CHAPTER IX
CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions of Croquet and other Pastimes
"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot. Hurry up," said McKinney, who was nervous.
"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former. "This here croquet is a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin' to be hurried none."
"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson. "Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace to civilization."
"Pronto! Pronto! Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. There were certain features of the contest in question which were perhaps not usual. Indeed, I do not recall ever to have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls and blue shirts. But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed, with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the other.
"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for arguments of counsel. Curly, you are a disgrace. You and McKinney ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of savvy. Can't you hit that stake?"
"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly. "I ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me. If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over Carrizy Mountain that last carrom. You watch me when onct I get the hang of this thing."
"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney. "A cow puncher ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."
"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly. "Now you change around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you to a finish. Bet you three pesos. Of course, I can't play this thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot. I wonder what my mammy'd say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little wooden tack hammer."
"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an advertisement," said Dan Anderson.
"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flushing.
"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson. "I didn't figure on what it might do to our mortality tables. You fellows can't play the game wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns on. Here, all of you, come over here. The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game. I don't mind bein' umpire in the ancient and honorable game of croquet, but I ain't goin' to assume no unpaid obligations as coroner."
[Illustration: "'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game.'"]
With some protests all those engaged handed their belts to Dan Anderson, who casually flung them over a projecting cedar limb of the fence. "For shame! Curly," said he. "Talk about tenderfeet! Here you are, wearin' a pearl handle on your gun, just like a cheap Nebraska sheepherder with social ambitions. I thought you was a real cowman. The court fines you—"
"It ain't my fault," said Curly, blushing. "The girl—the little woman—that's my wife—she done that last Christmas. She allowed it was fine—and it goes."
"Yes, and put enough money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet set for the family. Ain't that awful! All this comes of takin' a daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns. We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down in here."
"That's so," said McKinney, scratching his head. "Times is changin'. That reminds me, I ordered a new suit of clothes by mail from Philadelphy, and they ought to be just about due when Tom Osby comes down; and that ought to be to-day."
"That's so," assented Doc Tomlinson. "He's got a little bill of goods for me, too."
"Oh, why, oh, why this profligacy, Doc?" said Dan Anderson. "Didn't you order two pounds of alum the last trip Tom made? What do you want of so many drugs, anyhow?"
"Hush, fellers," said Curly. "Listen a minute!"
Curly's ears had detected the rattle of distant wagon wheels. "That's Tom comin' now," said he. "He's a heap more regular than the Socorro stage. That's him, because I can hear him singin'."
"Tom, he's stuck on music," said McKinney.
Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle coming down the cañon; and presently there was borne to our ears the sound of Tom Osby's voice in his favorite melody:—
"I never lo-o-oved a fo-o-o-o-nd ga-a-a-z-elle!"
He proclaimed this loudly.
We knew that Tom would drive up to Whiteman's store, hence we waited for him near the corral fence. As he approached and observed our occupation he arrested his salutations and gazed for a moment in silent meditation.
"Prithee, sweet sirs," said he, at length, "what in blazes you doin'?"
"These gentlemen," said Dan Anderson from the fence, "are engaged in showin' the endurin' quality of the Anglo-Saxon temperament. Wherever the Saxon goes he sets up his own peculiar institutions. What! Shall New Mexico be behind New York, or New England? This croquet set cost eighteen dollars to get here from Chicago. Get down, Tom, you're in on the game."
But Tom picked up his reins and clucked to his team. "Excuse me, fellers," said he. "That there looks too frisky for me. I got to think of my business reputation." He passed on up the street.
"What's the matter with Tom?" asked Curly. "Seems like he wasn't feelin' right cheerful, some way." Dan Anderson gazed after the teamster pensively.
"Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom," said he. "Let's go find out what it is, fellows." He disengaged the respective six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman's commercial emporium, where Tom Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon. This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers's restaurant, but to his own adobe down the arroyo. We looked at each other in silence.
"Something on his mind," said Dan Anderson.
"He didn't bring my clothes," said McKinney.
"Nor my drugs," said Doc Tomlinson.
"And yet," said Curly, who was observant, "he kep' one box in the wagon. Couldn't see the brand, but she's there all right."
"Curly," said Dan Anderson, "you are appointed a committee of one to follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means."
Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom Osby's adobe. The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters. He then began to search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not determine. With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom Osby's team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher can command on foot. When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled in a frown.
"Fellers," said he. "I didn't think it of him! This here ain't right. Tom Osby's got a baby in there, and he's squeezin' the life out of it. Listen! Come on now. Do you hear that? How's that? Why, I tell you—why, dang me if it ain't singin'!"
There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody, thin, quavering, distant, weird. As it rose upon the hot afternoon air it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible. The spine of each man crawled.
Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who maintained his self-possession. He smiled gently. "Now," said he, "we certainly are fixed; Heart's Desire ain't benighted any after this."
"What's the matter with you?" Curly questioned.
"Poor cow puncher," replied Dan Anderson, "I have to do the thinkin' for you, and I ain't paid for it. Who, if not the Learned Counsel on my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this community? Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city? Who put up the electric lightin' and heatin' plant, and installed the forty-eight miles of continuous trolley track all under one transfer system? Who built the courthouse and the red brick schoolhouse, with nine school-teachers fresh from Connecticut? Who planned the new depot? Who got a new leather lounge for the managin' editor of our daily newspaper? Who built the three new smelters? Who filled our busy streets each evenin' with throngs of happy-faced laborers pacin' home at night after four hours' pleasant work each day in our elegantly upholstered quartz mines? Was it you, Curly, who made these different and several pasears in progress? Was it you, Doc, you benighted stray from the short-grass Kansas plains, where they can't raise Kafir corn? Was it you, McKinney, you sour-dispositioned consumer of canned peas? Nay, nay. It was myself and my learned brother. You ought to send us both to Congress."
We gazed up the long, silent street of Heart's Desire, asleep in the all-satisfying sun, and it almost seemed to us that we could indeed see all these things that he had named. The spell was broken by a renewal of the thin, high voice of this mysterious Thing in Tom Osby's house.
"And now," resumed Dan Anderson, "as I remarked, havin' turned our hands to the stable things of life, and havin' builded well the structure of an endurin', permanent society, there remained for us no need save for the softenin' and refinin' touch of a higher culture. We lacked nothing but Art. Now, here she is!
"What you're listenin' to, my countrymen, is music. It ain't a baby, Curly. Music, heavenly maid, is young in Heart's Desire, but it ain't any baby that you're listenin' to. I told Tom Osby myself to look into the phonograph business some time if he got a chance. Gentlemen, I now bid you follow me, to greet Art upon its arrival in our midst. I must confess that Tom Osby is actin' like a blamed swine over this thing, tryin' to keep it all to himself."
The phonograph inside the adobe switched from one tune to another. "Don't that sound like the Plaza Major in old Chihuahua by moonlight?" cried McKinney, as a swinging band march came squealing out through the door. "That's a piece by a Mexican band. Can't you hear the choo-choo, and the wee-wee, and the bum-bum? They're all there, sure's you're born!"
"If she plays 'La Paloma,' or that 'Golondrina' thing, I'm goin' to shoot," threatened Curly. "I've done danced to them things at more'n a thousand bailes here and in Texas, and if this is Art, she's got to do different."
"Gentlemen," Dan Anderson suggested, "let us go in and watch Tom Osby gettin' his savage breast soothed."
Tom Osby started as he saw shadows on the floor; but it was too late. He was discovered sitting on the bed, in rapt attention to the machine industriously grinding away upon the table. Dan Anderson, with great gravity, took up a collection of four pins from each of the newcomers and handed them to Tom. "No bent ones," said he. "It's a good show; but, tell us, what are you doin'? This is worse than croquet. And we asked you in on our game, too. Ain't you playin' it just a little bit lonesome this way?"
Tom frowned in perturbation. "Well, I was goin' to spring her on you about to-night, up at the Lone Star," said he; "but I couldn't wait. Ain't she a yaller flower? Say, I played her every night from Vegas down for five nights—Pecos Crossin', Salt Wells, Maxwell's, Hocradle Cañon, Jack's Peak—all the way. After I'd get my horses hobbled out and get my bed made down, I'd set her up on the front seat and turn her loose. Coyotes—you'd ought to heard 'em! When you wind her up plumb tight and turn the horn the right direction, you can hear her about a mile."
"That," said Dan Anderson, "must have been a gladsome journey."
