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

"You know it is, Kid. Drop it, and come on out. We've got you sure."

The day's work was over. Dan Anderson remembered afterward how matter of fact and methodical it all had seemed. A few moments later a short, dirty young man appeared at the door, crawling over the prostrate horse. He held up his hands, grinning. He was followed by two others, both chewing tobacco calmly. The sheriff ordered down his men to meet them. McKinney unbuckled the belts. The captives seated themselves a few feet apart on the ground.

"This all the men you've got?" asked the Kid.

The sheriff nodded. "You've killed Jim Harbin," he added, jerking a thumb toward the arroyo.

"Why didn't he stay home, then?" said the Kid, peevishly. No one seemed disposed again to mention an unpleasant subject.

"Where you goin' to take us?" the Kid inquired.

"Vegas. It's a United States warrant, and you go dead or alive, either way you want."

"Oh, that's all right, Ben. We'll take the chance of stayin' alive a while."

Stillson now appeared to experience his first concern in regard to his casualties. "Doc," said he, "you take the ranch wagon here and carry Jim back to the settlements. You go along, Anderson. Doc, you drive."

"You busted up our breakfast," said the Kid, in an aggrieved tone. "Don't we eat?" He spoke complainingly. The day's work was thus concluded.

It was a long ride back for Dan Anderson, lying part of the time himself prone at the bottom of the wagon, too faint to sit with comfort on the narrow, jolting seat. The long, muffled body of the dead man, wrapped tightly in its blankets, at times rolled against him as the wagon tilted, and he pushed it back gently. The day's work had been savage, stern, and simple. The lesson of the landscape, the lesson of life, came to him as he had never felt it before. He saw now how little a thing is life, how easy to lay down—gayly, bitterly, lightly, or quietly perhaps; but not cheaply. He remembered the last words of the boy who now lay there, shrouded and silent,—"I've got to take my medicine."

"It's not a question of being happy," thought Dan Anderson, "but of doing your work, and taking your medicine."

In the absence of McKinney with the sheriff's posse, Curly became, by virtue of seniority, acting foreman on the Carrizoso ranch. Grieving over the edict which held him home from sheriffing, and disconsolate now that Ellsworth and Constance had departed, he sought an outlet for his feelings. "I'll show folks what a real cow foreman is like," he asserted, and forthwith began plans which, in his opinion, had been too long deferred by the more conservative McKinney.

The wagons of the Carrizoso cow outfit came into town one morning, with a requisition for all the loose .44-caliber ammunition that could be bought, begged, or commandeered under the plea of urgent necessity. Whiteman burrowed through his stock from top to bottom, but still the new foreman growled at the insufficiency. "There's more'n five thousand sheep in that bunch that has just crossed the Nogales," said he, "and we've got to kill 'em, every one. Do you suppose my men is goin' to take to clubs, like Digger Injuns?"

Whiteman could only shrug. There had always been ammunition in Heart's Desire sufficient for all benevolent and social purposes. No one had suspected sheep. The Carrizoso plateau had been sacred ground, and it was unsupposable that it could ever be desecrated by the trampling hoofs and scissor noses of these woolly abominations. Grumbling, Curly rode away with his wagons, surrounded by a group of be-Winchestered cow punchers, not unlike that which had accompanied Stillson out at the other end of the town.

It was two days before they returned. When they did so, two of the men were not in their saddles, but at the bottom of a wagon. Beside them, bucked up and bound, lay a strange and long-haired figure, at which the new foreman occasionally looked back with a gaze of mingled curiosity and respect.

It appeared that Carrizoso cow honor had been maintained. The five thousand sheep had been rounded up in a box cañon, and scrupulously killed to the last item, while two herders went flying westward in fright such as might have warranted euchre upon their stiffly extended coat-tails.

Willie, the half-wit, one of the sheep outfit, had readily taken the oath of allegiance; beyond that, however, there had been a hitch in the proceedings. The man causing this hitch—the long-haired figure at the bottom of the wagon—had been presumptuous enough to make a stand against the lords of the earth! The men of Heart's Desire, confident that the new foreman understood his business, asked few questions as they gathered about the wagon and gazed at the silent captive.

He was a singular-looking man, tall, lean, sinewy, with a high, thin nose and a square chin which seemed not in keeping with his calling. His left nostril was indented by a scar which ran across his cheek, and one ear was notched well-nigh as deeply as that of a calf at a spring branding.

"This feller," said Uncle Jim Brothers, "looks like he come from Arkansaw."

"Maybe so," answered Curly. "Anyhow, he shot up two of the boys and killed a horse for us before we got at him. We was out of ammunition—I told you we didn't have enough. After we killed the woollies, and run off them two herders, we rid up the cañon. There was him, a-settin' in the door of his ole Kentucky home, with a Winchester that'd go off—which it stands to reason couldn't have happened if he was a real sheepherder. I can't figure that out." Curly scratched his head dubiously, and looked again at his prisoner.

"He ain't saying a vort alretty," said Whiteman.

"He's happy enough without. He was livin' like a lord there, in his shack—four hundred paper-back novels, a keg of whiskey and a tin cup, and some kind of 'hop' that we brung along, and which was the only thing he hollered over."

