way of change.  The man from
+Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of
+Heart's Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as
+far distant as ever in the future.  Life went on, spent in the open for
+the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice.  Blackman, J.
+P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an
+erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further
+occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent
+much of the day sitting in the sun.
+
+"You might look several times at me," said Dan Andersen one day,
+without preface or provocation, "and yet not read all my past in these
+fair lineaments."
+
+This seemed unworthy of notice.  A man's past was a subject tabooed in
+Heart's Desire.  Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were
+glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall.  Conversation languished.  Dan
+Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a _cigarrillo_ with one hand, his gaze
+the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of
+the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away.  His mind
+might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely.  There was
+nothing to do.  There was only the sun, and as against it the shade.
+That made up life at Heart's Desire.  It was a million miles away to
+any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference
+to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart's Desire.
+Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen's mind,
+as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his
+pocket for a match.
+
+"No, you wouldn't think; just to look at me, my friend," said he, "you
+wouldn't think, without runnin' side lines, and takin' elevations for
+dips, spurs, and angles, that I had ever been anything but a barrister;
+now, would you?  Attorney and Counsellor-at-law, all hours of the day
+and night: that bill of specifications is engraved on my brow, ain't
+it?  You like enough couldn't believe that I was ever anything
+else--several things else, could you?"
+
+His speech still failed of interest, except as it afforded additional
+proof of the manner in which Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like
+disappeared from the speech of all men at Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson
+sat down in the shade, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
+"My boy," said he, "you can gaze at me if you ain't too tired.  As a
+matter of fact, in this pernicious age of specialization I stand out as
+the one glitterin' example of success in more than one line.  Why, once
+I was a success as a journalist--for a few moments."
+
+There was now a certain softness and innocence in his voice, which had
+portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had
+anything of consequence upon his soul.  Without more encouragement he
+went on.
+
+"My brother," said he, "when I first came out of Princeton I was
+burnin' up with zeal.  There was the world, the whole wide world,
+plunged into an abyss of error and wrongdoin'.  I was the sole and
+remainin' hope.  Like all great men, I naturally wanted to begin the
+savin' as early as possible; and like everybody else who comes out of
+Princeton, I thought the best medium for immediate salvation was
+journalism.  I wasn't a newspaper man.  I never said that at all.  I
+was a journalist.
+
+"Well, dad got me a place on a paper in New York, and I worked on the
+dog-fight department for a time, it havin' been discovered that I was
+noted along certain lines of research in Princeton.  I knew the
+pedigree and fightin' weight of every white, black, or brindle pup in
+four States.  Now, a whole lot of fellows come out of college who don't
+know that much; or if they do, they don't know how to apply their
+knowledge.  Now dogs, that's plumb useful.
+
+"I was still doin' dogs when the presidential campaign came along, or
+rather, that feature of our national customs which precedes the
+selection of the People's Choice.  First thing, of course, the People's
+Choice had to take a run over the country--which was a good thing, too,
+because he didn't know much about it--and let the people in general
+know that he was their choice.  I went along to tell the other people
+how he broke it to them."
+
+I confess I sat up at this, for there was now so supreme an innocence
+in Dan Anderson's eye that one might have been morally certain that
+something was coming.  "From dogs to politics--wasn't that a little
+singular?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said he; "but you have to be versatile in journalism.  The
+regular man who was to have gone on that special presidential car got
+slugged at an art gatherin'.  I didn't ask for the place.  I just went
+and told the managin' editor I was ready if he would give me an order
+for expense money.  It wouldn't have been good form for him to look up
+and pay any attention to me, so I got the job.  I needed to see the
+country just as much as the People's Choice did.
+
+"Three other fellows went along,--newspaper men.  I was the only real
+journalist.  We did the presidential tour for ten towns a day.  I
+watched what the other fellows did, and in about two hours it was easy.
+Everything's easy if you think so.  Folks made a lot of fuss about
+gettin' along in the world.  That's all a mistake.
+
+"People's Choice tore it off in fine shape.  Comin' into Basswood
+Junction he turns to his Honorable Secretary, and says he, 'Jimmy,
+what's this?'  Jimmy turns to his card cabinet, and says he: 'Prexie,
+this is Basswood Junction.  Three railroads come in here--and get away
+as soon as they can.  Four overall factories and a reaper plant.
+Population six thousand, and increasin' satisfactory.  Hon. Charles D.
+Bastrop, M.C., from this district, on the straight Republican ticket
+for the last three hundred years; world without end.'
+
+"Then the train would pull into this station to the sad sweet notes of
+the oompah horn, and the delegation of leadin' citizens would file in
+behind the car, and the first leadin' citizen would get red in the face
+with his Welcome talk, while we four slaves of the people were hustling
+the President's speech to the depot telegraph wire before he said it.
+People's Choice, he stands on the back platform with one hand in his
+bosom, and says he: 'Fellow-citizens of Basswood Junction, I am proud
+to see before me this large and distinguished gatherin' of our noble
+North American fauna.  My visit to your pleasant valley is wholly
+without political significance.  These noble et cetera; these smilin'
+et cetera; these beautiful et cetera, fill me with the proudest
+emotions of et cetera.  This, our great and glorious et cetera;
+Basswood Junction has four magnificent factories, and is the centre
+of three great trunk lines of railroad which radiate et cetera; it
+is destined to be a great commercial et cetera.  And what could be
+more confirmatory of the sober, practical judgment of the citizens of
+this flourishing community than the fact that they have produced and
+given to the world that distinguished statesman and gentleman, the
+Hon. Charles D. Bastrop, who is your representative in the Congress
+of the United States and who has always et cetera, et cetera?
+'Fellow-citizens, the issue before this country to-day--' and that
+was where he would hit his gait.
+
+"He had three of these, and on the schedule laid out by the chairman of
+the Central Committee he couldn't spring any two alike closer together
+than a hundred miles.  The whole business would take about five minutes
+to a station.  We would put number Two, or number Three, or whichever
+it was, on the wire, while the People's Choice was talkin', provided we
+could catch the station agent, who on such occasions was bigger than
+the President.  Then, toot! toot! and we were off for the next Basswood
+Junction, to show 'em who was their spontaneous choice.
+
+"Well, that was all right, and it was easy work to report.  The only
+thing was not to get number One speech mixed up with number Two or
+number Three at any given point.  The Honorable Secretary had to attend
+to that.  So all the time we were bored for something to do.  What we
+was hopin' and longin' for all the time was that some one in the
+opposition at some station would haul off and throw a brick at the car.
+Then we would have had some News."
+
+"Oh," said I, "you got to wanting news!  You had a narrow escape."
+
+"Maybe," said Dan Anderson.  "I admit I got to likin' the game.  I
+think, too, I did get to understandin' what news was.  So one day, when
+I was mighty tired of the four-factory, railroad-centre,
+leadin'-citizen business, I mixed up the speeches on the Honorable
+Secretary between stations."  Dan Anderson blew a faint wreath of blue
+smoke up toward the blue sky and remained silent for a time.
+
+"The next particular Basswood Junction happened to be a Democratic
+minin' town, instead of a Republican agricultural community.  It didn't
+have any overall factories at all.  They didn't relish bein' told that
+they had voted the straight Republican ticket ever since Alexander
+Hamilton, and that they had given to the public that distinguished
+citizen, James K. Blinkensop, when the man they had really given to the
+public was Dan G. Healy.  Oh, the whole thing got all mixed up!  Now,
+that was News!  And they fired me by wire that night!  The People's
+Choice was awful hostile.  And me raised tender, too!"
+
+"Well, then, what did you do?" asked I, getting interested in spite of
+myself.
+
+"I was far, far from home.  But not thus easily could I be shaken out
+of my chosen profession.  In thirty-eight minutes I was at work as
+managin' editor of a mornin' paper.  That particular Basswood Junction
+was just startin' a daily, the kind the real-estate men and the local
+congressman have to support or go out of the business.  Their editor
+had been raised on a weekly, and had been used to goin' to sleep at
+eight o'clock in the evening.  The rumor spread that a metropolitan
+journalist had fallen out of a balloon into their midst.  That
+morning's paper was two days late.  So I just went in and went to work.
+I sent every one else home to bed, and sat down to write the paper.
+
+"Of course, I began with dogs, for on account of my early trainin' I
+knew more about that.  Two columns of dogs as a Local Industry.  Then I
+took up Mineral Resources, about half a column.  Might have played that
+up a little stronger, but I was shy on facts.  Then I did the Literary
+and Dramatic.  I shuddered when I struck that, because when a man on a
+paper gets put on Literary and Dramatic, it usually isn't far to his
+finish.  He don't have to send out after trouble--it comes to him
+spontaneous.  Next, I had to do Society.  Didn't know anybody there, so
+that was a little hard.  Had to content myself with the
+Beautiful-and-Accomplished-Who-Shall-be-Nameless,--that sort of thing.
+Why," said Dan Anderson, plaintively, "it's awful hard to write society
+and local news in a town when you've only been there fifteen minutes.
+But a real metropolitan journalist ought to be able to, and I did.
+
+"By this time the office force was standin' around some awed.  I sent
+the foreman of the pressroom out for a bottle of fizz.  Sarsaparilla
+was the nearest he could come to it, but it went.  Then I turned my hot
+young blood loose on the editorial page.  'This,' said I, 'is my
+opportunity to save the country, and I'm goin' to save it, right here.'
+It was then eleven hours, forty-five minutes, and eight seconds by the
+grandpa clock which adorned the newly furnished sanctum."  Dan Anderson
+again sat silent a few moments, the stub of his _cigarrillo_ between
+his fingers.
+
+"Oh, well," said he, "it might, perhaps, have been worse, although I
+admit that was unlikely.  I couldn't prove an alibi, but there were
+extenuatin' circumstances.  The fact was, I got the politics of the
+place mixed up almost as bad as the People's Choice.  That community
+woke up as one man at six-thirty the next morning, and turned out to
+see the evidence of their progress.  I never did see so many Democrats
+in my life.  Or was it Republicans?  I forget.  I had given 'em a good,
+hot, mixed Princeton paper,--dog, international law, society,
+industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had
+Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a
+Household Corner--How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich
+for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers--why, if I do say
+it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in
+all his life, inside the space of one night's writin'.  But they didn't
+like me.  I was too good for them.  Ah, well!"
+
+Dan Anderson sighed softly.  The lazy sun crawled on.  Nobody came into
+the street.  There was nothing to happen.  It might have been an hour
+before Dan Anderson leaned over, picked up a splinter to whittle, and
+went on with his story, back of which I was long before this well
+convinced there remained some topic concealed, albeit beneath
+inconsequent and picturesque details.
+
+"At that state of my _entwickelung_, as the French say, I still wore
+my trousers with a strong crimp at the bottom and cut pear-shaped at
+the hips.  That pair was.  The next one wasn't.  It was a long, long
+way to that next pair.  I forgot how many years.
+
+"You see, by that time--although I did still say 'rully,' account of
+having roomed with a man who had been in Harvard for a while--I was
+really beginning to wake up just a little bit.  My dad still supposed I
+was doing dog on the dramatic page in New York, whereas the facts were
+I had been fired twice.  But that did me good.  I sort of woke up about
+then, and realized there were such things in the world as folks.  I
+wasn't the People's Choice,--not yet,--but I was learnin' a heap more
+about the Basswood Junctions of this world.  And I want to say to you
+that after all's said and done, Princeton hasn't got Basswood Junction
+skinned no ways permanent.  There's several kinds of things in life,
+when you come to find it out.  It ain't all in the gay metropolis.
+
+"At half-past four one afternoon I turned the roll down out of my
+trousers and took account of the world.  Says I to myself: 'Journalism
+is not a science.  It ain't exact enough.'  Then I thought of studyin'
+medicine.  Bah!  That's not a science.  It's a survival.  I clerked for
+a while, but I couldn't stand it.  What I was lookin' for was a
+science.  At last I concluded to take up law, because I thought it was
+more of a science than any of these other things.  I wanted some place
+where I could sort of reason things out, and have them fit and hang
+together.  Well, the law--well, you know the law isn't just exactly
+that way.  But it's a beautiful thing if you just hang to the
+principles, and don't believe too much of the practice.  The law is
+disgraced--but at bottom what the law meant to do was to give humanity
+some sort of a square deal; which, of course, it doesn't.  It ain't a
+science; but I love it, because it might have been."
+
+He fell silent once again for a time, after his fashion, but now his
+gaze was softened, although he went on with his light speech.  "I
+rather thought I would take up the science of the law as the most
+possible line of activity for a man of my attainments.  I began to read
+a little on the side.  Then I didn't know whether to have contempt for
+us fools who live and endure the eternal folly, or whether I ought to
+pity Basswood Junction and Princeton, because life is all so awfully
+hard and hopeless.  Meantime, Old Mr. World went right on--didn't stop
+to ask me anything.
+
+"You can understand these things took a little time.  Meantime, my dad
+had sized me up as one more young man ruined by college life.  The old
+man had a heap of sense in him, and he did the right thing.  He told me
+to go to the devil."
+
+"So you came West?"
+
+"So I came West.  Same pants."
+
+"But you haven't told me about the girl," said I, quietly.
+
+Ah, that was it, then!  I could see his eyelids twitch.  A moisture
+broke out on his lower lip, in that country where perspiration was so
+little known.  "And you!" he said.  "But then, it didn't take much
+brains to guess that.  It was the same way with you.  We all of us came
+here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, there was a Girl."
+
+So now we both were silent.  Indeed, all the world was silent.  The
+calm valley lay unwinking in the sun.  The grave mountains stood about
+unperturbed, unagitated, calm.  The blue sky swept above, peaceful,
+unflecked by any moving cloud.  There was not a leaf in all that land
+to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple.  It was a
+world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with
+nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world
+gone by.  Here was no place for memories or dreams.  The rush of
+another world might go on.  Folk might live and love, grieve and joy,
+and sorrow and die, and it mattered nothing.  These things came not to
+Heart's Desire.
+
+Presently Dan Anderson was guilty of a thing revolutionary, horrible!
+He sat silent as long as he could, but at length there broke from him a
+groan that was half a sob.  He rose and flung out an arm at the great
+blue heaven.  "Girl!" he cried.  "Girl!"  Then he sank down, burying
+his face in his hands.  One might have heard falling, faint and far
+off, the shattered crystals of the walls that had long hedged sacredly
+about the valley of Heart's Desire.  One might have heard, sweeping the
+soft and silken curtains of its oblivion, the rough rush of a
+disturbing wind!
+
+Dan Anderson's back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the
+valley.  "Friend," said he, "I swore never to think of her once more.
+Of course, the old ways had to end.  Her people wouldn't have it.  She
+told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for
+dreamers; that the world was run by workers.  She told me--well, I came
+West, and after a while a little farther West.
+
+"I hadn't begun, I know that.  It was fair enough to suppose I never
+would begin.  But at least I didn't holler.  I sat down to read law.
+Ah, don't let's talk of it.  Her face was on the pages.  I would brush
+it off, and read over a page a dozen times.  I had to force it into my
+mind.  I worked so hard--but maybe it was all the better for me.  I not
+only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced
+comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type
+looks, irregularly set around a roll of brown hair and a pair of gray
+eyes that look straight at you.  My boy, when the principles of law are
+back and under that kind of a page illustration, they are hard to get,
+and you don't forget them when they're yours.  It wasn't hard to learn
+things in Princeton.  It's the things out of college that are hard to
+learn.
+
+"Well, you know how that is.  A fellow lives because this physical
+machine of ours is wound up for threescore years and ten, and unless
+the powers of evil get their fingers in the works, it runs.  Well, one
+time, after I was admitted to the bar back there, I was sitting one
+night reading Chitty on Pleading.  That was the worst of all the books.
+Contracts, notes and bills, torts, replevin, and ejectment--all those
+things were easy.  But when I got to Chitty, the girl's face would
+always get on the page and stick there.  So one night, seeing that I
+was gone, I took Chitty on Pleading, girl's face and all, and screwed
+it shut, tight and fast in the letter-press.  I allowed she couldn't
+get out of there!  Then I pulled my freight.  I punched a burro into
+Heart's Desire, two hundred miles, just as you did.  I have lived here,
+just as you have.  No life, no trouble, no woman--why, you know, this
+is Heart's Desire!"
+
+"It was," said I; "God bless it."
+
+"And amen!  We'd all have been in the Army, or burglary, or outlawry,
+if it hadn't been for Heart's Desire.  God bless it."
+
+"But she got out," said I.  "Some one unscrewed the press?"
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson.  "She's out.  They're out.  I tell you,
+they're out, all over the world!
+
+"We were three hundred men here, and it was Heaven.  One vast commune,
+and yet no commune.  Everything there was if you asked for it, and
+nothing you could take if you didn't ask.  Not a church, because there
+wasn't a woman.  Not a courthouse, because there wasn't any crime, and
+that because there wasn't a woman.  Not a society--not a home--and I
+thank God for it.  I knew what it was back there--every man suspicious,
+every man scared, every man afraid of his own shadow--not a clean, true
+note in all the world; and incidentally a woman behind every tree, in
+every corner, whichever way you turned.  Life in the States was being a
+_peon_ with a halter around your neck.  But it was never that way
+here.  There never was any crime in Heart's Desire.  It's no crime to
+shoot a man when he's tired of living and wants you to kill him.  Why,
+this was Heart's Desire until--"
+
+"Until the press got loose?"
+
+"It's loose all over the world!" cried Dan Anderson.  "They've got out.
+You can't keep them in.  How did Charlie Allen get killed over at
+Sumner?  Woman in it.  When the boys arrested this fellow Garcia over
+at the Nogales, what was it all about?  A woman.  What set the
+desperado Arragon on the warpath so the boys had to kill him?  That was
+a woman, too.  What made Bill Hilliard kill Pete Anderson?  Woman moved
+in within fifty miles of them on the Nogales.  Here's Curly; good man
+in his profession.  Night-wrangler, day-herder, bog-rider, buster,
+top-waddy--why, he'd be the old man on the range for his company if
+that Kansas family hadn't moved down in here and married him.  It's
+Paradise Lost, that's what it is.  Arizona next, and it's full of
+copper mines and railroads.  Where shall we go?"  The sweat stood full
+on his lip now, and a deep line ran across his forehead.  "Where shall
+we go?" he repeated insistently.  "Come!"
+
+In my own bitterness at all this I grew sarcastic with him.  "Sit
+down," said I.  "Why all this foolishness about a college girl with a
+shirtwaist and a straw hat?"
+
+"Oh, now," and his forehead puckered up, "don't you be deceived for one
+minute, my friend.  This wasn't ordinary.  No plain woman; no common or
+crimping variety.  Just a specimen of the great 'North American Girl!"
+He took off his hat.  "And may God bless her, goin' or comin'!" said he.
+
+This was the most untoward situation ever yet known in the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Dan Andersen was proving recreant to our creed.  And
+yet, what could be done?
+
+Dan Anderson presently made the situation more specific.  "May old Jack
+Wilson just be damned!" said he.  "If he hadn't found that gold
+prospect up on the Homestake, we might have lived here forever.
+Besides, there's the coal fields yonder on the Patos, no one knows how
+big."
+
+Coal!  That meant Eastern Capital.  I could have guessed the rest
+before he told it.
+
+"Oh, of course, we've got to sell our coal mines, and get a lot of
+States men in here monkeyin' around.  And, of course, it couldn't have
+been anybody else but the particular daddy of this particular girl who
+had to come pokin' in here to look at the country!  He's got money
+literally sinful."
+
+"But, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that the girl's coming,
+too?"
+
+He nodded mutely.  "They're out," said he, at last.  "You can't get
+away from 'em.  They're all over the world."
+
+Here, indeed, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a
+long time, as we sat moodily in the sun.  At about this time, Tom Osby
+drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of
+Whiteman the Jew, just across the street.  Tom tore open a bale of hay,
+and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed
+grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a
+pipe, he began to sing his favorite song.
+
+  "I never _loved_ a fond gazel-l-l-e,"
+
+he drawled out.  Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot
+through the top of Tom Osby's wagon.  Tom came up, rifle in hand, like
+a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.
+
+"Shut up," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Well, I ain't so sure," said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin.  "It's
+a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don't get quite
+so funny, by a leetle shade."
+
+I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire
+over smaller things than this.  "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked
+Tom Osby.
+
+"I hadn't noticed it," said he.
+
+"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson.  "You come here, and tell me what
+time the stage gets in from Socorro."
+
+"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."
+
+"He's _loco_, Tom," said I.
+
+"Well, I reckon _so_.  When a man begins to worry about what time the
+Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."
+
+"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital--Eastern Capital, Eve and
+the Serpent, all on one stage.  The only comfort is that no Eastern
+Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day.  She'll go
+back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again."  But the dumb
+supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.
+
+There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire.  It was ninety miles to the
+nearest wire.  The stage came in but occasionally from the distant
+railroad.  Yet--and this was one of the strange things of that strange
+country, which we accepted without curiosity and without
+argument--there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by
+which news got about over great distances.  Perhaps it was a rider in
+by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had
+seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the canon, the white
+smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming.  This news
+brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him
+in query.
+
+"Man," said he, as he gripped my arm, "you see, up there on Carrizo,
+the big canon where we hunt bear.  You know, up there at the end,
+there's a big pine tree.  Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of
+this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late
+Daniel Anderson, you go up the canon and look up the tree.  I'll be
+there.  I'm scared."
+
+By this I knew that he would, in all likelihood, meet the stage and
+help Eve to alight at Heart's Desire.  Moreover, I reproached him as
+having been deliberately a party to this invasion.  "You've been
+writing back home to the girl," I said.  "That is not playing the game.
+That's violation of the creed.  You're renegade.  Then go back home.
+You don't belong here!"
+
+"I'm not!  I won't!  I didn't!" he retorted.  "I didn't write--at least
+only a few times.  I tried not to--but I couldn't help it.  Man, I tell
+you I couldn't _help_ it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
+the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some._
+
+The sun drew on across the enchanted valley and began to sink toward
+the rim of the distant Baxter Peak.  The tremendous velvet robes of the
+purple evening shadows dropped slowly down upon the majestic shoulders
+of Carrizo, guardian of the valley.  A delicious kindness came into the
+air, sweet, although no flower was in all that land, and soft, though
+this was far from any sea, unless it were the waters immeasurably deep
+beneath this sun-dried soil.  There was no cloud even at the falling of
+the sun, but the gun had no harshness in his glow.  There was a blue
+and purple mystery over all the world, and calm and sweetness and
+strength came down as it were a mantle.  Ah, never in all the world was
+a place like this Eden, this man's Eden of Heart's Desire!
+
+A gentle wind sighed up the valley from the narrow canon mouth, as it
+did every day.  There was no variableness.  Surprises did not come
+thither.  The world ran always in one pleasant and unchanging groove.
+But the breeze this evening brought no smile of content to Dan
+Anderson's face as he sat waiting for the coming of the new and fateful
+visitor to our ancient Eden.
+
+"They'll be about at the Carrizoso Springs now," said Dan Anderson,
+"twelve miles away down the trail.  Can't you smell the cold cream?"
+
+This was beyond ken, but he became more explicit.  "Cold cream to the
+eyes and ears," said he.  "To the untutored face, the sun of this
+heathen district is something sinful; and like enough she never heard
+of collodion for cracked lips in an alkali country.  And a veil--oh,
+sacred spirits! that veil and its contents is now hatin' Carrizoso
+flats and all the inarticulate earth till fare-ye-well!  Wrapped up to
+the topmast in a white veil,--or one of was-white,--gray travelling
+gown, common-sense boots.  Gloves--ah, yes.  And hate--hate--why, can't
+you feel the simmerin', boilin' hatred of that States girl just raisin'
+the temperature of this land of Canaan?  Hate us?  Why, she'll be
+poisonous.  Ninety miles in the sun, at ninety in the shade.  Water
+once at the Mal Pais, and it alkali."
+
+I reminded Dan Anderson that in view of his promise to absent himself
+at the time of the arrival of the Socorro stage, he was not conducting
+himself with the proper regard either to decorum or historical accuracy.
+
+"I want to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go.  I ought to go
+climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the
+lady and her dad.  I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this
+faintness out of my legs.  But somehow I can't get started.  I'd look
+well, tryin' to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn't I?  Man,
+haven't you any sympathy?"
+
+So we sat on a log out in front of Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, and
+waited for the worst to happen.
+
+"Don't you go away," said Dan Anderson.  "I want you for my second.
+You can go for the doctor.  I ain't feelin' very well."
+
+Now, there was no doctor in Heart's Desire, nor had there ever been, as
+Dan Anderson knew.  Neither did he look in need of any help whatsoever.
+He made no foolish masculine attempt at personal adornment, but his
+long figure, with good bony shoulders and a visible waist line, looked
+well enough in the man's garb of blue shirt and belted trousers.  A
+rope of hair straggled from under his wide hat; for in Heart's Desire
+wide hats were worn of right and not in affectation.  He was a manly
+man enough, in a place where weak men were rare.  The one most vitally
+concerned in all the population of Heart's Desire, he was now the one
+least visibly affected.  All the rest of the settlement, suddenly
+smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and
+a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties.
+Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the
+purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that
+which was to come to him.  True, there was the slight moisture on his
+brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself
+only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.
+
+For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events.
+"What will you do?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you've
+been ass enough to allow this girl to come on down in here?  You'll
+have some one killed in this town before long.  Besides, where can a
+white girl live in this place?  There's not a bedspread or a linen
+sheet in the whole town."
+
+"You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully.  "Do you
+suppose a Wellesley girl, accustomed steady to high thinkin', can't get
+along with a little plain livin' once in a while?  As for women folks,
+why can't Curly's girl take care of her?  Does a chance lady caller in
+this city need a _thousand_ women to entertain her?  And
+blankets--why, you know well enough, that blankets are better after
+sundown here than much fine linen.  Heart's Desire'll be here calm and
+confident after this brief pageantry has passed from our midst."
+
+As he spoke, he half turned and started, with a broken exclamation.  I
+followed his gaze.  The street was vacant, barren of the accustomed
+throng that usually awaited near the post-office the arrival of the
+infrequent stagecoach.  But there, at the mouth of the canon, almost
+under the edge of the deepening shadow from the purple-topped mountain,
+appeared the dusty top of the creeping vehicle that bore with it the
+fate of Heart's Desire.  Dan Anderson was pale now, and he put his hand
+to his shirt collar, as though it were too tight; but he sat gazing
+down the valley.
+
+"That old fool, Bill Godfrey, is showin' them our sign," said he, in
+exasperation.  "That's a nice thing, ain't it, for Eastern Capital, or
+a woman, to see the first thing?"
+
+It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart's Desire, who
+subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had
+prepared the grim blazonry on the canon wall to which Dan Anderson had
+made reference.  "Prepare to meet thy God!" was the sign that Charlie
+Lee had painted there.  It was the last thing he did on his way out of
+town.  That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading
+citizen.  Charlie's emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for
+expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon.  The
+inhabitants had always left the sign standing there.  But at this time
+it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.
+
+"They ain't goin' to understand that," said he.  "They can't think the
+way we do.  Oh, why didn't that old fool Godfrey call their attention
+the other way?  Oh, that'll set fine, won't it, with a man comin' to
+buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face
+and a consumin' vision of tarantulas in her soul!  This'll be another
+case of New Jersey Gold Mill.  Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he'll run
+out at the same door wherein he went; that's what he'll do.  And, oh,
+doctors and saints, look at that, now!"  Bill Godfrey was leaning out
+of the coach-box and pointing with his whip.  "He's showin' them the
+town now," said Dan Anderson.  "Why--I hadn't thought before but what
+this place was all right."
+
+I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation.  It had been our
+world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it
+had been satisfactory until now.  Never before that moment had the
+scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and
+insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy.  We were suddenly ashamed.
+
+Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the
+log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage,
+white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up
+from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired
+mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.
+
+He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily
+forward.  Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously
+have offered assistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master
+of his faculties.
+
+The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear
+seat, when there appeared the passenger nearest to our side of the
+coach,--a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in
+girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache.  He was well shod and
+well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels
+and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs.
+He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored.  A flush of recognition
+crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.
+
+"Well, Andersen," Mr. Ellsworth said, extending a hand, "how are you?
+Got here at last--awful drive.  Where do we stop?  You know my
+daughter, of course."
+
+What treachery to Heart's Desire was here!  Dan Anderson, a man who had
+come to stay, shaking hands on terms of old acquaintanceship,
+apparently, with Eastern Capital itself; and not content with that,
+advancing easily and courteously, hat in hand, to greet the daughter of
+Eastern Capital as though it were but yesterday that last they met.
+Moreover, and bitterest of all for a loyal man of Heart's Desire, was
+there not a glance, a word between them?  Did Dan Anderson whisper a
+word and did she flush faint and rosy? or was it a touch of the light?
+Certain it was he reached up his hand to take hers, shaking it not too
+long nor too fervently.
+
+"I do remember Miss Ellsworth very well, of course, Mr. Ellsworth,"
+said he.  "We are all very glad to see you."
+
+"And we're very glad to _see_ you!" echoed the girl.  "Oh! the dust,
+the dust!"  She spoke in a full, sweet voice, excellent even for
+outlanders to hear.  If there were agitation in her tones, agitation in
+Dan Andersen's heart, none might know it.  This meeting, five years and
+two thousand miles from a parting, seemed the most natural and ordinary
+thing in all the world.  Mr. Ellsworth was of the belief that he
+himself had planned it so far as himself and Dan Anderson were
+concerned.
+
+"My daughter was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth
+began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up
+here to see about the climate--lots of folks go West nowadays, you
+know, even in the spring.  I'll warrant she's sick of the trip by now.
+A good climate has to have dust to season it.  One of the mules went
+lame--thought we would never get here.  And now tell me, where'll she
+stop?"  The personification of Eastern Capital looked about him
+dubiously at the only hotel of Heart's Desire, before which the coach
+had pulled up as a matter of course.  "Any women folks in town,
+anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan
+Andersen's impassive face.
+
+"I was upon the point of saying, Mr. Ellsworth," replied Dan
+Anderson--and vaguely one felt that his diction was once more that of
+Princeton--"that my friend here, a prominent member of the bar, will go
+with Miss Ellsworth to the house of a nice little woman, wife of--er--a
+cow gentleman of our acquaintance.  That will be best for her.  I'll
+try to take care of you myself, sir, if you like, while the Learned
+Counsel goes with Miss Ellsworth."
+
+There were introductions and further small talk, and presently Learned
+Counsel found himself climbing up to the seat beside Eve; beside the
+Temptress who, he made no manner of doubt, had come to put an end to
+Paradise.
+
+But ah! she was Eve enough for any Eden--a tall girl, rounded, firm
+formed, with a mass of good brown hair, and a frank gray eye, and a
+regular and smooth forehead.  Her garb was a cool, gray serge, and, a
+miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with
+immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman
+might tell.  A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim.  Her
+hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray.  Her foot, trim and well
+shaped,--for even a desolate pariah might note so much,--was shod in no
+ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels,
+all unsuited to gravel and slide-rock, yet exceeding good, as it seemed
+at that time.  The girl raised her eyes, smiling frankly.  There was no
+cold cream traceable.  The first thought of Learned Counsel was that
+her complexion would brown nicely under sunburn; his second thought was
+that he had on overalls,--a fact which had escaped him for more than
+four years.
+
+If Eve, new come within Heart's Desire, felt any surprise, or if she
+even experienced any pique at the calm deportment of Dan Anderson, she
+masked it all and put all at ease with a few words spoken in that
+manner of voice which is an excellent thing in woman.  In a sort of
+dream the coach trundled on up the street, to pause for half an instant
+in front of the commercial emporium of Whiteman the Jew.  Whiteman came
+out with his hat above his head, and said, "Velgome."
+
+The girl looked backward down the street as they turned to cross the
+_arroyo_ beyond which stood the house of the Kansas family, where Curly
+lived.  The off mule limped.  "Poor little fellow," she said; "I wanted
+them to stop.  They have no pity--"
+
+"No," said Learned Counsel to her, "there is no such thing as pity in
+all the world."  She fell silent at this, and looked back once more,
+unconsciously, down the street, as one who would gladly pity, or be
+pitied.  But soon the coach was at Curly's house, and there came out to
+meet it, already forewarned of her guest, the Littlest Girl, wiping her
+hands on her apron, which means Welcome on the frontier.
+
+The Littlest Girl, uncertain and overawed by her visitor, came forward
+and took a first look.  Then she suddenly held out her arms; and
+Constance Ellsworth, from the East, lonely, perhaps grieved, walked
+straight into the outstretched arms and straight into the heart of the
+Littlest Girl from Kansas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
+Craven Adam_
+
+The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr.
+Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed.  The window-panes
+were very small, where any still remained.  The interior of the hotel
+consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim
+slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might
+rest if very weary from one cause or another.  The front door was
+always open.  The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but
+utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both
+hotel and bank.
+
+There was in Heart's Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern
+Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined
+circulating medium.  That was all the money there was.  No one could
+be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all
+wealth, as was very well known.  To many this may seem a restricting
+and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars
+is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for
+a whole town to have, as any man of Heart's Desire could have told you.
+
+A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the
+front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place
+devoted to the sale of firearms.  There were many nails driven into
+the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all
+these nails held specimens of weapons.  Excellent weapons they were,
+too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of
+Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends
+bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills,
+none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks.  At
+times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the
+wall at Uncle Jim's hotel.  The visible supply fluctuated somewhat.
+Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move
+up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the
+circulating medium.
+
+Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man.  If a man paid,
+very well.  If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him,
+for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well
+knew.  And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as
+Uncle Jim also knew very well.  There were no printed rules or
+regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel.  There was no hotel register.  There
+were no questions ever asked.  Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his
+duty, was to feed men.  For the rest, he often had to do his own
+cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in
+the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk?  Indeed, there was no
+desk.  The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.
+
+That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was
+something never dreamed in Heart's Desire.  Yet one day a sensitive
+young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how,
+down into Heart's Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue
+shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one
+dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time
+he was very hungry.  He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask
+for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim.  The latter
+said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which
+actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed!  "Get
+'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better."  The young man
+"got 'round" the beefsteak.  Perhaps it was the feeling about the
+butter, which of itself was a thing unusual.  At any rate, as he went
+out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door.  This act
+meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer
+existed.  The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle
+Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good.  The
+intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was
+right" was silently and fully evidenced.  That a man would give up his
+gun was proof enough of that.  So this became the custom of the place,
+the unwritten law.  When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the
+three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in,
+handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one
+else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down
+the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air.  It is
+astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can
+be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general
+supply of six-shooters.
+
+On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious
+activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the
+night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were
+hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of
+better days.  The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had
+all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the
+guns.  Temporarily, male Heart's Desire did not exist.
+
+Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to
+display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man
+who--as the rapid word spread to all--had come to look into the
+gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up
+Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head
+and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso!  Humiliated,
+Heart's Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan
+Anderson, do the talking.
+
+"I didn't know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson," said
+Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel.  "Lately organized?"  He
+swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.
+
+"That?  Oh, that's not the arsenal," replied Dan Anderson; "that's the
+clearing-house.  If a man's broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know.
+I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country to you
+right at once, sir.  You see, it's different.  Now, out here, a
+six-shooter is part of a man's clothes.  That's why the fellows stay
+out.  They're ashamed--don't feel properly dressed, you know."
+
+"Not much law and order, eh?"
+
+"Not much law, but plenty of order, and not the least pretence about
+it."
+
+"The courts--"
+
+"No courts at all, or at least within sixty miles.  Why, we haven't
+even a town organization--not a town officer.  There was never even a
+town-site plat filed."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth turned on him suddenly.  "Where's your titles?" he asked.
+
+"We haven't needed any, so far.  Now that you've come, with talk of a
+railroad and all that--"
+
+"Oh, well, you know, that's just talk.  I'm not responsible for that."
+
+"I hope you like canned tomatoes," said Dan Anderson, "or, if you
+don't, that you're very fond of beefsteak.  There won't be much else
+till Tom Osby gets back from Las Vegas with a load of freight.  Tom
+Osby's our common carrier.  I hope the new railroad will do as well."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth was a gentleman, and a very hungry one, so there was no
+quarrel over the tomatoes, which were Special XXX, nor over the
+beefsteak, which might have been worse.  An hour later he went out on
+the street with his host, whose conduct thus far, he was forced to
+admit, had been irreproachable.  They strolled up the rambling street,
+past many straggling buildings, and at length paused before the little
+building, made of sun-dried brick, and plastered with mud, where Dan
+Anderson had his residence and his law office.
+
+"You'll excuse me, Mr. Ellsworth," said that young gentleman, "for
+bringing you here, but the truth is I thought you might be thirsty and
+might get poisoned.  You have to do these things gradually, till you
+get immune.  Now, under my bed, I've got a bottle which never has been
+opened and which ought to be safe.  I don't bother corks a great deal,
+only when we are welcoming distinguished guests."
+
+"It's just a little soon after dinner," demurred Ellsworth, "but,
+ahem!  That dust--yes, I believe I will."
+
+There was a dignity about Dan Anderson now which left Ellsworth
+distinctly uncomfortable.  The latter felt himself in some fashion at
+a disadvantage before this penniless adventurer, this young man whom
+once he had not cared to have as a regular visitor at his own home
+back in the far-off East.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me, young man," he spoke after a long period
+of silence, "that this is the way you live?"
+
+"Certainly," said Dan Anderson.  "I know I'm extravagant.  I don't
+need a place as good as this, but I always was sort of sensuous, you
+know." Ellsworth looked at him without any comprehension, from him to
+the bed with blankets, and the bare table.  "Come in," said Dan
+Anderson, "and sit down.  Better sit on the chair, I reckon.  One leg
+of the bed is sort of dicky."
+
+"So this is the way you live?" repeated Ellsworth to Dan Anderson, who
+was now on his hands and knees and searching under the bed.  "Now,
+about my daughter--is there any hotel--are there any women?"
+
+"Three, from Kansas," said Dan Anderson.  "That is, three real ones.
+All the female earth, Mr. Ellsworth, comes from Kansas, same as all
+the baled hay.  Oh, yes, here she is!"
+
+He had been speaking with his voice somewhat muffled under the bed,
+but now emerged, bearing a dusty bottle in his hand.
+
+Mr. Ellsworth looked at him a bit keenly; for, after all, he was not a
+bad judge of men.  "How long has that bottle been there?" asked he,
+abruptly.
+
+"Oh, a couple of years, maybe."
+
+"And you've never opened it?"
+
+"No, why should I?  You hadn't come yet.  Of course, I knew you'd be
+along some day.  I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr.
+Ellsworth--the health of the man who told me not to come around his
+house--told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable
+company for his--why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all."  His
+voice was slow, but harder now in quality.
+
+Ellsworth sat on the chair, the bottle in his hand hanging between his
+knees.  He looked at Dan Anderson steadily.  "You've got me guessing
+in a good many ways," he said; "I don't know why you came here--"
+
+"No?"
+
+"Nor how you live, nor what encouragement or prospects you find here.
+For instance, about how much did you make last year in your business?"
+
+"My law practice?  Oh, you mean down at the county-seat?  There is no
+law court here.  How much did the boys pay me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, I know it's a heap of money; but I made it."
+
+"Enough for tobacco money!"
+
+"Sir," said Dan Anderson, "more.  I ate frequent.  Why, sir, did you
+ever stop to think that our total circulating medium here is only
+three hundred dollars?  I had almost all of it one time or another.
+Now, not doubting your intentions in the least, did you ever come that
+near to corralling the whole visible supply of cash in your own town?
+Moreover, I am attorney for the men who own the coal-mines.  I'm the
+lawyer for both the gold mills.  We've got one or two mines here, and
+I'm in.  Besides, I've just got the law business from Pitzer Chisum,
+down on the Seven Rivers,  He's got maybe a hundred thousand head of
+cattle.  Now, I'm going to rob Pitzer, because he needs it.   He's got
+money scandalous."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth put the bottle down on the floor, and sat up on the
+chair with his hands in his pockets, wondering.  "But why?" he
+demanded sternly, "why?  What are you doing out here?  Why have you
+thrown away your life?  Come--you're a bright young man, and you--"
+
+"Friend," said Dan Anderson, with a sudden cold quality in his voice,
+"I think that'll about do.  I am no brighter than I was a few years
+ago."
+
+"But this is no place to live."
+
+"Why isn't it?  It takes a man to live here.  Do you reckon you could
+qualify?"  The older man raised his head with a snort, but Dan
+Anderson stood looking at him calmly.  "Now let me tell you one
+thing," said he.  "If you heard of our coal-mines here through me, at
+least I didn't ask you to come out here, and I didn't ask you to bring
+anybody along with you.  I've played fair with you.  You don't come
+here to do me any favor, do you?"
+
+"Oh, well,"--began the other.
+
+"Then you think there might be something here, after all?"
+
+"What is there here?"
+
+"A very great deal.  There's just as much here as there is anywhere
+else in the world."
+
+Mr. Ellsworth arose and stepped to the door.  For a moment he stood
+looking out at the twilight.  He turned suddenly to the young man.
+"I'll tell you," said he.  "There's something to you--I don't know
+what.  Drop all this.  Come on back.  I'll think it over--I'll give
+you a place in my office."
+
+"You'd give me _what_?  Did you ever stop to think that you can't
+give me _anything_?"
+
+Surprise sat on his visitor's face.  "_Nada_!" cried Dan Anderson.
+"Me go back there and work on a salary for you?  Me check my immortal
+soul on your hat-rack?  Me live scared of my life, like all the rest
+of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell?  If I
+should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me
+you once expressed, before you really knew me."
+
+"But what have you got out here?" repeated the other, stupidly.
+
+Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the
+mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his
+blue shirt.
+
+"What made you come?" insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the
+neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.
+
+"You know almighty well why I came.  But let that go.  Let's say I
+came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you
+buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley
+if you have luck later.  I'm going to be your kind and loving partner
+in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you.
+You watch me.  I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to work all I
+want to.  When I don't want to, there isn't any living mortal soul
+that's going to crack a whip over me and tell me I've got to."
+
+"Things seem rather strange," began Mr. Ellsworth.  "You talk as
+though I were obliged to put money into these mines."
+
+"Of course you will.  You can't help it.  You never saw a better
+opportunity for investment in all your life.  But now let me tell you
+another thing, which I oughtn't to tell you if I served you right.
+You go slow while you're here.  There is plenty of gold in this
+valley.  There isn't a fellow in this settlement who hasn't got a
+quart glass fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and
+who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like
+yourself.  You're Glad Tidings in this town.  You couldn't walk
+to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys
+would offer you.  You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes.  You
+wouldn't know where you were; and when you came to; you'd own about
+fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the
+variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid.  Now, I
+oughtn't to take care of you.  I don't owe you a thing on earth.  But
+because you brought--well, because--anyhow, I'm _going_ to take care
+of you, while you're here, and see that you get a square deal."