"For sure," said Tom Osby. "Look at the reecords—whole box of 'em. Some of the stylishest singers in the business are in here. Some of 'em's Dago, I reckon. Here's one, 'Ah, no Ginger.'"
"That, probably," said Dan Anderson, "is 'Ah, non Giunge.' Yes, it's Dago, but not bad for a lady with a four-story voice."
"Here's another," said Tom; "'Down Mobile.'"
"I know that one," said Curly.
"Let me see it," said the impresario in charge. "Ah, as I thought; it's 'La Donna e Mobile.' This, bein' translated, means that any lady can change her mind occasionally, whether she comes from Mobile or not."
"That's no dream," said Curly. "Onct on the Brazos—"
"Never mind, Curly. Just feed that 'Donna' into the machine, Tom, and let's hear how it sounds once more."
And so Tom Osby, proud in his new possession, played for his audience, there in the adobe by the arroyo; played all his records, or nearly all; played them over and over again. It was nearly night when we left the place.
"Excuse me," said Dan Anderson to me, with a motion as though adjusting a cravat upon my neck, "but your white tie is slipping around under your ear again." And as we walked, I was sure that I saw an opera hat under his arm, though sober reason convinced me that we both were wearing overalls, and not evening clothes.
"But did you notice," said Curly, after a while, "Tom, he's holdin' out on us. That there music, it's all tangled up in my hair." He removed his hat and ran a questioning hand through the matted tangle on his curly front. "But," he resumed, "there was one piece he didn't play. I seen him slip it under the blankets on the bed."
"How could he!" said Dan Anderson. But memories sufficient came trooping upon him to cause him to forget. He fell to whistling "La Donna e Mobile" dreamily.
CHAPTER X
ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie Laurie
The shadows of night had fallen when at length Tom Osby crept stealthily to his door and looked around. The street seemed deserted and silent, as usual. Tom Osby stepped to the side of the bed and withdrew from under the blankets the bit of gutta-percha which Curly had noticed him conceal. He adjusted the record in the machine and sprung the catch. Then he sat and listened, intent, absorbed, hearkening to the wonderful voice of one of the world's great contraltos. It was an old, old melody she sang,—the song of "Annie Laurie."
Tom Osby played it over again. He sat and listened, as he had, night after night, in the moonlight on the long trail from Las Vegas down. The face of a strong and self-repressed man is difficult to read. It does not change lightly under any passing emotion. Tom Osby's face perhaps looked even harder than usual, as he sat there listening, his unlit pipe clenched hard between his hands. Truant to his trusts, forgetful of the box of candy which regularly he brought down from Vegas to the Littlest Girl, Curly's wife; forgetful of many messages, commercial and social,—forgetful even of us, his sworn cronies,—Tom Osby sat and listened to a voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye.
[Illustration: "A voice which sang of a Face that was the Fairest, and of a Dark blue Eye."]
The voice sang and sang again, until finally four conspirators once more approached Tom Osby's cabin. He had forgotten his supper. Dinner was done, in Heart's Desire, soon after noon. Dan Anderson stood thoughtful for a time.
"Let him alone, fellows," said he. "I savvy. That fellow's in love! He's in love with a Voice! Ain't it awful?"
Silence met this remark. Dan Anderson seated himself on a stone, and we others followed his example, going into a committee of the whole, there in the night-time, on the bank of the arroyo.
"Did you notice, Curly," asked Dan Anderson—"did you get a chance to see the name on the record of the singer who—who perpetrated this?"
"No," said Curly. "I couldn't get a clean look at the brand, owin' to Tom's cuttin' out the thing so sudden from the bunch. It was somethin' like Doughnuts—"
"Exactly—Madame Donatelli! I thought I rather recognized that voice my own self."
"Dago!" said McKinney with scorn.
"By trainin', though not by birth," admitted Dan Anderson. "Georgia girl originally, they tell me, and Dagoized proper, subsequent. All Yankee girls have to be Dagoized before they can learn to sing right good and strong, you know. They frequent learn a heap of things besides 'Annie Laurie'—and besides singin'. Oh, I can see the Yankee Dago lady right now. Fancy works installed in the roof of her mouth, adjacent and adjoinin' to her tongue, teeth, and other vocal outfit.
