CHAPTER XV
SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed Horse
"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 was noticed early in the game that Pinto might be lookin' one way and goin' the other, at the same time. He'd be goin' on a keen lope, and then something or other might get on his mind, and he'd stop and untangle hisself from all kinds of ridin'. Sometimes he'd jump and snort like he was seein' ghosts. A feller on that horse could have roped antelopes as easy as yearlin' calves, if he could just have told which way Mr. Pinto was goin'; but he was a shore hard one to estermate.
"At last Tom, why, he suspected somethin' wasn't right with Pinto's lamps. If you stuck out a bunch of hay at him, he couldn't bite it by about five feet. When you led him down to water, you had to go sideways; and if you wanted to get him in through the corral gate, you had to push him in backward. We discovered right soon that he was born with his parallax or something out of gear. His graduated scale of seein' things was different from our'n. I don't reckon anybody ever will know what all Pinto saw with them glass lamps of his, but all the time we knowed that if we could ever onct get his lookin' outfit tuned up proper, we had the whole country skinned in a horse race; for he could shore run copious.
"That was why he had the whole Bar T outfit guessin' all the time. We all wanted to bet on him, and we was all scared to. Sometimes we'd make up a purse among us, and we'd go over to some social getherin' or other, and win a thousand dollars. Old Pinto could run all day; he can yet, for that matter. Didn't make no difference to him how often we raced him; and natural, after we'd won one hatful of money with him, we'd want to win another. That was where our judgment was weak.
"You never could tell whether Pinto was goin' to finish under the wire, or out in the landscape. His eyes seemed to be sort of moverble, but like enough they'd get sot when he went to runnin'. Then he'd run whichever way he was lookin' at the time, or happened to think he was lookin'; and dependin' additional on what he thought he saw. And law! A whole board of supervisors and school commissioners couldn't have looked that horse in the face, and guessed on their sacred honor whether he was goin' to jump the fence to the left, or take to the high sage on the outside of the track.
"Onct in a while we'd git Pinto's left eye set at a angle, and he'd come around the track and under the wire before she wobbled out of place. On them occasions we made money a heap easier than I ever did a-gettin' it from home. But, owin' to the looseness of them eyes, I don't reckon there never was no horse racin' as uncertain as this here; and like enough you may have observed it's uncertain enough even when things is fixed in the most comf'terble way possible."
A deep sigh greeted this, which showed that Curly's audience was in full sympathy.
"You always felt like puttin' the saddle on to Pinto hind end to, he was so cross-eyed," he resumed ruminatingly, "but still you couldn't help feelin' sorry for him, neither. Now, he had a right pained and grieved look in his face all the time. I reckon he thought this was a hard sort of a world to get along in. It is. A cross-eyed man has a hard enough time, but a cross-eyed horse—well, you don't know how much trouble he can be for hisself, and every one else around him.
"Now, here we was, fixed up like I told you. Mr. Allopath is over on Sweetwater creek, Mr. Homeopath is maybe in the last stages of starvation. Old Pinto looks plumb hopeless, and all us fellers is mostly hopeless too, owin' to his uncertain habits in a horse race, yet knowin' that it ain't perfessional for us not to back a Bar T horse that can run as fast as this one can.
"About then along comes Mr. Ostypath. This was just about thirty days before the county fair at Socorro, and there was money hung up for horse races over there that made us feel sick to think of. We knew we could go out of the cow-punchin' business for good if we could just only onct get Pinto over there, and get him to run the right way for a few brief moments.
"Was he game? I don't know. There never was no horse ever got clost enough to him in a horse race to tell whether he was game or not. He might not get back home in time for supper, but he would shore run industrious. Say, I talked in a telyphome onct. The book hung on the box said the telyphome was instantaneous. It ain't. But now this Pinto, he was a heap more instantaneous than a telyphome.
"As I was sayin', it was long about now Mr. Ostypath comes in. He talks with the boss about locatin' around in here. Boss studies him over a while, and as there ain't been anybody sick for over ten years he tries to break it to Mr. Ostypath gentle that the Bar T ain't a good place for a doctor. They have some conversation along in there, that-a-way, and Mr. Ostypath before long gets the boss interested deep and plenty. He says there ain't no such a thing as gettin' sick. We all knew that before; but he certainly floors the lot when he allows that the reason a feller don't feel good, so as he can eat tenpenny nails, and make a million dollars a year, is always because there is something wrong with his osshus structure.
"He says the only thing that makes a feller have rheumatism, or dyspepsia, or headache, or nosebleed, or red hair, or any other sickness, is that something is wrong with his nervous system. Now, it's this-a-way. He allows them nerves is like a bunch of garden hose. If you put your foot on the hose, the water can't run right free. If you take it off, everything's lovely. 'Now,' says Mr. Ostypath, 'if, owin' to some luxation, some leeshun, some temporary mechanical disarrangement of your osshus structure, due to a oversight of a All-wise Providence, or maybe a fall off'n a buckin' horse, one of them bones of yours gets to pressin' on a nerve, why, it ain't natural you ought to feel good. Now, is it?' says he.