+
+"By the way, my daughter--" said Mr. Ellsworth, sitting up uneasily.
+
+"Never mind," said Dan Anderson, gently.  "Miss Constance is all
+right.  They'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of
+you.  Everybody will be more sociable by about noon to-morrow.  The
+whole town's scared yet."
+
+"I don't see anything very terrible about me," said Mr. Ellsworth.
+
+"Oh, it isn't _you_," said Dan Anderson, calmly.  "Nobody's afraid of
+_you_.  It's your daughter--it's the woman.  Don't you reckon Adam
+was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time
+old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreading fig tree?  I don't
+know that I make myself right plain--you see, it's sort of funny here.
+We aren't used to women any more."
+
+"Oh, well, now, my dear sir, you see, my daughter--"
+
+"I know all about her," said Dan Anderson, sharply.
+
+"I don't doubt she thought I was a mere trifler.  She couldn't
+understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until
+he's found the right thing to stick to.  I don't blame her the least
+bit in the world.  She could only see what I _wasn't_ doing.  I knew
+what I was _going_ to do, and I know it now."  There was a gravity
+and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through the
+self-consciousness of the man before him.  Ellsworth looked at him
+intently.  "We'll be here for a day or so," said he, "and meantime, it
+will seem a little strange for my daughter, I suppose--"
+
+"You don't need to tell me about anything," said Dan Anderson.  "Of
+course, her coming is a little inopportune.  You see, Mr. Ellsworth,
+the morning stars are inopportune, and the sunrise every day, and the
+dew of heaven."
+
+Ellsworth looked at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured
+something about going to look up his daughter.
+
+"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson.  "But I know the
+way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's,
+I am going over there--alone.  Wait till I get my coat.  I don't wear
+it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the
+evening here, the same as they do in the States."
+
+As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets,
+crossed the _arroyo_ alone, he met Curly coming the other way.
+Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness
+of the importance of his position in society at the time.
+
+"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new
+girl is the absolute limit.  She dropped in just like we'd been
+expectin' her.  I was some scared; but _she's_ just _folks_!"
+
+Dan Anderson hardly heard him.  He passed on into the house, where he
+had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place.
+It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl.  "I was
+just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and
+everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to
+our city park.  Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and
+light."
+
+She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the
+half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she
+rose and joined him.  All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening
+fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without
+possible resistance.
+
+A short distance up the _arroyo_, toward the old abandoned stamp
+mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the
+Patos spring, far up on the mountain side.  At the end of this pipe,
+where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas
+had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of
+her own.  Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose
+bush, now blossomless.  Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and
+handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.
+
+"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed
+your stroll along the boulevard.  I hope, also, that the entertainment
+of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."
+
+"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at
+them.  These people are genuine."
+
+"I'm not apologizing," he said quickly; "there are just a few things a
+fellow learns out here.  One is not to apologize; and another is not
+to beg.  Sit down."  There were two white boulders beside which the
+trickle of water rippled.  Obeying him, she seated herself.  Presently
+Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat
+in silence.  The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half
+darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old
+Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of
+Heart's Desire.  The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified
+into a strange, half-ghostly beauty.  The earth has few scenes more
+beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight.  These two sat and gazed
+for a time.
+
+"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself
+than to him.
+
+"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the
+mountain-rimmed horizon.  "Yes, it's mine."
+
+"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful.  Some time there'll be a
+man who'll learn something in such a place as this.  I don't know but
+I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."
+
+"The years!" she whispered to herself.
+
+"It seems forever," said he.  "The time when a fellow's taking his
+medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life
+of five years ago--almost, except a part of it.  It's been another
+world here.  Nothing matters much, does it?"
+
+Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could
+not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.
+
+"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's
+Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.
+"Look!  It is unspeakable."
+
+He looked at her face instead.  "I've seen you right here," he said,
+"right at this very place, a thousand times.  It's Eden.  It's the
+Garden.  It's the Beginning."
+
+"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.
+
+"Yes, yes--"  Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control.
+"It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete.
+Constance--"
+
+The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too
+often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found
+moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life.
+Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not
+served to banish it.  She had heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes
+when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered.  Now, beneath a
+limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world--in
+this Eden which they two alone occupied--she heard him, the man whom
+in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in very person, and
+speaking that very thought which was in her own heart that hour.  Her
+bosom rose tumultuously, her throat fluttered.  Instinctively she
+would have fled, but a hand on her shoulder pressed her back as she
+would have arisen, and she obeyed--as she had always obeyed him--as
+she always would.
+
+"Paradise unfinished--" he whispered, his face close to hers.  "You
+know what it is that's missing."
+
+Ah! could not a woman also know the longing, the vacancy, the solitude
+of an Eden incomplete!  She turned to him trembling, her lips half
+open, as though to welcome a long-hoped-for draught of happiness.
+
+Alas! it was not happiness, but misery that came; for Constance
+Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are
+withheld from none.  There was a sound of a distant shout--the chance
+call of some drunken reveller--far down the street, a tawdry,
+unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an
+illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just.
+Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire.
+It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm,
+another mental world.  He started, and half shivered as his hand
+dropped to his side.  His face showed haggard even in the moonlight.
+
+"My God! what am I saying?" he murmured to himself.
+
+Then presently he drew himself up, smiling bitterly.  "Some prominent
+citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodded toward
+the street.  "Don't you think you'd like Heart's Desire?"
+
+The moment of Eve--the woman's moment--the instant for her happiness
+was past and gone!  The light of the moon lay ghostly over all the
+world, but there was no radiance, no joy nor comfort in it now.
+
+The girl herself was silent.  She sat looking out over the street
+below, instinctively following Dan Anderson's gaze.  Voices came to
+them, clamorous, strident, coarse.  There lay revealed all that was
+crude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of
+Heart's Desire.  It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in
+which he had lived.  For a woman--for her--for this sweet girl of a
+gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous.  "Be
+just!  Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he
+saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.
+
+"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude
+which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in."
+
+His face was averted as he walked beside her.  There was no word that
+he could say.  Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not
+know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood
+and in some part forgave.
+
+"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at
+length from the door of Curly's house.
+
+Choking, he left her.  As he stumbled blindly back, over the
+_arroyo_, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a
+shooting star.  Dully he watched it, and for him it was the flaming
+sword barring the gates of Eden.
+
+Hours later--for sleep was not for him--Dan Anderson stood waiting for
+the sun to rise over old Carrizo.  Far off, along the pathway of the
+morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the
+combat, and the grovelling.  "No, not for me; not there!" he said,
+conviction coming to him once more.
+
+He turned then and glanced down the single street of Heart's Desire, a
+street as straggling and purposeless as his own misdirected life--a
+wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion.
+Longer he looked, and stronger the conviction grew.  "No, no," he
+said, clenching his hand; "not here for her--not here!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
+Legs_
+
+Time wore on at Heart's Desire, uncalendared and unclocked.  The sun
+rose, passed through a sky impenetrably blue, and sank behind Baxter
+Peak at evening.  These were the main events of the day.  All men had
+apparently long ago forgotten the departure of the stage-coach that had
+borne away at one voyaging both Eve and Eastern Capital.  Eve had gone
+forever, as she supposed, although Capital secretly knew full well that
+it, at least, was coming back again.
+
+The population shifted and changed, coming and going, as was the wont
+of the land, but none questioned the man booted and spurred who rode
+out of town or who came into town.  Of late, however, certain booted
+and bearded men wandered afoot over the mountain sides, doing strange
+things with strange instruments.  A railroad was about to cross the
+country somewhere.  Grave and moody, Heart's Desire sat in the sun, and
+for two months did not mention the subject which weighed upon its mind.
+Curly broke the silence one morning at a plebiscite of four men who
+gathered to bask near Whiteman's corral.
+
+"I hit the trail of them surveyors," said he, "other side of Lone
+Mountain, day before yestiday.  They've got a line of pegs drove in the
+ground.  Looks like they was afraid their old railroad was goin' to git
+lost from 'em, unless they picketed it out right strong."
+
+Reproachful eyes were turned on Curly, but he went on.
+
+"It's goin' to run right between Carrizoso ranch and the mouth of our
+canon," said he.  "You'll have to cross it every time you come to town,
+McKinney.  When she gits to runnin' right free and general, there'll be
+a double row of cow corpses from here to Santa Rosa.  What this here
+new railroad is a-goin' to do to your English stockholders, Mac, is a
+deep and abidin' plenty."
+
+McKinney made no reply, but looked stolidly out across the valley.
+
+"Them fellers come up into town for tobacco, Doc." Curly threw out the
+suggestion cheerfully.
+
+"Tobacco ain't _drugs_," said Doc Tomlinson, annoyed.  He was
+sensitive about allusions to his stock of drugs, which had been
+imported some years before, and under a misapprehension as to Heart's
+Desire's future.
+
+"We might shoot up the surveyors," said Curly, tentatively.  But Dan
+Anderson shook his head.
+
+"That's the worst of it," he answered, "We might shoot any one of us
+here, and the world wouldn't care.  But if we shot even a leg off one
+of the least of these, them States folks would never rest content.  For
+me, I'm goin' in with the railroad.  Looks like I'd have to be
+corporation counsel."
+
+"Well, I reckon we won't have to drive our cows quite so far to
+market," apologized McKinney, striving to see the silver lining.
+
+"Oh, drop it," snapped Doc Tomlinson.  "I might as well say I could get
+in my drugs easier.  Cows can walk; and as for importin' things,
+everybody knows that Tom Osby can haul in everything that's needed in
+this valley."
+
+The members of the plebiscite fell silent for a time, willing to wait
+for Tom Osby's arrival, whenever that might be.
+
+"Now, we ain't downtrod none in this country," finally began Doc
+Tomlinson, who had made political speeches in Kansas.
+
+"Is _any_body?" asked Curly, who had never lived anywhere but on the
+free range.
+
+"We've had three squares a day," said McKinney.  "This country's just
+as good as the States."
+
+"States!" cried Dan Anderson.  "We've got a state of our own, or did
+have, right here, the Free State of Heart's Desire.  But it ain't good
+enough for us.  We want to hitch our little wagon to the star of
+progress.  I reckon we oughtn't to holler if the star travels some
+fast.  It was ours, the Free State of Heart's Desire!  And we--well--"
+
+"Well," said Curly, ruminatingly, "I don't see as ole Carrizo is
+frettin' any about these here things."  He glanced up at the big
+mountain whose shadow lay athwart the valley.  Dan Anderson gazed
+thither as well.  McKinney sat looking quietly up the street.
+
+"No use frettin' about it, anyhow," said he, in his matter-of-fact way.
+"And as to Tom Osby, fellers, I'll bet a plug of tobacco that's him
+pullin' in at the head of town right now."
+
+"Just like I said," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "He's good enough
+railroad for any one, and he's safe!  I wonder what did he bring this
+time."
+
+What Tom Osby brought this time, besides sundry merchandise for
+Whiteman the Jew, was a parrot and a pair of twins.  Neither of these
+specialties had ever before been seen in Heart's Desire.
+
+"Twins!" exclaimed Dan Anderson, when the facts were divulged, "and a
+parrot!"
+
+Tom Osby, after making known the full nature of his cargo, discharged
+divers boxes, bales, and other packages at the store of Whiteman the
+Jew.  The parrot was not disposed to wait for the close of these
+formalities.  From under the white cover of the wagon there came sounds
+of profane speech.  Tom Osby paused and filled his pipe.  "Him?" said
+he, jerking his head toward the cover, as he scratched a match on the
+side of the wagon seat.  "He's a shore peach.  Talked to me all the way
+from Vegas down."
+
+"Quork!" said the parrot.  "Look out!  Look out!  Brrrrrrrr--awk--awk!
+Quork!"
+
+"I told you so," said Tom.
+
+"Oh, dang it, I'm tired!" continued the bird.
+
+"This," remarked Dan Anderson, "seems to be a cultivated gentleman.
+But how about the twins?  Where are they?  And might we--er--ask whose
+are they?"
+
+"Them?" said Tom.  "Why, they're for Curly.  They're asleep down under
+the seat here.  Now, between the parrot and them twins, my trip down
+ain't been any lonesome to speak of."
+
+All eyes were turned on Curly, the newly wedded cow puncher, who
+blushed a bright brick red to the roots of his hair.  "Wh--where did
+they come from?" stammered he.
+
+"I presume, Curly," said Dan Anderson, gravely, "like enough they came
+from somewhere over on the Brazos, your earlier home.  Why didn't you
+tell us you were a married man?"
+
+"I ain't--I never was!" cried Curly, hotly.  "I never did have no twins
+nowhere.  Where'd you git 'em, Tom?"
+
+The freighter threw his leg across the seat.  "Oh, they're yours all
+right, I reckon, Curly," said he.  "Mother's dead.  No relations.  They
+come from Kansas, where all the twins comes from.  I found 'em waitin'
+up there in Vegas, billed through to you.  Both dead broke, both plumb
+happy, and airy one of 'em worth its weight in gold.  Its name is
+Susabella and Aryann, or somethin' like that.  Shall I wake it up?
+It's both alike."
+
+"Now, why, my woman's folks," began Curly, "up there in Kansas--I
+reckon maybe _that's_ how it happened!  She had a sister done married
+a Baptis' preacher, onct.  Say, now, I bet a horse that's right how
+this here happened.  Say, they was so pore they didn't have enough to
+eat."
+
+"Letter come with 'em," said Tom, taking out a handful of tobacco from
+his pocket with the missive.  "I reckon, that explains it, I wouldn't
+take a thousand dollars for 'em if they was mine.  Here, you kids, get
+out of there and come and see the nice gentlemen.  Here they are,
+fellers."
+
+He haled forth from beneath the wagon cover two solemn-eyed and sleepy
+little girls, perhaps five years of age, and of so close a personal
+resemblance to each other as impressed all as uncanny.  The four men
+stepped to the wagon side, and in silence gazed at the curly-headed
+pair, who looked back, equally silent, upon the strange group
+confronting them.  At length the twins buried their faces in Tom Osby's
+overalls.
+
+"Look here, friend," said Tom Osby to Curly, with asperity, "if you
+don't want these here twins, why, I'll take 'em off your hands mighty
+damn quick.  They're corral broke and right well gentled now, half good
+stock anyway, and is due to be right free steppers.  If you don't want
+'em, they're mine for the board bill."
+
+But Curly stepped up and laid an awkward hand on the head of each of
+the twins.  "Fellers," said he, "I ain't got a whole lot of experience
+in this here twin game, but this goes.  These here twins is mine.  This
+is some sudden, but I expect it'll tickle the little woman about half
+to death.  I reckon I can get enough for 'em all to eat, somehow."
+
+McKinney looked at him with anger in his gaze.  "I told you, Curly," he
+reminded the cow puncher with undue emphasis, "that you was drawin' ten
+extry from day before yestiday.  I reckon the stockholders can stand
+that."
+
+"That'll make it about break even," Curly answered simply.
+
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, "if either of them twins should need any
+drugs--"
+
+"Drugs!" snorted Dan Anderson.  "What would they want with drugs?
+After they've run around in here for two weeks, you couldn't kill 'em
+with an axe.  If the coyotes don't catch 'em, there's nothing else can
+happen to 'em."
+
+"I'll give you about eight dollars for the green canary, Tom," said Doc
+Tomlinson.  "I want to hang him in my store."
+
+"But I want to hang him in my wagon," objected Tom Osby.  "He's
+company.  You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town."  His
+voice was plaintive.
+
+"The court rules," observed Dan Anderson, judicially, "that the parrot
+goes with the twins."  And it was finally so decided by the referendum.
+Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common
+carrier, drove off with Curly across the _arroyo_ in search of a new
+mother for the twins.
+
+The Littlest Girl, Curly's wife, read the letter which Tom offered.
+Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the
+Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood
+at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby's
+hand.
+
+"Babies!" cried she.  "You poor little babies!  Oh!"  And so she
+gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly
+head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter
+on his wagon seat.  Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across
+the _arroyo_.  Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart's Desire
+became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.
+
+Within a few weeks the parrot and the twins had so firmly established
+themselves in the social system of the place as to become matters of
+regular conversation.  Curly never appeared at the forum of Whiteman's
+corral without finding himself the recipient of many queries.
+
+"Why, them twins," he replied one day, "they're in full charge of the
+_rodeo_.  They've got me and the woman hobbled, hitched, and
+side-lined for keeps.  Dead heat between them and Bill, the parrot.
+They're in on all the plays together.  Wherever they go, he's right
+after 'em, and he night-and-day-herds 'em closer'n a Mexican shepherd
+dog does a bunch of sheep.  Now, I blew in last night, intoe their
+room, and there was old Bill, settin' on the foot of the bed, watchin'
+of 'em, them fast asleep.  'Too late now,' says he to me.  'Too late.
+All over now!' I didn't know what he meant till I looked under the
+bedclothes; and there was a pan full of ginger cakes the woman had made
+for the fam'ly.  You needn't tell me a parrot can't think."
+
+"It would seem," said Dan Anderson, meditatively, "that we may report
+progress in civilization."
+
+"But say, fellers," remarked Curly, taking off his hat and scratching
+his head perplexedly, "sometimes I wish Bill was a chicken hawk instead
+of a talker.  There is rats, or mice, or something, got into this
+valley at last."
+
+"Do you want any drugs?" asked Doc Tomlinson, suddenly.
+
+"No, not yet," Curly shook his head.  "Never did see airy rat or mouse
+round here, but still, things is happenin' that looks right strange.
+
+"It's this-a-way, fellers," he continued, "--set down here and let me
+tell you."  So they all sat down and leaned back against the fence of
+Whiteman's corral.
+
+"Last Christmas," Curly began at the beginning, "why, you see, my girl,
+she got a Christmas present from some of her folks back in Kansas, in
+the States.  It was a pair of candy legs."
+
+"What's that, Curly?" said Dan Anderson, half sitting up.
+
+"Legs," said Curly, "made out of candy, about so long, or maybe a
+little longer.  Red, and white, and blue--all made out of candy, you
+know.  Shoes on the feet, buckles on the shoes, and heels.  Sort of
+frill around on top.  The feller that made them things could shore do
+candy a-plenty.  They was too pretty to eat up, so the little woman,
+she done put 'em in the parlor,--on the table like, in the middle of
+the floor; tied 'em together with a blue ribbon and left 'em there.
+Now, you all know right well that's the only pair of candy legs in
+Heart's Desire."
+
+"That's legitimate distinction, Curly," Dan Anderson decided.  "It
+entitles your family to social prominence."
+
+"Oh, we wasn't stuck up none over that," laughed Curly, modestly, "but
+we always felt kind of comfortable, thinkin' them there legs was right
+there on the parlor table in the other room.  You can't help feelin'
+good to have some little ornyment like that around the place, you know,
+special if there's women around.  But now, fellers, what I was goin' to
+say is, there's mice, or rats, got in on this range some how, and
+they--"
+
+"Why didn't you put 'em in a box?" asked McKinney, severely.  "You
+ain't got sense enough to know the difference between a hair rope and a
+can of California apricots."
+
+"Put 'em in a box?" cried Curly.  "Why?  Them was _ornyments_!  Now
+you ain't got a ornyment on your whole place, except a horned toad and
+four tarantulas in a teacup.  Now a real ornyment is somethin' you put
+on the parlor table, man, and show it free and open.  It's sort of
+sacred like."
+
+"Not for rats," said McKinney.
+
+"You'd better keep your eye on that parrot," warned Doc Tomlinson.
+"About to-morrow, you tell us what you find out."
+
+But on the morrow the mystery remained unsolved.  "One heel's plumb
+gone," said Curly, sighing.  "And they've begun on the toe of the other
+foot."
+
+Bill, the parrot, remained under increasing suspicion.  "He's got a
+wall eye," said McKinney, "and I never seen a wall eye in a man, woman,
+or mustang, that it didn't mean bad.  This here bird ain't no Hereford,
+nor yet a short-horn.  He's a dogy that ain't bred right, and he ain't
+due to act right."  All Curly could do was to shake his head,
+unpersuaded.
+
+Meantime, there went on in the little cabin across the _arroyo_, a
+reproduction of an old, old drama.  Should we, after all, criticise
+these two descendants of the first sweet human woman of the world?
+Consider; to their young and inexperienced eyes appealed all the
+fascinations of this august but tempting object, new, strange,
+appealing.  For a time their hearts were strong, upon their souls
+rested the ancient mandate of denial.  They gazed, short breathed, in
+awe, upon this radiantly bestriped, unspeakably fascinating, wholly and
+resplendently pulchritudinous creation.  They must have known that it
+was a part of the family pride, a part of the parlor--a part, indeed,
+of the intermingled fabric of the civilization of Heart's Desire!  And
+yet--alas!
+
+One morning the twins foregathered in the parlor.  The hour of
+temptation, as is always the case, found all things well ordered for
+the success of evil.
+
+"Everybody's gone," whispered Suzanne.  "There ain't nobody here at
+all."
+
+"Only Bill," said Arabella, looking at the parrot, which regarded them
+with a badly bored aspect.  "I wonder if he'd tell?"
+
+"Oh, dang it all!" remarked Bill; "I'm tired!"
+
+"He's awful," remarked Arabella.  "He swears.  Folks that swears goes
+to the bad place.  Besides, Bill wouldn't tell, would you, Bill?"
+
+"He'll go to sleep," said Suzanne.  "Besides, we ain't goin' to bite
+off only just a little _bit_ of a _bite_!  Nobody'll never notice it."
+
+Twofold Eve edged up to the centre table.  "You first," said Arabella.
+
+"No, you."
+
+"You first," insisted Arabella.  "I'm afraid.  Bill, he's lookin'."
+
+"I ain't afraid," Suzanne asserted boldly, and stretched out her hand.
+
+That was the time when the first heel disappeared.  Even as Suzanne's
+white teeth closed upon it, the parrot gave a vast screech of
+disapproval.  "Quork!" cried he.  "Look out!  Look out!"  At which
+warning both the twins fled precipitately underneath the bed; whence
+presently their heads peered out, with wide and frightened eyes.
+
+"I didn't have my bite," whimpered Arabella.
+
+"It's only Bill!"  Suzanne was disgusted with herself for running.
+"Come on.  Who's afraid?"  Arabella chose the toe of the other foot.
+
+Thus it was that temptation, at first insidious, at length
+irresistible, had its way.  The lustre paled and dimmed on one gaudily
+bepainted leg.  The remaining heel disappeared.  A slight nick became
+visible on the cap of the right knee.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" said Curly, scratching his head, as he observed
+these developments.
+
+"So'll I," remarked Bill, in frank friendship.  "Ha!  Ha!"
+
+Curly looked at him pugnaciously for a moment.  "For one cent, Bill,"
+said he, "I'd wring your cussed green neck for you.  I'll bet a hundred
+you're the feller that's been a-doin' all this devilment.  Here
+you,--Susy--Airey,--have you seen Bill a-eatin' the ornyment?"  Both
+the young ladies solemnly and truthfully declared that they had never
+noticed any such thing; and pointed out that parrots, in their belief,
+did not eat candy.
+
+The next day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further.
+Only Bill was present when Arabella broke out into tears.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked stout-hearted Suzanne.
+
+"Why, we--we--we--can't eat it but _once_," mourned Arabella.
+"Now--now--now it's most _gone_!  OO--oo--oo!"
+
+"It's good," said Suzanne.
+
+"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.
+
+Suzanne evaded this question.  "How can we _help_ it, when it looks so
+pretty, and tastes so good?  They ought to put 'em in a _box_.  I
+c-c-can't help it!"  And now tears broke from her eyes also.  They
+leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept.  But even as
+they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table,
+reached out toward the disfigured remnant.  A week later the last bite
+was taken.  The parlor table was bare and vacant.  Heart's Desire, in
+all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!
+
+That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of
+Whiteman's corral.  "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he,
+gloomily.  "The finish ain't far off.  You all come on over across the
+_arroyo_ with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing
+happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."
+
+It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and
+Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the _arroyo_.  They found
+Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in aprons full of pinon
+chips for the kitchen stove.
+
+The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one
+in Heart's Desire.  The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of
+the other room was swept clean, spick and span.  A chair stood exactly
+against the wall.  The parlor table--ah, appalling spectacle! the
+parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any
+sort whatever!
+
+"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!"  His hand instinctively
+reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the
+parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.
+
+"All over now!" remarked Bill.  "All over!  Too late!  Quork!"
+
+"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person.  We
+got to look in his teeth."
+
+"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson.  "He hasn't got any teeth."  The
+entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon
+them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his
+honor.
+
+Dan Anderson, his hands in his pockets, turned and strolled alone into
+the other room, and thence out of the door into the sunlight, where the
+twins were still continuing their unwonted industry at the chip pile.
+He stood and looked at them, saying no word, but with a certain smile
+on his face.  A corner of each apron fell down, spilling the chips upon
+the ground.  The other hand of each twin was raised as though to wipe a
+furtive tear.  Dan Andersen put out his arms to them.
+
+"Come here, little women," he said softly, and took them in his arms.
+One chubby face rested against each side of his own.  His long arms
+tightened around them protectingly.  Tears now began to wet his cheeks,
+falling from the eyes of the twins.
+
+"You--you won't tell?" whispered Suzanne, in his right ear, and
+Arabella begged as much upon the left.
+
+"No," said Dan Anderson, hugging them the tighter, "I won't tell."
+
+"It's gone!" said Suzanne, vaguely.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's gone."  He turned at the sound of
+voices.  Curly appeared at the door, carrying in his hand a limp,
+bedraggled figure.
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "I take to be the remains of our late friend
+Bill, the parrot.  What made you, Curly?"
+
+"Well," said Curly, defensively, as he held the body of Bill suspended
+by the head between two fingers, "I was lookin' for his teeth, to see
+if he had any candy in 'em, and he bit my finger nigh about off.  So I
+just wrung his neck.  Do you reckon he'd be good fried?"
+
+"He'd like enough be tolerable tough," said McKinney.  "Them parrots
+gets shore old."
+
+"You ought to have some drugs to tan his hide," Doc Tomlinson
+volunteered hopefully.  "It'd be right stylish on a hat."
+
+Dan Anderson gazed at Curly with reproach in his eyes.  "Now, I just
+wrung his neck," repeated the latter, protesting.
+
+"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "and you've wrung the wrong neck.  Bill was
+innocent."
+
+"Then who done et the legs?"
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "brings me again to the position which I
+enunciated this morning.  In these modern days of engineers, mining
+companies, parrots, and twins, the structure of our civilization is so
+complex as to require the services of a highly intelligent corporation
+counsel.  You ask who ate the candy ornament, representation, or image
+formerly existent on your premises.  I reply that in all likelihood it
+was done by a corporation; but these matters must appear in court at a
+later time."
+
+"Well," said McKinney, "it looks like the joke was on us."
+
+Dan Anderson smiled gravely.  "In the opinion of myself and the
+consolidation which I represent," said he, and he hugged the twins, who
+looked down frightened from his arms, "the joke is on Bill, the
+prisoner at the bar."
+
+The group would have separated, had it not been for a sudden
+exclamation from Curly.  "Ouch!" cried that worthy, and cast from him
+the body of Bill.  supposedly defunct.  "He bit me again, blame him!"
+said Curly, sucking his thumb.
+
+"If he bit you for true," said McKinney, who was of a practical turn of
+mind, "like enough he ain't been dead at all."
+
+Corroboration was not lacking.  The prisoner at the bar, thrown
+violently upon the ground, now sat up, half leaning against a pinon
+log, and contemplated those present with a cynical and unfriendly gray
+eye.
+
+"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, regarding him, "you get him a few drugs, and
+he'll be just as good as new, right soon."
+
+"All I got to say," grumbled Curly, "is, for a thing that ain't got no
+teeth, and that's dead, both, he can bite a leetle the hardest of
+anything I ever did see."
+
+"Yet it is strange," remarked Dan Anderson, "that the innocent
+bystander should sit up and take notice, after all.  How are you
+feeling, friend?"
+
+This to Bill, who was now faintly fanning a wing and ruffling up his
+yellow crest.
+
+"I'm mighty tired," said Bill.
+
+"I don't blame you," remarked Dan Anderson, cheerfully, turning to put
+down Suzanne and Arabella safe within the door, "but as corporation
+counsel I am bound to protect the interests of my clients.  Run, you
+kids!
+
+"As to you, Curly," he continued, "you represent, in your ignorance,
+ourselves and all Heart's Desire.  We have intrusted to us a candy
+palladium of liberty, which, being interpreted, means a man's chance to
+be a grown man, with whiskers, in a free state of Heart's Desire.  What
+do we do then?  Ask in a railroad corporation, and shut our eyes!"
+
+"And a corporation," said Curly, meditatively, "can be a shore cheerful
+performer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
+of Croquet and other Pastimes_
+
+"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot.  Hurry up," said McKinney, who was
+nervous.
+
+"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former.  "This here croquet is
+a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin'
+to be hurried none."
+
+"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson.
+"Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here
+balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace
+to civilization."
+
+"_Pronto_!  _Pronto_!  Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch
+on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was
+probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and
+Rio Grande rivers.  There were certain features of the contest in
+question which were perhaps not usual.  Indeed, I do not recall ever to
+have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high
+contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls
+and blue shirts.  But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed,
+with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly
+between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the
+other.
+
+"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for
+arguments of counsel.  Curly, you are a disgrace.  You and McKinney
+ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of
+savvy.  Can't you hit that stake?"
+
+"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly.  "I
+ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me.
+If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over
+Carrizy Mountain that last carrom.  You watch me when onct I get the
+hang of this thing."
+
+"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney.  "A cow puncher
+ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."
+
+"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly.  "Now you change
+around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you
+to a finish.  Bet you three _pesos_.  Of course, I can't play this
+thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot.  I wonder what my mammy'd
+say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little
+wooden tack hammer."
+
+"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an
+advertisement," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flushing.
+
+"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson.  "I didn't figure on what
+it might do to our mortality tables.  You fellows can't play the game
+wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns
+on.  Here, all of you, come over here.  The umpire decides that you've
+got to check your guns during the game.  I don't mind bein' umpire in
+the ancient and honorable game of croquet, but I ain't goin' to assume
+no unpaid obligations as coroner."
+
+[Illustration: "'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns
+during the game.'"]
+
+With some protests all those engaged handed their belts to Dan
+Anderson, who casually flung them over a projecting cedar limb of the
+fence.  "For shame!  Curly," said he.  "Talk about tenderfeet!  Here
+you are, wearin' a pearl handle on your gun, just like a cheap Nebraska
+sheepherder with social ambitions.  I thought you was a real cowman.
+The court fines you--"
+
+"It ain't my fault," said Curly, blushing.  "The girl--the little
+woman--that's my wife--she done that last Christmas.  She allowed it
+was fine--and it goes."
+
+"Yes, and put enough money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet
+set for the family.  Ain't that awful!  All this comes of takin' a
+daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns.
+We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down in
+here."
+
+"That's so," said McKinney, scratching his head.  "Times is changin'.
+That reminds me, I ordered a new suit of clothes by mail from
+Philadelphy, and they ought to be just about due when Tom Osby comes
+down; and that ought to be to-day."
+
+"That's so," assented Doc Tomlinson.  "He's got a little bill of goods
+for me, too."
+
+"Oh, why, oh, why this profligacy, Doc?" said Dan Anderson.  "Didn't
+you order two pounds of alum the last trip Tom made?  What do you want
+of so many drugs, anyhow?"
+
+"Hush, fellers," said Curly.  "Listen a minute!"
+
+Curly's ears had detected the rattle of distant wagon wheels.  "That's
+Tom comin' now," said he.  "He's a heap more regular than the Socorro
+stage.  That's him, because I can hear him singin'."
+
+"Tom, he's stuck on music," said McKinney.
+
+Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle
+coming down the canon; and presently there was borne to our ears the
+sound of Tom Osby's voice in his favorite melody:--
+
+  "I never _lo-o-oved_ a fo-o-o-o-nd ga-a-a-z-elle!"
+
+He proclaimed this loudly.
+
+We knew that Tom would drive up to Whiteman's store, hence we waited
+for him near the corral fence.  As he approached and observed our
+occupation he arrested his salutations and gazed for a moment in silent
+meditation.
+
+"Prithee, sweet sirs," said he, at length, "what in blazes you doin'?"
+
+"These gentlemen," said Dan Anderson from the fence, "are engaged in
+showin' the endurin' quality of the Anglo-Saxon temperament.  Wherever
+the Saxon goes he sets up his own peculiar institutions.  What!  Shall
+New Mexico be behind New York, or New England?  This croquet set cost
+eighteen dollars to get here from Chicago.  Get down, Tom, you're in on
+the game."
+
+But Tom picked up his reins and clucked to his team.  "Excuse _me_,
+fellers," said he.  "That there looks too frisky for me.  I got to
+think of my business reputation."  He passed on up the street.
+
+"What's the matter with Tom?" asked Curly.  "Seems like he wasn't
+feelin' right cheerful, some way."  Dan Anderson gazed after the
+teamster pensively.
+
+"Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom," said he.  "Let's
+go find out what it is, fellows."  He disengaged the respective
+six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly
+clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman's commercial emporium, where Tom
+Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon.
+This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up
+to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was
+his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers's restaurant, but to
+his own adobe down the _arroyo_.  We looked at each other in silence.
+
+"Something on his mind," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"He didn't bring my clothes," said McKinney.
+
+"Nor my drugs," said Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"And yet," said Curly, who was observant, "he kep' one box in the
+wagon.  Couldn't see the brand, but she's there all right."
+
+"Curly," said Dan Anderson, "you are appointed a committee of one to
+follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means."
+
+Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom
+Osby's adobe.  The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the
+wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under
+the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters.  He then began to
+search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was
+attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not
+determine.  With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another
+at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom
+Osby's team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher
+can command on foot.  When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled
+in a frown.
+
+"Fellers," said he.  "I didn't think it of him!  This here ain't right.
+Tom Osby's got a baby in there, and he's squeezin' the life out of it.
+Listen!  Come on now.  Do you hear that?  How's that?  Why, I tell
+you--why, dang _me_ if it ain't _singin'_!"
+
+There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody,
+thin, quavering, distant, weird.  As it rose upon the hot afternoon air
+it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible.  The spine of
+each man crawled.
+
+Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who
+maintained his self-possession.  He smiled gently.  "Now," said he, "we
+certainly are fixed; Heart's Desire ain't benighted any after this."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Curly questioned.
+
+"Poor cow puncher," replied Dan Anderson, "I have to do the thinkin'
+for you, and I ain't paid for it.  Who, if not the Learned Counsel on
+my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this
+community?  Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city?
+Who put up the electric lightin' and heatin' plant, and installed the
+forty-eight miles of continuous trolley track all under one transfer
+system?  Who built the courthouse and the red brick schoolhouse, with
+nine school-teachers fresh from Connecticut?  Who planned the new
+depot?  Who got a new leather lounge for the managin' editor of our
+daily newspaper?  Who built the three new smelters?  Who filled our
+busy streets each evenin' with throngs of happy-faced laborers pacin'
+home at night after four hours' pleasant work each day in our elegantly
+upholstered quartz mines?  Was it you, Curly, who made these different
+and several _pasears_ in progress?  Was it you, Doc, you benighted
+stray from the short-grass Kansas plains, where they can't raise Kafir
+corn?  Was it you, McKinney, you sour-dispositioned consumer of canned
+peas?  Nay, nay.  It was myself and my learned brother.  You ought to
+send us both to Congress."
+
+We gazed up the long, silent street of Heart's Desire, asleep in the
+all-satisfying sun, and it almost seemed to us that we could indeed see
+all these things that he had named.  The spell was broken by a renewal
+of the thin, high voice of this mysterious Thing in Tom Osby's house.
+
+"And now," resumed Dan Anderson, "as I remarked, havin' turned our
+hands to the stable things of life, and havin' builded well the
+structure of an endurin', permanent society, there remained for us no
+need save for the softenin' and refinin' touch of a higher culture.  We
+lacked nothing but Art.  Now, here she is!
+
+"What you're listenin' to, my countrymen, is music.  It ain't a baby,
+Curly.  Music, heavenly maid, is young in Heart's Desire, but it ain't
+any baby that you're listenin' to.  I told Tom Osby myself to look into
+the phonograph business some time if he got a chance.  Gentlemen, I now
+bid you follow me, to greet Art upon its arrival in our midst.  I must
+confess that Tom Osby is actin' like a blamed swine over this thing,
+tryin' to keep it all to himself."
+
+The phonograph inside the adobe switched from one tune to another.
+"Don't that sound like the Plaza Major in old Chihuahua by moonlight?"
+cried McKinney, as a swinging band march came squealing out through the
+door.  "That's a piece by a Mexican band.  Can't you hear the
+choo-choo, and the wee-wee, and the bum-bum?  They're all there, sure's
+you're born!"
+
+"If she plays 'La Paloma,' or that 'Golondrina' thing, I'm goin' to
+shoot," threatened Curly.  "I've done danced to them things at more'n a
+thousand _bailes_ here and in Texas, and if this is Art, she's got to
+do different."
+
+"Gentlemen," Dan Anderson suggested, "let us go in and watch Tom Osby
+gettin' his savage breast soothed."
+
+Tom Osby started as he saw shadows on the floor; but it was too late.
+He was discovered sitting on the bed, in rapt attention to the machine
+industriously grinding away upon the table.  Dan Anderson, with great
+gravity, took up a collection of four pins from each of the newcomers
+and handed them to Tom.  "No bent ones," said he.  "It's a good show;
+but, tell us, what are you doin'?  This is worse than croquet.  And we
+asked you in on our game, too.  Ain't you playin' it just a little bit
+lonesome this way?"
+
+Tom frowned in perturbation.  "Well, I was goin' to spring her on you
+about to-night, up at the Lone Star," said he; "but I couldn't wait.
+Ain't she a yaller flower?  Say, I played her every night from Vegas
+down for five nights--Pecos Crossin', Salt Wells, Maxwell's, Hocradle
+Canon, Jack's Peak--all the way.  After I'd get my horses hobbled out
+and get my bed made down, I'd set her up on the front seat and turn her
+loose.  Coyotes--you'd ought to heard 'em!  When you wind her up plumb
+tight and turn the horn the right direction, you can hear her about a
+mile."
+
+"That," said Dan Anderson, "must have been a gladsome journey."
+
+"For sure," said Tom Osby.  "Look at the reecords--whole box of 'em.
+Some of the stylishest singers in the business are in here.  Some of
+'em's Dago, I reckon.  Here's one, 'Ah, no Ginger.'"
+
+"That, probably," said Dan Anderson, "is 'Ah, non Giunge.'  Yes, it's
+Dago, but not bad for a lady with a four-story voice."
+
+"Here's another," said Tom; "'Down Mobile.'"
+
+"I know that one," said Curly.
+
+"Let me see it," said the impresario in charge.  "Ah, as I thought;
+it's 'La Donna e Mobile.'  This, bein' translated, means that any lady
+can change her mind occasionally, whether she comes from Mobile or not."
+
+"That's no dream," said Curly.  "Onct on the Brazos--"
+
+"Never mind, Curly.  Just feed that 'Donna' into the machine, Tom, and
+let's hear how it sounds once more."
+
+And so Tom Osby, proud in his new possession, played for his audience,
+there in the adobe by the _arroyo_; played all his records, or nearly
+all; played them over and over again.  It was nearly night when we left
+the place.
+
+"Excuse me," said Dan Anderson to me, with a motion as though adjusting
+a cravat upon my neck, "but your white tie is slipping around under
+your ear again."  And as we walked, I was sure that I saw an opera hat
+under his arm, though sober reason convinced me that we both were
+wearing overalls, and not evening clothes.
+
+"But did you notice," said Curly, after a while, "Tom, he's holdin' out
+on us.  That there music, it's all tangled up in my hair."  He removed
+his hat and ran a questioning hand through the matted tangle on his
+curly front.  "But," he resumed, "there was one piece he didn't play.
+I seen him slip it under the blankets on the bed."
+
+"How could he!" said Dan Anderson.  But memories sufficient came
+trooping upon him to cause him to forget.  He fell to whistling "La
+Donna e Mobile" dreamily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
+Laurie_
+
+The shadows of night had fallen when at length Tom Osby crept
+stealthily to his door and looked around.  The street seemed deserted
+and silent, as usual.  Tom Osby stepped to the side of the bed and
+withdrew from under the blankets the bit of gutta-percha which Curly
+had noticed him conceal.  He adjusted the record in the machine and
+sprung the catch.  Then he sat and listened, intent, absorbed,
+hearkening to the wonderful voice of one of the world's great
+contraltos.  It was an old, old melody she sang,--the song of "Annie
+Laurie."
+
+Tom Osby played it over again.  He sat and listened, as he had, night
+after night, in the moonlight on the long trail from Las Vegas down.
+The face of a strong and self-repressed man is difficult to read.  It
+does not change lightly under any passing emotion.  Tom Osby's face
+perhaps looked even harder than usual, as he sat there listening, his
+unlit pipe clenched hard between his hands.  Truant to his trusts,
+forgetful of the box of candy which regularly he brought down from
+Vegas to the Littlest Girl, Curly's wife; forgetful of many messages,
+commercial and social,--forgetful even of us, his sworn cronies,--Tom
+Osby sat and listened to a voice which sang of a Face that was the
+Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye.
+
+[Illustration: "A voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and
+of a Dark blue Eye."]
+
+The voice sang and sang again, until finally four conspirators once
+more approached Tom Osby's cabin.  He had forgotten his supper.  Dinner
+was done, in Heart's Desire, soon after noon.  Dan Anderson stood
+thoughtful for a time.
+
+"Let him alone, fellows," said he.  "I savvy.  That fellow's in love!
+He's in love with a Voice!  Ain't it awful?"
+
+Silence met this remark.  Dan Anderson seated himself on a stone, and
+we others followed his example, going into a committee of the whole,
+there in the night-time, on the bank of the _arroyo_.
+
+"Did you notice, Curly," asked Dan Anderson--"did you get a chance to
+see the name on the record of the singer who--who perpetrated this?"
+
+"No," said Curly.  "I couldn't get a clean look at the brand, owin' to
+Tom's cuttin' out the thing so sudden from the bunch.  It was somethin'
+like Doughnuts--"
+
+"Exactly--Madame Donatelli!  I thought I rather recognized that voice
+my own self."
+
+"Dago!" said McKinney with scorn.