"Now, this here Georgia girl, accordin' to all stories, has sung herself into about a quarter of a million dollars and four or five different husbands with that voice of hers; and that same 'Annie Laurie' song was largely responsible. Now, why, why, couldn't she have taken a fellow of her size, and not gone and made trouble for Tom Osby? It wasn't fair play.
"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn. What does he see? Madame Donatelli? Does he see her show her teeth and bat her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers? Nay, nay. What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know—"
"Whoa! Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney. "This country's just as good as—"
"No, let him go on," said Curly to McKinney. "Onct over on the Brazos—"
"Sometimes I think you fellows are inclined to be provincial," said Dan Anderson, calmly. "Now, I'm not goin' to talk if you don't leave me alone. Listen. What does Tom Osby see in that horn that he's lookin' into? I'll tell you. He sees a plumb angel in white clothes and a blue sash. She's got gray eyes and brown hair, and she's just a little bit shorter than will go right under my arm here when I stretch it out level."
"That's about right!" said McKinney.
"She's got on white," resumed Dan Anderson, casting a glance about him in the dusk of the evening. "The girl's got to have on white. There ain't no man can hold out when they come in white and have on a blue sash—it's no use tryin' then.
"Now, there she is, a-settin' at the piano in there in the front parlor; daddy's gone out into the country after a load of wood, like enough; old lady's gone to bed, after a hard day's labor. Honeysuckles bloomin' all around, because in New Jersey—"
"It wasn't in New Jersey," said Learned Counsel, hastily, before he thought.
"No, it was in New York," said McKinney, boldly.
"You're all liars," said Curly, calmly; "it was onct on the Brazos."
"Gentlemen," said Dan Anderson, "you are right. It was once on the Brazos, and in Iowa, and in New York, and in New Jersey, and in Georgia. Thank God, it was there, once upon a time, in all those places. . . . And, as I was sayin', the birds was just twitterin' in the evergreen trees along the front walk, some sleepy, because it was just gettin' right dark. Vines, you know, hangin' over the edge of the front porch, like. Few chairs settin' around on the porch. Just a little band of moonlight layin' there on the front steps, leadin' up like a heavenly walk, like a white path to Paradise—which was there in the front parlor, with the best angel there at home.
"The high angel of this here Heaven, like I told you, she's a settin' there in white," he went on; "and with a blue sash—it was blue, now, wasn't it, fellows? And she's lettin' her fingers, God bless 'em, just tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la, up and down the keys of the piano her dad gave her when she graduated. And now she's sort of singin' to herself—half whisperin', soft and deep—I hate a thin-voiced woman, or a bad-tempered one, same as you do—she's just singin' about as loud as you can hear easy down as far as the front gate. And—why, she's a singin' that same tune there, of 'Annie Laurie'! . . . And in your heart you know it's true, every word of it, all the time, and at any station!" said Dan Anderson.
"At any station!" said Curly.
"At any station!" said McKinney,
"At any station!" said Learned Counsel.
There were no hats on at that moment. To be sure, the evening air was a trifle warm.
"And now," said Dan Anderson, after a while, "it's got Tom. Now, why couldn't it have been a man-Dago to sing that air into the tuneful horn of the mechanical heavenly maid yonder? No reason, only it's got to be a woman to sing that man's song of 'Annie Laurie.' A man couldn't any more sing 'Annie Laurie' than you could make cocktails without bitters. The only way we can get either one of them here is in bulk, which we have done. It's canned Art, that's all. Owin' to our present transportation facilities, everything has to come here in cans."
Dan Anderson arose and stretched out his arm. "Gentlemen," said he, "I present to you Art!" He raised before him an imaginary glass, which we all saw plainly. "I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it. Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art! We are not quite provincial. Listen at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . . Shoot him up, boys!" he cried suddenly. "I'm damned if I'm going to look all my days on the picture of a girl in a blue sash! The chief end of man is to witness an ecru coyote and a few absolute human failures like you and me. Down with the heavenly maid! Shoot him up! He's a destroyer of the peace!"
So we shot up Tom's adobe for a time, joyously peppering the thick walls, until at length that worthy came out annoyed, a phonograph record in one hand and a gun in the other.
"Don't, fellers," said he. "You might break something."
