Heart's Desire by Emerson Hough (comprehension books .TXT) 📕

I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire over smaller things than this. "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked Tom Osby.

"I hadn't noticed it," said he.

"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson. "You come here, and tell me what time the stage gets in from Socorro."

"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."

"He's loco, Tom," said I.

"Well, I reckon so. When a man begins to worry about what time the Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."

"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital—Eastern Capital, Eve and the Serpent, all on one stage. The only comfort is that no Eastern Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day. She'll go back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again." But the dumb supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.

There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire. It was ninety miles to the nearest wire. The stage came in but occasionally from the distant railroad. Yet—and this was one of the strange things of that strange country, which we accepted without curiosity and without argument—there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by which news got about over great distances. Perhaps it was a rider in by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the cañon, the white smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming. This news brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him in query.

"Man," said he, as he gripped my arm, "you see, up there on Carrizo, the big cañon where we hunt bear. You know, up there at the end, there's a big pine tree. Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late Daniel Anderson, you go up the cañon and look up the tree. I'll be there. I'm scared."

By this I knew that he would, in all likelihood, meet the stage and help Eve to alight at Heart's Desire. Moreover, I reproached him as having been deliberately a party to this invasion. "You've been writing back home to the girl," I said. "That is not playing the game. That's violation of the creed. You're renegade. Then go back home. You don't belong here!"

"I'm not! I won't! I didn't!" he retorted. "I didn't write—at least only a few times. I tried not to—but I couldn't help it. Man, I tell you I couldn't help it."

The sun drew on across the enchanted valley and began to sink toward the rim of the distant Baxter Peak. The tremendous velvet robes of the purple evening shadows dropped slowly down upon the majestic shoulders of Carrizo, guardian of the valley. A delicious kindness came into the air, sweet, although no flower was in all that land, and soft, though this was far from any sea, unless it were the waters immeasurably deep beneath this sun-dried soil. There was no cloud even at the falling of the sun, but the gun had no harshness in his glow. There was a blue and purple mystery over all the world, and calm and sweetness and strength came down as it were a mantle. Ah, never in all the world was a place like this Eden, this man's Eden of Heart's Desire!

A gentle wind sighed up the valley from the narrow cañon mouth, as it did every day. There was no variableness. Surprises did not come thither. The world ran always in one pleasant and unchanging groove. But the breeze this evening brought no smile of content to Dan Anderson's face as he sat waiting for the coming of the new and fateful visitor to our ancient Eden.

"They'll be about at the Carrizoso Springs now," said Dan Anderson, "twelve miles away down the trail. Can't you smell the cold cream?"

This was beyond ken, but he became more explicit. "Cold cream to the eyes and ears," said he. "To the untutored face, the sun of this heathen district is something sinful; and like enough she never heard of collodion for cracked lips in an alkali country. And a veil—oh, sacred spirits! that veil and its contents is now hatin' Carrizoso flats and all the inarticulate earth till fare-ye-well! Wrapped up to the topmast in a white veil,—or one of was-white,—gray travelling gown, common-sense boots. Gloves—ah, yes. And hate—hate—why, can't you feel the simmerin', boilin' hatred of that States girl just raisin' the temperature of this land of Canaan? Hate us? Why, she'll be poisonous. Ninety miles in the sun, at ninety in the shade. Water once at the Mal Pais, and it alkali."

I reminded Dan Anderson that in view of his promise to absent himself at the time of the arrival of the Socorro stage, he was not conducting himself with the proper regard either to decorum or historical accuracy.

"I want to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go. I ought to go climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the lady and her dad. I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this faintness out of my legs. But somehow I can't get started. I'd look well, tryin' to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn't I? Man, haven't you any sympathy?"

So we sat on a log out in front of Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, and waited for the worst to happen.

"Don't you go away," said Dan Anderson. "I want you for my second. You can go for the doctor. I ain't feelin' very well."

Now, there was no doctor in Heart's Desire, nor had there ever been, as Dan Anderson knew. Neither did he look in need of any help whatsoever. He made no foolish masculine attempt at personal adornment, but his long figure, with good bony shoulders and a visible waist line, looked well enough in the man's garb of blue shirt and belted trousers. A rope of hair straggled from under his wide hat; for in Heart's Desire wide hats were worn of right and not in affectation. He was a manly man enough, in a place where weak men were rare. The one most vitally concerned in all the population of Heart's Desire, he was now the one least visibly affected. All the rest of the settlement, suddenly smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties. Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that which was to come to him. True, there was the slight moisture on his brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.

For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events. "What will you do?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you've been ass enough to allow this girl to come on down in here? You'll have some one killed in this town before long. Besides, where can a white girl live in this place? There's not a bedspread or a linen sheet in the whole town."

"You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully. "Do you suppose a Wellesley girl, accustomed steady to high thinkin', can't get along with a little plain livin' once in a while? As for women folks, why can't Curly's girl take care of her? Does a chance lady caller in this city need a thousand women to entertain her? And blankets—why, you know well enough, that blankets are better after sundown here than much fine linen. Heart's Desire'll be here calm and confident after this brief pageantry has passed from our midst."

As he spoke, he half turned and started, with a broken exclamation. I followed his gaze. The street was vacant, barren of the accustomed throng that usually awaited near the post-office the arrival of the infrequent stagecoach. But there, at the mouth of the cañon, almost under the edge of the deepening shadow from the purple-topped mountain, appeared the dusty top of the creeping vehicle that bore with it the fate of Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson was pale now, and he put his hand to his shirt collar, as though it were too tight; but he sat gazing down the valley.

"That old fool, Bill Godfrey, is showin' them our sign," said he, in exasperation. "That's a nice thing, ain't it, for Eastern Capital, or a woman, to see the first thing?"

It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart's Desire, who subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had prepared the grim blazonry on the cañon wall to which Dan Anderson had made reference. "Prepare to meet thy God!" was the sign that Charlie Lee had painted there. It was the last thing he did on his way out of town. That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading citizen. Charlie's emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon. The inhabitants had always left the sign standing there. But at this time it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.

"They ain't goin' to understand that," said he. "They can't think the way we do. Oh, why didn't that old fool Godfrey call their attention the other way? Oh, that'll set fine, won't it, with a man comin' to buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face and a consumin' vision of tarantulas in her soul! This'll be another case of New Jersey Gold Mill. Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he'll run out at the same door wherein he went; that's what he'll do. And, oh, doctors and saints, look at that, now!" Bill Godfrey was leaning out of the coach-box and pointing with his whip. "He's showin' them the town now," said Dan Anderson. "Why—I hadn't thought before but what this place was all right."

I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation. It had been our world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it had been satisfactory until now. Never before that moment had the scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy. We were suddenly ashamed.

Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.

He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily forward. Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously have offered assistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master of his faculties.

The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear seat, when there appeared the passenger nearest to our side of the coach,—a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache. He was well shod and well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs. He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored. A flush of recognition crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.

"Well, Andersen," Mr. Ellsworth said, extending a hand, "how are