"He goes on and shows how all up and down a feller's backbone there is plenty of soft spots, and he shows likewise that there is scattered around in different parts of a feller's territory something like two hundred and four and a half bones, any one of which is likely any minute to jar loose and go to pressin' on a soft spot; 'In which case,' says he, 'there is need of a ostypath immediate.'
"For instance,' he says to me, 'I could make quite a man out of you in a couple of years if I had the chanct.' I ast him what his price would be for that, and he said he was willin' to tackle it for about fifty dollars a month. That bein' just five dollars a month more than the boss was allowing me at the time, and me seein' I'd have to go about two years without anything to wear or eat—let alone anything to drink—I had to let this chanct go by. I been strugglin' along, as you know, ever since, just like this, some shopworn, but so's to set up. There was one while, I admit, when the Doc made me some nervous, when I thought of all them soft spots in my spine, and all them bones liable to get loose any minute and go to pressin' on them. But I had to take my chances, like any other cow puncher at forty-five a month."
"You ought to raise his wages, Mac," said Doc Tomlinson to McKinney, the ranch foreman, but the latter only grunted.
"Mr. Ostypath, he stayed around the Bar T quite a while," began Curly again, "and we got to talkin' to him a heap about modern science. Says he, one evenin', this-a-way to us fellers, says he, 'Why, a great many things goes wrong because the nervous system is interfered with, along of your osshus structure. You think your stomach is out of whack,' says he. 'It ain't. All it needs is more nerve supply. I git that by loosenin' up the bones in your back. Why, I've cured a heap of rheumatism, and paralysis, and cross eyes, and—'
"'What's that?' says Tom Redmond, right sudden.
"'You heard me, sir,' says the Doc, severe.
"Tom, he couldn't hardly wait, he was so bad struck with the idea he had. 'Come here, Doc,' says he. And then him and Doc walked off a little ways and begun to talk. When they come up toward us again, we heard the Doc sayin': 'Of course I could cure him. Straybismus is dead easy. I never did operate on no horse, but I've got to eat, and if this here is the only patient in this whole blamed country, why I'll have to go you, if it's only for the sake of science,' says he. Then we all bunched in together and drifted off toward the corral, where old Pinto was standin', lookin' hopeless and thoughtful. 'Is this the patient?' says the Doc, sort of sighin'.
"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.
"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways, sideways, and all around. Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd 'a' been lookin' him full in the face. Doc he stands thoughtful for quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down along Pinto's spine. He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful subject,' says he. 'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject! Whole osshus structure exposed!' And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful in the game."
Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.
"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is full of little humps—you can see that easy in the springtime. Now old Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky Mountain range.
"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he, 'Just like I thought,' says he. 'The patient has suffered a distinct leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"
"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.
"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.
"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.
"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more. 'Now, here is a distant luxation in the lumber regions.' He talked like Pinto had a wooden leg.
"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.
"'Now look here, Doc,' says Tom Redmond to him then. 'You go careful. We all know there's something strange about this here horse; but now, if he's got any bone pressin' on him anywhere that makes him run the way he does, why, you be blamed careful not to monkey with that there particular bone. Don't you touch his runnin' bone, because that's all right the way it is.'
"'Don't you worry any,' says the Doc. 'All I should do would only be to increase his nerve supply. In time I could remedy his ocular defecks, too,' says he. He allows that if we will give him time, he can make Pinto's eyes straighten out so's he'll look like a new rockin' horse Christmas mornin' at a church festerval. Incidentally he suggests that we get a tall leather blinder and run it down Pinto's nose, right between his eyes.
"This last was what caught us most of all. 'This here blinder idea,' says Tom Redmond, 'is plumb scientific. The trouble with us cow punchers is we ain't got no brains—or we wouldn't be cow punchers! Now look here, Pinto's right eye looks off to the left, and his left eye looks off to the right. Like enough he sees all sorts of things on both sides of him, and gets 'em mixed. Now, you put this here harness leather between his eyes, and his right eye looks plumb into it on one side, and his left eye looks into it on the other. Result is, he can't see nothing at all! Now, if he'll only run when he's blind, why, we can skin them Socorro people till it seems like a shame.'
"Well, right then we all felt money in our pockets. We seemed most too good to be out ridin' sign, or pullin' old cows out of mudholes. 'You leave all that to me,' says Doc. 'By the time I've worked on this patient's nerve centres for a while, I'll make a new horse out of him. You watch me,' says he. That made us all feel cheerful. We thought this wasn't such a bad world, after all.
"We passed the hat in the interest of modern science, and we fenced off a place in the corral and set up a school of ostypathy in our midst. Doc, he done some things that seemed to us right strange at first. He gets Pinto up in one corner and takes him by the ear, and tries to break his neck, with his foot in the middle of his back. Then he goes around on the other side and does the same thing. He hammers him up one side and down the other, and works him and wiggles him till us cow punchers thought he was goin' to scatter him around worse than Cassybianca on the burnin' deck after the exploshun. My experience, though, is that it's right hard to shake a horse to pieces. Pinto, he stood it all right. And say, he got so gentle, with that tall blinder between his eyes, that he'd 'a' followed off a sheepherder.