+
+"By trainin', though not by birth," admitted Dan Anderson.  "Georgia
+girl originally, they tell me, and Dagoized proper, subsequent.  All
+Yankee girls have to be Dagoized before they can learn to sing right
+good and strong, you know.  They frequent learn a heap of things
+besides 'Annie Laurie'--and besides singin'.  Oh, I can see the Yankee
+Dago lady right now.  Fancy works installed in the roof of her mouth,
+adjacent and adjoinin' to her tongue, teeth, and other vocal outfit.
+
+"Now, this here Georgia girl, accordin' to all stories, has sung
+herself into about a quarter of a million dollars and four or five
+different husbands with that voice of hers; and that same 'Annie
+Laurie' song was largely responsible.  Now, why, _why_, couldn't she
+have taken a fellow of her size, and not gone and made trouble for Tom
+Osby?  It wasn't fair play.
+
+"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn.  What
+does he see?  Madame Donatelli?  Does he see her show her teeth and bat
+her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers?
+Nay, nay.  What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know--"
+
+"Whoa!  Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney.  "This
+country's just as good as--"
+
+"No, let him go on," said Curly to McKinney.  "Onct over on the
+Brazos--"
+
+"Sometimes I think you fellows are inclined to be provincial," said Dan
+Anderson, calmly.  "Now, I'm not goin' to talk if you don't leave me
+alone.  Listen.  What does Tom Osby see in that horn that he's lookin'
+into?  I'll tell you.  He sees a plumb angel in white clothes and a
+blue sash.  She's got gray eyes and brown hair, and she's just a little
+bit shorter than will go right under my arm here when I stretch it out
+level."
+
+"That's about right!" said McKinney.
+
+"She's got on white," resumed Dan Anderson, casting a glance about him
+in the dusk of the evening.  "The girl's got to have on white.  There
+ain't no man can hold out when they come in white and have on a blue
+sash--it's no use tryin' then.
+
+"Now, there she is, a-settin' at the piano in there in the front
+parlor; daddy's gone out into the country after a load of wood, like
+enough; old lady's gone to bed, after a hard day's labor.  Honeysuckles
+bloomin' all around, because in New Jersey--"
+
+"It wasn't in New Jersey," said Learned Counsel, hastily, before he
+thought.
+
+"No, it was in New York," said McKinney, boldly.
+
+"You're all liars," said Curly, calmly; "it was onct on the Brazos."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Dan Anderson, "you are right.  It was once on the
+Brazos, and in Iowa, and in New York, and in New Jersey, and in
+Georgia.  Thank God, it was there, once upon a time, in all those
+places. . . .  And, as I was sayin', the birds was just twitterin' in
+the evergreen trees along the front walk, some sleepy, because it was
+just gettin' right dark.  Vines, you know, hangin' over the edge of the
+front porch, like.  Few chairs settin' around on the porch.  Just a
+little band of moonlight layin' there on the front steps, leadin' up
+like a heavenly walk, like a white path to Paradise--which was there in
+the front parlor, with the best angel there at home.
+
+"The high angel of this here Heaven, like I told you, she's a settin'
+there in white," he went on; "and with a blue sash--it was blue, now,
+wasn't it, fellows?  And she's lettin' her fingers, God bless 'em, just
+tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la, up and down the keys of the piano her
+dad gave her when she graduated.  And now she's sort of singin' to
+herself--half whisperin', soft and deep--I hate a thin-voiced woman, or
+a bad-tempered one, same as you do--she's just singin' about as loud as
+you can hear easy down as far as the front gate.  And--why, she's a
+singin' that same tune there, of 'Annie Laurie'! . . .  And in your
+heart you know it's true, every word of it, all the time, and at any
+station!" said Dan Anderson.
+
+"At any station!" said Curly.
+
+"At any station!" said McKinney,
+
+"At any station!" said Learned Counsel.
+
+There were no hats on at that moment.  To be sure, the evening air was
+a trifle warm.
+
+"And now," said Dan Anderson, after a while, "it's got Tom.  Now, why
+couldn't it have been a man-Dago to sing that air into the tuneful horn
+of the mechanical heavenly maid yonder?  No reason, only it's got to be
+a woman to sing that man's song of 'Annie Laurie.'  A man couldn't any
+more sing 'Annie Laurie' than you could make cocktails without bitters.
+The only way we can get either one of them here is in bulk, which we
+have done.  It's canned Art, that's all.  Owin' to our present
+transportation facilities, everything has to come here in cans."
+
+Dan Anderson arose and stretched out his arm.  "Gentlemen," said he, "I
+present to you Art!"  He raised before him an imaginary glass, which we
+all saw plainly.  "I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored
+combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it.
+Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art!  We are not quite provincial.  Listen
+at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . .  Shoot him up,
+boys!" he cried suddenly.  "I'm damned if I'm going to look all my days
+on the picture of a girl in a blue sash!  The chief end of man is to
+witness an ecru coyote and a few absolute human failures like you and
+me.  Down with the heavenly maid!  Shoot him up!  He's a destroyer of
+the peace!"
+
+So we shot up Tom's adobe for a time, joyously peppering the thick
+walls, until at length that worthy came out annoyed, a phonograph
+record in one hand and a gun in the other.
+
+"Don't, fellers," said he.  "You might break something."
+
+"Come out," said Dan Anderson.  "Not even grand opera lasts all night.
+Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant.  Come on.  Get ready
+to play croquet to-morrow.  It's safer."
+
+And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening.  Our
+little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson turned in at the post-office to see if the daily
+paper from El Paso had come in that month.
+
+It was something that Dan Anderson saw in the daily paper that caused
+him on the following day to lead Tom Osby aside.  "Did you know, Tom,"
+said he, "that that opera singer you've got in your box, the 'Annie
+Laurie' artist, is goin' to be down in this part of the world before
+long?"
+
+"I never _loved_ a fo-o-o-nd ga-aze-ll-lle!" began Tom Osby,
+defensively.
+
+"Well, it's true."
+
+"What are you tellin' me?" said Tom, scornfully.  "Comin' down here?
+Why, don't it say that them things is all sung by _artists_?"
+
+"So they are."
+
+"Well, now, a artist," said Tom Osby argumentatively, "ain't never
+comin' within a thousand miles of this here country.  Besides, a
+_artist_ is somebody that's _dead_."
+
+"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson.  "You've got to be
+dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art,
+of course.  It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will
+be just what it is to-day.  That's Art.  But I'm tellin' you the truth,
+Tom.  The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day.  She
+belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the
+name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life,
+but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything
+but boiled continuous.
+
+"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season.  They
+are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a
+moment, to catch a little of their financial breath.  The Southern
+Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad
+fares.  Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on
+the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the
+idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to
+sidetrack his whole _rodeo_ for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at
+the Sky Top hotel,--that new railroad health resort some Yankees have
+just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure
+in livin'."
+
+"How do you know _she'll_ be there?" asked Tom.
+
+"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it.  They
+think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both
+happy.  And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be
+down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."
+
+Tom Osby was silent.  The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a
+hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail.  "It ain't so," said Tom,
+at length.  "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso.  The
+dust's a fright."
+
+"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson.  "Now, the bull-ring over at
+Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera--especially for
+'Carmen'--which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight,
+anyway.  Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over
+there.  I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim
+smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension.  If
+Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso.
+He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.
+
+"But now," resumed he, "after they get done at El Paso, whatever they
+sing, the grub wagon will be located in the Sacramentos, while old
+Blauring, he goes on in advance and rides a little sign out near
+'Frisco and other places, where Art is patronized copious.  Yes,
+friend, 'Annie Laurie,' she'll be up in Sacramentos; and from all I can
+figure, there'll be trouble in that particular health resort."
+
+"Sometimes I think you're _loco_," said Tom Osby, slowly; "then again I
+think you ain't, quite.  The man who allows he's any better than this
+country don't belong here; but I didn't think you ever did."
+
+"No!" cried Dan Anderson.  "Don't ever say that of me."
+
+"Of course, I know folks is different," went on Tom Osby, presently.
+"They come from different places, and have lived different ways.  Me, I
+come from Georgy.  I never did have much chanct for edication, along of
+the war breakin' out.  My folks was in the fightin' some; and so I
+drifted here,"
+
+"You came from Georgia?" asked Dan Anderson.  "I was born farther
+north.  I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in
+all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart's Desire.
+The only real friends I ever had are here.
+
+"Now," he went on, "it's because I feel that way, and because you're
+going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next
+week to see if you can get a look at that 'Annie Laurie' woman--it's
+because of those things that I want to help you if I can.  And that's
+the truth--or something resemblin' it, maybe.
+
+"Now listen, Tom.  Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she's not dead.
+She was a Georgia girl herself--Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she
+had naturally a wonderful voice.  She went to Paris and Italy to study
+long before I came out West.  She first sang in Milan, and her
+appearance was a big success.  She's made thousands and thousands of
+dollars."
+
+"About how old is she?" asked Tom Osby.
+
+"I should think about thirty-five," said Dan Anderson.  "That is,
+countin' years, and not experience."
+
+"I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both."
+
+"Well, she came from Georgia--"
+
+"And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually.
+
+Dan Anderson was troubled.  His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's.
+
+"It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far."
+
+"I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly
+understanding.  "I can make it in less'n a week."
+
+"Tom," cried Dan Anderson, "don't!"
+
+But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never
+formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a
+country which held real men.
+
+"Do you know, Dan," said he, "if I could just onct in my life hear that
+there song right out--herself singin', words and all--fiddles, like
+enough; maybe a pianny, too--if I could just hear that!  If I _could_
+just hear--_that_!"
+
+"Tom!"
+
+They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke.  "There is
+some folks," said he, "that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of
+the folks that can't do things for keeps.  Some fellers has to just
+drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else
+common and useful--world's sort of fixed up that way, I reckon.  But
+folks that can do things for _keeps_--I reckon they're right proud,
+like."
+
+"Not if they really do the things that keep.  That sort ain't proud,"
+said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Now, I can just see her a-settin' there," went on the freighter.  "It
+sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around."
+
+"She was maybe standin' up."
+
+"She was a-settin' there," said Tom Osby, frowning; "right there at the
+pianny herself.  Can't you see her?  Don't you ever sort of imagine
+things yourself, man?"
+
+"God forbid!" said Dan Anderson.  "No, I can't imagine things.  That's
+fatal--I try to forget things."
+
+"Well," said Tom Osby, "I reckon I've been imaginin' things.  Now,
+there she's settin', right at the pianny, and sort of lettin' her
+fingers run up and down--"
+
+"Tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la?" said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Sure.  That's just it.  Tra-la-la-loo, loo-la-la-la, up and down the
+whole shootin' match.  And she sings!  Now what does she sing?  That
+song about Gingerbread?  That Mobile song?  No, not none.  It's 'Annie
+Laurie' she sings, man, it's 'Annie Laurie'!  Now, I freighted to El
+Paso before the railroad, and I know them boys.  They'll tear up the
+house."
+
+"She'll be wearin' black lace and diamonds," said Dan Anderson,
+irrelevantly; "and when she breathes she'll swell up like a toy
+balloon.  She'll bat her eyes.  They got to do those things."
+
+"Man," said Tom Osby, "there's times when I don't like you."
+
+"Well, then, cut out the lace.  I'll even leave off the diamonds."
+
+"She's settin' right there," said Tom Osby, wagging his forefinger,
+"and she's dressed in white--"
+
+"With a blue sash--"
+
+"Sure!  And she sings!  And it's 'Annie Laurie'!  And because I want my
+own share of things that's for keeps, though I ain't one of the sort
+that can do things for keeps, why, I want--why, you see--"
+
+"Yes, Tom," said Dan Anderson, gently, "I see.  Now, as you said, it's
+only a few days' drive, after all.  I'm goin' along with you.  There's
+watermelons near there--"
+
+"You _are loco_!"
+
+"Not yet," said his friend.  "I only meant to point out that the best
+melons these embalmed Greasers raise in their little tablecloth farmin'
+operations is right down there in the valley at the foot of the
+Sacramentos.  Now, you may have noticed that sometimes a fellow ought
+to cover up his tracks.  What's to hinder you and me just takin' a
+little _pasear_ down in toward the Sacramentos, on the southeast side,
+after a load of melons?  They're better than cactus for the boys here.
+That's straight merchandisin', and, besides, it's Art.  And--well, I
+think that's the best way.
+
+"We don't all of us always get our share, Tom," resumed Dan Anderson;
+"we don't always get our share of the things that are for keeps; but
+it's the right of every man to try.  Every once in a while, by just
+tryin' and pluggin' along on the dead square, a fellow gets something
+which turns out in the clean-up to be the sort that was for keeps,
+after all, even if it wasn't just what he thought he wanted."
+
+"Then you'll go along?"
+
+"_Si, amigo_!  Yes, I'll go along."
+
+They parted, Dan Anderson to seek his own lonely adobe.  There he
+closed the door, as though he feared intrusion.  The old restlessness
+coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room.
+Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and
+stood looking into it intently.  "Fool!" he muttered.  "Liar, and fool,
+and coward--you, you!  You'll take care of Tom, will you?  But who'll
+take care of _you_?"
+
+He seated himself on the blanketed bed, and picked up the newspaper
+which he had brought home with him.  He gazed long and steadily at it
+before he tore it across and flung it on the floor.  It held more news
+than he had given to Tom Osby.  In brief, there was a paragraph which
+announced the arrival in town of Mr. John Ellsworth, President of the
+new A. P. and S. E. Railway, his legal counsel, Mr. Porter Barkley,
+also of New York, and Miss Constance Ellsworth.  This party was bound
+for Sky Top, where business of importance would in all likelihood be
+transacted, as Mr. Ellsworth expected to meet there the engineers on
+the location of the road.
+
+"I ought not to go," said Dan Anderson to himself, over and over again.
+"I _must_ not go . . .  But I'm going!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with a
+Side-tracked Star_
+
+Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top,
+by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hills
+of the Sacramentos.  The silence was unbroken by any music from the
+"heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did the
+two occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from the
+reticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent,
+and mountains ever looking down.  The team of gnarled gray horses kept
+on their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouac
+after bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piled
+up at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tiny
+circle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire.  At last
+the line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavily
+timbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountain
+canons.
+
+"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the country
+of old.  "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've built
+their fool log hotel.  It beats the dickens how these States folks,
+that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way of
+livin'.  Why didn't they build it out of boards?  They've got a
+saw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in these
+mountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with.  Folks
+that builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain't
+got no boards.  But these States folks always was singerler."
+
+By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwing
+out the blanket rolls upon the ground.  "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie'
+machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattling
+of brass against the wagon box.  But his companion heeded him little,
+casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great horn
+swung wide, disconsolately.
+
+"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'.  It ain't the
+real thing.
+
+"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to do
+like you said you would.  Of course, I know melons don't grow up here
+in the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you was
+comin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
+
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.  "Wait," said he; "it'll be night
+before long.  Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around a
+little.  If you get scared, come back, and I'll--I'll take care of you.
+I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right on
+in alone, you know.  Tell her you know her preserved songs, and liked
+them so much you just had to come down here.  Tell her about the
+watermelons.  Tell her--"
+
+"You're actin' a _leetle_ nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby,
+keenly.  "But you watch Papa.  I been married four times, or maybe
+five, so what's a woman here or there to me?  What is there to any
+woman to scare a feller, anyway?"
+
+"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;--"there isn't--of course
+there isn't, of course not.  You're perfectly safe.  Why, just go right
+on up.  Have your sand along!"
+
+"Sure," said Tom Osby.  "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trail
+after a while."
+
+And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on
+the wagon tongue.  "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back.
+"If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and
+view the remains."
+
+Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat
+dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top.
+She was in effect a prisoner.  El Paso seemed like a dream, San
+Francisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spot
+upon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space.
+She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face that
+which boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
+
+The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor.  Unhappy Peruchini!  He
+started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep
+cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now
+resumed.
+
+"How dare you!" cried the _diva_.  "How dare you intrude on me?"
+
+"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini.  "What service is zere here?  I
+knock, but you do not hear.  Madame, what horror is zis place!"
+
+"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage.  "The beast!
+How dare he bring me here--_me_!" (she smote her bosom)--"who have
+sung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent--in Italy, Paris,
+London, St. Petersburg!  I shall not survive this!"
+
+"_Perfide_!" cried Peruchini, in assent.  "_Perfide_!  R-r-rascal!
+_Cochon_!  Pig unspikkab'!"
+
+"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for
+the scene.  "Behole!  It is I who have lofe you so long.  To lofe--ah,
+it is so divine!  How can you riffuse?"
+
+Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity.  "Never!" she
+cried.  "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this.  I bid you go.
+Begone!"
+
+"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands
+first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly
+tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling.  "I vill not be teniet!  Your
+puty, it is too much!  Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret?  Py
+Heaven, I--"
+
+With a swift motion he grasped her wrists.  Color rose to the Donatelli
+cheek.  Her eyes flashed.  She was about to sing.  She checked herself
+in time.  "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
+
+The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined.  And now the
+log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to
+light for them this unusual stage.  They did not hear the door open
+behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as
+there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack
+servant been directed thither.
+
+The door did open.  In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced.  He was dressed
+in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which
+did not disguise him nor the region which was his home.  His boots were
+new, sharp at toe and heel.  His hat, now removed, was new, but wide
+and white.  His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat,
+neither did white collar confine his neck.
+
+A quick glance took in the scene before him.  A little dark man was
+contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty
+that he had ever seen or dreamed.  Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into
+the room.  There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice
+that brought an instant conviction.  This--this was the Voice that he
+had worshipped!  This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen
+in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights
+afar in the desert lands.  She was assailed.  She was beset.  There
+swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life
+in that comer of the world.  In a flash his weapon leaped from its
+scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of
+this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
+
+"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby.  "Leggo!  What are you doin'
+there?  Break, now, and git out.  This ain't right."
+
+And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter
+sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion.  Tom Osby from that
+instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence.
+Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for
+warlike action rather than that now grown needful.
+
+Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards
+of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than
+actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of
+wide-eyed astonishment.  She had read in certain journals wild stories
+of doings of wild men.  Was that sort of thing actually true?
+
+"Sir," she said, "how dare you!"  At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length.  "I didn't know anybody
+was in here.  I just come in lookin' for somebody."
+
+She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep,
+dark eye, studying him curiously.
+
+"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom.  "I'm camped down the hill by
+the spring.  I left my _compadre_ there.  I--I belong to Heart's
+Desire, up north of here.  I--I come along in here this mornin'.  They
+said there wasn't any one in the parlor--they said there might be some
+one in the parlor, though, maybe.  And I was--I was--ma'am, I was
+lookin'--I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
+
+He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand against
+its edge.  "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
+
+"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice.  "From Heart's Desire?  What
+an exquisite name!  Where is it?  What is it?  That sounds like
+heaven," she said.
+
+"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't.  The water
+supply ain't reg'lar enough.  It's just a little place up in the
+mountains.  Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something like
+a hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!"  And he laughed so sudden and
+hearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out of
+all her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing.  It
+seemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matter
+where one found them.
+
+"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was her
+habit when perturbed.  "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
+
+"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much.
+It's mostly men."
+
+"But how do you live?  What do you do?"
+
+"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that.  But now you mention it, I
+can't say I really know.  The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
+
+"But yourself?"
+
+"Me?  I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire.
+There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon.  We held a
+co'te there, onct.  You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for a
+good many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of the
+country.  Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to the
+States.  Some stayed.  And it's--why, I can't rightly explain it to
+you, ma'am--but it's--it's Heart's Desire."
+
+The face of the woman before him softened.  "It's a beautiful name,"
+said she.  "Heart's Desire!"  She said it over and over again,
+wistfully.  The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocable
+loss.  "Heart's Desire!" she whispered--"I wonder--
+
+"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what do
+you do at Heart's Desire?"
+
+"Nothing," said Tom Osby.  "I just told you, I reckon."
+
+"Do you have any amusements?  Are there ever any entertainments?"
+
+"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
+
+She threw back her head and laughed.  There rose before her the picture
+of a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart,
+saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
+
+"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't do
+no good.  Why--I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'ry
+singers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more.  We
+couldn't afford it.  Onct we had a singin'-school teacher.  Fellow by
+the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music.  He
+used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.'  Used to have a
+daughter, and she sung, too.  Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the
+Prairie Flower.'  They made quite a lot of money holdin'
+singin'-school.  The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and
+that broke up the singin'-school.  There ain't been any kind of show at
+Heart's Desire for five years.  But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about
+that feller that had hold of you when I come in.  Did he hurt you any?"
+
+"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini!  He's a great artist."
+She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter.  "No, don't bother
+him.  We'll need him out on the Coast.  Don't you know, we are just
+here in the mountains for a little while."
+
+"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking back
+into his seat.  "I always did.  They always remind me of the Smokies,
+in Car'lina, back South."
+
+"You came from the South?"
+
+"Georgy, ma'am."
+
+"Georgia!  So did I!  We should be friends," she said, and, smiling,
+held out her hand.  Tom Osby took it.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you.  I've not been
+back home for a good many years.  I've been all over."
+
+"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly.  "I've been all over, too.
+But now, what brought you here?  Tell me, did you want to see me?"
+
+"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply.  "I said that's why I come!"
+
+"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing?  Ah, I wish that
+were not impossible."
+
+"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby.  "Though, of course, the
+boys would do anything for you they could.  What we want in Heart's
+Desire--why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again,
+everything.  Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe we
+was just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
+
+She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled.
+"Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it.  Up at Vegas
+I heard a funny sort of singin' machine.  It had voices in it.  Ma'am,
+it had a Voice in it.  It--it sung--" he choked now.
+
+"And some of the songs?"
+
+Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes.  She flushed
+like a girl as he nodded gravely.  "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
+
+"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath.  "It reconciles me to
+selling my art in that way.  No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
+
+Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
+
+"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he.  "I knew you sung it.  Ma'am, I
+played her all the way from Vegas down."
+
+"But why did you come?"  She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll.
+The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you.  I just come to see you, or to
+hear you, I can't rightly tell which.  It must have been both."  Now he
+arose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently.  "Ma'am," he went
+on, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me.  And I knowed
+that a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spot
+in her heart.  I come to hear you sing.  There's things that us fellers
+want, sometimes."
+
+The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
+
+"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on.  "You'll have to
+sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct,
+before I went away from home."
+
+The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it
+herself, unconsciously.
+
+"My friend," said she, "you're right.  I reckon I'll have to sing."
+
+"When?" said Tom Osby.
+
+"Now," said Alice Strowbridge.  She rose and stepped toward the piano
+open near the fire.
+
+The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a
+deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion.  A splendid creature,
+bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the
+less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands
+twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang
+in public as a child.  The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught
+a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land.  The
+red rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--half
+trembled.  Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known in
+years--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman.  There
+sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this
+lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place where
+men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that
+which was not theirs.  She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how
+she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her,
+what she had done for the heart of humanity.  Halfway across the floor
+she stopped, her hand at her throat.
+
+"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding,
+"for me to do this-a-way.  It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you
+to try to oblige a feller like me.  But, ma'am, all I can say is, all
+the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
+
+She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it.  Tom Osby grew more
+confident, more bold.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I
+reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort
+of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the
+things you are singin' right then.  Ain't that so?"
+
+"We have many costumes," said she, simply.  "We play many parts.
+Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
+
+"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume
+to go along with that?"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always
+seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right
+_white_."  He blushed and hastened to apologize.  "Not sayin' anything
+against that dress you've got on," he said.  "I never saw one as fine
+as that in all my life.  I never saw any woman, never in all my life,
+like you.  I--I--ma'am"--he flushed, but went on with a Titanic
+simplicity--"I _worship_ you, right where you stand, in that there
+dress; but--could you--"
+
+"You are an artist yourself!" cried she.  "Yes!  Wait!"
+
+In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at
+the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening.
+In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared.  The rich black
+laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone.
+She was clad in simple white--and yes! a blue sash was there.  The
+piled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids.  By
+the grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her that
+night.  For once in many years she was sincere.  Now she was a girl
+again, and back at the old home.  Those were the southern mountains
+half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days,
+swinging up again.  There was the gallery at the window of the old
+Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the
+trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, the
+unspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more!  The souls of a
+thousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came to
+her out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.
+
+And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all,
+to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--she
+sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat
+crumpled up, shaken, undone.
+
+She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she
+could not deprive herself of her own little triumph.  Or perhaps,
+deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it
+would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear.  She
+sang first the leading _arias_ of her more prominent operatic roles.
+She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance
+on a critical stage.  "_Nobil signors_," she sang, her voice
+lingering.  And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling
+measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in
+her rendition.  Melody after melody, score after score, product of the
+greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never
+definitely realized what privilege had been his.  She slipped on and
+on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least
+of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her
+fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no
+florid triviality from any land.  With a voice which had mastered the
+world, she sang the best of the masters of the world.  So music, with
+all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a
+time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later
+comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there
+in the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
+
+All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano
+broke, dropped, and paused.  And then, with no more interlude, that
+great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect
+human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie
+Laurie."  At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and
+a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with
+bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
+
+Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who
+approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery.
+Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to
+the hotel.  Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never
+got even so far as the door.  The voice of Donatelli caught and held
+him as it had her other auditor.  He stopped midway of the gallery,
+listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away,
+returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines.  He started even at
+the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the
+little fire.  He could not sleep.  A face looked at him out of the
+dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.
+The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached
+him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he
+admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a
+Face that was the Fairest.
+
+He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time.  It was Tom Osby,
+who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a
+crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure
+on the camper's bed.  Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that
+his companion was not asleep.
+
+"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head
+as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very
+much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back
+home with us."
+
+"Passengers?"  A voice came from the blankets.
+
+"Yes.  Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin'
+train from El Paso.  Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow,
+Barkley, I believe his name is.  I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
+
+Deep silence greeted this.  Tom reached forward and picked up a brand
+to light his pipe more thoroughly.
+
+"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to
+take care of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_
+
+In the morning the travellers arose with the sun, and after breakfast
+Tom Osby began methodically to break camp as though preparing for the
+return up-country.  Neither made reference to any event occurring since
+their arrival, or which might possibly occur in the near future.  Dan
+Anderson silently watched his partner as he busied himself gearing up
+his horses.  All was nearly ready for the start on their journey down
+the east side of the Sacramentos, when they heard afar a faint and
+wheezy squeak, the whistle of a railway train climbing up the opposite
+slope.
+
+"There's the choo-choo cars," said Tom, "comin' a-rarin' and
+a-pitchin'.  The ingine has to side-step and back-track about eight
+times to get up the grade.  Didn't notice my old grays a-doin' that
+none, when we come up, did you?  I'm the railroad for our town, and
+I've got that one beat to a frazzle.  Now listen to that thing, Dan;
+that's the States comin' to find us out."  Dan Anderson made no reply.
+
+"Well, let her come," Tom resumed cheerfully; "I come from Georgy, and
+in that country, it ain't considered perlite to worry if you've got one
+square meal ahead.  Which, by the way, reminds me that that's about all
+we've got ahead now.  You just set here with the team a while, while I
+take a _pasear_ down the canon to see if I can get a deer for supper
+to-night.  I hope the old railroad ain't scared 'em all away.  Besides,
+we might as well stay here for a hour or so anyway, now, and see what
+the news is, since the cars has got in."
+
+He tapped the muzzle of his old rifle against the wagon wheel to shake
+out the dust, and then took a squint into the barrel.  "I can see
+through her," he said, "or any ways, halfway through, and I reckon
+she'll go off."  Next he poked the magazine full of cartridges, and so
+tramped off down the mountain side.
+
+Dan Anderson sat down on a bundle of bedding, and fell into a half
+dream in the warm morning sun.  There was time even yet for him to
+escape, he reflected.  He had but to step into the wagon, and drive on
+down the canon.  Constance Ellsworth--if indeed it were true that she
+had come again so near to him--need never know that he had been there.
+How could he learn if she had indeed come?  How could he ever face her
+now?  Surely she could never understand.  She could only despise him.
+Dan Anderson sat, irresolute, staring at the breakfast dishes piled
+near the mess-box ready for packing.
+
+Meantime, in the dining room at Sky Top hotel, there was a certain
+flutter of excitement as there entered, just from the train, the party
+of Mr. Ellsworth, president of the new railway company now building
+northward.  Ellsworth beckoned Porter Barkley to him for talk of
+business nature, so that Constance sat well-nigh alone when Madame
+Alicia Donatelli came sweeping in, tall, comely, sombre, and, it must
+be confessed, hungry.  Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made
+room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli
+hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of class
+other than her own.
+
+"And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli,
+catching a remark made by one of the men.  "I wish I could go as well.
+You go by buckboard?"
+
+Constance nodded.  "I like it," said she.  "I am sure we shall enjoy
+the ride up to Heart's Desire."
+
+"Heart's Desire?" repeated the diva, with an odd smile.
+
+Constance saw the smile and challenged it.  "Yes," she replied briefly,
+"I was there once before."
+
+"What is it like?" asked Donatelli.
+
+"Like nothing in the world--yet it's just a little valley shut in by
+the mountains."
+
+"A man was here from Heart's Desire last night," began Donatelli.  "You
+know, I am a singer.  He had heard in some way.  My faith!  He came
+more than a hundred miles, and he said from Heart's Desire.  I've
+wondered what the place was like."
+
+The Donatelli face flushed hotly in spite of herself.  A queer
+expression suddenly crossed that of Constance Ellsworth as well.  She
+wondered who this man could be!
+
+"It was just a couple of campers who travelled down by wagon,"
+explained the diva.  "Only one of them came up to the house.  Their
+camp is by the springs, a half mile or so down the east side.  He told
+me they had no music at Heart's Desire."
+
+In the heart of Constance Ellsworth there went on jealous questionings.
+Who was this man from Heart's Desire, who had come a hundred miles to
+hear a bit of music?  What other could it be than one?  And as to this
+opera singer, surely she was beautiful, she had charm.  So then--
+
+Constance excused herself and returned to her room.  She did not even
+descend to say farewell to Donatelli and her bedraggled company, who
+steamed away from Sky Top slopes in the little train whose whistlings
+came back triumphantly.  She admitted herself guilty of ignoble joy
+that this woman--a singer, an artist, a beautiful and dangerous woman
+as she felt sure--was now gone out of her presence, as indeed she was
+gone out of her life.  But as to this man from Heart's Desire, how came
+it that he was not here at the hotel, near to his operatic divinity?
+Why did he not appear to say farewell?
+
+Ellsworth and Barkley betook themselves to the gallery after breakfast,
+and paced up and down, each with his cigar.  "I ordered our head
+engineer, Grayson, to meet us," said Ellsworth, "and he ought to be
+camped not far away.  I told him not to crowd the location so that
+those Heart's Desire folks would get wind of our plans.  For that
+matter, we don't want to take those men for granted, either.  Somehow,
+Barkley, I believe we've got trouble ahead."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Barkley.  "The whole thing's so easy I'm almost
+ashamed of it."
+
+"That last isn't usually the case with the Hon. Porter Barkley,"
+Ellsworth observed grimly.
+
+Barkley laughed a strong, unctuous laugh.  He was a sturdy, thick-set
+man, florid, confident, masterful, with projecting eyebrows and a chin
+now beginning its first threat of doubling.  Well known in Eastern
+corporation life as a good handler of difficult situations, Ellsworth
+valued his aid; nor could he disabuse himself of the belief that there
+would be need of it.
+
+"If I don't put it through, Ellsworth," reiterated Barkley, biting a
+new cigar, "I'll eat the whole town without sugar.  If I failed, I'd be
+losing more than you know about."  He turned a half glance in
+Ellsworth's way, to see whether his covert thought was caught by the
+suspicion of the other.  The older man turned upon him in challenge,
+and Barkley retreated from this tentative position.
+
+"Maybe you can do it," said Ellsworth, presently, "but I want to say,
+if I'm any judge, you've got to be mighty careful.  Besides, you've
+never been out here before.  We'll have to go slow."
+
+"Why'll we have to?  I tell you, we can go in and take what we want of
+their blasted valley, and they can't help themselves a step in the
+road."
+
+"I don't know," demurred Ellsworth.  "They're there, and in possession."
+
+"Nonsense!" snorted Barkley.  "How much title have they got?  You say
+yourself they've never filed a town-site plat.  We can go in there and
+take the town away from under their feet, and they can't help
+themselves.  More than that, I'll bet there's not one mining claim out
+of fifty that we can't 'adverse' in the courts and take away from its
+dinky locater.  These fellows don't work assessments.  They never
+complete legal title to a claim.  There never was a mine in the Rocky
+Mountains that was located and proved up on without a fight, if it was
+worth fighting for.  Bah! we just walk in and see what we want, and
+take it, that's all."
+
+"Well," said Ellsworth, "it's the best-looking deal I've seen for a
+long while, that's sure, and I don't see how it's been covered up so
+long.  And yet if you come to talk of law-suits, I've noticed it a
+dozen times that when Eastern men have gone against these Western
+propositions, they've got the worst of it.  They're a funny lot, these
+natives.  They'll live in a shirt and overalls, without a _sou marque_
+to bless 'emselves with.  They'll holler for Eastern Capital, and
+promise Eastern Capital the time of its life, if it'll only come; and
+when Eastern Capital does come--why, then they _give_ it the time of
+its life!"
+
+"Nonsense," rejoined Barkley, walking up and down with his hands under
+the tails of his coat.  "We'll eat 'em up.  I'm not afraid of this
+thing for a minute.  What I want to do now is to get in touch with that
+Grayson fellow, the head engineer."
+
+"I'm not so sure about that," commented Ellsworth, seating himself in
+the sun at the edge of the gallery.  "If you want to see the real head
+engineer of this whole Heart's Desire situation, the man you want isn't
+Grayson, but a young fellow by the name of Anderson, a lawyer up there."
+
+"Lawyer?"
+
+"Yes, and I shouldn't wonder if he was a pretty goodish one, too.  Oh,
+don't think these people are all easy, Barkley, I tell you.  This isn't
+my own first trip out here."
+
+"What about this lawyer of yours?"
+
+"Well, he's a young man that I knew something about before he went
+West.  He knows every foot of the ground up there, and every man that
+lives there, and I want to tell you, he's got the whole situation by
+the ear.  That gang will do pretty hear what he tells them to do.  He's
+got nerve, too.  He's the most influential man in that town."
+
+"Oh, ho!  Well, that's different.  I'm always right after the man who's
+got the goods in his pocket.  We'll trade with Mr. Anderson mighty
+quick, if he can deliver the goods.  What does he hold out for?  What
+does he want?"
+
+"Well, I don't know.  He talked to me rather stiff, up there, and we
+didn't hitch very well.  He sort of drifted off, and I didn't see him
+at all the day I left, when I'd laid out to talk to him.  He's the
+fellow that put me on to this deal, too.  It was through him I got word
+there was coal in that valley."
+
+"How would it do to charter him for our local counsel?  Is he strong
+enough man for that?"
+
+"Strong enough!  I'm only afraid he's _too_ strong."
+
+"Well, now, let's not take everything for granted, you know.  Let's go
+at this thing a little at a time.  There's got to be a system of courts
+established in here, and we've got to know our judiciary, as a matter
+of course.  Then we've got to know our own lawyers, as another matter
+of course.  Did you say you knew him before, that is, to get a line on
+him, before he came out here?"
+
+Ellsworth colored just a trifle.  "Well, yes," he admitted.  "He's a
+Princeton man.  He comes of good family--maybe a little wild and
+headstrong--wouldn't settle down, you know.  Why, I offered him a place
+in my office once, and he--well, he refused it.  He started out West
+some five years ago.  Of course--well, you know, in a good many cases
+of this sort, there's a girl at the bottom of the Western emigration."
+
+"What girl?" asked Porter Barkley, sharply.
+
+"One back East somewhere," said Ellsworth, evasively.
+
+Porter Barkley came and seated himself beside the older man, leaning
+forward, his elbows resting on his knees, meditatively crumbling a bit
+of bark in his hands.
+
+"I was just going to say, Mr. Ellsworth," said he, "that a girl in a
+case like this--always provided that this man is as influential as you
+think--may be a mighty useful thing.  Maybe you couldn't buy the man
+for himself, but you could buy him for the girl.  Do you see?"
+
+Ellsworth did not answer.
+
+"He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley.  "He wants to go
+back East with a little roll.  Now, we give him a chance to make good.
+We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him
+up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing.  For the sake of going
+back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap
+of things for us.  You've seen it a thousand times yourself.  A woman
+can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work.  Now, Ellsworth, you
+furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me.  I'll deliver Heart's
+Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to
+think he is."
+
+Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly
+and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling
+his bits of bark in the sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
+with a Maid_
+
+Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the
+dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred pinon sticks.  So deep was
+his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet
+approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to
+his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the
+camp and come in on that side of the mountain.  Then he looked up.  It
+was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries
+by day, the face that he had seen but now--the "face that was the
+fairest"!  He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him
+once more for his unreadiness.  Then he sprang up and stared the
+harder--stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her
+father and a well-groomed stranger.
+
+The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley
+discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and
+heightened color upon another man.
+
+When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the
+engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a
+walk in the morning's sun.  If it had been in her mind to discover the
+mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself.  But
+now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this
+stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva
+of the stage!  The consciousness flashed upon her sharply.  Despite her
+traitorous coloring, she greeted him but coolly.
+
+Porter Barkley, noticing some things and suspecting others, drew a breath
+of sudden conviction.  With swift jealousy he guessed that this could be
+none other than the man to whom Ellsworth had referred,--Anderson, the
+lawyer of Heart's Desire.  Why had not Ellsworth told him that Constance
+also knew him?  Porter Barkley ran his eye over the tall strong figure,
+the clean brown jaw, the level eyes, sizing up his man with professional
+keenness.  He instantly rated him as an enemy dangerous in more ways than
+one.
+
+After the first jumbled speeches of surprise, Ellsworth introduced the
+two.  Maugre his coatless costume, Dan Anderson was Princeton man upon
+the moment, and Barkley promptly hated him for it, feeling that in the
+nature of things the stranger should have been awkward and constrained.
+Yet this man must, for business reasons, be handled carefully.  He must
+be the business friend, if the personal enemy, of Hon. Porter Barkley,
+general counsel for the A. P. and S. E. Railway.
+
+The States had come to Sky Top, as Tom Osby had said, and this group,
+gathered around a mountain fireside, became suddenly as conventional as
+though they had met in a drawing-room.  "Who could have suspected that
+you were here, of all places, Mr. Anderson?" Constance remarked with
+polite surprise.
+
+"Why, now, Dolly," blundered Mr. Ellsworth, "didn't the hotel fellow tell
+you that some one had come down from Heart's Desire to hear the latest
+from grand opera--private session--chartered the hall, eh?  You might
+have guessed it would be Mr. Anderson, for I'll warrant he's the only man
+in Heart's Desire that ever heard an opera singer before, or who would
+ride a hundred miles--that is--anyhow, Mr. Anderson, you are precisely
+the man we want to see."  He finished his sentence lamely, for he
+understood in some mysterious fashion that he had not said quite the
+right thing.
+
+"I am very glad to hear that," replied Dan Anderson, gravely, "I was just
+sitting here waiting for you to come along."
+
+"Now, Mr. Anderson," resumed Ellsworth, "Mr. Barkley, here, is our
+general counsel for the railroad.  He's going up to Heart's Desire with
+us in a day or so to look into several matters.  We want to take up the
+question of running our line into the town, if proper arrangements can be
+made."
+
+"Take chairs, gentlemen," said Dan Andersen, motioning to a log that lay
+near by.  He had already seated Constance upon the corded blanket roll
+from which he himself had arisen.  "I will get you some breakfast," he
+added.
+
+"No, no," Mr. Ellsworth declined courteously.  "We just came from
+breakfast.  We were moving around trying to find our engineer's camp;
+Grayson, our chief of location, was to have been here before this.  By
+the way, how did you happen to come down here, after all, Anderson?"
+
+Dan Anderson was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a
+pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue.  He glanced
+at the battered phonograph which leaned dejectedly against a tree.
+
+"As near as I can figure," said he, "I made this pilgrimage to hear a
+woman's voice."  Saying which he leaned over and deliberately kicked the
+phonograph down the side of the hill.
+
+"I hope you enjoyed it," commented Constance, viciously, her cheeks
+reddening.
+
+"Very much," replied Dan Anderson, calmly, and he looked squarely at her.
+
+Porter Barkley, quiet and alert, once more saw the glance which passed
+between these two.  Into his mind, ever bent upon the business phase of
+any problem, there flashed a swift conviction.  This was the girl!  Here,
+miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in
+the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom
+her father had referred!  If so, there was certainly a solution for the
+riddle of Heart's Desire.  Piqued as he was, his heart exulted.  For the
+time his own jealousy must be suppressed.  His accounting with Dan
+Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must
+handle the situation carefully--literally for what it is worth.
+
+"As I was saying," continued Dan Anderson, "what's a breakfast or two
+among friends?"
+
+"If it is among friends," replied Ellsworth, "and if you'll remember
+that, we'll eat with you."
+
+In answer Dan Anderson began to kick together the embers of the fire and
+to busy himself with dishes.  He was resolved to humiliate himself before
+this girl, to show her how absolutely unfit was the life of this land for
+such as herself.
+
+Suddenly he stopped and listened, as there came to his ear the distant
+thin report of a rifle.  Ellsworth looked inquiringly at his host.
+
+"That's my friend, Tom Osby," explained Dan Anderson, "He went out after
+a deer.  Tom and I came down together from the town."
+
+"I presume you do have some sort of friends in here," began Barkley,
+patronizingly.
+
+"I have never found any in the world worth having except here," replied
+Dan Anderson, quietly.
+
+"Oh, now, don't say that.  Mr. Ellsworth tells me that he has known you
+for a long time, and has the greatest admiration for you as a lawyer."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Ellsworth is very fond of me.  He's one of the most passionate
+admirers I ever had in my life," said Dan Anderson.
+
+Barkley looked at him again keenly, realizing that he had to do with a
+quantity not yet wholly known and gauged.
+
+Socially the situation was strained, and he sought to ease it after his
+own fashion.  "You see," he resumed, "Mr. Ellsworth seems to think that
+he can put you in a way of doing something for yourself up at Heart's
+Desire."
+
+It was an ugly thing for him to do under the circumstances, but if he had
+intended to humiliate the other, he met his just rebuke.
+
+"I don't often talk business at breakfast in my own house," said Dan
+Anderson.  "Do you use tabasco with your _frijoles_?"
+
+"Oh, we'll get together, we'll get together," Barkley laughed, with an
+assumed cordiality which did not quite ring true.
+
+"Thank you," Dan Anderson remarked curtly; "you bring me joy this
+morning."