The prisoner sat up in the wagon. "If you'd be so good as to give me the packet you've in your pocket," said he to Curly, "I'd be awfully obliged to you, old fellow, I would indeed." Curly drew a paper package from his pocket and passed it to the speaker, who opened it with eager fingers.

"Thanks, my good man," he remarked, "thank you awfully." They led him into the deserted Lone Star for further deliberations.

"That's the snuff he's been takin'," Curly explained aside. "I know. It's 'hop.' Sheep, 'hop,' and whiskey! With that for a life and them for a steady diet, I don't believe our friend here'd last more'n about thirty years more." He turned to the captive, who by this time was leaning back against the wall in his chair, the central figure of present affairs, but apparently quite unconcerned.

"How you feelin' now?" Curly asked.

"Much better," replied the prisoner. "Thank you awfully. I was beginning to feel deucedly seedy, you know."

"I'd like to know," inquired Curly, bluntly, "what in merry-hell you're doing down in here, anyhow. Where'd you come from? Where've you been?"

A half-humorous smile came to the face of the captive. "You seem not to know a Sandhurst man, gentlemen, when you see one," said he.

"I said he was from Arkansaw," remarked Uncle Jim.

"No foolin' now, young feller," said Curly, frowning. "You may have more trouble than you're lookin' for. What's your name?"

"I really forget my first name," replied the prisoner, blandly, but not discourteously. "Of late I have been customarily addressed as the King of Gee-Whiz."

"Well, King," suggested the acting foreman, grimly, "you'd better turn loose and tell us your story, about as soon as you know how."

"Very gladly," responded the other, "very gladly. You seem a good sort, and you fought fair. I'll tell you the absolute truth.

"I came from England originally, and not from Arkansaw, as my friend supposes, although I don't know where Arkansaw is, I'm sure. I was long in the British Army, or Navy, I cawn't remember which. I'm quite sure it was one or the other, possibly both."

"I wouldn't kid too much, friend," said Curly, warningly.

"I beg pardon?"

"Drop the foolishness!"

"You misunderstand me, I'm sure," said the King of Gee-Whiz. "At that time it was quite customary, indeed very fashionable, for young gentlemen to belong both to the Army and the Navy. Now, I remember with perfect distinctness that I shipped before the mast on her Majesty's submarine, the Equator."

Uncle Jim drew a long breath. "A submarine ain't got no mast," said he. "It crawls, on the bottom of the ocean."

"Don't mind him, friend," interrupted Curly. "He come from the short-grass country of Kansas, and he don't know a submarine from a muley cow. Go on, King."

"As I was saying," continued the latter, somewhat annoyed, "I shipped before the mast on her Majesty's submarine, the Equator, Captain Harry Oglethorpe commanding,—a great friend of mine, and a very brave and clever fellow. I knew him well before I got so deucedly down on my luck. But what was I saying?"

"About submarines—"

"Ah, yes, I remember; we left Portsmouth Harbor the 12th of August, 1357. It seemed a gruelling hard thing to us to sail just on the opening of the shooting season, but the wuzzies were troubling a bit.

"One day, as Sir Harry and I were sitting on deck before the mast, having a cigarette—"

"At the bottom of the sea—on deck!" gasped Uncle Jim Brothers.

"Pray don't interrupt me, or I'll never get on," chided the King of Gee-Whiz, politely. "We were smoking, as I said, awfter dinner. I was remarking to Sir Harry that we were having a very good voyage over, when, as he turned to reply, an orderly rode up to us and saluted."

"Rode—rode—rode up!" murmured Curly. "How could he?"

"Let him alone," said Uncle Jim. "Didn't he say he couldn't remember whether he was in the Army or the Navy? The horse goes."

"The orderly saluted," resumed the King of Gee-Whiz, "and said he, 'I beg pardon, but the officer of the day presents his compliments, and begs to report that the ship's a-fire, and upon the point of exploding.'

"Sir Harry looked at his watch. 'Thanks,' said he. 'Present my compliments to the officer of the day, and ask how long it will be before the explosion occurs.'

"'I beg pardon,' replied the orderly, 'but the officer of the day presents his compliments, and begs to say that the explosion will occur in about three minutes.'

"'Very well,' said Sir Harry, 'you may go.'—'That will give us time to finish our cigarettes,' said he to me. The orderly saluted and rode away. We never saw him again.

"The officer of the day was a very accurate man, very accurate indeed. In three minutes to the dot the explosion did occur. We never knew what caused it. No doubt the Admiralty Board determined that, but we were not present at the session.

"The explosion was most violent, and no doubt the submarine was quite destroyed by it. Sir Harry and I were blown to an extraordinary distance from the spot. I remember saying to him, as we reached the surface and started upward, that it seemed quite too bad that we'd not had time to get together our personal kit for the journey.

"It's no use my mentioning how long we travelled thus, for I'm not in the least clear about it myself. All I can say is that in course of time we descended, and that we found ourselves on solid ground, on the island of Gee-Whiz. That, you will understand, was an uncharted and hitherto undiscovered land, lying near the 400th parallel west of London and somewhere below Sumatra—several weeks' march from Calcutta, I should say. We'd never seen the place nor