"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.



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.