Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an important emotional situation. He rose and gazed down at her with solemn pity written upon his countenance.

"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on. I wish't you wouldn't. Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six weeks."

"He will live?"

"Oh, well," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say about that. He might live. You see, there ain't no doctor at Heart's Desire. The boys just took care of him the best they could. They brung him home from quite a ways off. They—they cut his arm off easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors. They—they sewed him up fine. He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to the Pinos Altos ranch. The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man as ever throwed a leg over a saddle. When he got back from takin' the Kid up to Vegas, the sherf—that's Ben Stillson—he starts down to Cruces. Convention there this week, ma'am. Ben, he allowed he'd get Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress—that is, if he hadn't 'a' got killed."

"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly. "I've known that a long time."

"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly. "There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on leather than him. He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we all wouldn't let go of. Some of 'em goes back home. He didn't. What there was here he could have. For one while we thought he was throwin' us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't. We done elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something better'n that—if they ain't started it already over to Cruces—that is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely—him bein' dead. Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this letter. But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any feller could."

Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights. "Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do. We all know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along. You got no right to cry. You got no right to let on what you don't really feel. I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am. Now I'm—I'm plumb sincere and truthful. No frills goes." There was the solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.

"I'm this much of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson. That's everdent. I ain't in on that side of the play. I'm just here to say that, so far as he's concerned hisself, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any minute of his life for you."

She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.

"He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that's all," said Curly, firmly. "He don't talk of nothing else but you, ma'am."

"How dare he talk of me!" she flashed.

"Oh, that is—well, that is, he don't talk so blamed much, after all," stammered Curly. "Leastwise, not none now. He's out of his head most of the time, now."

"Then you've not told me everything, even yet," exclaimed she, piteously.

"Not quite," said Curly, with a long breath; "but I'm a-comin' along."

"He's dying!" she cried with conviction. Curly, now taking an impersonal interest in the dramatic aspect of the affair, solemnly turned away his head.

"Ma'am," said he, at length, "he thought a heap of you when he was alive. We—we all did, but he did special and private like. Why, ma'am, if you'd come and stand by his grave, he'd wake up now and welcome you! You see, I am a married man my own self, and Tom Osby, he's been married copious; and Tom and me, we both allowed just like I said. We knew the diseased would have done that cheerful—if he had any sort of chanct."

The girl sprang up. "He's not dead!" she cried, and her eyes blazed, her natural courage refusing to yield. "I'll not believe it!"

"I didn't ast you to, ma'am," said Curly. "He ain't plumb dead; he's just threatened. Oh, say, you've kind of got me rattled, you see. I've got a missage—I mean a missive—anyways a letter, from him. I had it in my pants pocket all the time, and thought it was in my coat. Them was the last words he wrote."

She tore the letter from his hand, and her eyes caught every word of it at the first glance.

"This is not his letter!" she exclaimed. "He never wrote it! It's not in his hand!"

"Ma'am," said Curly, virtuously grieved, "how could you! I didn't say he wrote it. He had to have a amanyensis, of course,—him a-layin' there all shot up. Nobody said it was his handwriting It ain't his handwritin'. It's his heartwritin'. They sign it with their hearts, ma'am! Now I tell you that for the truth, and you can gamble on that, anyways.

"I think I had better go away. I'm hungry, anyhow," he added, turning away.

"Soon!" she said, stretching out her hand. "Wait!" her other hand trembled as she devoured the pages of the message to the queen. Her cheeks flushed.

"Oh, read it, ma'am!" said Curly, querulously. "Read it and get sorry. If you can read that there letter from Dan Anderson—signed with his heart—and not hit the trail for his bedside, then I've had a almighty long ride for nothing."



CHAPTER XXVI

THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE

The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better

As Curly stumped away, his spurs clinking on the gallery floor, he encountered Mr. Ellsworth, who held out his hand in recognition.

"I just heard some one was down from the town," he began. "How are you, and what's the news?"

"Mighty bad," said Curly, "mighty bad." Then to himself: "O Lord! I'm in for it again, and worse. I'd a heap rather lie to a woman than a man—it seems more natural."

"Bring any word down with you from up there?" asked Ellsworth. Curly nodded. "I brung a letter," said he.

"That so? What's it about?"

"Well, sir, it bein' a letter to a lady—"

"You mean my daughter? Now, what—"

"Yes, it's for her," admitted Curly; "but it's personal."

"Well, I didn't know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson. You know he went with the posse. Do you happen to know?"

"You ask her. It is, though."

"Did he send you down here?"