+
+He did not relish this sort of talk in the presence of Constance
+Ellsworth.  Disgusted with himself and with all things, be arose and made
+a pretence of searching in the wagon.  Rummaging about, his hand struck
+one of the round, gutta-percha plates which had accompanied the
+phonograph.  With silent vigor he cast it far above the tree tops below
+him on the mountain side.
+
+"That," he explained to Constance as he turned, "is the 'Annie Laurie'
+record of the Heart's Desire grand opera.  The season is now over." The
+girl did not understand, but he lost the hurt look in her eyes.
+Irritated, he did not hear her soul call out to him.
+
+"It's the luckiest thing in the world that you happen to be here."  Mr.
+Ellsworth took up again the idea that was foremost in his mind.  "You fit
+in like the wheels in a clock.  We're going to run our railroad up into
+your town--I don't mind saying that right here--and we're going to give
+you plenty of law business, Mr. Anderson; that is to say, if you want it,
+and will take it."
+
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, quietly.  But now in spite of himself he
+felt his heart leap suddenly in hope.  Suppose, after all, there should
+be for him, stranded in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, a chance
+for some sort of business success?  Suppose that there should be, after
+all, some work for him to do?  Suppose that, after all, he should
+succeed--that, after all, life might yet unfold before him as he had
+dreamed and planned!  Unconsciously he stole a glance at the gray-clad
+figure on the blanket roll.
+
+Constance sat cool, sweet, delicate but vital, refreshing to look upon,
+her gray skirt folded across her knees, the patent-leather tips of her
+little shoes buried in the carpet spread by the forest conifers.  He
+could just catch the curve of her cheek and chin, the droop of the long
+lashes which he knew so well.  Ah, if he could only go to her and tell
+her the absolute truth--if only it could be right for him, all his life,
+to tell her the truth, to tell her of his reverence, his loyalty, his
+love, through all these years!  If, indeed, this opportunity should come
+to him, might not all of this one day be possible?  He set his mind to
+his work, even as the girl held her heart to its waiting.
+
+There came the sound of a distant whistle approaching up the trail, and
+ere long Tom Osby appeared, stumbling along in his pigeon-toed way, his
+rifle in the crook of his arm.  Tom saluted the strangers briefly, and
+leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel.  Dan Anderson made known the
+names of the visitors, and Tom immediately put in action his own notions
+of hospitality.  Stepping to the wagon side he fished out a kerosene can,
+stoppered with a potato stuck on the spout.  He removed the potato,
+picked up a tin cup, and proceeded calmly to pour out a generous portion.
+
+"I always carry my liquor this way, gentlemen," said he, "because it's
+convenient to pour in the dark, and ain't so apt to get spilled.  This
+here liquor sometimes makes folks forget their geogerphy.  'Missin' me
+one place, search another,' as Walt Whitman says.  If a fellow gets a
+drink of this, he may take to the tall trees, or he may run straight on
+out of the country.  You never can tell.  Drink hearty."
+
+Ellsworth and Barkley, for the sake of complacency, complied with such
+show of pleasure as they could muster.
+
+"Now," said Tom, "I'll cook you a real breakfast.  My _compadre_, here,
+can't drink and he can't cook."
+
+"Three breakfasts before ten o'clock?" protested Constance.
+
+But Tom was inexorable.  "Eat when you get a chanct," he insisted.
+"That's a good rule."
+
+Barkley drew Ellsworth to one side.  "I can't figure these people out,"
+he complained.
+
+Ellsworth chuckled.  "I told you you'd need help, Barkley," he said.
+"They've got ways of their own.  You can't come in here and take that
+whole town without reckoning with the people that live there.  Now
+suppose we get Anderson to himself and talk things over with him a
+little?  We may not have another chance so good."
+
+Ellsworth beckoned to Dan Anderson, and he readily joined them.  The
+three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy
+of Tom Osby.
+
+"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the
+knives by sticking them into the sand.  "I don't reckon you do that way
+back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean."
+
+"So this is the way men live out here?" mused Constance, half to herself.
+
+"Mostly.  You ought to see him"--he nodded toward Dan Anderson--"cook
+flap-jacks.  The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home.
+We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe."
+
+Constance missed the irrelevance of this.  "I wonder," said she, gently,
+"how he happened to come out here--how any one happened to come out here?"
+
+"In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as
+far away from Washington as he could--his mileage will amount to more.
+This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to
+Congress from."  Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
+
+"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every
+feller come out here because of a girl somewheres.  They allow that a
+woman sent most of us out here.  For me, it was my fifth wife, or my
+fourth, I don't remember which.  She never did treat me right, and her
+eyes didn't track.  Yes, I'll bet, ma'am, without knowing anything about
+it, there was a girl back somewhere in Dan Anderson's early ree-cords,
+though whether it was his third or fourth wife, I don't know.  We don't
+ask no questions about such things out here."
+
+He went on rubbing sand around in the bottom of the frying-pan, but none
+the less caught, with side-long glance, the flush upon the brown cheek
+visible beneath its veil.
+
+"I'm mighty glad to see you this mornin', ma'am," he went on; "I am, for
+a fact.  It more'n pays me--it more'n pays him--" and he nodded again
+toward Dan Anderson, "for our trip down here.  We wasn't expectin' to
+meet you."
+
+"How did you happen to come?" asked Constance, feeling as she did so that
+she was guilty of treachery.
+
+Tom Osby again looked her straight in the face.  "Just because we was
+naturally so blamed lonesome," said he.  "That is to say, I was.  I
+allowed I wanted to hear a woman sing.  It wasn't him, it was me.  He
+come along to take care of me, like, because he's used to that sort of
+thing, and I ain't.  He's my chaperoon.  He didn't know, you know--didn't
+either of us know--but what I might be took advantage of, and stole by
+some gipsy queen."
+
+"But--but the phonograph--"
+
+Tom looked around.  "Where is it?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Anderson kicked it down the hill."
+
+"Did he?  Good for him!  I was goin' to do it my own self.  You see,
+ma'am, I come down here to hear a song about Annie Laurie.  I done so.
+Ma'am, I heard about a 'face that was the fairest.'  Him?  Was he
+surprised to see you-all this morning?  Was, eh?  Well, he didn't seem so
+almighty surprised, to my way of thinkin', last night when I told him you
+was comin' up here from El Paso.  I don't know how he knowed it, and I
+ain't sayin' a word."
+
+A strange lightening came to Constance Ellsworth's heart.  The droop at
+the corners of her mouth faded away.  She slid down off the blanket roll
+and edged along across the ground until she sat at his side.  She reached
+out her hand for the skillet.
+
+"That spider isn't clean in the least," said she.
+
+"Oh, well," apologized Tom Osby, leaning back against the wagon wheel and
+beginning to fill a pipe.  "I suppose there might be just a leetle sand
+left in it, but that don't hurt.  Do you want a dish towel?  Here's one
+that I've used for two years, freightin' from Vegas to Heart's Desire.
+Me and it's old friends."
+
+"Let your dishes dry in the sun if you can't do better than that,"
+reproved Constance.  "Ah, you men!"
+
+"You're right hard to get along with, ma'am.  Us gettin' you two
+breakfasts, too!"
+
+They looked into each other's faces and Constance laughed.  "The air is
+delightful--isn't it a beautiful world?" she exclaimed joyously.
+
+"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so.  It's all in
+the way you look at things."
+
+"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully
+explanatory.
+
+"Yes, I know.  You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good
+pasture.  Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you
+out for a lunger.  You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is
+very good, either.  He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
+
+She froze at this.  "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's
+affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
+
+"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly.  "Here's me and him
+have flew down here as a bird to our mountings.  We was wantin' to hear
+about a 'face that was the fairest.'  We was a-settin' here, calm and
+peaceful, eating _frijoles_, who intruded?  Was it us?  Or, what made us
+intrude?"  He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
+
+Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
+
+"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here.  If I come and
+set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name
+of your pet dog.  Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes,
+and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that
+time.  That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any _other_
+fellow what I may think.  It _does_ mean that I'm goin' to see fair
+play."
+
+The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even
+voice went on.
+
+"How I know things is easy," he continued.  "If you think he"--once more
+nodding his head toward the group beyond--"come down here to hear a op'ry
+singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't.  That was me.  He come to give
+me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see
+that he gets fair play in them same circumstances--"
+
+"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly
+thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why.  "He's been ill a great
+deal.  I've been alarmed about him.  I _always_ go with him."
+
+"Of course.  I noticed that.  Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into
+Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after.  You come along just
+to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or
+cerebrus meningittus, or something else.  I understood all that
+perfectly, ma'am.  And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued,
+tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States,
+somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he
+allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and
+ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know,
+ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of
+reasonin'; for _yore_ own face, ma'am,--and I ain't sayin' this with any
+sort of disrespect to any of my wives,--is about the fairest that Dan
+Anderson ever did or could see--or me either.  I don't reckon, ma'am,
+that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."
+
+Constance Ellsworth turned squarely and gazed hard into the eyes of the
+man before her.  She drew a breath in sharply between her lips, but it
+was a sigh of content.  She felt herself safe in this man's hands.  Again
+she broke into laughter and flung herself upon the convenient frying-pan,
+which she proceeded to scrub with sudden vigor.  Tom Osby's eyes twinkled.
+
+"Whenever you think that skillet's clean enough, us two will set up and
+cook ourselves some breakfast right comfterble.  As for them fellers over
+there, they don't deserve none."
+
+So presently they two did cook and eat yet again.  A strange sense of
+peace and content came to Constance, albeit mingled with remorse.  She
+had suspected Dan Anderson of worshipping at the shrine of an operatic
+star, whereas he had made the long journey from Heart's Desire to see
+herself!  She knew it now.
+
+"I'm goin' to take you up to the hotel, ma'am," said Tom Osby, after
+Constance had finished her third breakfast, "and then, after that, I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson back home to Heart's Desire.  We'll see you up
+there after a while.
+
+"One thing I want to tell you, ma'am, is this.  We've got along without a
+railroad, all right, and we ain't tearin' our clothes to have one now.
+If that railroad does get into our town, it's more'n half likely that
+it'll be because the boys has took a notion to you.  I never did see you
+before this mornin'; but the folks has told me about you--Curly's wife,
+you know, and the rest.  We'd like to have you live there, if only we
+thought the town was good enough for you.  It's been mostly for men, so
+far."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
+Capital and Able Corporation Counsel_
+
+Tom Osby and Constance walked up the trail toward the hotel, and Dan
+Anderson from a distance saw them pass.  He watched the gray gown move
+through sun and shadow, until it was lost beyond the thickening boles
+of mountain pines.  She turned once and looked back, but he dared not
+appropriate the glance to himself, although it seemed to him that he
+must rise and follow, that he must call out to her.  She had been
+there, close to him.  He had felt the very warmth of her hand near to
+his own.  There flamed up in his soul the fierce male jealousy.  He
+turned to this newcomer, this man of the States, successful, strong,
+fortunate.  In his soul was ready the ancient challenge.
+
+But--the earth being as it is to-day, a compromise, and love being
+dependent upon property, and chastity upon chattels, and the stars of
+the Universe upon farthing dips--though aching to rise and follow the
+gray gown, to snatch its wearer afar and away into a sweet wild forest
+all their own, Dan Anderson must sit silent, and plan material ways to
+bring the gray gown back again to his eyes according to the mandates of
+our society.  Because the gray gown was made in the States, he must
+forget the lesson of Curly and the Littlest Girl.  Because the wearer
+of the gown lived in the States, he must pull down in ruins the temple
+of Heart's Desire.  Such is the sweet logic of these days of modern
+progress, that independence, friendship, faith, all must yield if need
+be; even though, and after all, man but demands that himself and the
+woman whom he has sought out from all the world may one day be savage
+and sweet, ancient and primitive, even as have been all others who have
+loved indeed, in city or in forest, from the beginning of the world.
+
+"As Mr. Ellsworth has told me," went on Porter Barkley, "you are an
+able man, Mr. Anderson,--far too able to be buried down here in a
+mountain mining town."
+
+"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, sweetly; "that's very nice of you."
+
+"Now, I don't know what induced you to hide yourself out here--" went
+on Barkley, affably.
+
+"No," replied Dan Anderson, "you don't.  As for myself personally, it's
+no one's damned business.  I may say in a general way, however, that
+the prevailing high prices of sealskins and breakfast food in the
+Eastern States have had a great deal to do with our Western
+civilization.  The edge of the West is mostly inhabited by fools and
+philosophers, all mostly broke."
+
+"I think I follow you," assented Barkley; "but I'd rather classify you
+as a philosopher."
+
+"Perhaps.  At least I am not fool enough to talk about my own affairs.
+You say you are here to talk business.  It is your belief that I
+understand some of the chemical constituents of the population of
+Heart's Desire.  Now, in what way can we be useful to each other?"
+
+Ellsworth broke in, "It's as Barkley says; I've been watching you, Mr.
+Anderson, and I've had an interest in you for quite a while."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, I have.  I want to see you win out.  Now, if you won't go to the
+mountain, the mountain will have to come to you.  If you won't go back
+and live in the States, we will have to bring the States to you; and
+they'll follow mighty quick when the railroad comes, as you know very
+well."
+
+"My friend Tom Osby used those very words this morning, when he heard
+the whistle of your esteemed railroad train."
+
+"Precisely," Ellsworth went on.  "We'll give you a town to live in.
+We'll give you professional work to do."
+
+"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work?  That's very nice
+of you, indeed."
+
+"Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested
+Ellsworth, testily.  "Have we asked you to do anything but straight
+business?"
+
+"Exactly," said Barkley.
+
+They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face
+did not show it.  They were putting him in the balance against Heart's
+Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it.  They were making
+Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did
+not divulge it, as he sat and looked at them.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, at length, "I am a lawyer, the best one in
+Heart's Desire.  The law here is complex in practice.  The titles are
+very much involved.  Between Chitty on Pleading and the land grants of
+the Spanish crown, the law may be a very slow and deliberate matter in
+this country.  Now, I understand the practice.  I speak the language--I
+don't need an interpreter--so that I am probably as good as any lawyer
+you can secure at this time.  In straight matters of business I am open
+for employment."
+
+"Now you are beginning to talk," said Barkley.  "And just to get right
+_down_ to business, and show you we're not all talk, I want to give
+you a little retainer fee.  I'm sorry it isn't larger, but it'll grow,
+I hope."  He drew a goodly wallet from his breast pocket, and counted
+out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, which he threw down carelessly on the
+pine needles in front of Dan Anderson.  "Is that satisfactory?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes," said the latter; but he did not take up the money.
+
+"Oh, there'll be more," suggested Mr. Ellsworth.  "This business ought
+to net you between five and ten thousand dollars this year.  It might
+mean more than that if we got into town without a fight."
+
+"That would be about the only way you would get in at all," and Dan
+Anderson smiled incomprehensibly.
+
+"Exactly!  And now, since you are our counsel--" Barkley spoke with an
+increased firmness--"we want to know your idea on the right-of-way
+question.  What's the nature of the titles in that town, anyhow?"
+
+"As near as I can tell," replied Dan Anderson, "since you retain me and
+ask my legal opinion, the fundamental title to the valley of Heart's
+Desire lies in the ability of every fellow there to hit a tin can at
+forty yards with a six-shooter.  There's hardly a tin can in the street
+that you could cook a meal in," he added plaintively.
+
+"I see," said Barkley, his laughter a little forced.  "But now, I heard
+there never was a town site filed on."
+
+"There was a story," replied Dan Anderson, ruminatingly, "that Jack
+Wilson laid out a town there soon after he made the Homestake strike.
+He had McDonald, the deputy surveyor, plat it out on a piece of brown
+paper,--which was the only sort they had,--and Jack started over with
+the plat to file at the county seat.  He got caught in a rain and used
+the paper to start a fire with.  After that he forgot about it, and
+after that again, he died; so there never was any town site.  The boys
+just built their houses where they felt like it; and since then they
+have been so busy about other things--croquet, music, embroidery,
+antelope hunting, and the like--that they haven't had time to think
+about town lots or town sites, or anything of that sort."
+
+Barkley's eyes gleamed.  "That will simplify matters very much," said
+he.
+
+"You really do need local counsel," Dan Anderson observed.  "On the
+contrary of that, it will complicate matters very much."
+
+"Well, we'll see about that," rejoined Barkley, grimly.  "We'll see if
+a little mining camp can hold up a railroad corporation the size of
+this!  But why don't you put your money in your pocket?  It's yours,
+man."
+
+Dan Anderson slowly picked up the bills, folded them, and tucked them
+into a pocket.  "This," said he, "is a great deal more than the entire
+circulating medium of Heart's Desire.  I'm likely to become a
+disturbing factor up there."
+
+"That's what we want you to become," said Barkley.  "We know there're a
+lot of good mining claims in there, especially the coal lands on the
+east side of the valley.  It isn't the freight and passenger traffic
+that we're after--we want to get hold of those mines.  Why, the inside
+gang of the Southern Pacific--you'll keep this a professional secret,
+of course--has told us that they'll take coal from us for their whole
+system west of Houston.  In a couple of years there'll be a town there
+of eight or ten thousand people.  Why, man, it's the chance of your
+life.  And here's Mr. Ellsworth putting you in on the ground floor."
+
+Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.
+
+"By the way," began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer's
+blue-print map, "one of the first things we want to settle is the
+question of our depot site.  The only place we can lay out our side
+tracks is just at the head of the canon, and at the lower end of the
+valley.  Do you know anything about this house here?  It's the first
+one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley."
+
+Dan Anderson bent over the map.  "Yes, I know it perfectly," said he.
+"That's the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down
+with me from Heart's Desire.  He just went up the trail with your
+daughter, sir."
+
+"The yards'll wipe him out," said Barkley.
+
+"The valley is so narrow," went on Ellsworth, "according to what our
+engineers say, that we've got to clean out the whole lower part of the
+town, in order to lay out the station grounds."
+
+Dan Anderson started.  The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.
+
+"The trouble with your whole gang," resumed Barkley, striking a match
+on a log, "has been that you've been trying to stop the world.  You
+can't do that."
+
+Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many
+months, the crack of the whip of modern progress.  Yet, before his eyes
+he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the
+beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his
+young manhood.
+
+"I'll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen," said he, at length,
+rising; "we'll talk it over up at the town itself.  I don't know just
+what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my
+opinion force isn't the way to go about it."
+
+"Well, we'll use force if need be; you can depend on that!" said
+Barkley, harshly.  "I've got to get back home before long, and it will
+be up to you after that."
+
+He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the
+clinging dust and pine needles.  The three turned towards the trail and
+walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky
+Top edifice.
+
+"Quite a house, isn't it?" said Ellsworth, admiringly.
+
+Dan Anderson did not look at the building.  Constance was sitting alone
+at the edge of the gallery.  Wishing nothing so much in the world as to
+go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.
+
+Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him.  They
+seemed to call out to him to pause, to return.  The whispering of the
+pines called over and over to him, "Constance!  Constance!"
+
+Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still
+whispering.  At the edge of the opening he paused unseen.  He saw the
+girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley,
+laughing gayly and walking across the gallery.  Each had offered her an
+arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most
+natural one in the world.  Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose,
+solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very
+end of all the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
+Horse_
+
+"That old railroad'll shore bust me up a heap if it ever does git in
+here," remarked Tom Osby one morning in the forum of Whiteman's corral,
+where the accustomed group was sitting in the sun, waiting for some one
+to volunteer as Homer for the day.
+
+There was little to do but listen to story telling, for Tom Osby dwelt
+in the tents of Kedar, delaying departure on his accustomed trip to
+Vegas.
+
+"A feller down there to Sky Top," he went on, arousing only the most
+indolent interest, "one of them spy-glass ingineers--tenderfoot, with
+his six-shooter belt buckled so tight he couldn't get his feet to the
+ground--he says to me I might as well trade my old grays for a nice new
+checkerboard, or a deck of author cards, for I won't have nothing to do
+but just amuse myself when the railroad cars gets here."
+
+No one spoke.  All present were trying to imagine how Heart's Desire
+would seem with a railroad train each day.
+
+"Things'll be some different in them days, mebbe so."  Tom recrossed
+his legs with well-considered deliberation.
+
+"There's a heap of things different already from what they used to be
+when I first hit the cow range," said Curly.  "The whole country's
+changed, and it ain't changed for the better, either.  Grass is longer,
+and horns is shorter, and men is triflin'er.  Since the Yankees has got
+west of the Missouri River a ranch foreman ain't allowed to run his own
+brandin' iron any more, and that takes more'n half the poetry out of
+the cow business, don't it, Mac?"  This to McKinney, who was nearly
+asleep.
+
+"Everything else is changing too," Curly continued, gathering fluency
+as memories began to crowd upon him.  "Look at the lawyers and doctors
+there is in the Territory now--and this country used to be respectable.
+Why, when I first come here there wasn't a doctor within a thousand
+miles, and no need for one.  If one of the boys got shot up much, we
+always found some way to laundry him and sew him together again without
+no need of a diplomy.  No one ever got sick; and, of course, no one
+ever did die of his own accord, the way they do back in the States."
+
+"What's it all about, Curly?" drawled Dan Anderson.  "You can't tell a
+story worth a cent."  Curly paid no attention to him.
+
+"The first doctor that ever come out here for to alleviate us fellers,"
+he went on, "why, he settled over on the Sweetwater.  He was a allopath
+from Bitter Creek.  What medicine that feller did give!  He gradual
+drifted into the vet'inary line.
+
+"Then there come a homeopath--that was after a good many women folks
+had settled in along the railroad over west.  Still, there wasn't much
+sickness, and I don't reckon the homeopath ever did winter through.  I
+was livin' with the Bar T outfit on the Oscura range, at that time.
+
+"Next doctor that come along was a ostypath."  Curly took a chew of
+tobacco, and paused a moment reflectively.
+
+"I said the first feller drifted into vet'inary lines, didn't I?" he
+resumed.  "Well, the ostypath did, too.  Didn't you never hear about
+that?  Why, he ostypathed a horse!"
+
+"Did _what_?" asked Tom Osby sitting up; for hitherto there had seemed
+no need to listen attentively.
+
+"Yes, sir," he went on, "he ostypathed a horse for us.  The boys they
+gambled about two thousand dollars on that horse over at Socorro.  It
+was a cross-eyed horse, too."
+
+"What's that?" Doc Tomlinson objected.  "There never was such a thing
+as a cross-eyed horse."
+
+"Oh, there wasn't, wasn't there?" said Curly.  "Well, now, my friend,
+when you talk that-a-way, you simply show me how much you don't know
+about horses.  This here Bar T horse was as cross-eyed as a saw-horse,
+until we got him ostypathed.  But, of course, if you don't believe what
+I say, there's no use tellin' you this story at all."
+
+"Oh, go on, go on," McKinney spoke up, "don't pay no attention to Doc."
+
+"Well," Curly resumed, "that there horse was knowed constant on this
+range for over three years.  He was a outlaw, with cream mane and tail,
+and a _pinto_ map of Europe, Asia, and Africa wrote all over his ribs.
+Run?  Why, that horse could run down a coyote as a moral pastime.  We
+used him to catch jack rabbits with between meals.  It wasn't no
+trouble for him to _run_.  The trouble was to tell when he was goin'
+to _stop_ runnin'.  Sometimes it was a good while before the feller
+ridin' him could get him around to where he begun to run.  He run in
+curves natural, and he handed out a right curve or a left one, just as
+he happened to feel, same as the feller dealin' faro, and just as easy.
+
+"Tom Redmond, on the Bar T, he got this horse from a feller by the name
+of Hasenberg, that brought in a bunch of has-beens and outlaws, and
+allowed to distribute 'em in this country.  Hasenberg was a foreign
+gent that looked a good deal like Whiteman, our distinguished
+feller-citizen here.  He was cross-eyed hisself, body and soul.  There
+wasn't a straight thing about him.  We allowed that maybe this Pinto
+_caballo_ got cross-eyed from associatin' with old Hasenberg, who was
+strictly on the bias, any way you figured."
+
+"You ain't so bad, after all, Curly," said Dan Andersen, sitting up.
+"You're beginning now to hit the human interest part.  You ought to be
+a reg'lar contributor."
+
+"Shut up!" said Curly.  "Now Tom Redmond, he took to this here Pinto
+horse from havin' seen him jump the corral fence several times, and
+start floatin' off across the country for a eight or ten mile sasshay
+without no special encouragement.  He hired three Castilian busters to
+operate on Pinto, and he got so he could be rode occasional, but every
+one allowed they never did see any horse just like him.  He was the
+most aggravatinest thing we ever did have on this range.  He had a sort
+of odd-lookin' white eye, but a heap of them _pintos_ has got glass
+eyes, and so no one thought to examine his lookers very close, though
+it was noticed early in the game that Pinto might be lookin' one way
+and goin' the other, at the same time.  He'd be goin' on a keen lope,
+and then something or other might get on his mind, and he'd stop and
+untangle hisself from all kinds of ridin'.  Sometimes he'd jump and
+snort like he was seein' ghosts.  A feller on that horse could have
+roped antelopes as easy as yearlin' calves, if he could just have told
+which way Mr. Pinto was goin'; but he was a shore hard one to estermate.
+
+"At last Tom, why, he suspected somethin' wasn't right with Pinto's
+lamps.  If you stuck out a bunch of hay at him, he couldn't bite it by
+about five feet.  When you led him down to water, you had to go
+sideways; and if you wanted to get him in through the corral gate, you
+had to push him in backward.  We discovered right soon that he was born
+with his parallax or something out of gear.  His graduated scale of
+seein' things was different from our'n.  I don't reckon anybody ever
+will know what all Pinto saw with them glass lamps of his, but all the
+time we knowed that if we could ever onct get his lookin' outfit tuned
+up proper, we had the whole country skinned in a horse race; for he
+could shore run copious.
+
+"That was why he had the whole Bar T outfit guessin' all the time.  We
+all wanted to bet on him, and we was all scared to.  Sometimes we'd
+make up a purse among us, and we'd go over to some social getherin' or
+other, and win a thousand dollars.  Old Pinto could run all day; he can
+yet, for that matter.  Didn't make no difference to him how often we
+raced him; and natural, after we'd won one hatful of money with him,
+we'd want to win another.  That was where our judgment was weak.
+
+"You never could tell whether Pinto was goin' to finish under the wire,
+or out in the landscape.  His eyes seemed to be sort of moverble, but
+like enough they'd get sot when he went to runnin'.  Then he'd run
+whichever way he was lookin' at the time, or happened to think he was
+lookin'; and dependin' additional on what he thought he saw.  And law!
+A whole board of supervisors and school commissioners couldn't have
+looked that horse in the face, and guessed on their sacred honor
+whether he was goin' to jump the fence to the left, or take to the high
+sage on the outside of the track.
+
+"Onct in a while we'd git Pinto's left eye set at a angle, and he'd
+come around the track and under the wire before she wobbled out of
+place.  On them occasions we made money a heap easier than I ever did
+a-gettin' it from home.  But, owin' to the looseness of them eyes, I
+don't reckon there never was no horse racin' as uncertain as this here;
+and like enough you may have observed it's uncertain enough even when
+things is fixed in the most comf'terble way possible."
+
+A deep sigh greeted this, which showed that Curly's audience was in
+full sympathy.
+
+"You always felt like puttin' the saddle on to Pinto hind end to, he
+was so cross-eyed," he resumed ruminatingly, "but still you couldn't
+help feelin' sorry for him, neither.  Now, he had a right pained and
+grieved look in his face all the time.  I reckon he thought this was a
+hard sort of a world to get along in.  It is.  A cross-eyed man has a
+hard enough time, but a cross-eyed _horse_--well, you don't know how
+much trouble he can be for hisself, and every one else around him.
+
+"Now, here we was, fixed up like I told you.  Mr. Allopath is over on
+Sweetwater creek, Mr. Homeopath is maybe in the last stages of
+starvation.  Old Pinto looks plumb hopeless, and all us fellers is
+mostly hopeless too, owin' to his uncertain habits in a horse race, yet
+knowin' that it ain't perfessional for us not to back a Bar T horse
+that can run as fast as this one can.
+
+"About then along comes Mr. Ostypath.  This was just about thirty days
+before the county fair at Socorro, and there was money hung up for
+horse races over there that made us feel sick to think of.  We knew we
+could go out of the cow-punchin' business for good if we could just
+only onct get Pinto over there, and get him to run the right way for a
+few brief moments.
+
+"Was he game?  I don't know.  There never was no horse ever got clost
+enough to him in a horse race to tell whether he was game or not.  He
+might not get back home in time for supper, but he would shore run
+industrious.  Say, I talked in a telyphome onct.  The book hung on the
+box said the telyphome was instantaneous.  It ain't.  But now this
+Pinto, he was a heap more instantaneous than a telyphome.
+
+"As I was sayin', it was long about now Mr. Ostypath comes in.  He
+talks with the boss about locatin' around in here.  Boss studies him
+over a while, and as there ain't been anybody sick for over ten years
+he tries to break it to Mr. Ostypath gentle that the Bar T ain't a good
+place for a doctor.  They have some conversation along in there,
+that-a-way, and Mr. Ostypath before long gets the boss interested deep
+and plenty.  He says there ain't no such a thing as gettin' sick.  We
+all knew that before; but he certainly floors the lot when he allows
+that the reason a feller don't feel good, so as he can eat tenpenny
+nails, and make a million dollars a year, is always because there is
+something wrong with his osshus structure.
+
+"He says the only thing that makes a feller have rheumatism, or
+dyspepsia, or headache, or nosebleed, or red hair, or any other
+sickness, is that something is wrong with his nervous system.  Now,
+it's this-a-way.  He allows them nerves is like a bunch of garden hose.
+If you put your foot on the hose, the water can't run right free.  If
+you take it off, everything's lovely.  'Now,' says Mr. Ostypath, 'if,
+owin' to some luxation, some leeshun, some temporary mechanical
+disarrangement of your osshus structure, due to a oversight of a
+All-wise Providence, or maybe a fall off'n a buckin' horse, one of them
+bones of yours gets to pressin' on a nerve, why, it ain't natural you
+ought to feel good.  Now, is it?' says he.
+
+"He goes on and shows how all up and down a feller's backbone there is
+plenty of soft spots, and he shows likewise that there is scattered
+around in different parts of a feller's territory something like two
+hundred and four and a half bones, any one of which is likely any
+minute to jar loose and go to pressin' on a soft spot; 'In which case,'
+says he, 'there is need of a ostypath immediate.'
+
+"For instance,' he says to me, 'I could make quite a man out of you in
+a couple of years if I had the chanct.'  I ast him what his price would
+be for that, and he said he was willin' to tackle it for about fifty
+dollars a month.  That bein' just five dollars a month more than the
+boss was allowing me at the time, and me seein' I'd have to go about
+two years without anything to wear or eat--let alone anything to
+drink--I had to let this chanct go by.  I been strugglin' along, as you
+know, ever since, just like this, some shopworn, but so's to set up.
+There was one while, I admit, when the Doc made me some nervous, when I
+thought of all them soft spots in my spine, and all them bones liable
+to get loose any minute and go to pressin' on them.  But I had to take
+my chances, like any other cow puncher at forty-five a month."
+
+"You ought to raise his wages, Mac," said Doc Tomlinson to McKinney,
+the ranch foreman, but the latter only grunted.
+
+"Mr. Ostypath, he stayed around the Bar T quite a while," began Curly
+again, "and we got to talkin' to him a heap about modern science.  Says
+he, one evenin', this-a-way to us fellers, says he, 'Why, a great many
+things goes wrong because the nervous system is interfered with, along
+of your osshus structure.  You think your stomach is out of whack,'
+says he.  'It ain't.  All it needs is more nerve supply.  I git that by
+loosenin' up the bones in your back.  Why, I've cured a heap of
+rheumatism, and paralysis, and cross eyes, and--'
+
+"'What's that?' says Tom Redmond, right sudden.
+
+"'You heard me, sir,' says the Doc, severe.
+
+"Tom, he couldn't hardly wait, he was so bad struck with the idea he
+had.  'Come here, Doc,' says he.  And then him and Doc walked off a
+little ways and begun to talk.  When they come up toward us again, we
+heard the Doc sayin': 'Of course I could cure him.  Straybismus is dead
+easy.  I never did operate on no horse, but I've got to eat, and if
+this here is the only patient in this whole blamed country, why I'll
+have to go you, if it's only for the sake of science,' says he.  Then
+we all bunched in together and drifted off toward the corral, where old
+Pinto was standin', lookin' hopeless and thoughtful.  'Is this the
+patient?' says the Doc, sort of sighin'.
+
+"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.
+
+"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways,
+sideways, and all around.  Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks
+Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd
+'a' been lookin' him full in the face.  Doc he stands thoughtful for
+quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down
+along Pinto's spine.  He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful
+subject,' says he.  'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject!  Whole osshus
+structure exposed!'  And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful
+in the game."
+
+Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.
+
+"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is
+full of little humps--you can see that easy in the springtime.  Now old
+Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky
+Mountain range.
+
+"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he,
+'Just like I thought,' says he.  'The patient has suffered a distinct
+leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"
+
+"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.
+
+"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.
+
+"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore
+scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.
+
+"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more.  'Now, here is a
+distant luxation in the lumber regions.'  He talked like Pinto had a
+wooden leg.
+
+"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced
+ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.
+
+"'Now look here, Doc,' says Tom Redmond to him then.  'You go careful.
+We all know there's something strange about this here horse; but now,
+if he's got any bone pressin' on him anywhere that makes him _run_ the
+way he does, why, you be blamed careful not to monkey with that there
+particular bone.  Don't you touch his _runnin'_ bone, because
+_that's_ all right the way it is.'
+
+"'Don't you worry any,' says the Doc.  'All I should do would only be
+to increase his nerve supply.  In time I could remedy his ocular
+defecks, too,' says he.  He allows that if we will give him time, he
+can make Pinto's eyes straighten out so's he'll look like a new rockin'
+horse Christmas mornin' at a church festerval.  Incidentally he
+suggests that we get a tall leather blinder and run it down Pinto's
+nose, right between his eyes.
+
+"This last was what caught us most of all.  'This here blinder idea,'
+says Tom Redmond, 'is plumb scientific.  The trouble with us cow
+punchers is we ain't got no brains--or we wouldn't be cow punchers!
+Now look here, Pinto's right eye looks off to the left, and his left
+eye looks off to the right.  Like enough he sees all sorts of things on
+both sides of him, and gets 'em mixed.  Now, you put this here harness
+leather between his eyes, and his right eye looks plumb into it on one
+side, and his left eye looks into it on the other.  Result is, he can't
+see nothing at _all_!  Now, if he'll only run when he's _blind_, why,
+we can skin them Socorro people till it seems like a shame.'
+
+"Well, right then we all felt money in our pockets.  We seemed most too
+good to be out ridin' sign, or pullin' old cows out of mudholes.  'You
+leave all that to me,' says Doc.  'By the time I've worked on this
+patient's nerve centres for a while, I'll make a new horse out of him.
+You watch me,' says he.  That made us all feel cheerful.  We thought
+this wasn't such a bad world, after all.
+
+"We passed the hat in the interest of modern science, and we fenced off
+a place in the corral and set up a school of ostypathy in our midst.
+Doc, he done some things that seemed to us right strange at first.  He
+gets Pinto up in one corner and takes him by the ear, and tries to
+break his neck, with his foot in the middle of his back.  Then he goes
+around on the other side and does the same thing.  He hammers him up
+one side and down the other, and works him and wiggles him till us cow
+punchers thought he was goin' to scatter him around worse than
+Cassybianca on the burnin' deck after the exploshun.  My experience,
+though, is that it's right hard to shake a horse to pieces.  Pinto, he
+stood it all right.  And say, he got so gentle, with that tall blinder
+between his eyes, that he'd 'a' followed off a sheepherder.
+
+"All this time we was throwin' oats a-plenty into Pinto, rubbin' his
+legs down, and gettin' him used to a saddle a little bit lighter than a
+regular cow saddle.  Doc, he allows he can see his eyes straightenin'
+out every day.  'I ought to have a year on this job,' says he; 'but
+these here is urgent times.'
+
+"I should say they was urgent.  The time for the county fair at Socorro
+was comin' right clost.
+
+"At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair,
+and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the
+racin' book.  My friends, you would 'a' shed tears of pity to see them
+folks fall down over theirselves tryin' to hand us their money against
+old Pinto.  There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds
+of fancy riders, and money--oh, law!  Us Bar T fellers, we took
+everything offered--put up everything we had, down to our spurs.  Then
+we'd go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn.  We was gettin'
+rich so quick we felt almost scared.
+
+"There come nigh to bein' a little shootin' just before the horses was
+gettin' ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half.  We
+led old Pinto out, and some feller standin' by, he says, sarcastic
+like, 'What's that I see comin'; a snow-plough?'  Him alludin' to the
+single blinder on Pinto's nose.
+
+"'I reckon you'll think it's been snowin' when we get through,' says
+Tom Redmond to him, scornful.  'The best thing you can do is to shut
+up, unless you've got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar
+T festerval.'  But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the
+post, and there wasn't no more talk.
+
+"Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the
+starter didn't have no trouble with him at all.  At last he got them
+all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the
+whole bunch.  Say, man, that was a fine start.
+
+"Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he'd come out on the track
+that day just standin' on the edges of his feet, he was feelin' that
+fine.  We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up
+on Pinto for to ride him.  Now a Greaser ain't got no sense.  It was
+that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.
+
+"I was tellin' you that there horse was ostypathed, so to speak, plumb
+to a razor edge, and I was sayin' that he went off on a even start.
+Then what did he do?  Run?  No, he didn't _run_.  He just sort of
+passed _away_ from the place where he started at.  Our Greaser, he
+sees the race is all over, and like any fool cow puncher, he must get
+frisky.  Comin' down the homestretch, only needin' about one more
+jump--for it ain't above a quarter of a mile--Jose, he stands up in his
+stirrups and pulls off his hat, and just whangs old Pinto over the head
+with it, friendly like, to show him there ain't no coldness.
+
+"We never did rightly know what happened at that time.  The Greaser
+admits he may have busted off the fastenin' of that single blinder down
+Pinto's nose.  Anyhow, Pinto runs a few short jumps, and then stops,
+lookin' troubled.  The next minute he hides his face on the Greaser and
+there is a glimpse of bright, glad sunlight on the bottom of Jose's
+moccasins.  Next minute after that Pinto is up in the grandstand among
+the ladies, and there he sits down in the lap of the Governor's wife,
+which was among them present.
+
+"There was time, even then, to lead him down and over the line, but
+before we could think of that he falls to buckin' sincere and
+conscientious, up there among the benches, and if he didn't jar his
+osshus structure a heap _then_, it wasn't no fault of his'n.  We all
+run up in front of the grandstand, and stood lookin' up at Pinto, and
+him the maddest, scaredest, cross-eyedest horse I ever did see in all
+my life.  His single blinder was swingin' loose under his neck.  His
+eyes was right mean and white, and the Mexican saints only knows which
+way he _was_ a-lookin'.
+
+"So there we was," went on Curly, with another sigh, "all Socorro
+sayin' bright and cheerful things to the Bar T, and us plumb broke, and
+far, far from home.
+
+"We roped Pinto, and led him home behind the wagon, forty miles over
+the sand, by the soft, silver light of the moon.  There wasn't a horse
+or saddle left in our _rodeo_, and we had to ride on the grub wagon,
+which you know is a disgrace to any gentleman that wears spurs.  Pinto,
+he was the gayest one in the lot.  I reckon he allowed he'd been Queen
+of the May.  Every time he saw a jack rabbit or a bunch of sage brush,
+he'd snort and take a _pasear_ sideways as far as the rope would let
+him go.
+
+"'The patient seems to be still laborin' under great cerebral
+excitation,' says the Doc, which was likewise on the wagon.  'I ought
+to have had a year on him,' says he, despondent like.
+
+"'Shut up,' says Tom Redmond to the Doc.  'I'd shoot up your own osshus
+structure plenty,' says he, 'if I hadn't bet my gun on that horse race.'
+
+"Well, we got home, the wagon-load of us, in the mornin' sometime,
+every one of us ashamed to look the cook in the face, and hopin' the
+boss was away from home.  But he wasn't.  He looks at us, and says he;--
+
+"'Is this a sheep outfit I see before me, or is it the remnants of the
+former cow camp on the Bar T?'  He was right sarcastic.  'Doc,' says
+he, 'explain this here to me.' But the Doc, he couldn't.  Says the boss
+to him at last, 'The _right_ time to do the explainin' is before the
+hoss race is over, and not after,' says he.  'That's the only kind of
+science that goes hereafter on the Bar T,' says he.
+
+"I reckon the boss was feelin' a little riled, because he had two
+hundred on Pinto hisself.  A cross-eyed horse shore can make a sight of
+trouble," Curly sighed in conclusion; "yet I bought Pinto for four
+dollars, and--sometimes, anyway--he's the best horse in my string down
+at Carrizosy, ain't he, Mac?"
+
+In the thoughtful silence following this tale, Tom Osby knocked his
+pipe reflectively against a cedar log.  "That's the way with the
+railroad," he said.  "It's goin' to come in herewith one eye on the
+gold mines and the other on the town--and there won't be no
+blind-bridle up in front of old Mr. Ingine, neither.  If we got as much
+sense as the Bar T feller, we'll do our explainin' before, and not
+after the hoss race is over.  Before I leave for Vegas, I want to see
+one of you ostypothetic lawyers about that there railroad outfit."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PARTITION OF HEARTS DESIRE
+
+_Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
+Considerations_
+
+"You see, it's just this-a-way," began Tom Osby, the morning after
+Curly's osteopathic horse saga; "I've got to go on up to Vegas after a
+load of stuff, and I'll be gone a couple of weeks.  Now, you know, from
+what we heard down at Sky Top about this railroad, a heap of things can
+happen in two weeks.  Them fellers ain't showin' their hands any, but for
+all we know their ingineers may come in any day, and start in to doin'
+things."
+
+"They've got to make arrangements first," replied Dan Anderson.
+
+"That's all right; and so ought we to make arrangements.  We seen this
+place first.  Now, Dan--" and he extended a gnarled and hairy
+hand--"you've always done like you said you would.  You took care of me
+down there to Sky Top.  I want you to keep on a-takin' care of me,
+whether I'm here or not.  Now, there's my house and yard, right at the
+head of the canon, where they've got to come if they get in.  That little
+old place, and my little old team, is about all I've got in the world.
+If old Mr. Railroad comes up this _arroyo_, what happens to me?  You
+tell 'em to go somewheres else, because I seen this place first, and I
+like it.  Ain't that the law in this country?  Ain't it _always_ been
+the law?"
+
+Dan Anderson nodded.  He held out his hand to Tom Osby and looked him
+straight in the eye.  "I'll take care of you, Tom," he promised.