"All this time we was throwin' oats a-plenty into Pinto, rubbin' his legs down, and gettin' him used to a saddle a little bit lighter than a regular cow saddle. Doc, he allows he can see his eyes straightenin' out every day. 'I ought to have a year on this job,' says he; 'but these here is urgent times.'
"I should say they was urgent. The time for the county fair at Socorro was comin' right clost.
"At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair, and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the racin' book. My friends, you would 'a' shed tears of pity to see them folks fall down over theirselves tryin' to hand us their money against old Pinto. There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds of fancy riders, and money—oh, law! Us Bar T fellers, we took everything offered—put up everything we had, down to our spurs. Then we'd go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn. We was gettin' rich so quick we felt almost scared.
"There come nigh to bein' a little shootin' just before the horses was gettin' ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half. We led old Pinto out, and some feller standin' by, he says, sarcastic like, 'What's that I see comin'; a snow-plough?' Him alludin' to the single blinder on Pinto's nose.
"'I reckon you'll think it's been snowin' when we get through,' says Tom Redmond to him, scornful. 'The best thing you can do is to shut up, unless you've got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar T festerval.' But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the post, and there wasn't no more talk.
"Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the starter didn't have no trouble with him at all. At last he got them all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the whole bunch. Say, man, that was a fine start.
"Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he'd come out on the track that day just standin' on the edges of his feet, he was feelin' that fine. We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up on Pinto for to ride him. Now a Greaser ain't got no sense. It was that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.
"I was tellin' you that there horse was ostypathed, so to speak, plumb to a razor edge, and I was sayin' that he went off on a even start. Then what did he do? Run? No, he didn't run. He just sort of passed away from the place where he started at. Our Greaser, he sees the race is all over, and like any fool cow puncher, he must get frisky. Comin' down the homestretch, only needin' about one more jump—for it ain't above a quarter of a mile—Jose, he stands up in his stirrups and pulls off his hat, and just whangs old Pinto over the head with it, friendly like, to show him there ain't no coldness.
"We never did rightly know what happened at that time. The Greaser admits he may have busted off the fastenin' of that single blinder down Pinto's nose. Anyhow, Pinto runs a few short jumps, and then stops, lookin' troubled. The next minute he hides his face on the Greaser and there is a glimpse of bright, glad sunlight on the bottom of Jose's moccasins. Next minute after that Pinto is up in the grandstand among the ladies, and there he sits down in the lap of the Governor's wife, which was among them present.
"There was time, even then, to lead him down and over the line, but before we could think of that he falls to buckin' sincere and conscientious, up there among the benches, and if he didn't jar his osshus structure a heap then, it wasn't no fault of his'n. We all run up in front of the grandstand, and stood lookin' up at Pinto, and him the maddest, scaredest, cross-eyedest horse I ever did see in all my life. His single blinder was swingin' loose under his neck. His eyes was right mean and white, and the Mexican saints only knows which way he was a-lookin'.
"So there we was," went on Curly, with another sigh, "all Socorro sayin' bright and cheerful things to the Bar T, and us plumb broke, and far, far from home.
"We roped Pinto, and led him home behind the wagon, forty miles over the sand, by the soft, silver light of the moon. There wasn't a horse or saddle left in our rodeo, and we had to ride on the grub wagon, which you know is a disgrace to any gentleman that wears spurs. Pinto, he was the gayest one in the lot. I reckon he allowed he'd been Queen of the May. Every time he saw a jack rabbit or a bunch of sage brush, he'd snort and take a pasear sideways as far as the rope would let him go.
"'The patient seems to be still laborin' under great cerebral excitation,' says the Doc, which was likewise on the wagon. 'I ought to have had a year on him,' says he, despondent like.
"'Shut up,' says Tom Redmond to the Doc. 'I'd shoot up your own osshus structure plenty,' says he, 'if I hadn't bet my gun on that horse race.'
"Well, we got home, the wagon-load of us, in the mornin' sometime, every one of us ashamed to look the cook in the face, and hopin' the boss was away from home. But he wasn't. He looks at us, and says he;—
"'Is this a sheep outfit I see before me, or is it the remnants of the former cow camp on the Bar T?' He was right sarcastic. 'Doc,' says he, 'explain this here to me.' But the Doc, he couldn't. Says the boss to him at last, 'The right time to do the explainin' is before the hoss race is over, and not after,' says he. 'That's the only kind of science that goes hereafter on the Bar T,' says he.
"I reckon the boss was feelin' a little riled, because he had two hundred on Pinto hisself. A cross-eyed horse shore can make a sight of trouble," Curly sighed in conclusion; "yet I bought Pinto for four dollars, and—sometimes, anyway—he's the best horse in my string down at Carrizosy, ain't he, Mac?"
