"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 anybody?" 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."



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.