"Come out," said Dan Anderson. "Not even grand opera lasts all night. Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant. Come on. Get ready to play croquet to-morrow. It's safer."
And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening. Our little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson turned in at the post-office to see if the daily paper from El Paso had come in that month.
It was something that Dan Anderson saw in the daily paper that caused him on the following day to lead Tom Osby aside. "Did you know, Tom," said he, "that that opera singer you've got in your box, the 'Annie Laurie' artist, is goin' to be down in this part of the world before long?"
"I never loved a fo-o-o-nd ga-aze-ll-lle!" began Tom Osby, defensively.
"Well, it's true."
"What are you tellin' me?" said Tom, scornfully. "Comin' down here? Why, don't it say that them things is all sung by artists?"
"So they are."
"Well, now, a artist," said Tom Osby argumentatively, "ain't never comin' within a thousand miles of this here country. Besides, a artist is somebody that's dead."
"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson. "You've got to be dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art, of course. It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will be just what it is to-day. That's Art. But I'm tellin' you the truth, Tom. The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day. She belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life, but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything but boiled continuous.
"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season. They are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a moment, to catch a little of their financial breath. The Southern Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad fares. Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to sidetrack his whole rodeo for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at the Sky Top hotel,—that new railroad health resort some Yankees have just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure in livin'."
"How do you know she'll be there?" asked Tom.
"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it. They think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both happy. And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."
Tom Osby was silent. The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail. "It ain't so," said Tom, at length. "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso. The dust's a fright."
"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson. "Now, the bull-ring over at Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera—especially for 'Carmen'—which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight, anyway. Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over there. I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension. If Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso. He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.
"But now," resumed he, "after they get done at El Paso, whatever they sing, the grub wagon will be located in the Sacramentos, while old Blauring, he goes on in advance and rides a little sign out near 'Frisco and other places, where Art is patronized copious. Yes, friend, 'Annie Laurie,' she'll be up in Sacramentos; and from all I can figure, there'll be trouble in that particular health resort."
"Sometimes I think you're loco," said Tom Osby, slowly; "then again I think you ain't, quite. The man who allows he's any better than this country don't belong here; but I didn't think you ever did."
"No!" cried Dan Anderson. "Don't ever say that of me."
"Of course, I know folks is different," went on Tom Osby, presently. "They come from different places, and have lived different ways. Me, I come from Georgy. I never did have much chanct for edication, along of the war breakin' out. My folks was in the fightin' some; and so I drifted here,"
"You came from Georgia?" asked Dan Anderson. "I was born farther north. I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart's Desire. The only real friends I ever had are here.
"Now," he went on, "it's because I feel that way, and because you're going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next week to see if you can get a look at that 'Annie Laurie' woman—it's because of those things that I want to help you if I can. And that's the truth—or something resemblin' it, maybe.
"Now listen, Tom. Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she's not dead. She was a Georgia girl herself—Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she had naturally a wonderful voice. She went to Paris and Italy to study long before I came out West. She first sang in Milan, and her appearance was a big success. She's made thousands and thousands of dollars."
"About how old is she?" asked Tom Osby. "I should think about thirty-five," said Dan Anderson. "That is, countin' years, and not experience."
"I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both."
"Well, she came from Georgia—"
"And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually.
Dan Anderson was troubled. His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's.
"It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far."
"I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly understanding. "I can make it in less'n a week."
"Tom," cried Dan Anderson, "don't!"
But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a country which held real men.
"Do you know, Dan," said he, "if I could just onct in my life hear that there song right out—herself singin', words and all—fiddles, like enough; maybe a pianny, too—if I could just hear that! If I could just hear—that!"
"Tom!"
They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke. "There is some folks," said he, "that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of the folks that can't do things for keeps. Some fellers has to just drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else common and useful—world's sort of fixed up that way, I reckon. But folks that can do things for keeps—I reckon they're right proud, like."
"Not if they really do the things that keep. That sort ain't proud," said Dan Anderson.
"Now, I can just see her a-settin' there," went on the freighter. "It sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around."
"She was maybe standin' up."
"She was a-settin' there," said Tom Osby, frowning; "right there at the pianny herself. Can't you see her? Don't you ever sort of imagine things yourself, man?"
"God forbid!" said Dan Anderson. "No, I can't imagine things. That's fatal—I try to forget things."