"I'm almighty hungry; I ain't had no breakfast, nor nothing." Whereupon Curly bolted.

Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance. He found her, a crumpled and pathetic figure. The news then had, indeed, been bad!

"Now, now, child," he began, "what's up here? You've a letter, the man tells me."

She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap. "Is it from him, young Anderson?" he asked. She nodded.

"It's written by a friend of his," she answered presently. "He himself couldn't write. He was too—ill."

"Sent for you?" His voice was grave.

"Yes," she whispered, "when it was too late."

"We'll go," he said with decision. "Get ready. Maybe there is some mistake."

"Don't," she begged, "there is no mistake. I knew it would happen; I felt it."

"By Jove, I hope it's not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of that boy myself."

Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room. She turned and blazed at him. "Then why didn't you talk that way before?"

She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.

An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the Sky Top canon, bound for the northern trail.

Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse, which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and dragging on the ground. Curly seated himself on the ground near by and addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.

"Pinto," said he, "you remind me of a heap of folks I know. You think them reins holds you, but they don't. They ain't tied to nothing. You're just like them, hitched tight to a fool notion, that's all. If I don't take your bridle off, you'll stand there and starve to death, like a good many fool folks I've heard of. You've got to eat, Pinto."

Curly arose and with a meditative finger traced the outlines of the continental maps displayed on Pinto's parti-colored flanks. That cynical beast, with small warning, kicked at him viciously.

"Oh, there you go!" remonstrated Curly; "can't you get tired enough to be decent? Git on away—vamos!"

He stripped off the bridle from Pinto's head, and again gave him a friendly slap, as he drove him off to graze, without any precaution to prevent his running away. As for himself, Curly lay down upon the ground, his face on his arm, and was soon fast asleep in the glaring sun. Pinto, misanthropic as he was, did not abuse the confidence reposed in him. He walked off to a trickle of water which came down from a mountain spring, and grazed steadily upon the coarse mountain grass, but every now and then, under the strange bond which sometimes exists between horse and man, wandered around to look inquiringly at his sleeping master, whom he would gladly have brained upon occasion, but upon whom, none the less, he relied blindly.

There were long shadows slanting toward the eastward when Curly arose and again saddled up his misfit mount. He knew that the buckboard was well in advance of him in time, but it must take the longer wagon trail to the westward of Sky Top, while for himself there were shorter paths across the mountains. He rode on until night fell, and the moon arose, flooding all the mountain range with wondrous silvery light, which grew the plainer as he left the whispering pines and came into the dwindled pinons of the lower levels. Then up and down, over and over, he crossed the edges of other spurs, coming down from the great backbone of the range. It was past midnight when he reached the flat-topped mesa near the Nogales divide, where there were no trees at all, and where ancient pottery, relics of a forgotten Heart's Desire of another race and time, crumbled beneath his horse's hoofs. Here Curly loosened the saddle cinches, flung down the bridle-rein over Pinto's head again, and himself lay down to sleep, uncovered, but hardy as any mountain bear that roamed the hills.

When he awoke the red sun hung poised on the shoulder of Blanco, far away, as though to receive the ghostly worship of those who once lived and loved, and prayed here, in the long ago. So now he ate as he might, and drank at the Rio Bonito, a dozen miles farther on, and went his way comforted.

Dropping down rapidly on the farther side of the Nogales, Pinto shambling along discontentedly but steadily, Curly at length came to the wagon trail which led along the edge of the plain on the western side of these ranges which he had threaded. He leaned forward and examined the trail for wheel marks.

"By Jinks! Pinto," he muttered, "the old man and the girl is shore hittin' the trail hard for that there death-bed. I'll bet that pore girl's tired, for they must have made a short camp last night. Vamos, caballo!" and so he spurred on to the northward along the hot low flats.

By noon he sighted a dust cloud on ahead, which told him that he had the other party well in hand if he liked, in spite of the speed they were making.

"They travelled all night, that's what they did! If that Mexican don't kill his team, it's a lucky thing." He did not seek to close the gap between them, but on the other hand pulled up and rode more slowly.

"Now, Pinto," he pondered, "whatever in the world am I goin' to do when we all pull into town? Deathbed—and him like enough settin' up and playin' solitaire, or out pitchin' horse shoes. Shucks! If I could git around behind Dan Anderson's house, I believe I'd shoot him a few for luck, so's to make some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the small bills. We've been playin' it low down on them two folks, and for one, I wish't I was out of it. Pinto, this here particular trusted henchman has shore got cold feet right here."