+
+"Then that'll be about all," said Tom; "giddup, boys!"
+
+In some way news of the early advent of the railroad had gotten about in
+Heart's Desire, and Dan Anderson found talk of it on every tongue, talk
+very similar to that of Tom Osby.  Uncle Jim Brothers, owner of the
+one-story hotel and restaurant, the father and the feeder of all Heart's
+Desire when the latter was in financial stress, was the next to come to
+him; and Uncle Jim was grave of face.
+
+"See here, man," said he, "how about this here new railroad?  Do we want
+it, or _do_ we?  Seems to me like we always got along here pretty well
+the way things was."
+
+Dan Anderson nodded again.  Uncle Jim shifted from one large foot to the
+other, and thrust a great hand into the pocket of one trouser leg.
+
+"All I was going to say to you, Dan," he went on, "is, if it comes to
+takin' any sides, we all know which side you're on.  You're with _us_.
+Now, there's my place down there, where you've et many a time with the
+rest of the boys.  You've helped me build the tables in the dining
+room--done a lot of things which makes me feel obliged to you."  (Ah!
+lovable liar, Uncle Jim, who could feed a man broke and hungry, and still
+let him feel that the operation was a favor to the feeder!) "Now, I just
+wanted to say, Dan, I was sure, in case any railroad ever did come
+cavortin' around here, you'd sort of look after the old place.  Will you
+do that?"
+
+"Of course he will," broke in Doc Tomlinson, who had strolled down the
+street and overheard the conversation.  "Dan Anderson, he's our lawyer.
+We've got him retained permanent, ain't we, Dan?  Now, there's my old
+drug store--ain't much in it, but it's where I settled when I first driv
+into the valley, and I like the place.  Ain't no railroad going to boost
+me out without a scrap."
+
+Dan Anderson turned away, sick at heart.  For three days he kept to his
+cabin on the far side of the _arroyo_.
+
+But if hesitation sat on the soul of any man of the community, if doubt
+or questionings harassed the minds of any, there was no uncertainty on
+the part of the management of the railroad, whose coming was causing this
+uneasiness.  One day Dan Anderson was startled to hear a knock at his
+door, and to see the dusty figure of Porter Barkley, general counsel of
+the A. P. and S. E., just from a long buckboard ride from the head of the
+rails.  With him came Grayson, chief engineer.  Dan Anderson invited them
+in.
+
+"Well, Mr. Anderson," said Barkley, "here we are, close after you.  We're
+following up the right-of-way matters sharp and hard now.  We can't hold
+back our graders, and before the line gets abreast of this canon, we've
+got to know what we can do here.  Now, what can you tell us by this time?"
+
+"I can tell you, as I said, the status of every town lot and every mining
+claim in this valley," replied Dan Anderson.  "It's all simple so far as
+that is concerned."
+
+"How about that town site?  Grayson, here, is ready to go ahead with the
+new plat.  If you never had any town site filed, how were real-estate
+transfers made?"
+
+"There never were any transfers made.  There has not been a town lot sold
+in ten years."
+
+"Real estate just a little dull?" laughed Barkley, sarcastically.
+
+"We hadn't noticed it," said Dan Anderson, simply.
+
+"But how about your courts?  Next thing you'll be telling me there wasn't
+any court."
+
+"There never was, except when we acquitted a man for shooting a pig.  I
+was his counsel, by the way."
+
+"Nor any town election?"
+
+"Why should there be?"
+
+"No government--no nothing? for five years?"
+
+"Over twelve years altogether, to be exact.  I'm rather a newcomer
+myself."
+
+"No organization--no government--" Barkley summed it up.  "Good God!
+what kind of a place is this?"
+
+"It's Heart's Desire," said Dan Anderson.  No man of that valley was ever
+able to say more, or indeed thought it needful to say more.
+
+Porter Barkley gave a contemptuous whistle, as he turned on his heel,
+hands in pockets, his bulky form filling the doorway as he looked out.
+"So you were a lawyer here," he said.  "You must have had rather more
+leisure than law practice, I should think."
+
+"It left me all the more time for my reading," said Dan Anderson,
+gravely.  "You've no idea how much a law practice interferes with one's
+legal studies."  Barkley looked at him, but could discover no sign of
+levity.
+
+"Well, there is one thing mighty sure," said he, shutting his heavy jaws
+tight; "this valley is, or was, open to settlement under the United
+States land laws."
+
+"Certainly," assented Dan Anderson.  "The first men in here were mining
+men from every corner of the Rockies, and they knew their business.  All
+these mountains were platted, and 'adversed,' and litigated.  Then,
+before the second discoveries, and before any coal veins were located on
+the other side of the valley, the gold veins pinched out.  Everybody got
+broke, and nearly everybody got up and walked away.  Meantime, the courts
+had only been sitting over at Lincoln once in a while--when Billy the Kid
+allowed it.  I'll have to admit that things were a trifle tangled as to
+title."
+
+"Well, I should say so!"  Barkley was irritable, Grayson, the engineer,
+silent and smiling.
+
+"There was so much room after the mining boom broke, that nobody cared
+for a town lot.  Every fellow just picked out the place he liked, built
+where he liked, and went in as his own butler, chambermaid, and cook.
+
+"You are seeing this country now, gentlemen," he went on, "pretty much as
+God made it, and as Coronado saw it three hundred years ago.  I deprecate
+any undue haste on your part.  We've been three hundred years in getting
+this far along.  We've done very well without either a town site or a
+city council."
+
+Barkley was utterly unable to comprehend either Dan Anderson or Heart's
+Desire.  "This is the absolute limit!" he rapped out.  "At least we'll
+end this now.  Come on, Grayson, we three'll go out and have a look at
+the place, and see what is the best way to lay out the streets.  I
+suppose, Anderson, you can tell us how we can get title under government
+patent--mineral lands--coal lands--desert lands--homestead--whatever we
+can dig out the quickest?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Dan Anderson, "but don't dig too deep, or you may run
+against a land grant from Ferdinand and Isabella to some well-beloved
+_hidalgo_ whose descendants may now be herding sheep on the Pecos, or
+owning the earth along the Rio Grande.  Cabeza de Vaca may own this
+valley, for all I know.  Maybe Coronado owns it.  _Quien sabe_?  We only
+borrowed the place.  We thought that probably Charles IV, or Philip II,
+or whoever it was, wouldn't mind very much, seeing that he's dead anyhow,
+in case we returned the valley in good condition, reasonable wear and
+tear excepted, after we were dead ourselves.  Of course, this railroad
+coming in complicates matters a good deal.  Do I make all this clear to
+you, gentlemen?  I never did see a place just like this, myself."
+
+"No?" snapped Barkley.
+
+"So we called it Heart's Desire."
+
+"We'll call it Coalville now," retorted Barkley.
+
+They passed out into the bright sunlit street of Heart's Desire.
+Stern-browed Carrizo, guardian through centuries of calm and secrecy,
+gazed down on them unwinking.  Dan Anderson looked up at the grim
+sentinel of the valley, and mockery left his speech.  He looked about at
+the wide and vacant spaces of the little settlement, lying content,
+secure, and set apart, and a horror came upon his soul.  He was about to
+be a traitor, a traitor to Heart's Desire!  Law--title--security--what
+more of these could these men bring to Heart's Desire than it had long
+had already?  What wrong here had ever been left unrighted?  Truth, and
+justice, and fairness, and sincerity, those priceless things--why, he had
+known them here for years.  Were they now to be made more obvious, or
+more strong?  He had believed his friends, had had friends to believe;
+would these walking at his side be better friends?  These men of Heart's
+Desire, these simple children who had left the smother of civilization to
+seek out for themselves a place of strength and simplicity, these strong
+and fearless giants, these friends of his--had he not promised them that
+they would be safe in his hands?  Hitherto there had never been a traitor
+among all the men of Heart's Desire.  Was he, their accepted friend, to
+be the first?  Dan Anderson passed his hand over a forehead suddenly
+grown moist.  He dared not look up at the chiding front of old Carrizo.
+
+"I was saying," said Porter Barkley, turning from the taciturn engineer
+as they walked along the hillside, "that this place seems to have been
+laid off with a circular saw.  I can't see any idea of streets at all."
+
+"There is a sort of a street along the _arroyo_," said Dan Anderson,
+dully.  "There never were any cross streets.  The boys just built where
+they felt like it."
+
+"And great builders they were!  I didn't know men ever lived in such
+places.  What's that joint there?"  He pointed out a ruined _jacal_ of
+upright mud-chinked logs, now leaning slantwise far to one side.  "Was
+that a house, too?  It hasn't even a chimney,"
+
+"That was the residence and law office of a former supreme judge of the
+State of Kansas," replied Dan Anderson.  "He didn't need any chimney.
+You've no idea how useless a chimney really is.  He never stopped to cut
+any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and
+let the smoke go out the window.  He had a pet wildcat that shared his
+legal studies--oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to you,
+just fresh from New York."
+
+"But didn't you live in New York once yourself?"
+
+"Yes, once."
+
+"What made you come away?"
+
+"Objected to, as irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; and objection
+sustained," replied Dan Anderson.  "The first thing I learned in this
+country was not to inquire about any man's past.  That's a useful thing
+for _you_ to learn, too."
+
+Porter Barkley, accustomed to dominating those around him, flushed red,
+but managed to suppress his rising choler for the time.  "And by the way,
+what's that old shell over there, across the ditch?" he asked.
+
+"I regret your irreverence," said Dan Anderson.  "That's the New Jersey
+Gold Mills.  Eighty thousand of Eastern Capital went in there at one
+time.  They didn't understand the ways of the country."
+
+"Humph!  Well, it's a more practical layout you've got in here this time.
+You can gamble that Ellsworth and our gang are not going to sink their
+roll here, by a long ways, unless they get something for it."
+
+"You'll get a run for your money, in all likelihood," remarked Dan
+Anderson.
+
+"As I said, now, Grayson, don't pay any attention to this gully here,"
+went on Barkley.  "We'll fill this ditch and put in drains at the
+crossings, and run the main street north and south.  We'll take the
+ramshorn crooks out of this town in about two days, when we get started."
+
+"I see no reason why we could not run the cross streets at right angles,"
+said Grayson, the constructive.  "Of course, we'll catch a good many of
+these buildings--" he hesitated, pointing at the time to Doc Tomlinson's
+drug store.
+
+"The corner of this fence would be inside the line of the main street,"
+he went on, sighting along his lead pencil to the angle of Whiteman's
+corral.  It was the very spot where Dan Anderson had sat in council with
+his cronies many a time.  He bit his lip now as he followed the gaze of
+the engineer.
+
+"How about the stone house down the _arroyo_?" asked he of Grayson.
+This was Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, sanctuary for the homeless of
+Heart's Desire, a temple of refuge, a place where the word "Friendship,"
+unspoken, never written, was known and understood among men gathered from
+all corners of this unfriendly world.
+
+"That would have to go," replied Grayson.
+
+"As to that shanty down below, at the head of the canon," growled
+Barkley, pointing to Tom Osby's adobe, "that's going to be the first
+thing we'll tear down, street or no street.  We need that place for our
+depot yard, and we're going to take it.  Besides, there was something
+about that Osby fellow I didn't like when we met him over at Sky Top.
+He's too damned independent to suit me."
+
+Dan Anderson straightened up as though smitten, his face a dull red.  The
+dancing heat mist blurred before his eyes.  He said nothing.  They turned
+presently and strolled down toward the foot of the _arroyo_.  Barkley
+pushed his hat back on his furrowed forehead.
+
+"There is a lot in this thing for me, Andersen," said he, "and there'll
+be a lot in it for you.  Have you got any claims of your own in here?
+Mineral, I mean?"
+
+"Of course," Dan Anderson replied.  "We all have claims.  This is the
+only valley in the West, so far as I know, where there is good coal on
+one side, and paying gold quartz on the other.  But that's the case here.
+We haven't overlooked it."
+
+Barkley whistled.  "I wouldn't ask a better show than you'll have here,"
+said he, contemplatively.  "The only wonder to me is that some one hasn't
+broken into this long ago."
+
+"There might be some few difficulties," suggested Dan Anderson.
+
+"Difficulties!  What do you care about that?  We'll wear 'em out, pound
+'em out, break 'em up, I tell you.  We're the first ones to find this
+country--"
+
+"Except maybe Coronado, De Vaca and Company."
+
+"Who were they?"
+
+"The same as you and me," replied Dan Anderson, enigmatically.  "Ask the
+mountains."
+
+"Oh, rot!" said Barkley.  "I'll tell you, once for all, I'm not
+interested in dreams or foolishness.  Now, if you want to go in with us,
+that's one thing.  If you don't, we want to find it out mighty quick."
+
+"You might do worse," said Dan Anderson.  "The other lawyer is worse than
+myself.  At times I suspect him of being lazy."
+
+"Well, well, let's get together," urged Barkley, impatiently.  "Now,
+Grayson thinks it will take about three hundred and fifty acres for the
+first plat, without additions; we'll supersede the old Jack Wilson
+patent.  He's dead, you say?  Never left a will, or any heirs?  Never did
+get his town site platted and filed?  Well, he never will, now.  You go
+with Grayson to-morrow and run out these lines quietly, and help him get
+an idea of the best mining claims on both sides of the valley, too.
+There'll be plenty for you to do."
+
+Dan Anderson nodded, but made no comment.  Many things were revolving in
+his mind.
+
+"Meantime," concluded Barkley, "I've got to get back down the line to
+meet Mr. Ellsworth.  We'll come up again.  You can readily see that we've
+got to have a town meeting before very long.  Get things in line for it.
+Will you attend to this?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dan Anderson, slowly and musingly; "yes, I'll attend to
+it."
+
+Barkley looked once more upon the impassive face of his local counsel,
+and departed more than ever puzzled and exasperated.  He liked Dan
+Anderson as little as he understood him.  "I'll handle him, though," he
+muttered to himself.  "There's a way to handle every man, and I rather
+think that this one'll come to his feed before we get done with him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
+and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator_
+
+"Learned Counsel," said Dan Anderson on the morning following the
+preliminary survey of Heart's Desire, "I want you to take my case."
+
+"What's up?" asked Learned Counsel.  Dan Anderson pointed down the
+street, where a group stood talking among themselves, casting
+occasional side-long glances in his direction.  "They're milling like a
+bunch of scared longhorns," he said.  "Something's wrong, and I know it
+mighty well.  I want you to take my case.  Come along."
+
+Contrary to the ancient custom of the forum at Whiteman's corral, the
+group did not move apart to admit them to the circle.  "The gentleman
+from Kansas was addressing the meeting," said Dan Anderson.  Doc
+Tomlinson continued speaking, but still the circle made no move.
+
+"Say it!" burst out Dan Anderson.  "Tell it out!  What's on your minds,
+you fellows?"
+
+"We don't like to believe it," McKinney began, facing toward him.  "We
+hope it ain't true."
+
+"What's not true?" he demanded, looking from one averted face to
+another.  At length Doc Tomlinson resumed his office as spokesman.
+"They say you've sold us out.  They say you're bought by the railroad
+to clean us out; that the scheme is to steal the town, and you're in
+the steal.  Is that so?"
+
+"Is it true?" asked McKinney.
+
+"We want to _know_ if it's true," insisted Doc Tomlinson.  "You was
+all over town with them fellers.  Now they've let it out they're goin'
+to grab the town site and make a re-survey."
+
+"We know there wasn't ever any town site here," added Uncle Jim
+Brothers, "but what need was there?  Wasn't there plenty of room for
+everybody?"
+
+"You can't try any hurrah game on us fellers here," said McKinney,
+facing Dan Anderson squarely.
+
+"Nor you with me," retorted Dan Anderson.  "Don't any of you undertake
+that."
+
+"Hold on there," called Learned Counsel, lifting his hand for
+attention.  "This man is my client!  You're not hearing both sides."
+
+"Tell the other side, Dan," said Uncle Jim Brothers.  Dan Anderson
+shook his head.
+
+"Why can't you?" asked Uncle Jim.
+
+"I can't!" broke from Dan Andersen's dry lips.  "If you knew, you
+wouldn't ask me to."
+
+"That's no argument," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson.  "What we do know is
+that you were figurin' to run the street right past here, maybe through
+my store and Uncle Jim's place, maybe takin' Tom's place for depot
+yards.  That outfit's been all over the hills lookin' for claims to
+jump.  It's a case of gobble and steal.  They say you're hired to help
+it on, and are gettin' a share of the steal.  Now, if that's so, what
+would you do if you was in our place?"
+
+"I'd run the fellow out of town," said Dan Anderson.  "If there was
+that sort of a traitor here, by God! I'd kill him."
+
+"We never did have no man go back on us here," Uncle Jim Brothers
+remarked.
+
+"Don't say that to me!" Dan Andersen's voice was shaken.  "You've fed
+me, Uncle Jim.  Don't say that to me."
+
+"Then what _shall_ we say, man?" replied Uncle Jim.  "We want to be
+fair with you.  But let me tell you, _you_ don't own this valley.
+_We_ own it.  There's other places in the world besides the States,
+and don't you forget that.  We didn't think you'd ever try to bring
+States ways in here."
+
+"To hell with the States!" said McKinney, tersely.
+
+"And States ways with them!" added Doc Tomlinson.  "I'd like to see any
+railroad, or any States, or any United States government, try to run
+this place."  Unconsciously he slapped his hand upon the worn scabbard
+at his hip, and without thought others in the group eased their pistol
+belts.  It was the Free State of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Well, by God!" said Uncle Jim Brothers, snapping and throwing away the
+pinon twig which he had been fumbling, "if we don't want no railroad,
+we don't _have_ it, and that goes!"
+
+"Of course," broke in Learned Counsel.  "We all know that.  That's a
+small thing.  The big question is whether or not we've been fair to my
+client.  I've not had time yet to go fully into his case.  We'll have
+to continue this trial.  We've got to have fair play."
+
+"That's right enough," assented McKinney, and the others nodded.
+
+"Then wait a while.  You can't settle this thing until my client has
+had time to talk with me.  I'll find out what he ought to tell."
+
+"All right for that, too," agreed Uncle Jim Brothers.  "But about that
+railroad, we'll hold court right here.  We'll send out a summons to
+them folks, and have a meetin' here, and we'll see which is which and
+what is what in this town."
+
+"That's fair enough," assented Learned Counsel.  "We'll try the
+railroad, and we'll try my client at the same time."
+
+"Write out the summons," said Doc Tomlinson.  "Send word down to them
+railroad folks to come up here and be tried.  It's time we knew who was
+boss, them or us.  Go ahead, you're a lawyer; fix it up."
+
+They ignored Dan Anderson, their long-time leader in all matters of
+public interest!  Eventually it was Doc Tomlinson himself who drafted
+the document, one of the most interesting of the Territorial records--a
+summons whereby civilization was called before the bar of primitive
+man.  These presents being signed and sealed, a messenger was sought
+for their delivery.  None better offered than a half-witted sheepherder
+commonly known as Willie, who chanced to be in town by buckboard from
+the lower country.  This much accomplished, the meeting at Whiteman's
+corral broke up.
+
+Learned Counsel took his client by the arm and led him away.  "You need
+not say much to your lawyer," he remarked; "but while I don't ask you
+to incriminate yourself even with your counsel, I only want to say that
+a Girl is, in a great many decisions of the upper courts, held to be an
+extenuating circumstance."  He watched the twitch of Dan Anderson's
+face, but the latter would not speak.
+
+"I don't know just where the girl exists now in this case," went on
+Learned Counsel, "or how; but she's somewhere.  It is not wholly
+necessary that you should specify."
+
+"My God!" broke out Dan Anderson.  "I wanted--I hoped so much?  It was
+my opportunity, my first--"
+
+"That's enough," said Learned Counsel.  "You needn't say any more.
+Every fellow has something of that sort in his life.  What brought
+McKinney here, and Doc Tomlinson, and all the rest?"
+
+"Ribbons!" said Dan Anderson.  "Tintypes!"
+
+"Precisely.  And who shall cast the first stone?  If the boys knew--"
+
+"But they don't know, they can't know.  Do you think I'd uncover her
+name, even among my friends--make her affairs public?  No."
+
+"Then your only defence cannot be brought into court."
+
+"No.  So what do you advise?"
+
+"What do you advise your counsel to advise you?" asked Learned Counsel,
+bitterly.
+
+"Nothing.  I'm done for, either way it goes."
+
+Dan Anderson turned a drawn face.  "What shall I do?" he asked at
+length again.
+
+For once Learned Counsel was wise.  "In this sort of crisis," said he,
+"one does not consult a lawyer.  He decides for himself, and he lives
+or dies, succeeds or fails, wins or loses forever, for himself and by
+himself, without aid of counsel or benefit of clergy."  He stood and
+watched the iron go home into the soul of a game man.  Dan Anderson was
+white, but his reply came sharp and stern.
+
+"You're right!  Leave me alone.  I'll take the case now myself."
+
+They shook hands and separated, not to meet again for days; for Dan
+Anderson shut himself up in his cabin and denied himself to all.  Gloom
+and uncertainty reigned among his friends.  That a crisis of some sort
+was imminent now became generally understood.  At length the crisis
+came.
+
+There arrived in town, obedient to the summons of Heart's Desire, the
+dusty buckboard driven by Willie the sheepherder.  Upon the front seat
+with him was Mr. Ellsworth; on the back seat sat Porter Barkley and
+Constance.  The chief actors in the impending drama were now upon the
+stage, and all Heart's Desire knew that action of some sort must
+presently follow.
+
+With due decorum, however, all Heart's Desire stood apart, while the
+three travellers, dusty and weary, buried themselves in the privacy of
+Uncle Jim Brothers's best spare rooms.  Then Heart's Desire sought out
+Willie the sheepherder.
+
+"Now, Willie," said Doc Tomlinson, "look here--you tell us the truth
+for once.  There's a heap of trouble goin' on here, and we want to get
+at the bottom of it.  Maybe you heard something.  Now, say, is this
+here railroad figurin' on comin' in here, or not?"
+
+"Shore it'll come," said Willie, sagely.  "Them folks has got money to
+do just what they want.  Railroad'll be here in a few days if they feel
+like it."
+
+"Maybe _we_ don't feel like it," said Doc Tomlinson, grimly.  "We'll
+see about that to-night."
+
+"The girl, she's the one," said Willie, vaguely.
+
+"What's that you mean?" commanded Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"The funniest thing," said Willie, "is how things is mixed.  Lord John,
+he rides on the front seat; and Lord Peter Berkeley,--that's the lawyer
+for the railroad,--he rides on the back seat with her, and he sues for
+her hand, he does, all the way up from the Sacramentos.  Says he to
+Lord John, says he, 'Gimme the hand of this fair daughter of thine, and
+the treasure shall be yours,' says he."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Doc Tomlinson.  "I shore thought that girl was mixed up
+in this somehow.  But I didn't understand.  Wonder if Dan Anderson told
+us everything he knew?"
+
+"They set on the back seat," continued Willie, glancing importantly at
+the listeners to his romance, "a-lookin' into each other's eyes.  And
+says the bold juke, to her, says he, 'Constance!' like that.
+'Constance,' says he, 'I've loved you these many years agone.'"
+
+"What did she say then?"
+
+"I didn't ketch what she said.  But by'm by the proud earl--"
+
+"You said the bold juke."
+
+"It's the same thing.  The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint,
+like earls always is, and says he agin, 'Lord John, the treasure shall
+be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of
+thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,' says he.  From that I
+thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn't ketch.  Of
+course, I was busy drivin' the coach."
+
+The men of Heart's Desire looked from one to the other.  "Well, I'll be
+damned!" said Doc Tomlinson.
+
+Curly chewed tobacco vigorously.  "To me," he said, "it looks like Dan
+was throwed down.  That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn't
+think that of her."
+
+"Throwed down hard," affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; "but now, hold on
+till we get all this straight.  Maybe Dan wouldn't work for this outfit
+if he knew all that's goin' on.  Seems to me like, one way or another,
+the girl's kind of up at auction.  If she's part of the railroad's
+comin' into Heart's Desire, why, then, we want to know about it.  I
+wish 't Dan Anderson was here,"
+
+But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his
+_casita_ across the _arroyo_.  As fate would have it, he had caught
+Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own
+account.  Willie escaped alive, and presently left town.  Whereafter
+Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the
+court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised;
+and that of the woman as well.
+
+At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him.
+Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself,
+and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation.  Then, in his
+loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him,
+conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.
+
+Far up on the flank of Carrizo he sat and looked down upon the little
+straggling town in the valley below.  These hills, he thought, with all
+their treasures, were to be sold and purchased for a price, for a
+treasure greater than all their worth,--the hand of the woman whom he
+loved.  She had consented to the bargain.  She had been true to the
+States, and not to Heart's Desire.  She had been true to her class, and
+not to him, who had left her class.  She had been true to her sex, and
+not to him, her unready lover.  Ah, he had not deserved her
+remembrance; but still she ought to have remembered him!  He had not
+been worthy of her, but still she ought to have loved him!  He had
+offered her nothing, he had evaded her, shunned her, slighted her--but
+in spite of that she ought to have waited for him, and to have loved
+him through all, and believed in him in spite of all!
+
+He sat, befooled and befuddled, arguing, accusing, denying, doubting,
+until he knew not where treachery began or faith had ended.  It was
+late when he descended the mountain and walked dully down the street.
+
+All this time Constance, in ignorance of everything except the absolute
+truth, sat in the meagre room of the little stone hotel.  She wondered
+if there would ever be any change in her manner of life, if there would
+ever be anything but this continuous following of her father from one
+commercial battle into another.  She wondered why Dan Anderson did not
+come.  Surely he was here.  Surely his business was with his employers;
+and more surely than all, and in spite of all, his place was here with
+her; because her heart cried out for him.  In spite of all, he was her
+heart's desire.  Why did he not come?
+
+She arose, her hands clenched; she hated him, as much as she had longed
+for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events_
+
+There are two problems in life, and only two: food and love.
+Civilization offers us no more, nor indeed does barbarism; for
+civilization and barbarism are not far apart.  The great metropolis
+which sent its emissaries out to the little mountain hamlet never held
+within its teeming confines any greater or graver questions than those
+which were now to come before the town meeting of Heart's Desire.
+
+Down at the stone hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers the tables had been
+cleared away to make room for this event, the first of its kind ever
+known in that valley.  Heretofore there had been no covenant among
+these men, no law save that which lay in leather on each man's thigh.
+It was a land of the individual; and a sweeter land than that for a man
+was never known in all the world.  Now these men were coming together
+to debate what we call a great question, but what is really a small
+question--that of an organization under the laws of what is denominated
+civilization; that compact which the world devised long ago, when first
+man's flocks and herds became of value, and against which the world has
+since then rebelled, and ever will rebel, until there is no longer any
+world remaining, nor any worth the name of man.
+
+The long room, low and bare, was filled with silent, bearded men.  Two
+or three smoky little lamps but served to emphasize the gloom.  At the
+farther end, on chairs raised a few inches above the level of the
+floor, sat John Ellsworth and Porter Barkley.  The latter was the first
+to address the meeting, and he made what might have been called an able
+effort.
+
+Ignoring the fact that civilization had been summoned to the bar of
+Heart's Desire for trial, and assuming that barbarism was put upon its
+defensive, he pointed out to the men of Heart's Desire that they had
+long been living in a state of semi-savagery.  To be sure, they had not
+yet had among them men of executive and organizing minds, but the
+fulness of years had now brought this latter privilege.
+
+He paused, waiting a space for applause, but no applause came.  He felt
+upon him scores of straight-forward eyes, unwavering, steady.
+
+The town, in its new shape, he hurried on to explain, ought, of course,
+to wipe out and forget its past.  Even the name, "Heart's Desire," was
+an absurd one, awkward, silly, meaning nothing.  They had tremendous
+coal-fields directly at their doors.  He suggested the name of
+Coalville as an eminently practical one for the reconstructed
+community.  His suggestion brought out a stir, a shuffle, a sigh; but
+no more.
+
+Mr. Barkley declared that there must be a fundamental revolution as to
+the old ideas of Heart's Desire.  There had been no courts.  There had
+been no government, no society.  It was time that the old days of the
+mining camp and cow town were done, time that miner's law and no law at
+all should give way to the laws of the Territory, to the laws of the
+United States government, and to the greater law of industrial progress.
+
+He additionally, and with a hardening of his voice, pointed out that,
+under the provisions of the laws of society and civilization, property
+belonged only to the man who held the legal title to it.  The gentlemen
+representing this new railroad were the first to assume legal title to
+this town site; they had taken all necessary steps, and intended to
+hold this town site in the courts as their own.  Their expenses would
+be very large, and they proposed to be repaid.  They felt that their
+holdings in the valley would warrant them in going ahead rapidly with
+their plans of development.  They had bought some few claims in the
+coal-fields, had filed on others for themselves, and had taken over
+other and abandoned claims on both sides of the valley.  Their
+disposition was not to be hostile.  They hoped, after the preliminary
+organization of the town government should have been completed, to have
+the unanimous ratification of all their actions.  They felt most
+friendly, most friendly indeed, toward the hardy citizens of this
+remote community.  They proposed to help them all they could.  He felt
+it a distinguished privilege for himself to be the man to take the
+first steps for the organization of the new commercial metropolis of
+Coalville.
+
+But it was distinctly to be understood by all that the gentlemen whom
+he represented did not propose to entertain, and would not tolerate,
+any interference with their plans.  He begged, in conclusion, to
+present to them, with the request for a respectful and intelligent
+hearing, that able, that distinguished, that benevolent gentleman, well
+known in financial circles of the East, Mr. John Ellsworth of New York,
+who would now address them.
+
+Barkley sat down, and, with customary gesture of the orator, passed his
+handkerchief across his brow.  Then he gazed up, surprised.  The
+applause was long in coming.  He straightened in his chair.  The
+applause did not come at all.  The men of Heart's Desire sat hard and
+grim, each silent, each looking straight ahead, nor asking any counsel.
+
+Ellsworth felt the chill which lay upon the audience, and understood
+its meaning.  He stood before them, a rather portly figure, clean,
+ruddy, well clad, fully self-possessed, and now, by intent,
+conciliatory.  With hands behind his back, he told a certain funny
+little story with which he had been wont to conquer, at least in social
+gatherings.  No ripple came in response.  The eyes of the men of
+Heart's Desire looked as intolerably keen and straight at him as they
+had at his predecessor.  He could feel them plainly in the gloom beyond.
+
+Unconsciously on the defensive now, he explained in detail the
+undeniable advantages which would accrue to Heart's Desire on the
+advent of this railroad and the carrying out of the plans that had been
+outlined.  He did not deny that he considered the opinion of his
+counsel valid; that the valley was in effect open to settlement; that
+they had taken steps to put the first legal possession in their own
+names.  Yet, he stated, although they had taken over a number of claims
+to which there seemed to be no legal title, they did not propose to
+interfere, if it could be avoided, with the holdings of any man then
+living in Heart's Desire.  The re-survey of the town would naturally
+make some changes, but these should sit as lightly as possible upon
+those affected.  Of course, the railroad company could condemn and
+confiscate, but it did not wish to confiscate.  It desired to take the
+attitude of justice and fairness.  The gentlemen should bear in mind
+that all these improvements ran into very considerable sums of money.
+A hundred miles of the railroad below them must pass over a barren
+plain, a cattle country and not an agricultural region, and hence
+offering relatively small support to a railroad enterprise.  As yet,
+artesian water was unknown in that country, and might remain always a
+problem.  No natural streams crossed that great dry table land which
+lay to the west, or the similar plateau to the east.  All their hopes
+lay in this one valley and its resources, and while without doubt those
+resources were great, while the coal-fields upon the one side of the
+valley and the gold claims upon the other had been proved beyond a
+peradventure to be of value, the gentlemen should nevertheless remember
+that all this road building and mine developing cost money, a great
+deal of money.  Of course, no capital could be invested except under
+the protection of a stable and adequate system of the law.
+
+These gentlemen before him, Ellsworth said in conclusion, had chosen
+for their habitation one of the most delightful localities he had ever
+seen in all his travels.  He congratulated them.  He looked forward to
+seeing a prosperous city built up in this happy valley.  The country
+was changing, and it must change, the line of the frontier passing
+steadily from the east to the west across the continent.  They could
+not forever escape civilization.  Indeed, it had now come to them.  He
+hoped that they would receive it, and that they would receive him as
+their friend.
+
+As he closed, Ellsworth found himself not dictating, but almost
+pleading.  The stern gravity of his audience removed the edge of any
+arrogance he might have felt.  He sat down and in turn passed his hand
+across his forehead, as perplexed as had been Barkley before him.  Both
+grew uneasy.  There was a shifting in the seats out in the half-lighted
+interior before them, but there came no sound of applause or comment.
+Ellsworth leaned over and whispered to his associate.
+
+"There's something up," said he.  "We haven't got them going.  What's
+on their minds?  Where's Anderson?  He ought to be here.  Get him, and
+let's nominate him for mayor, or something.  This thing's going to
+split!"
+
+"I'll go out and find him," whispered Barkley, and so slipped out of
+the room.
+
+He did find him, aloof, alone, pacing slowly up and down the street,
+the one man needed by both divergent interests, and the one man absent.
+"Good God!  Anderson," protested Barkley.  "What are you doing out here
+by yourself?  We need you in there.  They're like bumps on a log.  We
+can't get them started at all."
+
+"That's funny," said Dan Anderson.
+
+"Funny!  I don't _think_ it's very funny.  You are the one supposed to
+understand these men, and we want you now to deliver the goods."
+
+"If you will pardon me, sir," said Dan Anderson, facing him with his
+hands in his pockets, "I don't exactly like that expression."
+
+"Like it or not," retorted Barkley, hotly.  "You belong in there, and
+not out here in the moonlight studying over your maiden speech.  What
+are you afraid of?"
+
+"Of nothing," said Dan Anderson, simply.  "Or, of nothing but myself."
+
+"But we need another strong talk to stir them up."
+
+"Go make it, then."
+
+"What's that!" cried Barkley, sharply; "you'll not come in."
+
+"No, I'm done with it."
+
+"Why, damn your soul! man, you don't mean to tell me that you've
+flunked--that you've gone back on us?"
+
+Dan Anderson bit his lip, but continued silent.
+
+"You've taken our money!" exclaimed Barkley.  "We've hired you, bought
+you!  We won't stand for any foolishness, and we won't put up with any
+treachery, I want you to understand that.  Your place is in there, at
+the meeting--and here you are standing around as though you were
+mooning over some girl."
+
+"I hadn't noticed the moonlight," said Dan Anderson.  "As to the rest
+of it, the street of this town has usually been free for a man to think
+as he pleased."
+
+"You're a traitor and a squealer!" cried Barkley.
+
+"You're a damned cad!" retorted Dan Anderson, calmly.  He stepped close
+to the other now, although his hands remained in his pockets.  "I
+dislike to make these remarks to an oiled and curled Assyrian ass," he
+went on, smiling, "but under the circumstances, I do; and it goes."
+
+Porter Barkley, dominant, arrogant, aggressive, for years accustomed to
+having his own way with men, felt a queer sensation now--a replica,
+fourfold intensified, of that he had experienced before the silent
+audience he had left within.  He was afraid.  Dan Anderson stepped
+still closer to him, his face lowered, his lips smiling, his eyes
+looking straight into his own.
+
+"It's just what I said," began Barkley, desperately, "I told
+Constance--"
+
+The wonder was that Barkley lived, for the resort to weapons was the
+only remedy known in that land, and Dan Anderson knew the creed, as
+Barkley should have known it.  His weapon leaped out in his hand as he
+drew back, his lean body bent in the curve of the fanged rattler about
+to strike.  He did strike, but not with the point of flame.  The heavy
+revolver came to a level, but the hooked finger did not press the
+trigger.  Instead, the cylinder smote Porter Barkley full upon the
+temple, and he fell like a log.  Dan Anderson checked himself, seeing
+the utter unconsciousness of the fallen man.  For a moment he looked
+down upon him, then walked a few steps aside, standing as does the wild
+stag by its prostrate rival.  The fierce heats of that land, still
+primitive, now flamed in his soul, gone swiftly and utterly savage.  It
+was some moments before he thrust the heavy weapon back into its
+scabbard, and, turning, strode toward the door.
+
+As he entered the crowded room he was recognized, and heard his name
+called again and again.  The audience had wakened, was alive!
+Ellsworth, sitting, alone and anxious, looked up hopefully and beckoned
+Dan Anderson to his side.  The latter seemed scarce to know him, as he
+walked to the end of the hall and, without preliminary, began to speak.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he,--"boys--I am glad to answer you.  I have twice
+been invited to speak at this meeting.  Rather I should say that I am
+now invited by you.  A moment ago I was commanded, ordered to speak, by
+a man who seemed to think he was my owner.
+
+"He thought himself my owner by reason of this!"  He drew from his
+pocket the roll of bills which had been untouched since he had received
+them at Sky Top.  "Here's my first fee as a lawyer.  It's a thousand
+dollars.  I wanted the money.  My business is that of the law.  I am
+open to employment.  You ought not to blame me--you shall not blame
+me."  He held the money in his hand above his head.
+
+The silent audience looked at him gravely, with eyes level and
+straight, as it had regarded the speakers preceding him.
+
+"But--" and here he stiffened--"I did not know I was asked to help
+steal this town, to help rob my friends.  These men have proposed to
+take what was not theirs.  They have wanted no methods but their own.
+They have not asked, but ordered.  If this is their way, they'll have
+to get some other man."
+
+The men of Heart's Desire still looked at him gravely, silently.
+
+"Now," said Dan Anderson, "I've had my chance to choose, and I've
+chosen.  The choice has cost me much, but that has been my personal
+cost, with which you have nothing to do.  I am throwing away my chance,
+my future, but I do throw them away!"
+
+As he spoke he flung at Mr. Ellsworth's feet the roll of bills.  "Sir,"
+said he, "it is the sense of this meeting that the railroad shall not
+come into Heart's Desire.  Is it so?" he asked of the eyes and the
+darkness; and a deep murmur said that it was so.
+
+Dan Anderson stepped down from the little platform out into the room.
+Hands were thrust out to him, but he seemed not to see them.  He pushed
+on out, haggard; and presently the assemblage followed, breaking apart
+awkwardly, and leaving Ellsworth standing alone at the rear of the room.
+
+Ellsworth was now wondering what had become of Barkley, and in his
+discomfiture was turning around in search, when he heard a voice behind
+him, and passing back encountered Barkley, staggering and bloody, as he
+entered through a side door of the building.
+
+"Great God! man, what's the matter?" exclaimed Ellsworth.  "What's
+happened to you?"
+
+"That fellow struck me with a gun.  Let me in!  Let me get fixed for
+him!  By God!  I'll kill him."
+
+"Kill whom?  Who did it?  Wait!  Wait, now!" expostulated Ellsworth,
+following him toward his room; but Barkley still fumed and threatened.
+"That fellow Anderson--" Ellsworth caught.
+
+The sound of their voices reached other ears.  Constance came running
+from her own room, questioning.
+
+"Barkley's been hurt," explained her father, motioning her away.  "Some
+mistake.  He and Anderson have had trouble over this railroad business,
+some way."
+
+"By God!  I'll kill him!" shrieked Barkley again, in spite of her
+presence, perhaps because of it.  "Where can I get a gun?"
+
+"You forget--my daughter--" began Ellsworth.  But Constance avenged the
+discourtesy for herself.
+
+"Never mind, papa," she said coldly.  "Mr. Barkley, you look
+ridiculous.  Go wash your face; and then, if you want a gun, go get one
+in the front room.  The wall's full of them."  A glint of scorn was in
+her eyes, which carried no mercy for the vanquished, nor any concern
+for the victor.  She drew her father with her into her own room.
+
+"By the Lord! girl," exclaimed he, "things have come out different from
+what we expected.  I never thought--"
+
+"No," said Constance, "you never thought.  You didn't know."  She spoke
+bitterly.
+
+Ellsworth sank down in a chair, his hands in his pockets.  "Well, we're
+whipped," said he.  "The game's up.  That fellow Anderson did us up,
+after all,--and look here, here's the money he threw back, almost in my
+face.  They went with him like so many lambs.  Confound it all, I don't
+more'n half believe I ever understood that fellow."
+
+"No, you never did," said Constance, slowly.  She was sitting upon the
+edge of the bed, gazing at her father quietly.  "And so he threw away
+his chance?"
+
+"Just what he did.  Said it meant a lot for him to throw away his
+future, but he was going to do it."
+
+"Did he say that?" asked the girl.
+
+"Sure he said it!  There's not going to be any railroad at Heart's
+Desire; and incidentally Mr. Daniel Anderson isn't going to be mayor,
+or division counsel with a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.  Oh,
+well, to-morrow we'll pull out of here."
+
+Constance was deliberate with her reply.  "One thing, dad, is sure,"
+said she; "when we go, you and I go together.  Let Porter Barkley take
+the stage to-morrow if he likes.  You and I'll go back by way of Sky
+Top; and we'll go alone."
+
+Ellsworth pursed his lips into a whistle, many things perplexing him.
+"He's lucky to get away at all," he remarked at length.  "From what he
+said, it looks like there'd be more trouble."
+
+"Trouble!"  She flung out her hand in contempt.  "There'll be no
+trouble if it waits for him to make it.  If I know Porter Barkley,
+he'll know enough to stay right there in his room.  If he does not--"
+
+"By Jinks!  Dolly," exclaimed her father, "you remind me all the time
+of your mother.  I never could fool that woman; and no one ever could
+scare her!"
+
+She looked at him without reply, and though he stroked her hair softly,
+he departed in discontent, his own head bowed in reflection.
+
+Meanwhile, out in the long street of Heart's Desire, little groups of
+men gathered; but they held to the sides of the street, within the
+shelter of angles and doorways.  In the centre of the street there
+paced slowly up and down, his hands behind his back and not fumbling
+his weapon, a tall figure, with head bent slightly forward as in
+thought, although with eyes keenly watching the door of the hotel.
+Uncle Jim Brothers himself had brought out word of Barkley's
+threatenings, and according to the only known creed there was but one
+issue possible.  That issue was now awaited decently and in order.  The
+street was free and fair.  Let those concerned settle it for
+themselves.  Incidentally, Heart's Desire was willing that its question
+should be settled at the same time.  Here was its champion, waiting.
+
+The watchers in the street grew restless, but nothing happened to
+interrupt their waiting.  Upon the side of the house nearest them,
+lights shone from three windows.  Presently one of these, that in the
+room of Constance Ellsworth, was extinguished.  A second window
+blackened; Mr. Ellsworth had retired.  The third light disappeared.