In the thoughtful silence following this tale, Tom Osby knocked his pipe reflectively against a cedar log. "That's the way with the railroad," he said. "It's goin' to come in herewith one eye on the gold mines and the other on the town—and there won't be no blind-bridle up in front of old Mr. Ingine, neither. If we got as much sense as the Bar T feller, we'll do our explainin' before, and not after the hoss race is over. Before I leave for Vegas, I want to see one of you ostypothetic lawyers about that there railroad outfit."
CHAPTER XVI
THE PARTITION OF HEARTS DESIRE
Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable Considerations
"You see, it's just this-a-way," began Tom Osby, the morning after Curly's osteopathic horse saga; "I've got to go on up to Vegas after a load of stuff, and I'll be gone a couple of weeks. Now, you know, from what we heard down at Sky Top about this railroad, a heap of things can happen in two weeks. Them fellers ain't showin' their hands any, but for all we know their ingineers may come in any day, and start in to doin' things."
"They've got to make arrangements first," replied Dan Anderson.
"That's all right; and so ought we to make arrangements. We seen this place first. Now, Dan—" and he extended a gnarled and hairy hand—"you've always done like you said you would. You took care of me down there to Sky Top. I want you to keep on a-takin' care of me, whether I'm here or not. Now, there's my house and yard, right at the head of the cañon, where they've got to come if they get in. That little old place, and my little old team, is about all I've got in the world. If old Mr. Railroad comes up this arroyo, what happens to me? You tell 'em to go somewheres else, because I seen this place first, and I like it. Ain't that the law in this country? Ain't it always been the law?"
Dan Anderson nodded. He held out his hand to Tom Osby and looked him straight in the eye. "I'll take care of you, Tom," he promised.
"Then that'll be about all," said Tom; "giddup, boys!"
In some way news of the early advent of the railroad had gotten about in Heart's Desire, and Dan Anderson found talk of it on every tongue, talk very similar to that of Tom Osby. Uncle Jim Brothers, owner of the one-story hotel and restaurant, the father and the feeder of all Heart's Desire when the latter was in financial stress, was the next to come to him; and Uncle Jim was grave of face.
"See here, man," said he, "how about this here new railroad? Do we want it, or do we? Seems to me like we always got along here pretty well the way things was."
Dan Anderson nodded again. Uncle Jim shifted from one large foot to the other, and thrust a great hand into the pocket of one trouser leg.
"All I was going to say to you, Dan," he went on, "is, if it comes to takin' any sides, we all know which side you're on. You're with us. Now, there's my place down there, where you've et many a time with the rest of the boys. You've helped me build the tables in the dining room—done a lot of things which makes me feel obliged to you." (Ah! lovable liar, Uncle Jim, who could feed a man broke and hungry, and still let him feel that the operation was a favor to the feeder!) "Now, I just wanted to say, Dan, I was sure, in case any railroad ever did come cavortin' around here, you'd sort of look after the old place. Will you do that?"
"Of course he will," broke in Doc Tomlinson, who had strolled down the street and overheard the conversation. "Dan Anderson, he's our lawyer. We've got him retained permanent, ain't we, Dan? Now, there's my old drug store—ain't much in it, but it's where I settled when I first driv into the valley, and I like the place. Ain't no railroad going to boost me out without a scrap."
Dan Anderson turned away, sick at heart. For three days he kept to his cabin on the far side of the arroyo.
But if hesitation sat on the soul of any man of the community, if doubt or questionings harassed the minds of any, there was no uncertainty on the part of the management of the railroad, whose coming was causing this uneasiness. One day Dan Anderson was startled to hear a knock at his door, and to see the dusty figure of Porter Barkley, general counsel of the A. P. and S. E., just from a long buckboard ride from the head of the rails. With him came Grayson, chief engineer. Dan Anderson invited them in.
"Well, Mr. Anderson," said Barkley, "here we are, close after you. We're following up the right-of-way matters sharp and hard now. We can't hold back our graders, and before the line gets abreast of this cañon, we've got to know what we can do here. Now, what can you tell us by this time?"
"I can tell you, as I said, the status of every town lot and every mining claim in this valley," replied Dan Anderson. "It's all simple so far as that is concerned."
"How about that town site? Grayson, here, is ready to go ahead with the new plat. If you never had any town site filed, how were real-estate transfers made?"
"There never were any transfers made. There has not been a town lot sold in ten years."
"Real estate just a little dull?" laughed Barkley, sarcastically.
"We hadn't noticed it," said Dan Anderson, simply.
"But how about your courts? Next thing you'll be telling me there wasn't any court."
"There never was, except when we acquitted a man for shooting a pig. I was his counsel, by the way."
"Nor any town election?"
"Why should there be?"
"No government—no nothing? for five years?"
"Over twelve years altogether, to be exact. I'm rather a newcomer myself."
"No organization—no government—" Barkley summed it up. "Good God! what kind of a place is this?"
"It's Heart's Desire," said Dan Anderson. No man of that valley was ever able to say more, or indeed thought it needful to say more.
