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

"And so you drifted here," said Curly. "Well, it's about the right place. Heart's Desire's wide open."

"It wasn't so bad," resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand across his forehead; "it wasn't so bad down here for a time. I didn't mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on the island for so long. But the trouble was that I was followed all the time—have been for more than a year now—by that cursed King—that damned fiend that I thought I'd left long ago! I'd go out into the sunshine, and there he'd be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along, anyway I'd look! He'd follow me like a—look! look! there he is now. See!"

He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open door. A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.

"Look!" cried the King of Gee-Whiz. "He's there! He's there!" He slipped and sank to the floor, rolling over into an utter insensibility. Curly put on his hat and stood looking down at him.

"Sand, sunshine, and sheep herdin'," said he, "will do up any man in time. I'd 'a' made a good cow puncher out of this fellow, too, if I'd got him in time. By Golly! I'll do it anyhow. I'll have Mac get him a horse and saddle and put him to work. Any feller that kin shoot and lie as good as him has got the makin' of a good cow puncher in him."

They turned over the King of Gee-Whiz gently, that he might rest more easily, where he lay. His coat and waistcoat fell open. Underneath them, upon the left side of his chest, appeared a small, dull-colored cross of metal.

"For Valor"; Curly read the inscription with difficulty. "I knowed it; I knowed he'd been a cow puncher sometime, and just went wrong."

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Uncle Jim Brothers, "that's the Victoria Cross! This here's a V. C. man!"

"I don't know that brand. It ain't registered for this range," said Curly.

"Well," said Billy Hudgens, philosophically gazing at the sleeper, "I reckon 'D. T.' would be easier to understand, all things considered."

"If he ever comes to," said Curly, as he cast away through the open door the contents of the pockets of the King of Gee-Whiz, "we'll try to get him through the D. T. stage as well as the V. C., whatever that is, and I reckon he's good for a job on the Carrizoso range. This country can't afford to be too damned particular about a feller's past."

Tom Osby's freight wagon made not so bad a conveyance after all. The first fifty miles of the journey were passed in comparative silence, Constance and her father for the most part keeping to the shelter of the wagon tilt. Tom Osby grew restless under solitude ere long, and made friendly advances.

"You come up here and set by me on the seat," said he to Constance, "and let the sun shine on you. The old man can stay back there on the blankets with my kerosene can of whiskey if he still thinks his health ain't good. Like enough he'll learn to get the potato off'n the snoot of the can before long.

"You see," he went on, "I don't make no extry charge for whiskey or conversation to my patients. Far's I know, I'm the only railroad that don't. I got a box of aigs back there in the wagon, too. Ever see ary railroad back in the States that throwed in ham and aigs? I reckon not."

"Twenty dollars extra!" remarked Ellsworth, "You've made the girl laugh."

"Man, hush!" said Tom Osby. "Go on to sleep, and don't offer me money, or I'll make you get out and walk." This with a twinkle which robbed his threat of terror, though Ellsworth took the advice presently and lay down under the wagon cover.

"Don't mind him, Miss Constance," apologized Tom Osby. "He's only your father, anyhow, if it comes to the worst. But now tell me, what ails you? Say, now, you ain't sick, are you?" He caught the plaintive droop of the girl's mouth; but, receiving no answer, he himself evaded the question, and began to point out antelope and wolves, difficult for the uneducated eye to distinguish upon the gray plains that now swept about them. It was an hour before he returned to the subject really upon his mind.

"I was hearin' a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he began tentatively. "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't have more'n half time enough to git the news." From the corner of his eye he watched the face of his passenger.

"A great way to do, wasn't it!" exclaimed Constance, in sudden indignation. "I asked them why they didn't hire men to do such work."

"Ma'am," said Tom Osby; "I used to think you had some sense. You ain't."

"Why?"

"You can't think of no way but States ways, can you? I s'pose you think the police ought to catch a bad man, don't you?"

"Well, it's officer's work, going after a dangerous man. Wasn't this man dangerous?"

He noted her eagerness, and hastened to qualify. "Him? The Kid? No, I don't mean him. He's plumb gentle. I mean a real bad man—if there was any out here, you know. Now, not havin' any police, out here, the fellers that believes in law and order, why, onct in a while, they kind of help go after the fellers that don't. It works out all right. Now I don't seem to just remember which ones it was of our fellers that Stillson took with him the other day, along of your hurrying me out of town so soon after I got in."