+Porter Barkley, not yet exactly of the proper drunkenness to find
+courage for his recently declared purpose, had concluded to go to sleep
+instead.
+
+In the street Heart's Desire waited patiently, gazing at the darkened
+house, at the shaded door.  Half an hour passed, an hour.  Dan
+Anderson, without speech to any one, walked slowly up the street and
+across the _arroyo_.  The light in his own casita flickered briefly
+and then vanished.
+
+"I told you all along he was game!" said Curly, emerging from the
+corner of Whiteman's store and offering everybody a chew from his plug
+of tobacco.  "They ain't runnin' him any, I reckon.  Huh?"
+
+"Shucks!" remarked Uncle Jim, disgustedly.  "From the way that feller
+Barkley roared around, I shore thought he was a-goin' to tear up the
+earth.  He's so yellow that in the mornin' I'm goin' to tell him to
+move on out of town.  I've always kep' a respectable house before now,
+and I never did harbor a man who wouldn't shoot _some_!"
+
+"In the mornin'," added Doc Tomlinson, as the group broke up, "I'm
+goin' to take Dan Anderson that saddle of mine that's layin' around in
+my store.  Why, what does a man want of a _saddle_ in a drug store?  I
+just want to _give_ the boy something."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
+the Jew_
+
+There was a barber at Heart's Desire, a patient though forgotten man,
+who had waited some years in the belief that eventually a patron would
+come into his shop in search of professional services.  No one did
+come, but still the barber hoped.  He was one of those who had clamored
+most loudly for Eastern Capital.  After the town meeting the courage of
+the barber failed him.  He declared himself as at length ready to
+abandon his faith in Heart's Desire, and to depart in search of a
+community offering conditions more encouraging.  In this determination
+he was joined by Billy Hudgens of the Lone Star, a man also patient
+through long years of adversity, who now admitted that he might be
+obliged to close up and move to Arizona.
+
+The news of these impending blows fell upon a community already gloomy
+and despondent.  Some vague, intangible change had come over Heart's
+Desire.  The illusion of the past was destroyed.  Men rubbed their
+eyes, realizing that they had been asleep, that they had been dreaming.
+There dawned upon them the conviction that perhaps, after all, the old
+scheme of life had not been sufficient.  The lotus plant was robbed of
+its potency.
+
+It was at this time that McGinnis came to town.  His advent was the
+most fortunate thing that could have happened.  Certainly, it was
+hailed with joy and accepted as an omen; for, as was known of all men
+over a thousand miles of mining country in the Rockies, McGinnis was
+the image and emblem of good luck.
+
+Not that this meant prosperity for McGinnis himself, for that gentleman
+continued in a very even condition as to worldly goods, being steadily
+and consistently broke,--a sad state of affairs for one who had brought
+so much happiness to others.  History proved to the point of proverb
+that whenever McGinnis visited a camp,--and he had followed scores of
+strikes and stampedes in all the corners of the metalliferous
+world,--that camp was destined to witness a boom at no distant day.
+
+McGinnis was not actually a newcomer at Heart's Desire, but upon the
+contrary one of the autochthones of that now decadent community.  He
+was a friend and former bunk-mate of old Jack Wilson, discoverer of the
+Homestake mine.  Five years ago, however, at the breaking of the
+Heart's Desire boom, he had silently stolen away, whether for Alaska or
+the Andes no one knew nor asked.  Returning now as though from
+temporary absence, he punched an ancient and subdued burro into town,
+and unrolled his blankets behind Whiteman's corral, treating his
+return, as did every one else, entirely as a matter of course.  Seeing
+these things, a renewed cheerfulness came to the lately despondent.
+Whiteman the Jew, ever a Greatheart, openly exulted, and voiced again
+his perennial confession of commercial faith in Heart's Desire.
+
+"Keep your eye on Viteman," said he.  "Der railroat may go, der barber
+may go, der saloon may go, but not Viteman.  My chudgment is like it
+vas eight years ago.  Dis stock of goots is right vere I put it.  If no
+one don't buy it, I keeps it.  I know my pizness.  Should I put in
+twenty thousand dollars' vort of goots, and make a mistake of der blace
+vere a town should be?  I guess not!  Viteman stays.  By and by der
+railroat comes to Viteman.  You vatch.  Keep your eye on Viteman."
+
+He stood in the door of his long log store building, squat, stocky,
+bristling, blue shirted like the rest, and cast his eye down counters
+and shelves piled with clothing and hats, boots and gloves, pick-axes,
+long-handled shovels, saddles, spurs, wagon bows, flour, bacon, and all
+manner of things which come in tin cans.  Dust was over all; but above
+the dust was expectancy and not despair.  The Goddess of Progress had
+her choicest temple in the frontier store.
+
+"I toll you poys years ago," Whiteman went on, "you should blat der
+town.  Ve blat it oursellufs now.  Ve don't act like childrens no more.
+Ve meet again.  Ve holt a election.  Ve make Viteman gounty dreasurer.
+Dan Anderson should be mayor, and McGinney glerk.  Ve make a town
+gouncil, and ve go to vork like ve should ought to did.  Ve move
+Nogales City over here and make dis der gounty seat.  Ve bedition for a
+new gounty--ve don't vant to belong to dot Becos River gow outfit.  Ve
+make a town for oursellufs.  Viteman didn't put in dis stock of goots
+for noddings.  You vatch Viteman."
+
+This speech turned the tide, coming as it did with the arrival of
+McGinnis.  Billy Hudgens decided to wait for a few more days, although
+for the time he was out of business for lack of liquids.  It was
+fortunate that McGinnis did not know this latter fact.
+
+The capital of McGinnis, aside from his freckles and his thirst, was
+somewhat limited.  His blankets were thin and ragged, his pistol minus
+the most important portion of a revolver--to wit, the cylinder--and
+withal so rusted that even had it boasted all the component parts of a
+six-shooter, it could not have been fired by any human agency.  He had
+a shovel, a skillet, and a quart tin cup.  He had likewise a
+steel-headed and long-handled hammer, in good condition; this being,
+indeed, the only item of his outfit which seemed normal and in perfect
+repair.  McGinnis was a skilled mechanic and a millwright and could use
+a hammer as could but few other men.
+
+On the morning after his arrival McGinnis rolled early out of his
+blankets, ate his breakfast of flapjacks and water, and put his hammer
+in his hip pocket, where some men put a gun who do not know how to
+carry a gun.  McGinnis spoke to no one in particular, but headed up
+into the mouth of the curving valley where stood the silent works of
+the New Jersey Gold Mills Company.  He was not cast down because he
+found no one whom he could ask for work.  He whistled as he walked
+through the open and barn-like building, looking about him with the eye
+of a man who had seen gold mills before that time.
+
+"They've got their plates fixed at a lovely angle!" said he; "and
+there's about enough mercury on 'em to make calomel for a sick cat.
+There's been _talent_ in this mill, me boy!"
+
+He crawled up the ore chute into the bin, and cast a critical gaze upon
+the rock heaped up close to the crusher.  Then he examined the battery
+of stamps with silent awe.  "This," said McGinnis, softly to himself,
+"is the end of the whole and intire earth!  Is it a confectionery shop
+they've got, I wonder?  They do well to mash sugar with them lemon
+squeezers, to say nothing of the Homestake refractories."
+
+He passed on about the mill in his tour of inspection, still whistling
+and still critical, until he came to the patent labor-saving ore
+crusher, which some inventor had sold to the former manager of the New
+Jersey Gold Mills Company, along with other things.  McGinnis drifted
+to this instinctively, as does the born mechanician, to the gist of any
+problem in mechanics.
+
+"Take shame to ye fer this, me man, whoivver ye were," said McGinnis,
+and the blood shot up under his freckles in indignation.  "This is so
+bad it's not only unmechanical and unprofissional--it's absolutely
+unsportsmanlike!"
+
+His ardor overcame him, and, hammer in hand, he swung down into the ore
+bin underneath the crusher.  "Here's where it is," said he to himself.
+"With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this
+stuff--especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss
+was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry!  Yer little donkey
+injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a
+crusher--yah!  It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill.
+Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, man; loose her off!"
+
+McGinnis was a man of action.  In a moment he was tapping at the
+clenched bolt with the head of his bright steel hammer.  Slowly at
+first, and sullenly, for it had long been used to treatment that
+McGinnis called "unsportsmanlike"; then gently and kindly as it felt
+the hand of the master, the head of the bolt began to turn, until at
+length the workman was satisfied.  Then he turned also the
+corresponding nut on the opposite face of the jaw, swung the great
+steel jaw back to the place where he fancied it, and made all fast
+again.  "She's but a rat-trap," said he to himself, "but it's only fair
+to give the rat-trap its show."
+
+McGinnis went out and sat down upon a pile of ore.  It was a bright and
+cloudless morning, such as may be seen nowhere in the world but in
+Heart's Desire.  The Patos Mountains, across the valley, seemed so
+close that one might lay his hand upon them.  The sun was bright and
+unwinking, and all the air so golden sweet that McGinnis pushed back
+his hat and gloried simply that he was alive.  He did not even note the
+cottontail that came out from behind a bush to peer at him, nor mark
+the sweeping shadow of a passing eagle that swung high above the little
+valley.  His eye now and again fell upon the abandoned mill, gaunt,
+idle and silent; yet he regarded it lazily, the spell of the spot and
+the languor of the air filling all his soul.
+
+But at last the sun grew more ardent, and McGinnis, knowing the secret
+of the dry Southwest, sought shade in order that he might be cool.  He
+rose and strolled again into the mill, looking about him as before,
+idly and critically.  "Av ye was all me own, it's quite a coffee mill I
+cud make of ye, me dear," said he, familiarly.  And at this moment a
+thought seemed to strike him.
+
+"It has always been me dream to be a captain of industhry,"
+soliloquized McGinnis.  "I've always longed to hear the busy hum of me
+own wheels, and to feel that I was the employer and not merely the
+employeed."  He mused for a few moments, too lazy to think far at one
+flight.
+
+"It wud be nice," he resumed later, "to see the smoke of your own
+facthory ascendin' to the sky, and to feel that yerself 'uz the whole
+affair, cook and captain bold, ore shoveller, head ingineer,
+amalgamator and main squeeze."
+
+"All capital," continued McGinnis, "is too much depindent upon labor.
+The only real solution--" he paused to feel his pockets for a
+match--"the only real solution is to be _both_ capital and labor.
+Then, av ye've anny kick, take it to yourself, and settle it fair fer
+both!"  He paused again, and again the light of his idea showed upon
+his countenance.  "This," said McGinnis, "is Accajyun!"
+
+He wandered over to the little boiler which drove the engine, and took
+inventory of the pile of crooked pinon wood that lay heaped up near by.
+He sounded the tank on top of the engine house, and found that it was
+half full.  Then, calmly and methodically, he took off his coat, folded
+it, and laid it across a bench.  He picked up a piece of board,
+whittled a little pile of shavings, thrust them into the ashy grate,
+and piled some wood above them.  Then he scraped a match, and turning a
+cock or so to satisfy himself that the boiler would not go out through
+the roof in case he did get up steam, sat down to await developments.
+"She'll steam for sure," he ruminated.  "She'll steam as much as wud do
+for a peanut wagon, av ye give her time."
+
+Before the morning was gone the little boiler began to thump and churn
+and threaten.  McGinnis ran the belt on to the stamp shaft.  He went up
+and connected the crusher and shovelled a few barrows of ore into the
+hopper.  Not long afterwards there was a dull and creaking rumble.  The
+shaft of the stamps turned half around, slipped and stopped with a
+rusty squeak.  Then came further creaks, groans, and rumbles.  McGinnis
+walked calmly from place to place, tightening, loosening, shaking,
+testing, shovelling, and watching.
+
+"It's wonderful," said he to himself, softly.  "It's just wonderful
+what human bein's can do!  If I, hadn't ever seen this mill, I wuddn't
+have believed it!  But I'll say at this point meself, that I'm not
+looking a gift mill in the mouth.  Moreover, this runnin' of your own
+mill, not bein' beholden to any sordid capitalist, nor yet depindent on
+anny inefficient labor, is what I may call a truly ijeel situation in
+life.  I'll stay here till the wood runs out.  Not that I'll cut wood
+for annybody.  Capital must draw the line somewhere!"
+
+No one noticed the smoke from the abandoned gold mill.  McGinnis ran it
+by himself and undisturbed until his woodpile waned.  Then he
+disconnected, blew off, and set to work to scrape his plates, whereon
+to his experienced eye there now appeared a gratifying roughness in the
+coating.  He got off a lump of amalgam as big as his fist, and was
+content.  "It's ojus there's no retort here," said he, "but like enough
+I'll find some way to vollituize this mercury."
+
+He crossed the _arroyo_, and went to the cabin which had once been the
+office of the assayer.  The latter was now an _emigre_, but he had left
+his crucibles and his furnace behind him; because it is not convenient
+to carry such things when one is afoot.  McGinnis found a retort,
+adjusted it, set it going, volatilized the mercury from his amalgam,
+and in time had his button of dirty but quite valid gold.  It lay heavy
+in his hand and rested heavy in his pocket.  "As a captain of
+industhry," said he, "I must see what I can do for poor sufferin'
+humanity."  He chuckled, and passed out into the street.
+
+"As capital," said McGinnis to himself, walking on in the moonlight, "I
+am entitled to the first drink meself, and after that to one or two as
+a laborer.  Then, if there's anny left, after treatin' all round, I'll
+buy the town a public liberry, pervidin' the town'll make it
+sufficiently and generally understood that I'm a leadin' and
+public-minded citizen that has reached success by the grace of God and
+a extraordinary brain."
+
+But McGinnis in his philanthropic intentions met difficulty.  He
+wandered into the Lone Star, and placing his crude bullion upon the
+counter, swept about him a comprehensive hand.  To his wonder there was
+no response.  A few of the assembled populace shifted uneasily in their
+seats, but none arose.  "Do you take this for a low-down placer camp?"
+asked Billy Hudgens, with a dull show of pride, when McGinnis demanded
+the gold scales.
+
+"No," said McGinnis, "it's a quartz camp right enough, and all it needs
+is developin'.  At this speakin', I'm capital and labor both, and crew
+of the _Nancy Brig_.  What's the matter?"
+
+A sigh escaped from the audience, as Billy Hudgens made reply.  "Not a
+drop," said he; "all gone.  Nothing till Tom Osby gets back from Vegas,
+and maybe not then.  I owe Gross & Blackwell over two hundred now."
+
+McGinnis's voice dropped into a low, intent whisper.  "Do you mean to
+tell me that?" he said.  "Me, with my thirst?"  He laid a hand on
+Billy's shoulder.  "Friend," said he, "I've walked two hundred miles.
+I've developed your place.  I'm in a position to give this town a
+public liberry worth maybe forty dollars.  Now, do you mean to say to
+me--do you mean--"  He gulped, unable to proceed.  Hudgens nodded.
+McGinnis let fall his hand from the counter, turned and silently left
+the place.
+
+He moved up the street to the adobe where the barber had his shop.  The
+barber was gloomily sitting inside, waiting.  McGinnis entered, and
+looked about him with the ease of one revisiting familiar scenes.
+
+In a case upon the wall were rows of shaving mugs, now dusty and
+abandoned, mute witnesses of a former era of glory.  Indeed, they
+remained an historical record of earlier life in Heart's Desire.
+
+Once there had been rivalry between McGinnis and Tom Redmond for the
+affections of a widow who kept a boarding-house in Heart's Desire, the
+same long since departed.  There came by express one day, addressed to
+Tom Redmond, a shaving mug of great beauty and considerable size,
+whereon the name of Tom Redmond, handsomely emblazoned, led all the
+rest.  The fame of this work of art so spread abroad that Tom Redmond,
+as befitted one who had attained social distinction, became the
+recipient of increased smiles from the widow aforesaid.  McGinnis bided
+his time.  Thirty days later, there arrived by stage for him a shaving
+mug of such stature and such exceeding art as cast that of Tom Redmond
+completely in the shade!  Thenceforth the widow smiled upon McGinnis.
+Tom Redmond, unable to endure this humiliation, and in the limitation
+of things wholly unable to raise the McGinnis ante in shaving mugs, was
+obliged to leave the town.  McGinnis hung upon the handle of the
+Redmond mug a goodly card bearing the legend, "Gone, but not
+forgotten."  Shortly after that McGinnis himself left town.  Alas! at
+the instance of the widow the barber hung upon the McGinnis mug a
+similar card; it having appeared that McGinnis had emigrated without
+paying either his board bill or his barber's bill.
+
+This evidence of his early delinquency now confronted McGinnis as he
+stepped into the shop for the first time in these years.  He regarded
+it with displeasure.  "Take it off," said he to the barber, sternly.
+"I paid the widdy in Butte, two years ago.  As for yourself, I have
+come six hundred miles to pay my bill to you.  Take it out of that."
+He presented his heavy button of gold.
+
+The barber protested that he could not make change on this basis, but
+cheerfully extended the credit.  He was glad to see McGinnis back
+again, for he was most promisingly hairy.
+
+"I am back, but I'll not be stayin' long," said McGinnis.  "Have ye
+annything to drink?"
+
+The barber mournfully shook his head, even as had Billy Hudgens.
+McGinnis, refusing to believe such heavy news, walked up to the mantle,
+picked up a tall bottle labelled "Hair tonic," smelled of it, and
+without asking leave, raised it to his lips and drained it to the
+bottom.
+
+"For industhrial purposes, friend," said he.  In twenty minutes he was
+lying in a deep and dreamless sleep.
+
+"In some ways this fellow has talent," said Billy Hudgens, as he looked
+in on McGinnis later; "but like enough he's come to a show-down now."
+
+Until noon the next day McGinnis slept soundly.  Then he sat up on the
+floor.  "How're you feelin' now, man?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+
+"Friend," said McGinnis, "I'm feelin' some dark and hairy inwardly; but
+I'm a livin' example of how a man can thriumph over circumstances."
+Wherewith he smiled gently, sank back, and slept again till dark.
+
+"It wud have been too bad," said McGinnis to the barber when he awoke,
+"if you had left this town before I came.  What ye've all been needin'
+is some one to give ye a lesson in not gettin' discouraged.
+
+"As for combinin' hair tonic and strong drink into one ingradyint, if
+anny one tells you it's a good thing, you may say for me the report
+lacks confirmashun.  But we'll not despair.  Aside from the proverb
+about the will and the way, 'tis well known that no disgrace can come
+to a real captain of industhry through a timporary change in the
+industhrial conditions.  I'm sayin' to you, get in a new chair, and get
+ready for the boom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken_
+
+Even as the stouter-hearted captains of Heart's Desire began to voice
+their confidence, a sudden sense of helplessness, of personal inadequacy,
+came upon Porter Barkley, erstwhile leader of the forces of the A. P. and
+S. E. Railway Company.  With emotions of chagrin and humiliation he found
+himself obliged wholly to readjust his estimate of himself and his
+powers.  He had come hither full of confidence, accustomed to success,
+animated by a genial condescension toward these benighted men; and now,
+how quickly had the situation been reversed!  Nay, worse than reversed.
+He, Porter Barkley, a man who had bought a legislature in his time, was
+ignored, forgotten by these strangers, as though he did not exist!  More
+than that, Ellsworth was reticent with him; and worst of all, when he met
+Constance at the table she gave him no more than a curt nod and a polite
+forgetfulness of his presence.
+
+Porter Barkley wished nothing so much as speedily to get away from the
+scene of his twofold defeat, although he knew that farewell meant
+dismissal.  He knew also that he could restore himself to the respect of
+Heart's Desire in only one way; but he did not go out on the street in
+search of that way, although the Socorro stage was a full day late in its
+departure, and he was obliged to remain a prisoner indoors.
+
+Indeed, Constance and her father were little better than prisoners as
+well, for no possible means of locomotion offered whereby they could get
+out of town; and all Heart's Desire remained aloof from them, not even
+the Littlest Girl coming across the _arroyo_ to call on Constance at the
+hotel.
+
+"I'd like to have her come over to see the twins," said Curly to his
+spouse, "but I reckon like enough she's sore."
+
+"I'd be mighty glad to have a good square talk with some woman from the
+States," rejoined the Littlest Girl, hesitatingly.  "I'd sort of like to
+know what folks is wearin' back there now.  Besides that--"
+
+"Besides what?"
+
+"I don't more'n half believe her and Dan Anderson is gettin' along very
+well, someway."
+
+"That so?  Well, I don't see how they can, the way he throwed the spurs
+into her pa the other night."
+
+"He just worships the ground that girl walks on."
+
+"You oughtn't to talk so much.  That ain't our business--but how do you
+know?"
+
+"Well, because I _do_ know," responded the Littlest Girl, warmly.  "Don't
+you suppose I can see?  I've talked with Dan every time he come up here
+to buy a pie--talked about that girl.  He buys more pies now than he used
+to.  I reckon I _know_."
+
+"That may all be.  Question is, how's she a-feelin' toward _him_ these
+days?"
+
+"Curly," after a little silence, "I'm going to put on my bonnet and go
+over there and see that girl.  She's all alone.  I'll take her a pie.  I
+always did think she was nice."
+
+"Well, all right.  There's Bill Godfrey drivin' the stage out of his barn
+now.  I'll go over to the post-office and help the old man with the mail.
+May ride out as far as the ranch with Bill and see if Mac has anything
+special to do.  There was talk of that Nogal sheep outfit gettin' in on
+the lower end of our range.  If they do, something'll pop for sure.  You
+go on over to the hotel if you want to.  Ma'll take care of the twins."
+
+The departure of the stage for Socorro occurred once a week or so, if all
+went well, and the event was always one of importance.  Even Mr.
+Ellsworth and Constance found themselves joining the groups which
+wandered now toward the post-office, next door to Whiteman's store, in
+front of which Bill Godfrey regularly made his first stop preparatory to
+leaving town.  As they two passed up the street from the hotel, they
+missed the Littlest Girl, who crossed the _arroyo_ above them by a
+quarter of a mile; Heart's Desire being, in view of its population, a
+city of magnificent distances.
+
+The man from Leavenworth, postmaster, had nearly finished the solemn
+performance of locking up the emaciated mail-bag for Socorro, and Bill
+Godfrey was looking intently at his watch--which had not gone for six
+months--when all at once the assemblage in and around the post-office was
+startled by shrieks, screams, and calls of the most alarming nature.
+These rapidly approached from the direction of the _arroyo_, beyond
+which lay the residence portion of Heart's Desire.  Presently there was
+to be distinguished the voice of a woman, raised in terrified
+lamentations, accompanied with the broken screams of a child in evident
+distress.  There appeared, hastening toward the group in front of the
+store, Curly's mother-in-law, wife of the postmaster of Heart's Desire,
+and guardian as well of the twins of Heart's Desire.  It was one of these
+twins, Arabella, whom she now hurried along with her, at such speed that
+the child's feet scarce touched the ground.  When this latter did happen,
+Arabella seemed synchronously to catch her breath, becoming thus able to
+emit one more spasmodic wail.  There was pain and fright in the cries,
+and the whole attitude of the woman from Kansas was such that all knew
+some tragedy had occurred or was impending.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Curly, "I'll bet a thousand dollars the kid's got my
+strychnine bottle this time!  I left it in the window.  There was enough
+to poison a thousand coyotes!"
+
+He sprang forward to catch the other arm of the sobbing child.  The man
+from Kansas, postmaster of Heart's Desire, hastened to join his wife in
+the street, wagging his gray beard in wild queries.  In half a moment all
+the population was massed in front of Whiteman's store, incoherent,
+frightened, utterly helpless.
+
+"She's dyin'!" cried the woman from Kansas.  "Poison!  Oh, Willyam, what
+shall we do?"  But the postmaster was unable to offer any aid or counsel.
+
+"I just left it there in the window," explained Curly, excitedly; "I was
+goin' to put out some baits around a water hole, about to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, it's awful!" sobbed the woman from Kansas.  "What shall we do?  What
+shall we do?"
+
+"Doc," said Curly to Doc Tomlinson, "you run the drug store--ain't you
+got no anecdote for this?"  Doc Tomlinson could only shake his head
+mournfully.  A ring of bearded, beweaponed men gathered about the little
+sufferer, hopeless, at their wits' end.
+
+Constance and her father, hurrying to learn the cause of the commotion,
+received but incoherent answers to their questions.  "Good Lord! girl,
+that child's hurt!" cried Ellsworth, helpless as the others.  "What'll we
+do?"
+
+Constance did not even reply to him.  Without his assistance, indeed
+without looking to right or left, she made straight through the circle of
+men, who gave way to admit her.
+
+"What's the trouble here?  What's wrong?" she demanded sharply, catching
+the weeping woman by the arm, even as she reached out a hand toward the
+suffering Arabella.
+
+"Poison!" wailed the woman from Kansas again.  "She's goin' to die!
+There ain't no way to help it."
+
+"What poison--what has the child taken?" asked Constance.
+
+"It was strychnine, ma'am, like enough," ventured Curly.  "There was
+some--"
+
+"Nonsense!  It's not strychnine," cried the girl.  In an instant her eye
+had caught what every other individual present had overlooked, although
+it was certainly the most obvious object in all the landscape,--the
+half-empty can which still remained tightly clutched in Arabella's free
+hand.
+
+"Why, here it is!" she exclaimed.  "The child has eaten concentrated lye.
+Quick!  Get her in somewhere.  What are you standing around here for--get
+out of the way, you men!"
+
+They scattered, and Constance glanced about her.  "Where's some
+grease--some lard?  Quick!" she called out to Whiteman, who was looking
+on.
+
+"In here, lady--dis vay," he answered eagerly; but she outfooted him to
+the rear of the store, carrying Arabella in her arms.  Spying a lard tin,
+she thrust off the cover, and plunged in a hand.  Immediately the sobs of
+Arabella changed to sputterings, for the physician in charge had covered
+her face, lips, and a goodly portion of the interior of her mouth and
+throat with the ameliorating unguent!  At this act of first aid, the
+wails of the woman from Kansas ceased also, and a vast sigh of relief
+arose from the confederated helplessness of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Is she going to die?" gasped the woman from Kansas.
+
+"No," said Constance, scornfully.  "I've seen much worse burns.  The lye
+has perhaps lost a little of its strength, too.  The burns are all well
+in the front of the mouth and tongue, and I don't think she swallowed any
+of it.  Lard is as good as anything to stop the burn.  Why didn't you
+think of it?"
+
+"I don't know, ma'am," confessed the woman from Kansas.
+
+A sudden loquacity now seized upon all those recently perturbed and
+silent.
+
+"Now," said Curly, "it's this-a-way; the women they must have left that
+can of lye settin' around.  It's mighty careless of 'em.  I _needed_ my
+strychnine, but there ain't no _sense_ in leavin' lye settin' around.
+Them twins was due to eat it, shore.  Why, they was _broke_ to eat
+anything that comes in tin cans!"
+
+Constance gathered Arabella in her arms.  The tailored gown was ruined
+now.  One hand remained gloved, but both were grease-laden to the wrists.
+She was unconscious of all this.  Her gaze, frowning, solicitous,
+maternal, bent itself upon the face of her patient.  The men of Heart's
+Desire looked on, silent, relieved, adoring.  A few began to edge toward
+the open air.
+
+"You ain't no kind of a drug-store man," said the postmaster, scornfully,
+to Tomlinson.
+
+"Why ain't I?" retorted the latter, hotly.  "What _chance_ does a
+merchant get in this town?  What do I get for carrying a full line of
+drugs here for years?  Now, _lard_ ain't drugs.  It ain't in the
+pharmacopy."
+
+"I don't know but it's a good thing for that kid," said Curly.  "She
+ought to be plumb soft-spoken all her life, after all that lard in her
+frontispiece.  But it won't do 'em no good,--they'll eat my strychnine
+next.  This here stage-coach--with her along," jerking his thumb towards
+the physician in charge, "won't be any more'n out of sight before that
+twin corporation will be fryin' dynamite on the kitchen stove.  I shore
+thought that set of twins was busted this time for keeps.  Unless there's
+two of 'em, twins ain't no good!"
+
+"Ma'am, your dress is just ruined," said the woman from Kansas; "you are
+lard clean from head to foot!"
+
+"I know it," cried Constance, gayly, the color coming to her cheeks; "but
+never mind, the baby's all right now."
+
+"Well, you've got to come over to our house and get fixed up.  Was you
+goin' out on the stage?  You stay here for a day or so and watch that
+child; we'd like it mighty well if you would."
+
+It was a flag of truce from Heart's Desire.  Nevertheless, Constance
+seemed to hesitate.  Ah! wily Constance.  A great many things might
+happen which had not yet happened, but which ought to happen.  And in all
+that group Dan Anderson was nowhere to be seen.  Perhaps after a time he
+might come!
+
+Constance hesitated just long enough.  The dignity of Bill Godfrey had to
+be sustained.  His stagecoach had not started on the appointed and
+stipulated time any day these many months; yet for that stage, ready
+equipped for its journey, to stand waiting idly upon the convenience of
+any mortal after the "mails" had been brought out from the post-office
+and placed safely in the boot, was mortal affront to any stage-driver's
+reputation.  Bill Godfrey again looked solemnly at his watch and gathered
+up the reins.  "All aboard!" he cried.  "Git up!" and so swung a wide
+circle and headed down the street to the hotel.  Presently he departed.
+He carried a solitary passenger.  Constance and her father were still
+prisoners, or guests, in Heart's Desire for an indefinite time!  And in
+an indefinite time many things may occur.
+
+In his house across the _arroyo_ Dan Anderson endured the silence and
+loneliness as long as he could, turning over and over again in his mind
+the old questions to which he had found no answer.  Most of all, one
+question was insistent.  Had he been just to her, to Constance, in
+allowing himself to accept her alleged conduct as a motive for his own
+actual conduct?  He had taken for granted much--all--and upon what manner
+of testimony?  The babblings of a half-witted herder!  He had asked the
+men of Heart's Desire to hear both sides of his own case.  The men of
+Heart's Desire had heard both sides of the railroad's case.  But he had
+condemned without trial the woman whom he loved--her--Constance!  It was
+impossible, unbelievable of any man.
+
+When the horror of this thought broke upon him fully, Dan Anderson sprang
+up, caught his hat, and started fast as he might for the hotel.  He
+crossed the _arroyo_ below the post-office, and so did not know, at the
+time, of the peril and rescue of Arabella.  Nor did he know that all of
+Heart's Desire was penitent regarding her and her father; nor that both
+were to remain for yet a little time.
+
+Dan Anderson approached the stone hotel in time to watch the stage
+depart, himself unobserved.  Then he stepped farther toward the hotel
+door.  He met the Littlest Girl just emerging from the building, whither
+she had gone upon the same errand as his own.
+
+"She ain't here, Mr. Anderson," explained the Littlest Girl; "her and her
+pa has just went to the post-office."
+
+He looked at her silently.  "Oh, I know who you come to see," asserted
+the Littlest Girl, "and I don't blame you.  It's _time_ you did, too."
+
+Without a word he turned and walked with her up the street, there to miss
+Constance by three moments, which, potentially, might have been a
+life-time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work,
+and a Man's Medicine_
+
+"Dad, you've been drinking!" burst out Constance as her father met her
+at the door of Curly's house.  She had heard footsteps, and hastened to
+meet the visitor.  Perhaps it was disappointment, perhaps indignation
+with herself that she had listened, that she had waited, which caused
+her to greet her parent with such asperity.
+
+"You wrong me, daughter!" protested Mr. Ellsworth, solemnly; "only took
+one or two little ones, to celebrate the saving of the twin.  You've
+made a great hit with those people over there.  They'd all celebrate,
+if there was anything to drink.  I had to stock the Lone Star myself
+out of my valise.  They won't have anything in till Tom Osby comes.
+
+"I say," he resumed, taking his daughter's arm with genial gallantry as
+they stepped out into the sunlight together, "these people are not so
+bad.  They're warming up right along now.  If you and I could stay here
+awhile, we'd get along with 'em all right--better understanding all
+around."
+
+Her face brightened.  "Then you don't give up the railroad?"
+
+"No; by no means.  I never give up a thing I want.  Besides, I wouldn't
+mind coming here to live for a while.  The climate's glorious."
+
+"You live here?  You'd look well in a wide hat and a blue shirt,
+wouldn't you, dad?"
+
+"More irreverence!  Of course I'd look well.  And it's worth something
+to eat the way I do here.  I'm getting better every day.  Why, they
+tell me no one has died out here in a hundred years.  A man can eat
+anything from cactus to sole leather, and keep hearty.  I saw a lot of
+fellows over there just now, sitting flat on the ground in the sun out
+in the middle of the street, eating dried beef and canned tomatoes, and
+they looked so happy that I sat down and took a bite with them.  They
+are just travelling through,--sheriff's party from somewhere, going
+somewhere after somebody."
+
+"What's that, Mr. Ellsworth?" the woman from Kansas came out and
+inquired; for she knew better than he what that meant.  "Sheriff?  Was
+he a tall, slim man, longish mustache, sorter thin?"
+
+Ellsworth nodded; the woman wiped her hands on her blue-checked apron.
+Constance glanced at her serious face, and wondered.
+
+"Then it's Ben Stillson," the woman from Kansas said, "the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He's after somebody.  Did he summons any of our men along?"
+
+"I don't know, madam," answered Ellsworth.  The woman said no more; she
+only watched and listened.
+
+It was this posse, headed by the sheriff of Blanco, that Dan Anderson
+and the Littlest Girl saw when they reached a point midway between
+Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel and the post-office.  The little group of
+riders, dusty and travel-stained, had come at a steady trot down the
+street.  Stillson, tall, grim-featured, and bronzed, looked neither to
+the right nor to the left.  He stopped, and ordered his men to dismount
+and eat.  They swung out of their saddles without a word, loosening the
+cinches to breathe their horses.  The men of Heart's Desire began to
+gather around them.
+
+"What's up, Ben?" asked McKinney, the one most apt to be concerned; for
+cow men had borne the brunt of outlawry in that land for more than a
+generation.  "Has Chacon come across from Arizona, or has the Kid broke
+out again?"
+
+The sheriff looked at him gravely.  "The Kid's out," said he.  "We had
+him and two others at Seven Rivers, but he broke out four days ago.  He
+killed the jailer and a couple of Mexicans farther up the river.
+There's four in his bunch now, and we've trailed them this far.
+They're likely headed for Sumner.  We dropped in here, across the
+Patos, to get a couple of men or so.  How are you fixed here?"
+
+"Wait till I get a Winchester," said McKinney, briefly, and started
+down the street.
+
+"Whiteman," Doc Tomlinson volunteered, "you 'tend to my drug store
+while I'm away, and if anybody wants any drugs, you go get 'em."
+
+"You all hold on a minute," said Curly, hurrying forward, "while I run
+over home and git saddled up."  He did not see the Littlest Girl
+approaching, but the sheriff did.
+
+"Never mind, Curly," said the sheriff, quietly, pointing to her.  "I
+want one more man, a single man."
+
+"You, Curly!" interrupted his spouse, "you stay right where you are.
+You get some one else, Mr. Stillson.  He's got a family, and besides,
+he's _such_ a fool."
+
+Curly flushed.  "Was it _my_ fault I got married?" he began hotly.
+"And them twins, was they mine, real?  Now look here--"  But the
+sheriff shook his head.  He looked at Dan Anderson inquiringly.
+
+"Certainly I'll go," said he.  "Wait till I get fixed."
+
+"That's as many as I'll need," said Stillson.  "Hurry up, all of you."
+
+Dan Anderson hastened across the _arroyo_ to his house, first asking
+Curly to get him a horse.  Curly departed to his own home with the
+Littlest Girl; so that Constance presently got fuller news of the
+arrival of the sheriff's party, and learned also that Dan Anderson was
+to join them.
+
+"But, Curly," cried Constance, "isn't it dangerous?  Won't some one get
+hurt?"  She winced.  The steady flame of her own brave heart flickered
+at this new terror.
+
+"_Kin savvy_?" grinned Curly.  "The Kid's gang shore'll fight.  A good
+many fellers has got hurt goin' after him.  But what you goin' to do?
+Let 'em steal all the cows they want, and kill everybody they feel
+like?"
+
+"That's work for the officers," insisted Constance.
+
+"There ain't no police out here," Curly replied, "and not sherfs enough
+to go around; so a feller sorter has to go when he's asked.  They won't
+let me, because I got twins--though they ain't mine.  But, now, I've
+got to take this here horse over to Dan Anderson."  He mounted and rode
+away.
+
+It was Dan Anderson himself who presently came at a gallop across the
+_arroyo_.  A heavy revolver swung at his hip, a rifle rested in the
+scabbard under his leg, and a coat was rolled behind his saddle,
+plainsman fashion.  Constance noted these details, but passed them in
+her eagerness and pleasure that he should come at least to say good-by.
+Something of the joy faded from her eyes as he approached.  She had
+seen his face wear this same expression before,--fierce, eager,
+forgetful of all but a purpose.
+
+He did not smile.  He stooped from his saddle and grasped her hand.  He
+looked squarely into her eyes, but said no word of salutation or
+farewell.  He did not look back, as upon the instant, he whirled and
+galloped away!  For her there were to be yet more days of waiting; for
+him the relief of action and of danger.
+
+That afternoon Tom Osby drove into town from the northern trail.  Mr.
+Ellsworth welcomed him and his rude vehicle as the first feasible means
+of getting back to Sky Top.  By noon of the following day they were
+well upon their way, leaving behind them problems enough unsolved, and
+breaking touch with pending events which might cut short all problems
+for at least one loyal heart.  It was a sad and silent Constance who
+looked back and said good-by to the rambling street of Heart's Desire,
+lying in the sun empty, empty!
+
+As for the sheriff of Blanco and his men, they trotted on steadily
+toward the northeast, hour after hour.  They crossed the Patos divide,
+and a few miles beyond took up the trail of their quarry, at the point
+where Stillson had earlier left it.  This they followed rapidly,
+crossing wide plains of sage brush and cactus throughout the day.  They
+slept in their saddle-blankets that night, and were up and off again by
+dawn for the second day of steady travel.  There were seven men in the
+posse, three besides Stillson from the Seven Rivers country, employees
+of the cow men on the Pecos,--slim, brown, thin-featured fellows, who
+talked little either in the saddle or at the bivouac fire by night.
+
+The second night out they spent by a water hole in the desert; and on
+the morning of the third day they ran into their game, earlier than
+they had expected.  The sheriff, riding in advance, suddenly pulled up
+at the crest of a low ridge which they were ascending, and came back
+motioning to his men to remain under cover.
+
+"That's the Pinos Altos ranch house just ahead," he explained, "and
+there's smoke coming out of it.  Old Frazee's friendly enough with the
+Kid, and more'n likely the bunch has stopped in there to get something
+to eat.  Hold on a little till I have a look."  He took a pair of
+field-glasses from his saddle, and crawling to the top of the ridge lay
+examining the situation.
+
+"It's them, all right," he said when he returned.  "I know some of the
+horses.  It's the Kid and about three others.  They are all saddled
+up--probably stopped in to cook a meal.  We'll get 'em sure.  Now, all
+of you hitch back here, and crawl around to the _arroyo_ below, there.
+That'll put us within a hundred yards or so of the house."
+
+Each man, dismounting, hitched his horse, then quietly ran over the
+cylinder of his revolver, blew the dust out of the rear sight of his
+Winchester, tested the magazine, and cleared the breech action.  This
+done, each crept to the place assigned to him.  Dan Anderson found
+himself moving mechanically, dully, with a strange absence of
+excitement.  He almost felt himself looker-on at what other men were
+doing.
+
+For some time Stillson lay behind a little bush at the edge of the
+gully, peering critically at the house, from which came nothing to
+indicate that their approach had been discovered.  At length, without a
+word, he slowly raised his short-barrelled rifle and fired.  One of the
+horses hitched to the beam above the door stumbled forward and sank
+across the opening, blocking it.  The bullet had caught it at the butt
+of the ear, and it fell stone dead, its neck bent up by the shortened
+rein.
+
+In response, without a word of parley, a thin cloud of smoke gushed out
+of the only window facing the attack.  Puffs of sand arose along the
+front of the _arroyo_, searching out each little bush top which might
+possibly offer cover.  Stillson heard a smothered spat and a short
+sound, and turned his head quickly.  He saw Jim Harbin, one of the boys
+from the lower range, turn over with a sigh, and lie with arms spread
+out.  He had been shot straight through the neck.  Dan Anderson, the
+man nearest to him, drew him back.  He would have raised the head of
+the wounded man, but the choking warned him.  Harbin lay out on his
+back, looking up, his breath gurgling in his throat.  "No use," he
+whispered thickly.  "Leave me alone.  I've got to take my medicine."
+In ten minutes he was dead.
+
+The day's work went on.  The sheriff fired three or four more
+deliberate shots, but finally turned around.  At each shot, the other
+horse tied to the beam sprang back.
+
+"Can't you hit it?" grinned McKinney.
+
+"I don't want to kill the horse," said Stillson; "I know that horse,
+and it's a good one.  I want to turn it loose.  Here you, Anderson, can
+you see that rope from where you are?  Shoot it off, if you can, close
+up to the beam."
+
+Dan Anderson, in spite of Stillson's hasty warning to keep down, rose
+at full height at the edge of the cover, and took a deliberate off-hand
+shot.  They saw him whirl half around, and look down at his left arm;
+but as he dropped lower, he rested his rifle on a bit of sage brush,
+and fired once more.  With a snort the horse, which had been pulling
+back wildly on its lariat, now broke free and went off, saddled as it
+was.
+
+"Good shot!" commented the sheriff.  "That'll about put 'em on foot.
+What, did they get you?"
+
+Dan Anderson drew back from the crest and rolled up his shirt-sleeve
+above an arm now wet with blood.  A bullet had cut through the upper
+arm above the elbow.
+
+"Serves you mighty near right," called McKinney to him, "standing up,
+like a blamed fool!  You suppose them fellers can't shoot, same as us?"
+
+Doc Tomlinson crawled over to him and examined the hurt.  "It's all
+right," said he.  "Bone ain't touched.  Let me tie her up."
+
+A half hour passed without further firing.  Stillson edged around to
+the point nearest the house.  "Here you, Kid," he called out.  "Come on
+out.  We've got you on foot, and you might as well give up."
+
+A dirty rag was thrust out of a window at the end of a rifle-barrel.
+"That you, Ben?" called a muffled voice from the adobe.
+
+"You know it is, Kid.  Drop it, and come on out.  We've got you sure."
+
+The day's work was over.  Dan Anderson remembered afterward how matter
+of fact and methodical it all had seemed.  A few moments later a short,
+dirty young man appeared at the door, crawling over the prostrate
+horse.  He held up his hands, grinning.  He was followed by two others,
+both chewing tobacco calmly.  The sheriff ordered down his men to meet
+them.  McKinney unbuckled the belts.  The captives seated themselves a
+few feet apart on the ground.