He trailed behind the buckboard hour after hour, dropping back into a gully for concealment now and then, and putting off the unpleasant hour of meeting as long as possible. He kept in the rear until the vehicle turned in at the mouth of the canon which led up to the valley of Heart's Desire. Then Curly hastened, and so finally clattered up alongside the buckboard. Ellsworth was gray with fatigue, and Constance worn and pale; seeing which Curly cursed himself, Tom Osby, and all animate and inanimate things. "It's a shame, that's what it is!" he muttered to himself reproachfully, and averted his face when Constance smiled at him bravely and disclaimed fatigue.

The sun was beginning to sink beyond Baxter peak as they came in view of the little straggling town, clinging hard to the earth as it had through so many years of oblivion. It was an enchanted valley upon which they gazed. The majestic robes of the purple shadows, tremendous, wide-spreading, yet soft as the texture of thrice-piled velvet, were falling upon the shoulders of the hills. An unspeakable, stately calm came with the hour of evening. It was a world apart, beautiful, unreal, sweet and full of peace. Far, far from here were all the tinselled trappings of an artificial world, distant the clamorings of a disturbing civilization with its tears and terrors. Battle and striving, anxiety and doubt, apprehension and repinings—the envy and the jealousies and little fears of life—none of these lay in the lap of old and calm Carrizo. Peace, rest, and pause,—these things were here.

The ravens of the Lord had cared for those who had come hither, pausing, dreaming, for a pulse-beat in a frenzied century of rapacity and greed. Would the ravens care for a now pale-faced, trembling girl?

"It's perty, ain't it, ma'am?" said Curly. She looked at him and understood many things.

But Curly left them traitorously, almost as soon as they entered the lower end of the street, intent upon plans of his own. Those in the slower buckboard, whose tired team could ill afford any gait beyond a walk, saw him set spurs to his horse and dash ahead. There came more and more plainly to their ears the sound of a vast confused shouting, mingled with rapid punctuation of revolver fire. As they came into full view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the entire population of Heart's Desire, all apparently gone mad with some incomprehensible emotion.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" Mr. Ellsworth called out to one man after another as they passed; but none of them answered him. Coherent speech seemed to have deserted all. "Here, you, Curly!" he shouted. "What's all this about?"

Curly, after a swift dash up the street, was now spurring back madly, his hat swinging in the air, himself crazed as the others.

"He's in!" he yelled. "We done it!"

"Who's in? What've you done?"

"Dan Anderson—nomernated him for Congress—day 'fore yestidday, over to Cruces. Whole convention went solid—Cruces and Dona Ana, Blanco—whole kit and b'ilin' of 'em. Ben Stillson done it—boys just heard—heard the news!" After which Curly relapsed into a series of yells which closed the incident.

Constance listened, open-eyed and silent. So then, he had succeeded! The joy in his success, the pride in his victory, brought a flush to her cheek; but in the same moment the light faded from her eye. She caught her father by the shoulder almost fiercely. "Look at them!" she exclaimed. "They're proud of their victory, but they do not think of him. See! He is not here."

Her father, sniffing politics, was forgetting all else; but sobered at this speech, he now motioned the driver to move on. McKinney was there, Doc Tomlinson, Uncle Jim Brothers—the man from Leavenworth—many whom they knew, but not Dan Anderson.

As they turned from the street to cross the arroyo, they saw following at a respectful distance both Curly and Tom Osby, the latter walking at Curly's saddle-skirt, for reasons not visible at a distance. Tom Osby was still continuing his protestations. "You go on over, Curly," said he. "You've done mighty well; now go on and finish up. I ain't in on the messenger part."

"Maybe not," replied Curly, "but both halfs of this here amanyensis is goin' over there together. I told that girl that Dan Anderson was shot to a finish and just about to cash in. Now here's all this hoorah about his bein' put up for Congress! I dunno what she'll find when she gets into that house, but whichever way it goes, she's due to think I'm a damned liar. You come along, or I'll take you over on a rope."

The two conspirators crossed the arroyo and paused at the path which led up to Dan Anderson's little cabin. They saw Mr. Ellsworth and Constance leave the buckboard and stop uncertainly at the door. They saw him knock and step half within, then withdraw and gently push his daughter ahead of him. Then he stood outside, his hat in hand, violently mopping his brow. As he caught sight of the two laggards he beckoned them peremptorily.

"O Lord!" moaned Tom Osby; "now here's what that sheepherder done to us, with his missive and his signet ring."