Porter Barkley gave a contemptuous whistle, as he turned on his heel, hands in pockets, his bulky form filling the doorway as he looked out. "So you were a lawyer here," he said. "You must have had rather more leisure than law practice, I should think."
"It left me all the more time for my reading," said Dan Anderson, gravely. "You've no idea how much a law practice interferes with one's legal studies." Barkley looked at him, but could discover no sign of levity.
"Well, there is one thing mighty sure," said he, shutting his heavy jaws tight; "this valley is, or was, open to settlement under the United States land laws."
"Certainly," assented Dan Anderson. "The first men in here were mining men from every corner of the Rockies, and they knew their business. All these mountains were platted, and 'adversed,' and litigated. Then, before the second discoveries, and before any coal veins were located on the other side of the valley, the gold veins pinched out. Everybody got broke, and nearly everybody got up and walked away. Meantime, the courts had only been sitting over at Lincoln once in a while—when Billy the Kid allowed it. I'll have to admit that things were a trifle tangled as to title."
"Well, I should say so!" Barkley was irritable, Grayson, the engineer, silent and smiling.
"There was so much room after the mining boom broke, that nobody cared for a town lot. Every fellow just picked out the place he liked, built where he liked, and went in as his own butler, chambermaid, and cook.
"You are seeing this country now, gentlemen," he went on, "pretty much as God made it, and as Coronado saw it three hundred years ago. I deprecate any undue haste on your part. We've been three hundred years in getting this far along. We've done very well without either a town site or a city council."
Barkley was utterly unable to comprehend either Dan Anderson or Heart's Desire. "This is the absolute limit!" he rapped out. "At least we'll end this now. Come on, Grayson, we three'll go out and have a look at the place, and see what is the best way to lay out the streets. I suppose, Anderson, you can tell us how we can get title under government patent—mineral lands—coal lands—desert lands—homestead—whatever we can dig out the quickest?"
"Oh, yes," said Dan Anderson, "but don't dig too deep, or you may run against a land grant from Ferdinand and Isabella to some well-beloved hidalgo whose descendants may now be herding sheep on the Pecos, or owning the earth along the Rio Grande. Cabeza de Vaca may own this valley, for all I know. Maybe Coronado owns it. Quien sabe? We only borrowed the place. We thought that probably Charles IV, or Philip II, or whoever it was, wouldn't mind very much, seeing that he's dead anyhow, in case we returned the valley in good condition, reasonable wear and tear excepted, after we were dead ourselves. Of course, this railroad coming in complicates matters a good deal. Do I make all this clear to you, gentlemen? I never did see a place just like this, myself."
"No?" snapped Barkley.
"So we called it Heart's Desire."
"We'll call it Coalville now," retorted Barkley.
They passed out into the bright sunlit street of Heart's Desire. Stern-browed Carrizo, guardian through centuries of calm and secrecy, gazed down on them unwinking. Dan Anderson looked up at the grim sentinel of the valley, and mockery left his speech. He looked about at the wide and vacant spaces of the little settlement, lying content, secure, and set apart, and a horror came upon his soul. He was about to be a traitor, a traitor to Heart's Desire! Law—title—security—what more of these could these men bring to Heart's Desire than it had long had already? What wrong here had ever been left unrighted? Truth, and justice, and fairness, and sincerity, those priceless things—why, he had known them here for years. Were they now to be made more obvious, or more strong? He had believed his friends, had had friends to believe; would these walking at his side be better friends? These men of Heart's Desire, these simple children who had left the smother of civilization to seek out for themselves a place of strength and simplicity, these strong and fearless giants, these friends of his—had he not promised them that they would be safe in his hands? Hitherto there had never been a traitor among all the men of Heart's Desire. Was he, their accepted friend, to be the first? Dan Anderson passed his hand over a forehead suddenly grown moist. He dared not look up at the chiding front of old Carrizo.
"I was saying," said Porter Barkley, turning from the taciturn engineer as they walked along the hillside, "that this place seems to have been laid off with a circular saw. I can't see any idea of streets at all."
"There is a sort of a street along the arroyo," said Dan Anderson, dully. "There never were any cross streets. The boys just built where they felt like it."
"And great builders they were! I didn't know men ever lived in such places. What's that joint there?" He pointed out a ruined jacal of upright mud-chinked logs, now leaning slantwise far to one side. "Was that a house, too? It hasn't even a chimney,"
"That was the residence and law office of a former supreme judge of the State of Kansas," replied Dan Anderson. "He didn't need any chimney. You've no idea how useless a chimney really is. He never stopped to cut any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and let the smoke go out the window. He had a pet wildcat that shared his legal studies—oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to you, just fresh from New York."
"But didn't you live in New York once yourself?"
"Yes, once."
"What made you come away?"
"Objected to, as irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; and objection sustained," replied Dan Anderson. "The first thing I learned in this country was not to inquire about any man's past. That's a useful thing for you to learn, too."
Porter Barkley, accustomed to dominating those around him, flushed red, but managed to suppress his rising choler for the time. "And by the way, what's that old shell over there, across the ditch?" he asked.