+
+"This all the men you've got?" asked the Kid.
+
+The sheriff nodded.  "You've killed Jim Harbin," he added, jerking a
+thumb toward the _arroyo_.
+
+"Why didn't he stay home, then?" said the Kid, peevishly.  No one
+seemed disposed again to mention an unpleasant subject.
+
+"Where you goin' to take us?" the Kid inquired.
+
+"Vegas.  It's a United States warrant, and you go dead or alive, either
+way you want."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Ben.  We'll take the chance of stayin' alive a
+while."
+
+Stillson now appeared to experience his first concern in regard to his
+casualties.  "Doc," said he, "you take the ranch wagon here and carry
+Jim back to the settlements.  You go along, Anderson.  Doc, you drive."
+
+"You busted up our breakfast," said the Kid, in an aggrieved tone.
+"Don't we eat?"  He spoke complainingly.  The day's work was thus
+concluded.
+
+It was a long ride back for Dan Anderson, lying part of the time
+himself prone at the bottom of the wagon, too faint to sit with comfort
+on the narrow, jolting seat.  The long, muffled body of the dead man,
+wrapped tightly in its blankets, at times rolled against him as the
+wagon tilted, and he pushed it back gently.  The day's work had been
+savage, stern, and simple.  The lesson of the landscape, the lesson of
+life, came to him as he had never felt it before.  He saw now how
+little a thing is life, how easy to lay down--gayly, bitterly, lightly,
+or quietly perhaps; but not cheaply.  He remembered the last words of
+the boy who now lay there, shrouded and silent,--"I've got to take my
+medicine."
+
+"It's not a question of being happy," thought Dan Anderson, "but of
+doing your work, and taking your medicine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
+in Foreign Parts_
+
+In the absence of McKinney with the sheriff's posse, Curly became, by
+virtue of seniority, acting foreman on the Carrizoso ranch.  Grieving
+over the edict which held him home from sheriffing, and disconsolate
+now that Ellsworth and Constance had departed, he sought an outlet for
+his feelings.  "I'll show folks what a real cow foreman is like," he
+asserted, and forthwith began plans which, in his opinion, had been too
+long deferred by the more conservative McKinney.
+
+The wagons of the Carrizoso cow outfit came into town one morning, with
+a requisition for all the loose .44-caliber ammunition that could be
+bought, begged, or commandeered under the plea of urgent necessity.
+Whiteman burrowed through his stock from top to bottom, but still the
+new foreman growled at the insufficiency.
+
+"There's more'n five thousand sheep in that bunch that has just crossed
+the Nogales," said he, "and we've got to kill 'em, every one.  Do you
+suppose my men is goin' to take to clubs, like Digger Injuns?"
+
+Whiteman could only shrug.  There had always been ammunition in Heart's
+Desire sufficient for all benevolent and social purposes.  No one had
+suspected sheep.  The Carrizoso plateau had been sacred ground, and it
+was unsupposable that it could ever be desecrated by the trampling
+hoofs and scissor noses of these woolly abominations.  Grumbling, Curly
+rode away with his wagons, surrounded by a group of be-Winchestered cow
+punchers, not unlike that which had accompanied Stillson out at the
+other end of the town.
+
+It was two days before they returned.  When they did so, two of the men
+were not in their saddles, but at the bottom of a wagon.  Beside them,
+bucked up and bound, lay a strange and long-haired figure, at which the
+new foreman occasionally looked back with a gaze of mingled curiosity
+and respect.
+
+It appeared that Carrizoso cow honor had been maintained.  The five
+thousand sheep had been rounded up in a box canon, and scrupulously
+killed to the last item, while two herders went flying westward in
+fright such as might have warranted euchre upon their stiffly extended
+coat-tails.
+
+Willie, the half-wit, one of the sheep outfit, had readily taken the
+oath of allegiance; beyond that, however, there had been a hitch in the
+proceedings.  The man causing this hitch--the long-haired figure at the
+bottom of the wagon--had been presumptuous enough to make a stand
+against the lords of the earth!  The men of Heart's Desire, confident
+that the new foreman understood his business, asked few questions as
+they gathered about the wagon and gazed at the silent captive.
+
+He was a singular-looking man, tall, lean, sinewy, with a high, thin
+nose and a square chin which seemed not in keeping with his calling.
+His left nostril was indented by a scar which ran across his cheek, and
+one ear was notched well-nigh as deeply as that of a calf at a spring
+branding.
+
+"This feller," said Uncle Jim Brothers, "looks like he come from
+Arkansaw."
+
+"Maybe _so_," answered Curly.  "Anyhow, he shot up two of the boys and
+killed a horse for us before we got at him.  We was out of
+ammunition--I told you we didn't have enough.  After we killed the
+woollies, and run off them two herders, we rid up the canon.  There was
+him, a-settin' in the door of his ole Kentucky home, with a Winchester
+that'd go off--which it stands to reason couldn't have happened if he
+was a real sheepherder.  I can't figure that out."  Curly scratched his
+head dubiously, and looked again at his prisoner.
+
+"He ain't saying a vort alretty," said Whiteman.
+
+"He's happy enough without.  He was livin' like a lord there, in his
+shack--four hundred paper-back novels, a keg of whiskey and a tin cup,
+and some kind of 'hop' that we brung along, and which was the only
+thing he hollered over."
+
+The prisoner sat up in the wagon.  "If you'd be so good as to give me
+the packet you've in your pocket," said he to Curly, "I'd be awfully
+obliged to you, old fellow, I would indeed."  Curly drew a paper
+package from his pocket and passed it to the speaker, who opened it
+with eager fingers.
+
+"Thanks, my good man," he remarked, "thank you awfully."  They led him
+into the deserted Lone Star for further deliberations.
+
+"That's the snuff he's been takin'," Curly explained aside.  "I know.
+It's 'hop.'  Sheep, 'hop,' and whiskey!  With that for a life and them
+for a steady diet, I don't believe our friend here'd last more'n about
+thirty years more."  He turned to the captive, who by this time was
+leaning back against the wall in his chair, the central figure of
+present affairs, but apparently quite unconcerned.
+
+"How you feelin' now?" Curly asked.
+
+"Much better," replied the prisoner.  "Thank you awfully.  I was
+beginning to feel deucedly seedy, you know."
+
+"I'd like to know," inquired Curly, bluntly, "what in merry-hell you're
+doing down in here, anyhow.  Where'd you come from?  Where've you been?"
+
+A half-humorous smile came to the face of the captive.  "You seem not
+to know a Sandhurst man, gentlemen, when you see one," said he.
+
+"I said he was from Arkansaw," remarked Uncle Jim.
+
+"No foolin' now, young feller," said Curly, frowning.  "You may have
+more trouble than you're lookin' for.  What's your name?"
+
+"I really forget my first name," replied the prisoner, blandly, but not
+discourteously.  "Of late I have been customarily addressed as the King
+of Gee-Whiz."
+
+"Well, King," suggested the acting foreman, grimly, "you'd better turn
+loose and tell us your story, about as soon as you know how."
+
+"Very gladly," responded the other, "very gladly.  You seem a good
+sort, and you fought fair.  I'll tell you the absolute truth.
+
+"I came from England originally, and not from Arkansaw, as my friend
+supposes, although I don't know where Arkansaw is, I'm sure.  I was
+long in the British Army, or Navy, I cawn't remember which.  I'm quite
+sure it was one or the other, possibly both."
+
+"I wouldn't kid too much, friend," said Curly, warningly.
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"Drop the foolishness!"
+
+"You misunderstand me, I'm sure," said the King of Gee-Whiz.  "At that
+time it was quite customary, indeed very fashionable, for young
+gentlemen to belong both to the Army and the Navy.  Now, I remember
+with perfect distinctness that I shipped before the mast on her
+Majesty's submarine, the _Equator_."
+
+Uncle Jim drew a long breath.  "A submarine ain't _got_ no mast," said
+he.  "It crawls, on the bottom of the ocean."
+
+"Don't mind him, friend," interrupted Curly.  "He come from the
+short-grass country of Kansas, and he don't know a submarine from a
+muley cow.  Go on, King."
+
+"As I was saying," continued the latter, somewhat annoyed, "I shipped
+before the mast on her Majesty's submarine, the _Equator_, Captain
+Harry Oglethorpe commanding,--a great friend of mine, and a very brave
+and clever fellow.  I knew him well before I got so deucedly down on my
+luck.  But what was I saying?"
+
+"About submarines--"
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember; we left Portsmouth Harbor the 12th of August,
+1357.  It seemed a gruelling hard thing to us to sail just on the
+opening of the shooting season, but the wuzzies were troubling a bit.
+
+"One day, as Sir Harry and I were sitting on deck before the mast,
+having a cigarette--"
+
+"At the bottom of the sea--on deck!" gasped Uncle Jim Brothers.
+
+"Pray don't interrupt me, or I'll never get on," chided the King of
+Gee-Whiz, politely.  "We were smoking, as I said, awfter dinner.  I was
+remarking to Sir Harry that we were having a very good voyage over,
+when, as he turned to reply, an orderly rode up to us and saluted."
+
+"Rode--rode--rode up!" murmured Curly.  "How could he?"
+
+"Let him alone," said Uncle Jim.  "Didn't he say he couldn't remember
+whether he was in the Army or the Navy?  The horse goes."
+
+"The orderly saluted," resumed the King of Gee-Whiz, "and said he, 'I
+beg pardon, but the officer of the day presents his compliments, and
+begs to report that the ship's a-fire, and upon the point of exploding.'
+
+"Sir Harry looked at his watch.  'Thanks,' said he.  'Present my
+compliments to the officer of the day, and ask how long it will be
+before the explosion occurs.'
+
+"'I beg pardon,' replied the orderly, 'but the officer of the day
+presents his compliments, and begs to say that the explosion will occur
+in about three minutes.'
+
+"'Very well,' said Sir Harry, 'you may go.'--'That will give us time to
+finish our cigarettes,' said he to me.  The orderly saluted and rode
+away.  We never saw him again.
+
+"The officer of the day was a very accurate man, very accurate indeed.
+In three minutes to the dot the explosion did occur.  We never knew
+what caused it.  No doubt the Admiralty Board determined that, but we
+were not present at the session.
+
+"The explosion was most violent, and no doubt the submarine was quite
+destroyed by it.  Sir Harry and I were blown to an extraordinary
+distance from the spot.  I remember saying to him, as we reached the
+surface and started upward, that it seemed quite too bad that we'd not
+had time to get together our personal kit for the journey.
+
+"It's no use my mentioning how long we travelled thus, for I'm not in
+the least clear about it myself.  All I can say is that in course of
+time we descended, and that we found ourselves on solid ground, on the
+island of Gee-Whiz.  That, you will understand, was an uncharted and
+hitherto undiscovered land, lying near the 400th parallel west of
+London and somewhere below Sumatra--several weeks' march from Calcutta,
+I should say.  We'd never seen the place nor heard of it, but were
+jolly well pleased to alight upon it, under the circumstances.  Of the
+rest of the ship's company we never heard.
+
+"It was a baddish fix, I must say, for to be marooned on a desert
+island is serious; and it's still more serious to lose one's ship in
+the British Army.  Presently, however, we composed ourselves.  'I say,'
+said Sir Harry, 'this is a great go, isn't it?  Here I am with no
+luggage whatever except one bar of soap!'
+
+"Presently I saw approaching a band of natives, headed by a large
+person, who was apparently their leader or king."
+
+"Then that was the real King of Gee-Whiz?" asked Doc Tomlinson.
+
+"At that time, but not permanently, as I shall presently show you."
+
+"I explained the situation to the King, who turned out to be a very
+good sort.  'God bless my soul!' said he.  'My dear sir, there's not
+the slightest occasion for uneasiness, there really isn't, indeed.'
+
+"You may fawncy the situation!  As it was, Sir Harry and I were obliged
+to make the best of it.  We concluded to remain and to take possession
+of the region in the name of her Britennic Majesty."
+
+"That's the most natural part of your story!" affirmed Uncle Jim, with
+conviction.
+
+"Thank you.  But I must tell you of the complications which now arose.
+You will see that all these people were sun-worshippers, or something
+of the sort, and they'd a beastly unpleasant habit, you know, of
+offering up a sacrifice now and again to appease the spirits, or the
+like.  We learned they'd a valley of gold hidden away somewhere back in
+the island, and from this the King got all his gold, though even under
+these circumstances not so much as he wanted at all times.  He'd the
+trouble of most royal families.
+
+"The ruler of this golden valley was some sort of a princess, and she
+was downright niggardly with her money, as some of these heiresses are,
+you know.  She'd promise the King to bring him an apronful of gold if
+he'd give her a sacrifice to offer up, but he had no way of providing
+an offering.  No one had come for years in the line of a sacrifice,
+excepting ourselves.  You can imagine the awkwardness this created.
+The King wanted to sacrifice us, one or both, directly.  The princess,
+who by the by was a regular ripper in her way, was quite gone on Sir
+Harry, and he on her as well.  At this point my own personal fortunes
+were much involved, as you may understand.
+
+"Sir Harry explained that while he wished to be quite the gentleman
+about it, and accord me every courtesy, he'd be obliged if I'd be the
+sacrifice, and leave him to represent her Majesty in the new territory.
+We talked it over a bit, but came to no conclusion about the matter.
+It was at this time that one of the most remarkable portions of our
+experience occurred.
+
+"One morning Sir Harry and I were standing in front of our residence,
+in our part of the island, talking over matters.  Sir Harry was taking
+a bawth in a wash-hand basin--"
+
+"What's that?" asked Uncle Jim.
+
+"I reckon he means a wash-pan," explained Billy Hudgens.
+
+"At least, Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and
+he'd the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles.  Just then the King of
+Gee-Whiz came by, and chawnced to notice the bubbles.  You should have
+seen his expression!
+
+"You must remember he'd never seen a bit of soap in all his life; and
+no one who has been without it--like the King and myself--can tell what
+that means.  He was deucedly infatuated with the bubbles.  In short, he
+valued them at once far more than all the gold in the valley; and he
+wound up by telling us flat, that so long as we could make bubbles for
+him, there would be no sacrifice.  He commanded us to appear before him
+every day and make these bubbles--Sir Harry showed him how to do it
+with his pipe--every morning and awfternoon.
+
+"Awfter he'd gone, Sir Harry and I looked at each other.  'It's death
+or bubbles,' said he to me.  I pointed out to him that it was either
+death or no bawth.  He was much shocked.  Evidently the thing could not
+go on, for our soap was already very near exhausted.  Sir Harry was a
+sad dog.  Said he to me, 'While there is soap there is life,' meaning
+to say, you see, that while there was life there was hope.  Ha, ha!"
+
+"Leave that out," admonished Curly.  "Go on."
+
+"About now there went ashore on the island the private yacht of a
+gentleman whom we found to be Sir Isaac Morgenstern.  He was a retired
+soap-maker, of wealth and station, and was on a voyage to Samoa with
+his daughter, his household servants, and the like.  He'd with him, as
+chaplain, a missionary, William Cook, a person of very fat habit of
+body.
+
+"When the boat went ashore, Sir Isaac, his daughter, Lady Sophie, her
+maid, a Miss Eckerstrom, Mr. Cook, and one or two others were saved,
+together with certain of their effects--an auto car or so, a piano, a
+harp, some books, pictures, and a number of other items which made our
+life much pleasanter.  We all settled down together in a bit of colony,
+and we got on well enough.
+
+"The King by this time was becoming most unpleasant again about his
+sacrifice.  Sir Harry was a sad dog.  'Sacrifice Morgenstern,'
+suggested he, 'he's used to sacrifice.'  You see, in the retail
+business--"
+
+"Never mind dot," said Whiteman.  "Tell vot happenet!"
+
+"A great many things happened.  For one thing, the death of Sir Isaac."
+
+"How come that?" asked Billy Hudgens.
+
+"One day Sir Harry met Sir Isaac in the woods, and they'd a bit of
+talk.  Without thinking much about it, Sir Harry explained that he was
+called on to blow soap bubbles for the King, and that he was in great
+need of soap, which at that time was worth far more than gold."
+
+"Unt Morgenstern a retiret soap-mager" exclaimed Whiteman,
+involuntarily.
+
+"Now that was shore hard luck for _him_," added Uncle Jim.
+
+"You may quite believe so," said the teller of the story, gently.  "And
+the saddest part of it, he'd nearly solved our problem before he left
+us.  At once Sir Harry began talking of soap, Sir Isaac began wondering
+how he could make soap.  Ere long he thought of Mr. Cook, the
+missionary.  'Soap making is simple,' said he, 'if one has fat and a
+bit of alkali.'  The water there was most alkaline, I may add.  'Now
+there is Mr. Cook?'
+
+"'You cawn't have the missionary,' interrupted Sir Harry, 'until after
+he has married me and the princess.  Then I don't mind.'
+
+"I've every reason to believe that Mr. Cook was made over into soap.
+But for once Sir Isaac was wrong.  He oversold the market, and that was
+his mistake.  As soon as the King of Gee-Whiz found that there was
+abundance of soap he lost his fawncy for bubbles.  The shock of this
+lost opportunity prostrated Sir Isaac, and he presently passed away.
+We mourned him for a time, but presently other events occurred which
+deadened the loss.
+
+"You will understand that the King of Gee-Whiz was a deucedly good
+sort.  He'd take a nip now and again, of course.  The only thing he had
+to drink was palm wine, which he got by chopping a notch in a tree and
+catching the juice in a cup."
+
+"That sounds like wood alcohol," said Billy Hudgens, in a professional
+tone of voice.  "It ain't safe."
+
+"Quite right.  It wasn't safe.  The palm wine itself caused the King to
+cut a pretty caper now and then; but awfter his mistake, he was far
+worse--far, far worse.  He never got over that, never."
+
+"What happened to him?"
+
+"A most extraordinary thing.  I never knew of anything like it in all
+the world.
+
+"You see, there were two trees which grew close together near the royal
+palace.  One of these was his Majesty's private drinking tree.  The
+other, as it chawnced, was a rubber tree."
+
+Curly deliberately removed his hat and placed it on his knee, wiping,
+as he did so, a brow dotted thick with moisture.  No one broke the
+silence.
+
+"You will easily understand," resumed the speaker, "that when the King
+of Gee-Whiz had chopped into the rubber tree with his little gold axe,
+drinking awfterwards a cupful of pure caoutchouc, it did not take him
+long to repent of his inadvertence.  The results were what I may call
+most extraordinary.  I should judge the rubber juice to have been of
+very high proof indeed.
+
+"To be brief, I give you my word of honor, the King was turned into an
+absolutely elastic person on the spot!  When he stamped his foot he
+bounded into the air.  'He's a regular bounder, anyway,' said Sir
+Harry, who would always have his joke.  'And,' said he to me, as I
+remember distinctly, 'if his conscience becomes elastic, we're gone,
+the same as Cook and Morgenstern.'  Sir Harry was a great wit.
+
+"Now, the more furious the King became, the more helpless he became as
+well.  He simply bounced up and down and around and about.  Reigning
+monarch, too--lack of dignity--all that sort of thing--must have been
+most annoying to him.  We could do nothing to calm him.  In all my
+travels, I have never seen such a state of affairs; I haven't, really."
+
+"Nor me neither," said Billy Hudgens, sighing, "and I've kept bar from
+Butte to El Paso."
+
+"Then what happened?" demanded Curly.
+
+"Everything that could happen," said the other, bitterly.  "Lady Sophie
+and her maid, Sir Harry and the princess--the entire household suite of
+the King of Gee-Whiz--were mad enough to taste also of the juice of
+this rubber tree.  It had the same effect upon them!  I say to you,
+positively and truthfully, that then and there the island of Gee-Whiz
+was inhabited by the maddest population ever known in any possession of
+her Britannic Majesty."
+
+"Reckon they was a pretty lively bunch to hold," suggested Curly; "but
+what happened next?"
+
+"I am not quite clear as to all that transpired awfter that.  I know
+that I was the only sane man left on the island."
+
+"Then," remarked Curly, with conviction, taking a huge chew off his
+plug, "then that must shore have been one hell of a island!"
+
+But the narrator went on unmoved: "I reproved the others, and they
+resented it.  There was a great battle with the natives one day, of
+which I remember but little.  I seem to have been left insensible on
+the field.  When I recovered, I saw dawncing off across the sea the
+figures of all these different persons except Sir Harry--who, of
+course, was with me in the battle.  Sir Harry was still with me, quite
+sober at lawst, and quite dead, I do not know from what cause.  I was
+left alone.
+
+"It was thus, gentlemen, that I acquired, by right, as I think, my
+title which I assumed--awfter acting for a time as Viceroy for her
+Britannic Majesty--as the King of Gee-Whiz.  For a while I lived there
+alone.  Awfterwards, in some way, which I do not quite call to mind at
+present, I appear to have been discovered.  It was shortly awfter that
+I received my decoration--I beg your pardon."  He flushed a dull red.
+"It was nothing, of course," said he.  "As to saving Sir Harry, it was
+only what any other fellow would have done in the Army or the Navy--I
+don't remember which.
+
+"So, gentlemen, I've told you my story as a gentleman should.  I've
+been deucedly down on my luck ever since then, and I cawn't tell you,
+really I cawn't, how I happened to be here and in this business as you
+found me.  There's many a younger son, in the Army or the Navy, who
+knocks about and gets a bit to the bad.  I hope you'll not lay it up
+against me, I do indeed!"  His head dropped forward on his chest.  "I
+was stone broke," he whispered, "and I'd not a friend on earth."
+
+"And so you drifted here," said Curly.  "Well, it's about the right
+place.  Heart's Desire's wide open."
+
+"It wasn't so bad," resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand
+across his forehead; "it wasn't so bad down here for a time.  I didn't
+mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on
+the island for so long.  But the trouble was that I was followed all
+the time--have been for more than a year now--by that cursed King--that
+damned fiend that I thought I'd left long ago!  I'd go out into the
+sunshine, and there he'd be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along,
+anyway I'd look!  He'd follow me like a--look! look! there he is now.
+See!"
+
+He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open
+door.  A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight
+which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.
+
+"Look!" cried the King of Gee-Whiz.  "He's there!  He's there!"  He
+slipped and sank to the floor, rolling over into an utter
+insensibility.  Curly put on his hat and stood looking down at him.
+
+"Sand, sunshine, and sheep herdin'," said he, "will do up any man in
+time.  I'd 'a' made a good cow puncher out of this fellow, too, if I'd
+got him in time.  By Golly!  I'll do it anyhow.  I'll have Mac get him
+a horse and saddle and put him to work.  Any feller that kin shoot and
+lie as good as him has got the makin' of a good cow puncher in him."
+
+They turned over the King of Gee-Whiz gently, that he might rest more
+easily, where he lay.  His coat and waistcoat fell open.  Underneath
+them, upon the left side of his chest, appeared a small, dull-colored
+cross of metal.
+
+"For Valor"; Curly read the inscription with difficulty.  "I knowed it;
+I knowed he'd been a cow puncher sometime, and just went wrong."
+
+"Great Scott!" exclaimed Uncle Jim Brothers, "that's the Victoria
+Cross!  This here's a V. C. man!"
+
+"I don't know that brand.  It ain't registered for this range," said
+Curly.
+
+"Well," said Billy Hudgens, philosophically gazing at the sleeper, "I
+reckon 'D. T.' would be easier to understand, all things considered."
+
+"If he ever comes to," said Curly, as he cast away through the open
+door the contents of the pockets of the King of Gee-Whiz, "we'll try to
+get him through the D. T. stage as well as the V. C., whatever that is,
+and I reckon he's good for a job on the Carrizoso range.  This country
+can't afford to be too damned particular about a feller's past."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
+Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby_
+
+Tom Osby's freight wagon made not so bad a conveyance after all.  The
+first fifty miles of the journey were passed in comparative silence,
+Constance and her father for the most part keeping to the shelter of
+the wagon tilt.  Tom Osby grew restless under solitude ere long, and
+made friendly advances.
+
+"You come up here and set by me on the seat," said he to Constance,
+"and let the sun shine on you.  The old man can stay back there on the
+blankets with my kerosene can of whiskey if he still thinks his health
+ain't good.  Like enough he'll learn to get the potato off'n the snoot
+of the can before long.
+
+"You see," he went on, "I don't make no extry charge for whiskey or
+conversation to my patients.  Far's I know, I'm the only railroad that
+don't.  I got a box of aigs back there in the wagon, too.  Ever see ary
+railroad back in the States that throwed in ham and aigs?  I reckon
+not."
+
+"Twenty dollars extra!" remarked Ellsworth, "You've made the girl
+laugh."
+
+"Man, hush!" said Tom Osby.  "Go on to sleep, and don't offer me money,
+or I'll make you get out and walk."  This with a twinkle which robbed
+his threat of terror, though Ellsworth took the advice presently and
+lay down under the wagon cover.
+
+"Don't mind him, Miss Constance," apologized Tom Osby.  "He's only your
+father, anyhow, if it comes to the worst.  But now tell me, what ails
+_you_?  Say, now, you ain't sick, are you?"  He caught the plaintive
+droop of the girl's mouth; but, receiving no answer, he himself evaded
+the question, and began to point out antelope and wolves, difficult for
+the uneducated eye to distinguish upon the gray plains that now swept
+about them.  It was an hour before he returned to the subject really
+upon his mind.
+
+"I was hearin' a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a
+feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he
+began tentatively.  "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't
+have more'n half time enough to git the news."  From the corner of his
+eye he watched the face of his passenger.
+
+"A great way to do, wasn't it!" exclaimed Constance, in sudden
+indignation.  "I asked them why they didn't hire men to do such work."
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby; "I used to think you had some sense.  You
+ain't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You can't think of no way but States ways, can you?  I s'pose you
+think the _po_lice ought to catch a bad man, don't you?"
+
+"Well, it's officer's work, going after a dangerous man.  Wasn't this
+man dangerous?"
+
+He noted her eagerness, and hastened to qualify.  "Him?  The Kid?  No,
+I don't mean him.  _He's_ plumb gentle.  I mean a _real_ bad man--if
+there was any out here, you know.  Now, not havin' any _po_lice, out
+here, the fellers that believes in law and order, why, onct in a while,
+they kind of help go after the fellers that don't.  It works out all
+right.  Now I don't seem to just remember which ones it was of our
+fellers that Stillson took with him the other day, along of your
+hurrying me out of town so soon after I got in."
+
+"It was Mr. Tomlinson, and Mr. McKinney from the ranch, you know; and
+Curly wanted to go, but they wouldn't let him."
+
+"Why wouldn't they?"
+
+"Because he was a married man, they said.  And yet you say this
+criminal is not dangerous?"
+
+"He'd ought to been glad to go, him a married man.  I've been married a
+good deal myself.  But was them two the only ones that went?"
+
+"They two--and Mr. Anderson."
+
+Tom smoked on quietly.  "Well, I don't see why they'd take a tenderfoot
+like him," he remarked at length, "while there was men like Curly
+standin' around."
+
+"I thought you were his friend!" blazed the girl, her cheeks reddening.
+
+Tom Osby grinned at the success of his subterfuge.
+
+"If he wasn't a good man, Ben Stillson wouldn't 'a' took him along,"
+admitted he.
+
+"Then it _is_ dangerous?"
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, tapping his pipe against the side of the wagon
+seat, "they're about even, a half dozen good ones against about that
+many bad ones.  They're game on both sides, and got to be.  And we all
+know well enough that Dan Anderson's game as the next one.  The boys
+figured that out the other night.  Why, he'll come back all right in a
+few days; don't worry none about _that_."  He looked straight ahead of
+him, pretending not to notice the little gloved hand that stole toward
+his sleeve.  In her own way, Constance had discovered that she might
+depend upon this rough man of the plains.
+
+"Ma'am," he went on after a while, "not apropy of nothing, as they say
+in the novels, I wish you and your dad would hurry and get your old
+railroad through here.  Us folks may some of us want to go back to the
+States sometime, and it's a long way to ride from Heart's Desire to any
+railroad the way it is, unless you've got mighty good company, like I
+have, this trip.  I get awful lonesome sometimes, drivin' between here
+and Vegas.  I had a parrot onct, and a phonygraph, as you may remember,
+but the fellers took 'em both away from me, you know.  I'm thinkin' of
+makin' up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin' down.  She makes
+fine pies.  I've knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles--all
+the way up to Vegas--they're that permernent.  She reminds me a heap of
+my third wife.  Now, allowin' I did take one more chanct, and make up
+to that oldest girl, we'd look fine, wouldn't we, takin' a weddin' trip
+in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!"
+
+Constance was smiling now.  "I've got her gentled and comin' along
+right easy now," thought Tom Osby to himself.
+
+"I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct," he went on, "got married and went
+plumb to New York, towering around.  He got lost on a ferry-boat down
+there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me,
+'Blamed if every man in that town didn't get his boots blacked every
+day.'  That's foolish."
+
+The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and
+taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she
+had felt for days.  Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a
+deep snore from the rear of the wagon.
+
+"That," said Tom Osby, "sounds like the old man had got the potato
+loose."
+
+"I'm ashamed of him," declared Constance.
+
+"Natural," said Tom; "but why special?"
+
+"He oughtn't to touch that whiskey.  I hate it."
+
+"So do I, when it ain't good.  That in the can is good.  It's only fair
+your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone
+Star.  They didn't have a drop when I got in.  Now, that's another
+reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart's Desire.  It might
+prevent a awful stringency, sometime.  There's Dick McGinnis, why, he
+nearly--"
+
+"But it's not coming.  It will not be built.  They wouldn't let us in.
+We couldn't get the right of way."
+
+"Now listen at you!  You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer
+couldn't.  Of course not.  But you haven't tried it your own self yet."
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"Well, you'd a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa
+did.  The boys told me all about what happened.  A man out here don't
+holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that's
+different.  Dan Anderson done just right."
+
+"He broke up all our plans," Constance retorted hotly; and at once
+flushed at her own speech.
+
+"What was he to do?  Sell out?  Turn the whole town over to you folks?
+Soon as he knows what's up, he throws back the money and tells the road
+to go to hell.  He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers
+that had spoke to him about lookin' after their places.  He done right."
+
+Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon.  At length
+she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby's eyes.  "Yes, he was right,"
+she said.  "He did what was right."  But she drew a long breath as she
+spoke.
+
+"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, "not referrin' to the
+fact that you're squarer than your men folks, I want to say that,
+speakin' of game folks, you're just as game as any man I ever saw.
+Lots of women is.  Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin'
+on, sometimes."
+
+She felt his eyes upon her, and this time turned away her own.  For a
+time they were silent, as the well-worn wagon rolled along behind the
+long-stepping grays; but Tom Osby was patient.
+
+"A while ago," he resumed after a time, "you said 'we,' and 'our
+railroad.'  That's mighty near right.  You two folks right here in this
+wagon, yourself particular, can save that there railroad, and save
+Heart's Desire, both at the same time.  And that's something, even if
+them was all that was saved."
+
+"I don't quite see what you mean," answered Constance.
+
+"Oh, now, look here," said Tom, filling another pipe, "I ain't so
+foolish.  I ain't goin' to say that the old days'll last forever.  We
+all know better'n that when it comes right down to straight reasonin'.
+A country'll sleep about so long, same as a man; and then it'll wake
+up.  I've seen the States come West for forty years.  They're comin'
+swifter'n ever now."
+
+"When we first came here," said Constance, "I thought this was the very
+end of all the world."
+
+"It has been.  And the finest place in all the world, ma'am, is right
+at the end of the world.  That's where a man can feel right
+independent.  A woman can't understand that, no way on earth.  A man's
+a right funny thing, ma'am.  He's all the time hankerin' to git into
+some country out at the end of the world, where there ain't a woman
+within a thousand miles; and then as quick as he gets there, he begins
+to holler for some woman to come out and save his life!"
+
+She turned upon him again, smiling in spite of herself.
+
+"The boys have been mighty slow to let go of the old days," he went on.
+"In some ways there won't never be no better days.  We never had a
+thief in our valley, until your pa come in here last summer.  There
+ain't been a lock on a door in four hundred miles of this country in
+the last twenty years.  When the railroad comes the first thing it'll
+bring will be locks and bolts.  At the same time, it's got to come--I
+know that.  We've about had our sleep and our dream out, ma'am."
+
+"It was beautiful," Constance murmured vaguely; and he caught her
+meaning.
+
+"Yes, plumb beautiful.  Folks that hasn't tried it don't know.  A man
+that's lived the old life here, with a real gun on him as regular as
+pants, why, in about three years he gets what we call galvanized.
+He'll never be the same after that.  He'll never go back to the States
+no more.  That's hard for you to understand, ain't it?  And yet that
+sort of feelin' catches almost any man out here, sooner or later, if
+he's any good.  It's the country, ma'am."
+
+A strange spell seemed now to fall upon Constance herself, as she sat
+gazing out in the sunlight.  She felt the fatalism, the unconcern of a
+child, of a young creature.  She understood perfectly all that she had
+heard, and was ready to listen further.
+
+"Of course," continued Tom, "this, bein' South, and bein' West, it
+ain't really a part of the United States; so I can't save the whole
+country.  But, such as this part of the country is, I reckon I'll have
+to save it.  You'll see my name wrote on tablets in marble halls some
+day; because I've got a hard job.  I've got to reconcile these folks to
+your dad!  And yet I'm going to make 'em say, 'Now is the winter of our
+discontent made glorious summer by this son-of-a-gun from New York.'
+You didn't know I read Shakespeare?  Why, I read him constant, even if
+I do have to wear specs now for fine print."
+
+Constance, in spite of herself, laughed outright with so merry a peal
+that she wakened her father from his slumber.  "What's that?  What's
+that?" broke in Mr. Ellsworth, suddenly sitting up on his blankets.
+
+"Never mind, friend," said Tom Osby, "you go back to sleep again; me
+and Miss Constance is savin' things.  I was just talkin' to her about
+her railroad."
+
+Ellsworth rubbed his eyes.  "By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly, "that's a
+good idea.  It shall be hers if she says so.  I'll give her every share
+I own if that road ever runs into the valley."
+
+"Now you are beginnin' to _talk_," said Tom Osby, calmly.  "Not that
+you'd be givin' her much; for you and your lawyer wouldn't be able to
+get the railroad in there in a thousand years.  The girl can play a
+heap stronger game than both of you."
+
+"Well, if she can," responded Ellsworth, "she's going to have a good
+chance to do it.  We're going to build the railroad on north, and we
+don't feel like hauling coal down that canon by wagon."
+
+Tom Osby seemed to have pursued his game as far as he cared to do at
+this time.  "S'pose we stop along somewhere in here," he suggested,
+"and eat a little lunch?  My horses gets hungry, and thirsty, the same
+as you, Mr. Ellsworth.  Whoa, boys!"
+
+Descending from his high seat, he now unhitched his team and strapped
+on their heads the nose-bags with the precious oats, after a pail of
+not less precious water from the cask at the wagon's side.
+Methodically he kicked together a little pile of greasewood roots.
+
+"We're to have some tea, you know," he remarked.  "I don't charge
+nothin' extry for tea, whiskey, or advice on this railroad of mine.
+Get down now, ma'am," he added, reaching up his arms to assist
+Constance from her place.  "Come along, set right down here on the
+ground in the sun.  It's good for you.  Ain't it nice?
+
+"There's the back of old Carrizy just beginnin' to show," he explained;
+"and there's the Bonitos comin' up below.  That's Blanco Peak beyond,
+the tallest in the Territory; and them mountings close in is the
+Nogales.  There ain't a soul within many and many a mile of here.  And
+now, with them old mountings a-lookin' down at us on the strict
+_cuidado_, not botherin' us if we don't bother them, why, ain't it
+comfortable?  This country'll take hold of you after a while, ma'am.
+It's the oldest in the world; but somehow it seems to me onct in a
+while as if it was about the youngest, too."
+
+Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full
+glare of the Southwestern sun.  She looked about her and felt an
+unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle
+and under some watchful eye.  "Dad," said she, quietly, "I'm not going
+home.  I'm going to spend a month at Sky Top."
+
+"Has it caught _you_, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, simply.
+
+"She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be
+taken care of," grumbled her father.
+
+"Oh, now, interests ain't exclusive for the States," said Tom Osby.
+"You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn't do it.
+Give the girl a month, an' she'll just about have the town--or her and
+me together will.  You settin' there talkin' about goin' home!  Go on
+home if you feel like it.  Me and Miss Constance will stay out here,
+and take care of the business interests ourselves."
+
+"We're personally conducted, dad," laughed Constance.
+
+"Listen," said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon
+his knee.  "Now, you folks has got money behind you that's painful.
+You don't _have_ to steal, Mr. Ellsworth.  It's only a _habit_ with
+you.  Now s'pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin' that God can plat
+a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin' that the first fellers that
+finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones--which she _does_
+allow, and _know_.  Now, here's what she says.  Says she, 'We'll go in
+with this outfit, and we won't try to steal the landscape.  We'll pay
+for every foot of ground that's claimed by anybody that seen it first.
+We won't try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates
+back to Jack Wilson.  We'll put in the yard at the lower end of the
+town, provided that Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, gives his
+permission--always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr.
+Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he
+feels like goin' there.  Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas
+Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."
+
+"Of course," assented Constance; and her father nodded.
+
+"That'd be fair, and it'd be easy," went on Tom.  "We'll fix it up
+that-a-way, me and Miss Constance--not you.  And as soon as we get to a
+telegraft office, we fire the general counsel, Mr. Barkley; don't we,
+Miss Constance?"  The girl nodded grimly.
+
+"He's fired," said Tom.  "You can take care of that the first thing you
+do, Mr. Ellsworth.  Then you can make out my papers as yardmaster and
+general boss of the deepot.  You can be clerk.
+
+"Now here we go, the railroad cars a choo-chooin' up our canon, same as
+down here at Sky Top.  In the front car is the president, which is Miss
+Constance, with me clost along, the new yardmaster.  Your pa is
+somewhere back on the train, Miss Constance, with the money to pay off
+the hands.  He's useful, but not inderspensible."
+
+"Go on!" applauded Constance.  "Who besides us and poor old dad?"
+
+Tom Osby turned and looked at her gravely.
+
+"And there comes down to meet us at the station," he concluded, "the
+only man we needed to help us put this thing through."  Tom Osby
+finished his tea in silence.  Constance herself made no comment.  Her
+gaze was on the far-off mountains.
+
+"That there man," he resumed, shaking out the grounds from his tea-cup,
+"is the new division counsel for the road, the first mayor of Heart's
+Desire,--after Miss Constance,--and mighty likely the next
+Congressional delergate from this Territory.  Now can you both guess
+who that man is?"
+
+"I'll admit he's a bigger man than Barkley," said Ellsworth, slowly.
+"That boy would make a grand trial lawyer.  They couldn't beat him."
+
+"No," said Tom Osby, "they'd think he was square, and that means a lot.
+They _do_ think he's square; and the boys are goin' to do something
+for him if they can.  Now if he gets back--"
+
+Constance turned upon him with a glance of swift appeal.
+
+"As I was sayin', _when_ he gets back," resumed Tom, "some of us
+fellers may perhaps take it up with him, and tell him what Miss
+Constance wants to have done."
+
+This was too much.  The girl sprang to her feet.  "You'll tell him
+nothing!" she cried.
+
+Ellsworth turned to Tom Osby with a sober face.  "Young Anderson rode
+away from us the other morning," said he, "and he hardly troubled
+himself to say good-by.  We used to know him back East; and he needn't
+have taken that affair of the railroad meeting so much to heart."
+
+"Come!" called Constance, "get ready and let's be going.  I'm sick of
+this country!"  She walked rapidly away from the others.
+
+"A woman can change some sudden, can't she, Mr. Ellsworth?" remarked
+Tom Osby, slowly.
+
+"Look here, Miss Constance," said he, presently, when he came nearer to
+her, standing apart from the wagon, "there's been mistakes and busted
+plans enough in here already.  Now don't get on no high horse and break
+up my scheme."
+
+"Don't talk to me!"  She stamped her foot.
+
+"Ma'am! ain't you ashamed to say them words?"  She did not answer, and
+Tom Osby took the step for which he had been preparing throughout the
+entire morning.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, "one word from you would bring that feller to you on
+the keen lope.  He'd fix the railroad all right mighty soon.  Then
+besides--"
+
+She turned away.  "The question of the railroad is a business one, and
+nothing else; talk to my father about it."
+
+Tom went silently about his preparations for resuming the journey.
+When he came to put the horses to the wagon tongue, he found Constance
+sitting there, staring with misty eyes at the distant hills beyond
+which lay Heart's Desire.  Tom Osby paused at the shelter of the wagon
+cover and backed away.
+
+"Something has got to be did," he muttered to himself, "and did mighty
+blame quick.  If we don't get some kind of hobbles on that girl,
+_she's_ goin' to jump the fence and go back home."
+
+[Illustration: "'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame
+quick.'"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
+their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen_
+
+When Tom Osby came back to Heart's Desire, he drew Curly to one side,
+and the two walked over to a shady spot at the side of Whiteman's
+corral, seating themselves for what was evidently to be an executive
+session.
+
+Tom Osby continued to stuff tobacco into his pipe with a stubby
+forefinger, and Curly's hat was pushed back from a forehead wrinkled in
+deep thought.
+
+"It's a good deal like you say, Tom," he assented; "I know that.
+Unless we can get Dan Anderson and that girl to some sort of an
+understandin', the jig's up, and there ain't a-goin' to be no railroad
+at Heart's Desire.  But how're you a-goin' to _do_ that?"
+
+"Well, I done told you what I thought," said Tom Osby.  "I'm a married
+man, been married seven times, or maybe six.  There's just two things I
+understand, and them is horses and women, which I ought to, from
+associatin' with them constant.  Now, I tell you, if I'm any judge of
+women, that girl thinks a heap of Dan Anderson, no matter what she lets
+on.  It's her that's got the railroad up her sleeve.  The old man just
+thinks she's a tin angel with fresh paint.  Why, he's done _give_ her
+the whole railroad.  He don't want it.  He's got money now that's
+sinful.  Now, I say, she's got the railroad.  Dan Andersen's chances,
+they go with the railroad.  If she could just get _him_ to go with the
+business _chances_, that'd about fix things; and I more'n half believe
+she'd drop into line right free and gentle."
+
+"Well, why don't she _say_ so, then," grumbled Curly, "and stop this
+foolishness?"
+
+"Now there you go!" replied Tom.  "Can't you see that any woman on
+earth, even a married woman, is four-thirds foolishness and the rest
+human?  With girls it's still worse'n that.  If I'm any judge, she's
+wishin' a certain feller'd come along and shake the tree.  But she
+ain't goin' to fall off until the tree's done shook.  Consequently,
+there she is, still up the tree, and our railroad with her."