Constance Ellsworth had grown deadly pale as she approached the dwelling. The open door let in upon a darkened interior. There was no light, no ray of hope to comfort her. There, as it seemed to her, in that tomblike abode, lay the end of all her happiness. In her heart was only the prayer that she might find him able, still to recognize her.

At her father's gesture she stepped to the door—and stopped. The blood went first to her heart, and then flamed back into her face. Her cheeks tingled. Her hand fell lax from the door jamb, and she half staggered against it for support, limp and helpless.

There before her, and busily engaged in writing—so busy that he had merely called out a careless invitation to enter when he heard the knock of what he presumed to be a chance caller—there, perhaps a trifle pale, but certainly well, and very much himself, sat Dan Anderson!

"He's alive!" whispered Constance to her heart.

"He's going to live!"

The future delegate from the Territory had slunk away from the noisy street to pen some line of acknowledgment to his friend the sheriff of Blanco. He had succeeded, so he reasoned with himself insistently; and yet a strange apathy, a sadness rather than exultation, enveloped him. The world lay dull and gray around him. The price of his success had been the sight of a face worth more to him than all else in the world. He had won something, but had lost everything. His hand stopped, his pencil fell upon the paper. He looked up—to see her standing at his door!

Dumb, unbelieving, he gazed and gazed. She turned from red to pale, before his eyes, and still he could not speak. He knew that in an instant the vision would fade away.

"Oh, why, hello!" said he at last, weakly.

"How—that is, how do you do?" Constance said, flushing adorably again.

"I didn't expect—I didn't know you were coming," stammered Dan Anderson.

She chilled at this, but went on wonderingly. "I got your letter—" she began.

"Letter? My letter—what letter?"

Constance looked at him fairly now, agitation sufficiently gone to enable her to notice details. She saw that Dan Anderson's left arm was supported upon the table, but apparently not seriously injured. And he had been writing—with his right hand—at this very moment! She almost sank to the ground. There had been some cruel misunderstanding! Was she always to be repudiated, shamed? She stood faltering, and would have turned away.

But by this time Dan Anderson's own numbed faculties came back to him with a rush. With a bound he was at her side, his right arm about her, holding her close, strong.

"Constance!" he cried. "Constance! You! You!" He babbled many things, his cheek pressed against hers. She could not speak.

"You see—you see—" exclaimed Dan Anderson, at length, half freeing her to look the more directly into her eyes, and to assure himself once more that it all was true—"I didn't understand at first. Of course, I sent the letter. I wrote it. I couldn't wait—I couldn't endure it any longer. Darling, I couldn't live without you—and so I wrote, I wrote! And you've come!"

"But your handwriting—" she murmured.

"Of course! of course!" said Dan Anderson. He was lying beautifully now. "But of course you know I'm left-handed, and my left arm got hurt a while ago, so I couldn't use that hand. I don't suppose my handwriting did look quite natural to you."

Her eyes were solemn but contented as she looked into his face, and saw that in spite of his words he was as much mystified as herself. Slowly she presented to him the letter which he had never seen. His face grew grave and tender as he read it line for line.

"It is mine!" he said. "I wrote it. I sent it. I've sent it a thousand times to you before now, across the mountains."

"Is it signed with your heart, Dan?" she whispered.

"With my heart—yes, yes!"

"It is beautiful," said she, simply. And so they dropped between them the letter to the queen. Hand in hand they stepped to the door, the room too small now to contain their happiness.

Two stumbling figures fleeing, pigeon-toed and sharp-heeled, on the further side of the arroyo meant much to Dan Anderson. A laugh choked in his throat as he caught her once more in his arms.

"It looks like Willie had made good!" said Tom Osby to Curly, as he took a swift glance back over his shoulder.

But Constance and her lover had forgotten all the world, as they stepped out now into the glory of the twilight of Heart's Desire.

"You remember," said he—"up there—the other time?" He nodded toward the head of the arroyo, where lay the garden of the Littlest Girl.

"You broke my heart," she murmured. "I loved you, Dan. What could I do?"

"Don't!" he begged as he tightened his arm about her. "I loved you, Constance—what could I do? We've been through the fire together. It has all come right. It's all so beautiful."

They stood together at the little garden spot. Two brave red roses now blossomed there, and he plucked them both, pinning them at her throat with hands that trembled. They turned and looked out over the little valley, and to them it seemed a golden cup overrunning with joy.

"Heart's Desire," he murmured, and once more his cheek rested against hers.

"Yes," she whispered vaguely, "all, all—your Heart's Desire, I hope—and mine—mine."

"It's the world," he murmured. "It is the Beginning. We are the very first. Oh, Eve! Eve!"

THE END