"I regret your irreverence," said Dan Anderson. "That's the New Jersey Gold Mills. Eighty thousand of Eastern Capital went in there at one time. They didn't understand the ways of the country."
"Humph! Well, it's a more practical layout you've got in here this time. You can gamble that Ellsworth and our gang are not going to sink their roll here, by a long ways, unless they get something for it." "You'll get a run for your money, in all likelihood," remarked Dan Anderson.
"As I said, now, Grayson, don't pay any attention to this gully here," went on Barkley. "We'll fill this ditch and put in drains at the crossings, and run the main street north and south. We'll take the ramshorn crooks out of this town in about two days, when we get started."
"I see no reason why we could not run the cross streets at right angles," said Grayson, the constructive. "Of course, we'll catch a good many of these buildings—" he hesitated, pointing at the time to Doc Tomlinson's drug store.
"The corner of this fence would be inside the line of the main street," he went on, sighting along his lead pencil to the angle of Whiteman's corral. It was the very spot where Dan Anderson had sat in council with his cronies many a time. He bit his lip now as he followed the gaze of the engineer.
"How about the stone house down the arroyo?" asked he of Grayson. This was Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel, sanctuary for the homeless of Heart's Desire, a temple of refuge, a place where the word "Friendship," unspoken, never written, was known and understood among men gathered from all corners of this unfriendly world.
"That would have to go," replied Grayson.
"As to that shanty down below, at the head of the cañon," growled Barkley, pointing to Tom Osby's adobe, "that's going to be the first thing we'll tear down, street or no street. We need that place for our depot yard, and we're going to take it. Besides, there was something about that Osby fellow I didn't like when we met him over at Sky Top. He's too damned independent to suit me."
Dan Anderson straightened up as though smitten, his face a dull red. The dancing heat mist blurred before his eyes. He said nothing. They turned presently and strolled down toward the foot of the arroyo. Barkley pushed his hat back on his furrowed forehead.
"There is a lot in this thing for me, Andersen," said he, "and there'll be a lot in it for you. Have you got any claims of your own in here? Mineral, I mean?"
"Of course," Dan Anderson replied. "We all have claims. This is the only valley in the West, so far as I know, where there is good coal on one side, and paying gold quartz on the other. But that's the case here. We haven't overlooked it."
Barkley whistled. "I wouldn't ask a better show than you'll have here," said he, contemplatively. "The only wonder to me is that some one hasn't broken into this long ago."
"There might be some few difficulties," suggested Dan Anderson.
"Difficulties! What do you care about that? We'll wear 'em out, pound 'em out, break 'em up, I tell you. We're the first ones to find this country—"
"Except maybe Coronado, De Vaca and Company."
"Who were they?"
"The same as you and me," replied Dan Anderson, enigmatically. "Ask the mountains."
"Oh, rot!" said Barkley. "I'll tell you, once for all, I'm not interested in dreams or foolishness. Now, if you want to go in with us, that's one thing. If you don't, we want to find it out mighty quick."
"You might do worse," said Dan Anderson. "The other lawyer is worse than myself. At times I suspect him of being lazy."
"Well, well, let's get together," urged Barkley, impatiently. "Now, Grayson thinks it will take about three hundred and fifty acres for the first plat, without additions; we'll supersede the old Jack Wilson patent. He's dead, you say? Never left a will, or any heirs? Never did get his town site platted and filed? Well, he never will, now. You go with Grayson to-morrow and run out these lines quietly, and help him get an idea of the best mining claims on both sides of the valley, too. There'll be plenty for you to do."
Dan Anderson nodded, but made no comment. Many things were revolving in his mind.
"Meantime," concluded Barkley, "I've got to get back down the line to meet Mr. Ellsworth. We'll come up again. You can readily see that we've got to have a town meeting before very long. Get things in line for it. Will you attend to this?"
"Yes," replied Dan Anderson, slowly and musingly; "yes, I'll attend to it."
Barkley looked once more upon the impassive face of his local counsel, and departed more than ever puzzled and exasperated. He liked Dan Anderson as little as he understood him. "I'll handle him, though," he muttered to himself. "There's a way to handle every man, and I rather think that this one'll come to his feed before we get done with him."
CHAPTER XVII
TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens, and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator
"Learned Counsel," said Dan Anderson on the morning following the preliminary survey of Heart's Desire, "I want you to take my case."
"What's up?" asked Learned Counsel. Dan Anderson pointed down the street, where a group stood talking among themselves, casting occasional side-long glances in his direction. "They're milling like a bunch of scared longhorns," he said. "Something's wrong, and I know it mighty well. I want you to take my case. Come along."
Contrary to the ancient custom of the forum at Whiteman's corral, the group did not move apart to admit them to the circle. "The gentleman from Kansas was addressing the meeting," said Dan Anderson. Doc Tomlinson continued speaking, but still the circle made no move.
"Say it!" burst out Dan Anderson. "Tell it out! What's on your minds, you fellows?"
"We don't like to believe it," McKinney began, facing toward him. "We hope it ain't true."