"It was Mr. Tomlinson, and Mr. McKinney from the ranch, you know; and Curly wanted to go, but they wouldn't let him."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Because he was a married man, they said. And yet you say this criminal is not dangerous?"

"He'd ought to been glad to go, him a married man. I've been married a good deal myself. But was them two the only ones that went?"

"They two—and Mr. Anderson."

Tom smoked on quietly. "Well, I don't see why they'd take a tenderfoot like him," he remarked at length, "while there was men like Curly standin' around."

"I thought you were his friend!" blazed the girl, her cheeks reddening.

Tom Osby grinned at the success of his subterfuge.

"If he wasn't a good man, Ben Stillson wouldn't 'a' took him along," admitted he.

"Then it is dangerous?"

"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, tapping his pipe against the side of the wagon seat, "they're about even, a half dozen good ones against about that many bad ones. They're game on both sides, and got to be. And we all know well enough that Dan Anderson's game as the next one. The boys figured that out the other night. Why, he'll come back all right in a few days; don't worry none about that." He looked straight ahead of him, pretending not to notice the little gloved hand that stole toward his sleeve. In her own way, Constance had discovered that she might depend upon this rough man of the plains.

"Ma'am," he went on after a while, "not apropy of nothing, as they say in the novels, I wish you and your dad would hurry and get your old railroad through here. Us folks may some of us want to go back to the States sometime, and it's a long way to ride from Heart's Desire to any railroad the way it is, unless you've got mighty good company, like I have, this trip. I get awful lonesome sometimes, drivin' between here and Vegas. I had a parrot onct, and a phonygraph, as you may remember, but the fellers took 'em both away from me, you know. I'm thinkin' of makin' up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin' down. She makes fine pies. I've knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles—all the way up to Vegas—they're that permernent. She reminds me a heap of my third wife. Now, allowin' I did take one more chanct, and make up to that oldest girl, we'd look fine, wouldn't we, takin' a weddin' trip in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!"

Constance was smiling now. "I've got her gentled and comin' along right easy now," thought Tom Osby to himself.

"I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct," he went on, "got married and went plumb to New York, towering around. He got lost on a ferry-boat down there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me, 'Blamed if every man in that town didn't get his boots blacked every day.' That's foolish."

The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she had felt for days. Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a deep snore from the rear of the wagon.

"That," said Tom Osby, "sounds like the old man had got the potato loose."

"I'm ashamed of him," declared Constance.

"Natural," said Tom; "but why special?"

"He oughtn't to touch that whiskey. I hate it."

"So do I, when it ain't good. That in the can is good. It's only fair your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone Star. They didn't have a drop when I got in. Now, that's another reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart's Desire. It might prevent a awful stringency, sometime. There's Dick McGinnis, why, he nearly—"

"But it's not coming. It will not be built. They wouldn't let us in. We couldn't get the right of way."

"Now listen at you! You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer couldn't. Of course not. But you haven't tried it your own self yet."

"How could I?"

"Well, you'd a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa did. The boys told me all about what happened. A man out here don't holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that's different. Dan Anderson done just right."

"He broke up all our plans," Constance retorted hotly; and at once flushed at her own speech.

"What was he to do? Sell out? Turn the whole town over to you folks? Soon as he knows what's up, he throws back the money and tells the road to go to hell. He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers that had spoke to him about lookin' after their places. He done right."

Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon. At length she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby's eyes. "Yes, he was right," she said. "He did what was right." But she drew a long breath as she spoke.

"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, "not referrin' to the fact that you're squarer than your men folks, I want to say that, speakin' of game folks, you're just as game as any man I ever saw. Lots of women is. Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin' on, sometimes."

She felt his eyes upon her, and this time turned away her own. For a time they were silent, as the well-worn wagon rolled along behind the long-stepping grays; but Tom Osby was patient.

"A while ago," he resumed after a time, "you said 'we,' and 'our railroad.' That's mighty near right. You two folks right here in this wagon, yourself particular, can save that there railroad, and save Heart's