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

What treachery to Heart's Desire was here! Dan Anderson, a man who had come to stay, shaking hands on terms of old acquaintanceship, apparently, with Eastern Capital itself; and not content with that, advancing easily and courteously, hat in hand, to greet the daughter of Eastern Capital as though it were but yesterday that last they met. Moreover, and bitterest of all for a loyal man of Heart's Desire, was there not a glance, a word between them? Did Dan Anderson whisper a word and did she flush faint and rosy? or was it a touch of the light? Certain it was he reached up his hand to take hers, shaking it not too long nor too fervently.

"I do remember Miss Ellsworth very well, of course, Mr. Ellsworth," said he. "We are all very glad to see you."

"And we're very glad to see you!" echoed the girl. "Oh! the dust, the dust!" She spoke in a full, sweet voice, excellent even for outlanders to hear. If there were agitation in her tones, agitation in Dan Andersen's heart, none might know it. This meeting, five years and two thousand miles from a parting, seemed the most natural and ordinary thing in all the world. Mr. Ellsworth was of the belief that he himself had planned it so far as himself and Dan Anderson were concerned.

"My daughter was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up here to see about the climate—lots of folks go West nowadays, you know, even in the spring. I'll warrant she's sick of the trip by now. A good climate has to have dust to season it. One of the mules went lame—thought we would never get here. And now tell me, where'll she stop?" The personification of Eastern Capital looked about him dubiously at the only hotel of Heart's Desire, before which the coach had pulled up as a matter of course. "Any women folks in town, anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan Andersen's impassive face.

"I was upon the point of saying, Mr. Ellsworth," replied Dan Anderson—and vaguely one felt that his diction was once more that of Princeton—"that my friend here, a prominent member of the bar, will go with Miss Ellsworth to the house of a nice little woman, wife of—er—a cow gentleman of our acquaintance. That will be best for her. I'll try to take care of you myself, sir, if you like, while the Learned Counsel goes with Miss Ellsworth."

There were introductions and further small talk, and presently Learned Counsel found himself climbing up to the seat beside Eve; beside the Temptress who, he made no manner of doubt, had come to put an end to Paradise.

But ah! she was Eve enough for any Eden—a tall girl, rounded, firm formed, with a mass of good brown hair, and a frank gray eye, and a regular and smooth forehead. Her garb was a cool, gray serge, and, a miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman might tell. A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim. Her hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray. Her foot, trim and well shaped,—for even a desolate pariah might note so much,—was shod in no ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels, all unsuited to gravel and slide-rock, yet exceeding good, as it seemed at that time. The girl raised her eyes, smiling frankly. There was no cold cream traceable. The first thought of Learned Counsel was that her complexion would brown nicely under sunburn; his second thought was that he had on overalls,—a fact which had escaped him for more than four years.

If Eve, new come within Heart's Desire, felt any surprise, or if she even experienced any pique at the calm deportment of Dan Anderson, she masked it all and put all at ease with a few words spoken in that manner of voice which is an excellent thing in woman. In a sort of dream the coach trundled on up the street, to pause for half an instant in front of the commercial emporium of Whiteman the Jew. Whiteman came out with his hat above his head, and said, "Velgome."

The girl looked backward down the street as they turned to cross the arroyo beyond which stood the house of the Kansas family, where Curly lived. The off mule limped. "Poor little fellow," she said; "I wanted them to stop. They have no pity—"

"No," said Learned Counsel to her, "there is no such thing as pity in all the world." She fell silent at this, and looked back once more, unconsciously, down the street, as one who would gladly pity, or be pitied. But soon the coach was at Curly's house, and there came out to meet it, already forewarned of her guest, the Littlest Girl, wiping her hands on her apron, which means Welcome on the frontier.

The Littlest Girl, uncertain and overawed by her visitor, came forward and took a first look. Then she suddenly held out her arms; and Constance Ellsworth, from the East, lonely, perhaps grieved, walked straight into the outstretched arms and straight into the heart of the Littlest Girl from Kansas.

The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr. Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed. The window-panes were very small, where any still remained. The interior of the hotel consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might rest if very weary from one cause or another. The front door was always open. The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both hotel and bank.

There was in Heart's Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined circulating medium. That was all the money there was. No one could be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all wealth, as was very well known. To many this may seem a restricting and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for a whole town to have, as any man of Heart's Desire could have told you.

A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place devoted to the sale of firearms. There were many nails driven into the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all these nails held specimens of weapons. Excellent weapons they were, too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills, none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks. At times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the wall at Uncle Jim's hotel. The visible supply fluctuated somewhat. Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the circulating medium.

Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man. If a man paid, very well. If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him, for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well knew. And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as Uncle Jim also knew very well. There were no printed rules or regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel. There was no hotel register. There were no questions ever asked. Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his duty, was to feed men. For the rest, he often had to do his own cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk? Indeed, there was no desk. The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.

That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was something never dreamed in Heart's Desire. Yet one day a sensitive young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how, down into Heart's Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time he was very hungry. He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim. The latter said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed! "Get 'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better." The young man "got 'round" the beefsteak. Perhaps it was the feeling about the butter, which of itself was a thing unusual. At any rate, as he went out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door. This act meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer existed. The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good. The intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was right" was silently and fully evidenced. That a man would give up his gun was proof enough of that. So this became the custom of the place, the unwritten law. When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in, handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air. It is astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general supply of six-shooters.

On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of better days. The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the guns. Temporarily, male Heart's Desire did not exist.

Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man who—as the rapid word spread to all—had come to look into the gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso! Humiliated, Heart's Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan Anderson, do the talking.

"I didn't know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson," said Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel. "Lately organized?" He swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.

"That? Oh, that's not the arsenal," replied Dan Anderson; "that's the clearing-house. If a man's broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know. I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country