"What's not true?" he demanded, looking from one averted face to another. At length Doc Tomlinson resumed his office as spokesman. "They say you've sold us out. They say you're bought by the railroad to clean us out; that the scheme is to steal the town, and you're in the steal. Is that so?"
"Is it true?" asked McKinney.
"We want to know if it's true," insisted Doc Tomlinson. "You was all over town with them fellers. Now they've let it out they're goin' to grab the town site and make a re-survey."
"We know there wasn't ever any town site here," added Uncle Jim Brothers, "but what need was there? Wasn't there plenty of room for everybody?"
"You can't try any hurrah game on us fellers here," said McKinney, facing Dan Anderson squarely.
"Nor you with me," retorted Dan Anderson. "Don't any of you undertake that."
"Hold on there," called Learned Counsel, lifting his hand for attention. "This man is my client! You're not hearing both sides."
"Tell the other side, Dan," said Uncle Jim Brothers. Dan Anderson shook his head.
"Why can't you?" asked Uncle Jim.
"I can't!" broke from Dan Andersen's dry lips. "If you knew, you wouldn't ask me to."
"That's no argument," exclaimed Doc Tomlinson. "What we do know is that you were figurin' to run the street right past here, maybe through my store and Uncle Jim's place, maybe takin' Tom's place for depot yards. That outfit's been all over the hills lookin' for claims to jump. It's a case of gobble and steal. They say you're hired to help it on, and are gettin' a share of the steal. Now, if that's so, what would you do if you was in our place?"
"I'd run the fellow out of town," said Dan Anderson. "If there was that sort of a traitor here, by God! I'd kill him."
"We never did have no man go back on us here," Uncle Jim Brothers remarked.
"Don't say that to me!" Dan Andersen's voice was shaken. "You've fed me, Uncle Jim. Don't say that to me."
"Then what shall we say, man?" replied Uncle Jim. "We want to be fair with you. But let me tell you, you don't own this valley. We own it. There's other places in the world besides the States, and don't you forget that. We didn't think you'd ever try to bring States ways in here."
"To hell with the States!" said McKinney, tersely.
"And States ways with them!" added Doc Tomlinson. "I'd like to see any railroad, or any States, or any United States government, try to run this place." Unconsciously he slapped his hand upon the worn scabbard at his hip, and without thought others in the group eased their pistol belts. It was the Free State of Heart's Desire.
"Well, by God!" said Uncle Jim Brothers, snapping and throwing away the piñon twig which he had been fumbling, "if we don't want no railroad, we don't have it, and that goes!"
"Of course," broke in Learned Counsel. "We all know that. That's a small thing. The big question is whether or not we've been fair to my client. I've not had time yet to go fully into his case. We'll have to continue this trial. We've got to have fair play."
"That's right enough," assented McKinney, and the others nodded.
"Then wait a while. You can't settle this thing until my client has had time to talk with me. I'll find out what he ought to tell."
"All right for that, too," agreed Uncle Jim Brothers. "But about that railroad, we'll hold court right here. We'll send out a summons to them folks, and have a meetin' here, and we'll see which is which and what is what in this town."
"That's fair enough," assented Learned Counsel. "We'll try the railroad, and we'll try my client at the same time."
"Write out the summons," said Doc Tomlinson. "Send word down to them railroad folks to come up here and be tried. It's time we knew who was boss, them or us. Go ahead, you're a lawyer; fix it up."
They ignored Dan Anderson, their long-time leader in all matters of public interest! Eventually it was Doc Tomlinson himself who drafted the document, one of the most interesting of the Territorial records—a summons whereby civilization was called before the bar of primitive man. These presents being signed and sealed, a messenger was sought for their delivery. None better offered than a half-witted sheepherder commonly known as Willie, who chanced to be in town by buckboard from the lower country. This much accomplished, the meeting at Whiteman's corral broke up.
Learned Counsel took his client by the arm and led him away. "You need not say much to your lawyer," he remarked; "but while I don't ask you to incriminate yourself even with your counsel, I only want to say that a Girl is, in a great many decisions of the upper courts, held to be an extenuating circumstance." He watched the twitch of Dan Anderson's face, but the latter would not speak.
"I don't know just where the girl exists now in this case," went on Learned Counsel, "or how; but she's somewhere. It is not wholly necessary that you should specify."
"My God!" broke out Dan Anderson. "I wanted—I hoped so much? It was my opportunity, my first—"
"That's enough," said Learned Counsel. "You needn't say any more. Every fellow has something of that sort in his life. What brought McKinney here, and Doc Tomlinson, and all the rest?"
"Ribbons!" said Dan Anderson. "Tintypes!"
"Precisely. And who shall cast the first stone? If the boys knew—"
"But they don't know, they can't know. Do you think I'd uncover her name, even among my friends—make her affairs public? No."
"Then your only defence cannot be brought into court."
"No. So what do you advise?"
"What do you advise your counsel to advise you?" asked Learned Counsel, bitterly.
"Nothing. I'm done for, either way it goes."