+
+"Looks like _he_ ought to make the first break," observed Curly,
+sagely.
+
+"Of course he ought.  But _will_ he, that's the question."
+
+"No, he won't," admitted Curly, pushing his hat still farther back on
+his head.  "He's took his stand, and done what he allowed was right.
+After that, he ain't built to crawfish.  He's passed up the girl, and
+the railroad, too, and I reckon that settles it."
+
+"And yet he thinks a heap of the girl."
+
+"Natural?  Of course he does.  How can he help it?  That's where the
+trouble is.  I tell you, Tom, these here things is sort of _personal_.
+If these two folks is havin' trouble of their own, why, it's _their_
+trouble, and it ain't for us to square it, railroad or no railroad."
+
+"When two people is damn fools," commented Tom Osby, gravely, "it's all
+right for foreign powers to mediate a-plenty."
+
+"But what you goin' to do?  She won't bat a eye at him, and he ain't
+goin' to send for her."
+
+"Oh, yes he _is_," corrected Tom Osby; and the forefinger, crowding
+tobacco into his pipe, worked vigorously.  "He's _got_ to send for
+her."
+
+"Looks to me like we can't do nothin'," replied his friend,
+pessimistically.  "I like that girl, too.  Say, I'll braid her a nice
+hair rope and take it down to her.  Maybe that'll kind o' square things
+with her for losin' out with Dan."
+
+"Yes," scoffed Tom Osby, "that's all the brains a fool cow puncher has
+got.  Do you reckon a hair lariat, or a new pair of spurs, is any
+decent remedy for a girl's wownded affections?  No, sir, not none.  No,
+you go on down and take your old hair rope with you, and give it to the
+girl.  That's all right; but you're goin' to take something else along
+with you at the same time."
+
+"What's that?" "Why, you're goin' to take a letter to her,--a letter
+from Dan Andersen's death-bed."
+
+"Who--me?  Death-bed?  Why, he ain't _on_ no death-bed.  He's eatin'
+three squares a day and settin' up readin' novels.  Death-bed nothin'!"
+
+"Oh, no," said Tom Osby, "that's where you're mistaken.  Dan Anderson
+_is_ on his death-bed; and he writes his dyin' confession, his message
+in such cases made and pervided.  He sends his last words to his own
+true love.  Says he, 'All is forgiven.'  Then she flies to receive his
+dyin' words.  You ain't got no brains, Curly.  You ain't got no
+imagi_na_tion.  Why, if I left all this to you, she'd get here too
+late for the funeral.  You're a specialist, Curly.  You can rope and
+throw a two-thousand-pound steer, but you can't handle a woman that
+don't weigh over a hundred and twenty-five.  Now, you watch your Pa."
+
+Curly sat and looked at him in silence for a few minutes, but at last a
+light seemed to dawn upon him.  "Oh, I _see_," said he, smiling
+broadly.  "You mean for us to get up a letter for him--write it out and
+send it, like he done it hisself."
+
+Tom Osby nodded.  "Of course--that's the only way.  There wouldn't
+either of them write to the other one.  That's the trouble with these
+here States girls, and them men from the States, too.  You have to take
+care of 'em.  You and me has got to be gardeens for these two folks.
+If we don't, they're goin' to make all kinds of trouble for theirselves
+and each other."
+
+"Kin you disguise your handwritin' any, Tom?" asked Curly.  "I can't.
+Mine's kind of sot."
+
+"Curly," answered Tom, with scorn, "what you call your brains is only a
+oroide imitation of a dollar watch.  Why, of course we can't write a
+letter and sign his name to it deliberate.  That's forgery, and we'd
+get into the penitentiary for it.  That ain't the way to do.
+
+"Now look here.  Dan Anderson may be lookin' right well for a dyin'
+man, but he's on his death-bed just the same.  That's needful for the
+purposes of dramatic construction.  He's a-layin' there, pale and wore
+out.  His right arm is busted permernent, and it's only a question of
+time when he cashes in--though he _might_ live a few days if he was
+plumb shore his own true love was a-hastenin' to his bedside."
+
+"But it was his _left_ arm that got shot," argued Curly; "and it
+didn't amount to a whole lot at that."
+
+"There's you go," jeered Tom, in answer, "with them imitation brain
+works of yours.  It's his _right_ arm that's busted.  Now, him
+a-layin' there plumb helpless, his thoughts turns to his bride that
+might 'a' been, but wasn't.  With his last dyin' words he greets her.
+If she would only hasten to his deathbed, he could die in peace.
+That's what he writes to her.  'Dear Madam,' says he, 'Havin' loved you
+all my life, I fain would gaze on you onct more.  In that case,' says
+he, 'the clouds certainly would roll away!'"
+
+"That shorely would _fetch_ her," said Curly, admiringly, "but how you
+goin' to fix it?"
+
+"Why, how?  There ain't but one way.  The dyin' man has his dear friend
+Curly, or Tom Osby, or some one, write his last words for him.  That
+ain't counterfeitin'.  That's only actin' as his literary amanyensis,
+and that's plumb legal."
+
+"Things may be legal, and not _safe_," objected Curly.  "Supposin' he
+finds out?"
+
+"Why, then, we'll be far, far away.  This letter has got to be wrote.
+I can't write it myself, and you can't; but maybe several of us could."
+
+"I ain't in on writin' the letter," Curly decided; "I'll carry it, but
+my writin' is too sot, and so's my thinker."
+
+"Well, I ain't used my own thinker in this particular way for about
+twenty years," said Tom Osby, "although I did co'te two of my wives by
+perlite correspondence, something like this; and I couldn't see but
+what them wives lasted as good as any."
+
+"It's too bad Dan Anderson ain't in on this play hisself," Curly
+resumed.  "Now if it was us that was layin' dead, and him writin' the
+letter, he'd have us both alive, and have the girl here by two o'clock
+to-morrer, and everything 'd be lovely.  But us!  We don't know any
+more about this than a pair of candy frogs."
+
+"The fewer there is in on a woman deal the better," said Tom Osby, "and
+yet it looks like we needed help right now!"
+
+The two sat gazing gloomily down the long street of Heart's Desire, and
+so intent were they that they did not see the shambling figure of
+Willie the sheepherder coming up the street.  Then Tom Osby's gaze
+focussed him.
+
+"Now there's that damned sheepherder that broke us up in business,"
+said he.  "It was him that got us into this fix.  If he hadn't lied
+like a infernal pirate, and got Dan Anderson to thinkin' that the girl
+and this lawyer feller Barkley was engaged to each other on the side,
+why Dan wouldn't have flared up and busted the railroad deal, and let
+the girl get away, and gone and got hisself shot."
+
+"S'posin' I shoot Willie up just for luck," suggested Curly.  "He's got
+it comin' to him, from the way that Gee-Whiz friend of his throwed lead
+into our fellers, time we was arguin' with them over them sheep.  This
+country ain't got no use for sheep, nor sheepherders either, specially
+the kind that makes trouble with railroads, and girls."
+
+"No, hold on a minute," interrupted Tom Osby.  "You wait--I've got a
+idea."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Wait a minute.  How saith the psalmist?  All men is liars; and
+sheepherders special, natural, eighteen-karat, hand-curled liars--which
+is just the sort we need right now in our business."
+
+Curly slapped his thigh in sudden understanding.  The two sat, still
+watching Willie as he came rambling aimlessly up the street, staring
+from side to side in his vacant fashion.
+
+"A sheepherder, as you know, Curly," went on Tom, "has three stages in
+his game.  For a while he's human.  In a few years, settin' round on
+the hills in the sun, a-watchin' them damned woolly baa-baa's of his,
+he gets right nutty.  He sees things.  Him a-gettin' so lonesome, and
+a-readin' high-class New York literature all the time, he gets to
+thinkin' of the Lady Eyemogene.  You might think he's seein' cactus and
+sheep, but what is really floatin' before him is proud knights, and
+haughty barons, and royal monarchs, and Lady Eyemogenes.
+
+"It ain't sinful for Willie to lie, like it is for us, because life is
+one continuous lie to him.  He's seen a swimmin' picture of
+hand-painted palaces, and noble jukes, and stately dames out on the
+Nogal flats every day for eight years.  That ain't lyin'--that's
+imagination.
+
+"Now this feller's imagination is just about ripe.  Usual, at the end
+of about seven years, a sheepherder goes plumb dotty, and we either
+have to shoot him, or send him to Leavenworth.  Your Gee-Whiz man can
+maybe take to cow punchin' and prosper, but not Willie.  His long suit
+is imaginin' things, from now on.
+
+"Now, that feller is naturally pinin' to write this here particular
+letter we've got on our minds.  You watch Willie compose."
+
+"Here you, Willie, come over here!" Curly called out.
+
+The herder started in fright.  Timid at best, he was all the more so
+since the raid of the Carrizoso stock men.  His legs trembled under
+him, but he slowly approached in obedience.
+
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, sternly, "I'm some hardened as a sinner my own
+self, but the kind of way you do pains me.  What made you tell that lie
+about seein' the lady and that lawyer feller makin' love to each other,
+on the back seat of the buckboard, behind the old man's back?"
+
+"I _thought_ I seen 'em," pleaded Willie.  "I--I _thought_ I heard
+'em talkin'."
+
+"Oh, sufferin' saints!  Listen to that!  You _thought_!  Of course you
+did.  You and that Gee-Whiz friend of yours ought to turn yourselves
+into a symposium and write for the papers.  Now look here.  Have you
+got a copy of the 'Proud Earl's Revenge,' in your pocket?"
+
+Willie tremulously felt in his clothing, and did produce a dog-eared
+volume to somewhat that effect.  Tom Osby turned over a few of the
+pages thoughtfully, and then sat up with a happy smile.  "There ain't
+no trouble about that letter _now_!" said he.
+
+"What--what--what do you want?" asked Willie.  Then they told him.
+Willie radiated happiness.  He sat down beside them, his hands
+trembling with joy and eagerness--conspirator number three for the
+peace and dignity of Heart's Desire.
+
+"Go get some paper, Curly," said Tom Osby, and Curly departed.  Willie
+remained wrapped in thought, his mind confused at this sudden
+opportunity.
+
+"It's all about Lancelot," said he.
+
+"What brand did Lancelot ride under?  Now, no foolin', Willie."
+
+"Why--why--why," said Willie, "Lancelot, he's at a tournyment.  Now, he
+loves a beautiful queen."
+
+"Shore he does!  That goes.  What's the queen's name?"
+
+"Her name--her name--her name's Guinevere," replied Willie.  "And the
+proud king, he brooks it ill.  The proud king's name is Arthur."
+
+"Oh, no, it _ain't_!" said Tom Osby.  "There ain't no man who's name
+is _Arthur_ that has no scrap to him.  It ain't _Arthur_ that goes on
+no war-path."
+
+"Yes, he did," insisted Willie.  "Lancelot gets herded out.  He gets
+shot up some at the tournyment, so he leaves the beautiful queen, and
+he rides off for the range all alone by himself.  He's like a
+sheepherder."
+
+"Come on with the paper, Curly," called Tom Osby.  "This feller's
+thinker is workin' fine.  Go on, Willie."
+
+"Now, Lancelot, he's layin' at the point of death, and he's thinkin'
+all the time of Guinevere.  I reckon he writes her a letter, and he
+says, says he, 'Dear Lady, I send thee my undyin' love,' says he.  'I
+kiss the picture which is a-layin' on my breast,' says he; 'and with my
+last breath,' says he, 'I shorely yearn for thee!'"
+
+"Meanin' Guinevere?"
+
+"Shore!  Says Lancelot, 'Fair queen, thou didst me a injury onct; but
+couldst thou but come and stand at my bedside, I hadst new zeal in
+life,' says he."
+
+"Meanin' he'd get well?" asked Curly.  "That's the same as Dan
+Anderson!  _This_ feller's a peach!"
+
+"Shut up!" admonished Tom Osby.  "Go on, Willie."
+
+"It's always that-a-way," said Willie.  Tears stood in his eyes.  He
+looked vaguely out over the blue hills which hedged in the enchanted
+valley of Heart's Desire.  "It's always that-a-way," he repeated.
+"Somehow, somewhere, there's always a beautiful queen, for every
+fellow, just over the mountains.  It's always that-a-way."
+
+Tom Osby reached out a hand and gently shook him.
+
+"Set up, Willie," said he.  "Come down now, till we get this business
+fixed.  Now, what happens after that?"
+
+Willie winked his eyes and smiled amiably.  "The sick knight, he writes
+a missive to the beautiful queen," he went on.  "He sets his signet
+ring on to the missive, and he hands it to his trusted henchman, and
+his trusted henchman flies to do his bidding."
+
+"That's you, Curly," nodded Tom Osby.  "You're the trusted henchman."
+
+"I'm damned if I am!" replied Curly.  "I'm nothin' but a plain cow hand
+from the Brazos; but I don't take 'henchman' from nobody!"
+
+"Hush!" said his friend.  "This feller's a genius.  If he don't get
+side-tracked on Dead Shot Dick, or something of that kind, this letter
+is just as good as wrote, right now."
+
+"The good knight presses his signet ring on to the missive," resumed
+Willie, "and his trusted cow hand wraps the missive in the folds of his
+cloak, and climbs on to his trusted steed, and flies far, far away, to
+the side of the beautiful queen."
+
+"That's good!"
+
+"And the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and
+says she, 'My Gawd!'"
+
+"Oh, _now_ we're gettin' at it!" said Tom Osby.  "Say, this is pretty
+_poor_, ain't it, Curly?"
+
+"And then," went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, "the
+beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the
+distant bedside of the sufferin' knight."
+
+"She'll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely," said Tom Osby.  "You
+got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly?  But we'll let it go at that.
+She's got to fly to the distant bedside somehow."
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right," agreed Willie, sweetly.  "She'll fly.
+She'll come.  It's always the same.  It's always the same."
+
+"Write it down, Willie," ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before
+him.  Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.
+
+The latter balked in turn.  "What!  Have I got to start it for you?
+Well, then, begin it, 'Dear Madam!'"
+
+Curly shook his head.  "You couldn't never marry a woman writin' to her
+that-a-way."  And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the
+justice of the assertion.
+
+"Leave it to Willie," suggested Curly.  "He'll get it started after a
+while.  Go ahead, Willie.  How did he say it to her, now, when he sent
+for the beautiful queen?"
+
+Tom Osby's pencil followed rapidly as it might.
+
+"He writes," said Willie, "like they always do.  He says: 'Light of my
+heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.
+I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know
+with no proof but my word.  If I have drawn apart from you, 'twas
+through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe.  If I have
+not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, 'tis for that reason
+I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the
+same.  If I have missed the dear sight of your face, 'twas because I
+could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea
+on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor.  Heart's
+Heart, and life of my life, could you not see?  I could not doom you to
+a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.'"
+
+He passed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he
+heard speaking; but he went on.
+
+"'Now I lie here hurt to death,' says the good knight Lancelot.  'This
+is the end.  Now, at the time when truth must come from the soul, I say
+to you, my queen'--she's always queen to him--'I say to you, I have
+loved you more than I have loved myself.  But if you could come, if you
+could stand at my bedside before it is too late, before it is too
+late--too late--'"  Willie's voice broke into a wail.  The ray of light
+was almost fading from his clouded brain.
+
+"Go on," whispered Tom Osby.
+
+"'My queen, my darling--' says Lancelot."
+
+Willie's hands, trembling, fell into his lap.  "It's always
+that-a-way," he whimpered vaguely, coming now to himself.
+
+"Willie," said Tom Osby, gently, "I ain't right sure I've got it all
+down straight, but I think I have.  You read her over, and touch her up
+here and there where she needs it.  Curly, look here.  I don't believe
+Dan Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if he saw it."
+
+"They sign it with their hearts," said Willie, vaguely.  "They always
+do."
+
+"He signs it with his heart," said Tom Osby, "and it goes!"  He folded
+the paper and handed it to Curly.
+
+"Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can," said he, "and make the
+run to Sky Top as fast as God'll let you.  This letter's all right, and
+it goes!"
+
+So presently there rode down the long sunlit street of Heart's Desire,
+mounted upon the mad horse Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a
+message from a mad brain and two simple hearts,--a courier bound upon a
+strange and kindly errand.
+
+The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign, looked gently
+down, and the stern walls of the canon seemed to widen and make room
+for the messenger as he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent
+knight to his distant queen.
+
+"It's like he said," mused Curly to himself, feeling in his pocket for
+tobacco as he rode.  "It's that-a-way, and I reckon it always has been.
+I've felt like that myself sometimes.  _Ola, Pinto_!  _Vamos_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
+Ananias with Spurs_
+
+Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the
+bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and
+hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed.  The mad horse,
+Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears
+back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an
+antelope.  The two swept down the long canon from Heart's Desire,
+traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed
+then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle
+thieves and those who pursued them.  At last they swung down into the
+beautiful valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to the
+southward, until at length they reached the defiles of the Sacramentos.
+They pulled up after more than a day and a night of travel, weary but
+not hopelessly the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up the
+mountains to the Sky Top hotel.
+
+Curly, a trifle gaunt, gave his first attention to his horse, which he
+unsaddled with a slap of approval, and turned loose to feed as best it
+might on the coarse herbage of the upper heights.  His next thought was
+for himself, and he realized that he was hungry.  Immediately there
+dawned upon his mind another great conviction.  He was scared!
+
+He looked about at the long galleries of the ornate modern log house,
+wherein civilization sought to ape the wilderness; but it was not the
+arrogant pretentiousness of the building itself which caused him to
+shift his glance and stand dubiously upon one foot.  It was the thought
+of what the edifice might contain.  There, as he began too late to
+reflect, was the queen!  He, the trusted henchman, was bearing to her a
+missive regarding whose nature he now experienced sudden misgivings.
+Suppose Willie, the sheepherder, had not, after all, been able to meet
+the requirements of a situation so delicate and so important!  Curly
+had known the plains and the mountains all his life.  He had ridden in
+the press of the buffalo herd in the Panhandle, had headed cattle
+stampedes in the breaks of the Pecos, had met the long-toed cinnamon
+bear all over these mountains that lay about him--had even heard the
+whisper of hostile lead as part of his own day's work,--but never
+before had his heart failed him.
+
+Nevertheless, his face puckered into a frown of determination, he
+stumbled, a trifle pigeon-toed in his high-heeled boots, across the
+floor of one gallery after another, and knocked at one door after
+another, until finally, by aid of lingering Mexican servants, he found
+himself in the presence of the beautiful queen whom he had sought.
+
+He ratified her title when she came toward him where he stood, twirling
+his hat in his hands; so tall was she, so grave and dignified, yet so
+very sweet and simple.  Curly was a man, and he felt the spell of
+smooth brown hair and wide brows, and straight, sincere eyes; not to
+speak of a queen's figure clad in such raiment as had not often been
+given Curly to look upon.  He gazed in a frank admiration which
+lessened his fear.
+
+Constance Ellsworth held out her hand, with questions for his own
+household at Heart's Desire.  Was everything right with them?  Was
+Arabella quite well of her accident?  Was his wife well?  And so on.
+But all the time she questioned him deeper with eyes large, wistful,
+eager.  She had had no news since leaving Heart's Desire, and now she
+dreaded any.  This, then, she said with tightening heart, was news, but
+fatal news, long withheld.  Had Dan Anderson come back unhurt from his
+sheriff's errand, there would have been no message at all, and silence
+would have been sweeter than this certainty of evil.  This messenger,
+reticent, awkward, embarrassed, brought her news of Dan Anderson--of
+the boy whom she had loved, of the man she loved, debonair, mocking,
+apparently careless, but, as she herself knew, in his heart indomitably
+resolved.  Now he was gone forever from her life.  He was dead!  She
+could never see him again.  Ah! why had they not used the days of this
+life, so brief, so soon ended?  It was of his death that the messenger
+must speak.
+
+Curly, already sufficiently perturbed, witnessed all this written on
+her face, stumbled, stammered, but was unable to find coherent speech;
+although he saw plainly enough the subterfuge with which even now the
+girl sought to hedge herself against prying eyes that would have read
+her secret.  She began again, to ask him of his family, the same
+questions.  "Is anything wrong?" she demanded.  In some way they were
+seated before he could go on.
+
+"It ain't the twins, ma'am," he began.  "I got--I got a letter for you.
+It's from him--from us--that is, I got a letter from Mr. Anderson--Dan
+Anderson, you know."
+
+He fumbled in his pocket.  The girl, thoroughbred, looked him straight
+in the face, pale, meeting what she felt to be the great moment of her
+life.
+
+"Then he's alive!  He must be!"
+
+Curly shook his head; meaning that he was feeling in the wrong pocket.
+
+"He is dead!  And I did not see him.  He--went away--"  Her chin
+quivered.  "Tell me," she whispered, "tell me!"
+
+Curly, busy in his search for the letter, lost the tragedy of this.
+
+"Tell me, _tell_ me, how did it happen?"
+
+"Well, ma'am, he ain't hurt so awful," remarked Curly, calmly.  "He
+just got a finger or so touched up a little, so's he couldn't write
+none to speak of, you see."
+
+Her heart gave a great bound.  She feared to hope, lest the truth might
+be too cruel; but at length she dared the issue.  "Curly," said she,
+firmly, "you are not telling me the truth."
+
+"I know it, ma'am," replied Curly, amiably; he suddenly realized that
+he was not making his own case quite strong enough.  "The fact is, he
+got hurt a _leetle_ bit worse'n that.  His hand, his _left_--no, I
+mean his _right_ hand got busted up plenty.  Why, he couldn't cut his
+own victuals.  The fact is, it's maybe even a little worse'n that."
+
+"Tell me the truth!" the girl demanded steadily.  "Is his arm gone?"
+
+"Sure it is," replied Curly, cheerfully, glad of assistance.  "Do you
+reckon Dan Anderson would be gettin' _anybody_ to write to _you_ for
+him if he had even a piece of a arm left in the shop?  I reckon not!
+He ain't that sort of a _man_."
+
+Curly's sudden improvement gave him courage.  "The fact is, ma'am,"
+said he, "I got to break this thing to you kind of gentle.  You know
+how that is yourself."
+
+"I know all about it now," she said calmly.  "I knew he would not come
+back--I saw it in his face.  It was all because of that miserable
+railroad trouble that he went away--that he didn't ever come.  It was
+all my own fault--my fault,--but I didn't mean it--I didn't--"
+
+Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an
+important emotional situation.  He rose and gazed down at her with
+solemn pity written upon his countenance.
+
+"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on.  I wish't you
+wouldn't.  Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean
+through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six
+weeks."
+
+"He _will_ live?"
+
+"Oh, _well_," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say
+about _that_.  He _might_ live.  You see, there ain't no doctor at
+Heart's Desire.  The boys just took care of him the best they could.
+They brung him home from quite a ways off.  They--they cut his arm off
+easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors.  They--they sewed
+him up fine.  He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to
+the Pinos Altos ranch.  The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man
+as ever throwed a leg over a saddle.  When he got back from takin' the
+Kid up to Vegas, the sherf--that's Ben Stillson--he starts down to
+Cruces.  Convention there this week, ma'am.  Ben, he allowed he'd get
+Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress--that is, if he hadn't 'a' got
+killed."
+
+"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly.  "I've known that
+a long time."
+
+"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly.
+"There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on
+leather than him.  He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we
+all wouldn't let go of.  Some of 'em goes back home.  He didn't.  What
+there was here he could have.  For one while we thought he was throwin'
+us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't.  We done
+elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something
+better'n that--if they ain't started it already over to Cruces--that
+is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely--him bein' dead.
+Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this
+letter.  But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any
+feller could."
+
+Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights.
+"Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do.  We all
+know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's
+Desire.  Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along.
+_You_ got no right to cry.  You got no right to let on what you don't
+really feel.  I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am.  Now I'm--I'm
+plumb sincere and _truthful_.  No frills goes."  There was the
+solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.
+
+"I'm this much of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you
+don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson.  That's everdent.  I
+ain't in on that side of the play.  I'm just here to say that, so far
+as he's concerned _hisself_, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any
+minute of his life for _you_."
+
+She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.
+
+"He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that's
+all," said Curly, firmly.  "He don't talk of nothing else but you,
+ma'am."
+
+"How dare he talk of me!" she flashed.
+
+"Oh, that is--well, that is, he don't talk so blamed much, after
+_all_," stammered Curly.  "Leastwise, not none now.  He's out of his
+head most of the time, now."
+
+"Then you've not told me everything, even yet," exclaimed she,
+piteously.
+
+"Not quite," said Curly, with a long breath; "but I'm a-comin' along."
+
+"He's dying!" she cried with conviction.  Curly, now taking an
+impersonal interest in the dramatic aspect of the affair, solemnly
+turned away his head.
+
+"Ma'am," said he, at length, "he thought a heap of you when he was
+alive.  We--we all did, but _he_ did special and private like.  Why,
+ma'am, if you'd come and stand by his grave, he'd wake up _now_ and
+welcome you!  You see, I am a married man my own self, and Tom Osby,
+he's been married copious; and Tom and me, we both allowed just like I
+said.  We knew the diseased would have done that cheerful--if he had
+any sort of chanct."
+
+The girl sprang up.  "He's not dead!" she cried, and her eyes blazed,
+her natural courage refusing to yield.  "I'll not believe it!"
+
+"I didn't ast you to, ma'am," said Curly.  "He ain't plumb dead; he's
+just threatened.  Oh, say, you've kind of got me rattled, you see.
+I've got a missage--I mean a missive--anyways a letter, from him.  I
+had it in my pants pocket all the time, and thought it was in my coat.
+Them was the last words he wrote."
+
+She tore the letter from his hand, and her eyes caught every word of it
+at the first glance.
+
+"This is not his letter!" she exclaimed.  "He never wrote it!  It's not
+in his hand!"
+
+"Ma'am," said Curly, virtuously grieved, "how could you!  I didn't
+_say_ he wrote it.  He had to have a amanyensis, of course,--him
+a-layin' there all shot up.  Nobody _said_ it was his handwriting It
+_ain't_ his handwritin'.  It's his _heart_writin'.  They sign it with
+their _hearts_, ma'am!  Now I tell you that for the truth, and you can
+gamble on _that_, anyways.
+
+"I think I had better go away.  I'm hungry, anyhow," he added, turning
+away.
+
+"Soon!" she said, stretching out her hand.  "Wait!" her other hand
+trembled as she devoured the pages of the message to the queen.  Her
+cheeks flushed.
+
+"Oh, _read_ it, ma'am!" said Curly, querulously.  "Read it and get
+sorry.  If you can read that there letter from Dan Anderson--signed
+with his heart--and not hit the trail for his bedside, then I've had a
+almighty long ride for nothing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
+
+_The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much
+Better_
+
+As Curly stumped away, his spurs clinking on the gallery floor, he
+encountered Mr. Ellsworth, who held out his hand in recognition.
+
+"I just heard some one was down from the town," he began.  "How are you,
+and what's the news?"
+
+"Mighty bad," said Curly, "mighty bad."  Then to himself: "O Lord!  I'm
+in for it again, and worse.  I'd a heap rather lie to a woman than a
+man--it seems more natural."
+
+"Bring any word down with you from up there?" asked Ellsworth.  Curly
+nodded.  "I brung a letter," said he.
+
+"That so?  What's it about?"
+
+"Well, sir, it bein' a letter to a lady--"
+
+"You mean my daughter?  Now, what--"
+
+"Yes, it's for her," admitted Curly; "but it's personal."
+
+"Well, I didn't know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson.
+You know he went with the posse.  Do you happen to know?"
+
+"You ask her.  It is, though."
+
+"Did he send you down here?"
+
+"I'm almighty hungry; I ain't had no breakfast, nor nothing."  Whereupon
+Curly bolted.
+
+Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance.  He found her, a
+crumpled and pathetic figure.  The news then had, indeed, been bad!
+
+"Now, now, child," he began, "what's up here?  You've a letter, the man
+tells me."
+
+She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap.  "Is it from him,
+young Anderson?" he asked.  She nodded.
+
+"It's written by a friend of his," she answered presently.  "He himself
+couldn't write.  He was too--ill."
+
+"Sent for you?" His voice was grave.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, "when it was too late."
+
+"We'll go," he said with decision.  "Get ready.  Maybe there is some
+mistake."
+
+"Don't," she begged, "there is no mistake.  I knew it would happen; I
+felt it."
+
+"By Jove, I hope it's not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of
+that boy myself."
+
+Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room.  She
+turned and blazed at him.  "Then why didn't you talk that way before?"
+
+She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.
+
+An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the
+Sky Top canon, bound for the northern trail.
+
+Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse,
+which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been
+left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and
+dragging on the ground.  Curly seated himself on the ground near by and
+addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.
+
+"Pinto," said he, "you remind me of a heap of folks I know.  You think
+them reins holds you, but they don't.  They ain't tied to nothing.
+You're just like them, hitched tight to a fool notion, that's all.  If I
+don't take your bridle off, you'll stand there and starve to death, like
+a good many fool folks I've heard of.  You've got to eat, Pinto."
+
+Curly arose and with a meditative finger traced the outlines of the
+continental maps displayed on Pinto's parti-colored flanks.  That
+cynical beast, with small warning, kicked at him viciously.
+
+"Oh, there you go!" remonstrated Curly; "can't you get tired enough to
+be decent?  Git on away--_vamos_!"
+
+He stripped off the bridle from Pinto's head, and again gave him a
+friendly slap, as he drove him off to graze, without any precaution to
+prevent his running away.  As for himself, Curly lay down upon the
+ground, his face on his arm, and was soon fast asleep in the glaring
+sun.  Pinto, misanthropic as he was, did not abuse the confidence
+reposed in him.  He walked off to a trickle of water which came down
+from a mountain spring, and grazed steadily upon the coarse mountain
+grass, but every now and then, under the strange bond which sometimes
+exists between horse and man, wandered around to look inquiringly at his
+sleeping master, whom he would gladly have brained upon occasion, but
+upon whom, none the less, he relied blindly.
+
+There were long shadows slanting toward the eastward when Curly arose
+and again saddled up his misfit mount.  He knew that the buckboard was
+well in advance of him in time, but it must take the longer wagon trail
+to the westward of Sky Top, while for himself there were shorter paths
+across the mountains.  He rode on until night fell, and the moon arose,
+flooding all the mountain range with wondrous silvery light, which grew
+the plainer as he left the whispering pines and came into the dwindled
+pinons of the lower levels.  Then up and down, over and over, he crossed
+the edges of other spurs, coming down from the great backbone of the
+range.  It was past midnight when he reached the flat-topped mesa near
+the Nogales divide, where there were no trees at all, and where ancient
+pottery, relics of a forgotten Heart's Desire of another race and time,
+crumbled beneath his horse's hoofs.  Here Curly loosened the saddle
+cinches, flung down the bridle-rein over Pinto's head again, and himself
+lay down to sleep, uncovered, but hardy as any mountain bear that roamed
+the hills.
+
+When he awoke the red sun hung poised on the shoulder of Blanco, far
+away, as though to receive the ghostly worship of those who once lived
+and loved, and prayed here, in the long ago.  So now he ate as he might,
+and drank at the Rio Bonito, a dozen miles farther on, and went his way
+comforted.
+
+Dropping down rapidly on the farther side of the Nogales, Pinto
+shambling along discontentedly but steadily, Curly at length came to the
+wagon trail which led along the edge of the plain on the western side of
+these ranges which he had threaded.  He leaned forward and examined the
+trail for wheel marks.
+
+"By Jinks!  Pinto," he muttered, "the old man and the girl is shore
+hittin' the trail hard for that there death-bed.  I'll bet that pore
+girl's tired, for they must have made a short camp last night.  _Vamos,
+caballo_!" and so he spurred on to the northward along the hot low
+flats.
+
+By noon he sighted a dust cloud on ahead, which told him that he had the
+other party well in hand if he liked, in spite of the speed they were
+making.
+
+"They travelled all night, that's what they did!  If that Mexican don't
+kill his team, it's a lucky thing."  He did not seek to close the gap
+between them, but on the other hand pulled up and rode more slowly.
+
+"Now, Pinto," he pondered, "whatever in the world am I goin' to do when
+we all pull into town?  Deathbed--and him like enough settin' up and
+playin' solitaire, or out pitchin' horse shoes.  Shucks!  If I could git
+around behind Dan Anderson's house, I believe I'd shoot him a few for
+luck, so's to make some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the
+small bills.  We've been playin' it low down on them two folks, and for
+one, I wish't I was out of it.  Pinto, this here particular trusted
+henchman has shore got cold feet right here."
+
+He trailed behind the buckboard hour after hour, dropping back into a
+gully for concealment now and then, and putting off the unpleasant hour
+of meeting as long as possible.  He kept in the rear until the vehicle
+turned in at the mouth of the canon which led up to the valley of
+Heart's Desire.  Then Curly hastened, and so finally clattered up
+alongside the buckboard.  Ellsworth was gray with fatigue, and Constance
+worn and pale; seeing which Curly cursed himself, Tom Osby, and all
+animate and inanimate things.  "It's a shame, that's what it is!" he
+muttered to himself reproachfully, and averted his face when Constance
+smiled at him bravely and disclaimed fatigue.
+
+The sun was beginning to sink beyond Baxter peak as they came in view of
+the little straggling town, clinging hard to the earth as it had through
+so many years of oblivion.  It was an enchanted valley upon which they
+gazed.  The majestic robes of the purple shadows, tremendous,
+wide-spreading, yet soft as the texture of thrice-piled velvet, were
+falling upon the shoulders of the hills.  An unspeakable, stately calm
+came with the hour of evening.  It was a world apart, beautiful, unreal,
+sweet and full of peace.  Far, far from here were all the tinselled
+trappings of an artificial world, distant the clamorings of a disturbing
+civilization with its tears and terrors.  Battle and striving, anxiety
+and doubt, apprehension and repinings--the envy and the jealousies and
+little fears of life--none of these lay in the lap of old and calm
+Carrizo.  Peace, rest, and pause,--these things were here.
+
+The ravens of the Lord had cared for those who had come hither, pausing,
+dreaming, for a pulse-beat in a frenzied century of rapacity and greed.
+Would the ravens care for a now pale-faced, trembling girl?
+
+"It's perty, ain't it, ma'am?" said Curly.  She looked at him and
+understood many things.
+
+But Curly left them traitorously, almost as soon as they entered the
+lower end of the street, intent upon plans of his own.  Those in the
+slower buckboard, whose tired team could ill afford any gait beyond a
+walk, saw him set spurs to his horse and dash ahead.  There came more
+and more plainly to their ears the sound of a vast confused shouting,
+mingled with rapid punctuation of revolver fire.  As they came into full
+view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the
+entire population of Heart's Desire, all apparently gone mad with some
+incomprehensible emotion.
+
+"What's the matter?  What's the matter?"  Mr. Ellsworth called out to
+one man after another as they passed; but none of them answered him.
+Coherent speech seemed to have deserted all.  "Here, you, Curly!" he
+shouted.  "What's all this about?"
+
+Curly, after a swift dash up the street, was now spurring back madly,
+his hat swinging in the air, himself crazed as the others.
+
+"He's in!" he yelled.  "We done it!"
+
+"Who's in?  What've you done?"
+
+"Dan Anderson--nomernated him for Congress--day 'fore yestidday, over to
+Cruces.  Whole convention went solid--Cruces and Dona Ana, Blanco--whole
+kit and b'ilin' of 'em.  Ben Stillson done it--boys just heard--heard
+the news!"  After which Curly relapsed into a series of yells which
+closed the incident.
+
+Constance listened, open-eyed and silent.  So then, he had succeeded!
+The joy in his success, the pride in his victory, brought a flush to her
+cheek; but in the same moment the light faded from her eye.  She caught
+her father by the shoulder almost fiercely.  "Look at them!" she
+exclaimed.  "They're proud of their victory, but they do not think of
+_him_.  See!  He is not here."
+
+Her father, sniffing politics, was forgetting all else; but sobered at
+this speech, he now motioned the driver to move on.  McKinney was there,
+Doc Tomlinson, Uncle Jim Brothers--the man from Leavenworth--many whom
+they knew, but not Dan Anderson.
+
+As they turned from the street to cross the _arroyo_, they saw
+following at a respectful distance both Curly and Tom Osby, the latter
+walking at Curly's saddle-skirt, for reasons not visible at a distance.
+Tom Osby was still continuing his protestations.  "You go on over,
+Curly," said he.  "You've done mighty well; now go on and finish up.  I
+ain't in on the messenger part."
+
+"Maybe not," replied Curly, "but both halfs of this here amanyensis is
+goin' over there together.  I told that girl that Dan Anderson was shot
+to a finish and just about to cash in.  Now here's all this hoorah about
+his bein' put up for Congress!  I dunno _what_ she'll find when she
+gets into that house, but whichever way it goes, she's due to think I'm
+a damned liar.  You come along, or I'll take _you_ over on a rope."
+
+The two conspirators crossed the _arroyo_ and paused at the path which
+led up to Dan Anderson's little cabin.  They saw Mr. Ellsworth and
+Constance leave the buckboard and stop uncertainly at the door.  They
+saw him knock and step half within, then withdraw and gently push his
+daughter ahead of him.  Then he stood outside, his hat in hand,
+violently mopping his brow.  As he caught sight of the two laggards he
+beckoned them peremptorily.
+
+"O Lord!" moaned Tom Osby; "now here's what that sheepherder done to us,
+with his missive and his signet ring."
+
+Constance Ellsworth had grown deadly pale as she approached the
+dwelling.  The open door let in upon a darkened interior.  There was no
+light, no ray of hope to comfort her.  There, as it seemed to her, in
+that tomblike abode, lay the end of all her happiness.  In her heart was
+only the prayer that she might find him able, still to recognize her.
+
+At her father's gesture she stepped to the door--and stopped.  The blood
+went first to her heart, and then flamed back into her face.  Her cheeks
+tingled.  Her hand fell lax from the door jamb, and she half staggered
+against it for support, limp and helpless.
+
+There before her, and busily engaged in writing--so busy that he had
+merely called out a careless invitation to enter when he heard the knock
+of what he presumed to be a chance caller--there, perhaps a trifle pale,
+but certainly well, and very much himself, sat Dan Anderson!
+
+"He's alive!" whispered Constance to her heart.
+
+"He's going to live!"
+
+The future delegate from the Territory had slunk away from the noisy
+street to pen some line of acknowledgment to his friend the sheriff of
+Blanco.  He had succeeded, so he reasoned with himself insistently; and
+yet a strange apathy, a sadness rather than exultation, enveloped him.
+The world lay dull and gray around him.  The price of his success had
+been the sight of a face worth more to him than all else in the world.
+He had won something, but had lost everything.  His hand stopped, his
+pencil fell upon the paper.  He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his
+door!
+
+Dumb, unbelieving, he gazed and gazed.  She turned from red to pale,
+before his eyes, and still he could not speak.  He knew that in an
+instant the vision would fade away.
+
+"Oh, why, hello!" said he at last, weakly.
+
+"How--that is, how do you do?" Constance said, flushing adorably again.
+
+"I didn't expect--I didn't know you were coming," stammered Dan Anderson.
+
+She chilled at this, but went on wonderingly.  "I got your letter--" she
+began.
+
+"Letter?  My letter--_what_ letter?"
+
+Constance looked at him fairly now, agitation sufficiently gone to
+enable her to notice details.  She saw that Dan Anderson's left arm was
+supported upon the table, but apparently not seriously injured.  And he
+had been writing--with his _right_ hand--at this very moment!  She
+almost sank to the ground.  There had been some cruel misunderstanding!
+Was she always to be repudiated, shamed?  She stood faltering, and would
+have turned away.
+
+But by this time Dan Anderson's own numbed faculties came back to him
+with a rush.  With a bound he was at her side, his right arm about her,
+holding her close, strong.
+
+"Constance!" he cried.  "Constance!  You!  You!"  He babbled many
+things, his cheek pressed against hers.  She could not speak.
+
+"You see--you see--" exclaimed Dan Anderson, at length, half freeing her
+to look the more directly into her eyes, and to assure himself once more
+that it all was true--"I didn't understand at first.  Of _course_, I
+sent the letter.  I wrote it.  I couldn't wait--I couldn't endure it any
+longer.  Darling, I couldn't _live_ without you--and so I wrote, I
+wrote!  And you've come!"
+
+"But your handwriting--" she murmured.
+
+"Of course!  of course!" said Dan Anderson.  He was lying beautifully
+now.  "But of course you know I'm left-handed, and my left arm got hurt
+a while ago, so I couldn't use that hand.  I don't suppose my
+handwriting did look quite natural to you."
+
+Her eyes were solemn but contented as she looked into his face, and saw
+that in spite of his words he was as much mystified as herself.  Slowly
+she presented to him the letter which he had never seen.  His face grew
+grave and tender as he read it line for line.
+
+"It is mine!" he said.  "I wrote it.  I sent it.  I've sent it a
+thousand times to you before now, across the mountains."
+
+"Is it signed with your heart, Dan?" she whispered.
+
+"With my heart--yes, yes!"
+
+"It is beautiful," said she, simply.  And so they dropped between them
+the letter to the queen.  Hand in hand they stepped to the door, the
+room too small now to contain their happiness.
+
+Two stumbling figures fleeing, pigeon-toed and sharp-heeled, on the
+further side of the _arroyo_ meant much to Dan Anderson.  A laugh
+choked in his throat as he caught her once more in his arms.
+
+"It looks like Willie had made good!" said Tom Osby to Curly, as he took
+a swift glance back over his shoulder.
+
+But Constance and her lover had forgotten all the world, as they stepped
+out now into the glory of the twilight of Heart's Desire.
+
+"You remember," said he--"up there--the other time?"  He nodded toward
+the head of the _arroyo_, where lay the garden of the Littlest Girl.
+
+"You broke my heart," she murmured.  "I loved you, Dan.  What could I
+do?"
+
+"Don't!" he begged as he tightened his arm about her.  "I loved _you_,
+Constance--what could _I_ do?  We've been through the fire together.
+It has all come right.  It's all so beautiful."
+
+They stood together at the little garden spot.  Two brave red roses now
+blossomed there, and he plucked them both, pinning them at her throat
+with hands that trembled.  They turned and looked out over the little
+valley, and to them it seemed a golden cup overrunning with joy.
+
+"Heart's Desire," he murmured, and once more his cheek rested against
+hers.
+
+"Yes," she whispered vaguely, "all, all--your Heart's Desire, I
+hope--and mine--_mine_."
+
+"It's the world," he murmured.  "It is the Beginning.  We are the very
+first.  Oh, Eve!  Eve!"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***
+
+
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