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

"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 cañon, 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.

"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