Dan Anderson turned a drawn face. "What shall I do?" he asked at length again.
For once Learned Counsel was wise. "In this sort of crisis," said he, "one does not consult a lawyer. He decides for himself, and he lives or dies, succeeds or fails, wins or loses forever, for himself and by himself, without aid of counsel or benefit of clergy." He stood and watched the iron go home into the soul of a game man. Dan Anderson was white, but his reply came sharp and stern.
"You're right! Leave me alone. I'll take the case now myself."
They shook hands and separated, not to meet again for days; for Dan Anderson shut himself up in his cabin and denied himself to all. Gloom and uncertainty reigned among his friends. That a crisis of some sort was imminent now became generally understood. At length the crisis came.
There arrived in town, obedient to the summons of Heart's Desire, the dusty buckboard driven by Willie the sheepherder. Upon the front seat with him was Mr. Ellsworth; on the back seat sat Porter Barkley and Constance. The chief actors in the impending drama were now upon the stage, and all Heart's Desire knew that action of some sort must presently follow.
With due decorum, however, all Heart's Desire stood apart, while the three travellers, dusty and weary, buried themselves in the privacy of Uncle Jim Brothers's best spare rooms. Then Heart's Desire sought out Willie the sheepherder.
"Now, Willie," said Doc Tomlinson, "look here—you tell us the truth for once. There's a heap of trouble goin' on here, and we want to get at the bottom of it. Maybe you heard something. Now, say, is this here railroad figurin' on comin' in here, or not?"
"Shore it'll come," said Willie, sagely. "Them folks has got money to do just what they want. Railroad'll be here in a few days if they feel like it."
"Maybe we don't feel like it," said Doc Tomlinson, grimly. "We'll see about that to-night."
"The girl, she's the one," said Willie, vaguely.
"What's that you mean?" commanded Doc Tomlinson.
"The funniest thing," said Willie, "is how things is mixed. Lord John, he rides on the front seat; and Lord Peter Berkeley,—that's the lawyer for the railroad,—he rides on the back seat with her, and he sues for her hand, he does, all the way up from the Sacramentos. Says he to Lord John, says he, 'Gimme the hand of this fair daughter of thine, and the treasure shall be yours,' says he."
"Ah, ha!" said Doc Tomlinson. "I shore thought that girl was mixed up in this somehow. But I didn't understand. Wonder if Dan Anderson told us everything he knew?"
"They set on the back seat," continued Willie, glancing importantly at the listeners to his romance, "a-lookin' into each other's eyes. And says the bold juke, to her, says he, 'Constance!' like that. 'Constance,' says he, 'I've loved you these many years agone.'"
"What did she say then?"
"I didn't ketch what she said. But by'm by the proud earl—"
"You said the bold juke."
"It's the same thing. The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint, like earls always is, and says he agin, 'Lord John, the treasure shall be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,' says he. From that I thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn't ketch. Of course, I was busy drivin' the coach."
The men of Heart's Desire looked from one to the other. "Well, I'll be damned!" said Doc Tomlinson.
Curly chewed tobacco vigorously. "To me," he said, "it looks like Dan was throwed down. That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn't think that of her."
"Throwed down hard," affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; "but now, hold on till we get all this straight. Maybe Dan wouldn't work for this outfit if he knew all that's goin' on. Seems to me like, one way or another, the girl's kind of up at auction. If she's part of the railroad's comin' into Heart's Desire, why, then, we want to know about it. I wish 't Dan Anderson was here,"
But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his casita across the arroyo. As fate would have it, he had caught Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own account. Willie escaped alive, and presently left town. Whereafter Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised; and that of the woman as well.
At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him. Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself, and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation. Then, in his loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him, conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.
Far up on the flank of Carrizo he sat and looked down upon the little straggling town in the valley below. These hills, he thought, with all their treasures, were to be sold and purchased for a price, for a treasure greater than all their worth,—the hand of the woman whom he loved. She had consented to the bargain. She had been true to the States, and not to Heart's Desire. She had been true to her class, and not to him, who had left her class. She had been true to her sex, and not to him, her unready lover. Ah, he had not deserved her remembrance; but still she ought to have remembered him! He had not been worthy of her, but still she ought to have loved him! He had offered her nothing, he had evaded her, shunned her, slighted her—but in spite of that she ought to have waited for him, and to have loved him through all, and believed in him in spite of all!
He sat, befooled and befuddled, arguing, accusing, denying, doubting, until he knew not where treachery began or faith had ended. It was late when he descended the mountain and walked dully down the street.
All this time Constance, in ignorance of everything except the absolute truth, sat in the meagre room of the little stone hotel. She wondered if there would ever be any change in her manner of life, if there would ever be anything but this continuous following of her father from one commercial battle into another. She wondered why Dan Anderson did not come. Surely he was here. Surely his business was with his employers; and more surely than all, and in spite of all, his place was here with her; because her heart cried out for him. In spite of all, he was her heart's desire. Why did he not come?
She arose, her hands clenched; she hated him, as much as she had longed for him.