"Well," said Tom Osby, "I reckon I've been imaginin' things. Now, there she's settin', right at the pianny, and sort of lettin' her fingers run up and down—"
"Tra-la-loo-loo, loo-loo-la-la?" said Dan Anderson.
"Sure. That's just it. Tra-la-la-loo, loo-la-la-la, up and down the whole shootin' match. And she sings! Now what does she sing? That song about Gingerbread? That Mobile song? No, not none. It's 'Annie Laurie' she sings, man, it's 'Annie Laurie'! Now, I freighted to El Paso before the railroad, and I know them boys. They'll tear up the house."
"She'll be wearin' black lace and diamonds," said Dan Anderson, irrelevantly; "and when she breathes she'll swell up like a toy balloon. She'll bat her eyes. They got to do those things."
"Man," said Tom Osby, "there's times when I don't like you."
"Well, then, cut out the lace. I'll even leave off the diamonds."
"She's settin' right there," said Tom Osby, wagging his forefinger, "and she's dressed in white—"
"With a blue sash—"
"Sure! And she sings! And it's 'Annie Laurie'! And because I want my own share of things that's for keeps, though I ain't one of the sort that can do things for keeps, why, I want—why, you see—"
"Yes, Tom," said Dan Anderson, gently, "I see. Now, as you said, it's only a few days' drive, after all. I'm goin' along with you. There's watermelons near there—"
"You are loco!"
"Not yet," said his friend. "I only meant to point out that the best melons these embalmed Greasers raise in their little tablecloth farmin' operations is right down there in the valley at the foot of the Sacramentos. Now, you may have noticed that sometimes a fellow ought to cover up his tracks. What's to hinder you and me just takin' a little pasear down in toward the Sacramentos, on the southeast side, after a load of melons? They're better than cactus for the boys here. That's straight merchandisin', and, besides, it's Art. And—well, I think that's the best way.
"We don't all of us always get our share, Tom," resumed Dan Anderson; "we don't always get our share of the things that are for keeps; but it's the right of every man to try. Every once in a while, by just tryin' and pluggin' along on the dead square, a fellow gets something which turns out in the clean-up to be the sort that was for keeps, after all, even if it wasn't just what he thought he wanted."
"Then you'll go along?"
"Si, amigo! Yes, I'll go along."
They parted, Dan Anderson to seek his own lonely adobe. There he closed the door, as though he feared intrusion. The old restlessness coming over him, he paced up and down the narrow, cagelike room. Presently he approached a tiny mirror that hung upon the wall, and stood looking into it intently. "Fool!" he muttered. "Liar, and fool, and coward—you, you! You'll take care of Tom, will you? But who'll take care of you?"
He seated himself on the blanketed bed, and picked up the newspaper which he had brought home with him. He gazed long and steadily at it before he tore it across and flung it on the floor. It held more news than he had given to Tom Osby. In brief, there was a paragraph which announced the arrival in town of Mr. John Ellsworth, President of the new A. P. and S. E. Railway, his legal counsel, Mr. Porter Barkley, also of New York, and Miss Constance Ellsworth. This party was bound for Sky Top, where business of importance would in all likelihood be transacted, as Mr. Ellsworth expected to meet there the engineers on the location of the road.
"I ought not to go," said Dan Anderson to himself, over and over again. "I must not go . . . But I'm going!"
CHAPTER XI
OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with a Side-tracked Star
Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top, by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hills of the Sacramentos. The silence was unbroken by any music from the "heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did the two occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from the reticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent, and mountains ever looking down. The team of gnarled gray horses kept on their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouac after bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piled up at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tiny circle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire. At last the line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavily timbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountain cañons.
"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the country of old. "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've built their fool log hotel. It beats the dickens how these States folks, that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way of livin'. Why didn't they build it out of boards? They've got a saw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in these mountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with. Folks that builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain't got no boards. But these States folks always was singerler."
By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwing out the blanket rolls upon the ground. "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie' machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattling of brass against the wagon box. But his companion heeded him little, casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great horn swung wide, disconsolately.
"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'. It ain't the real thing.
"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to do like you said you would. Of course, I know melons don't grow up here in the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you was comin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
Dan Anderson looked at him queerly. "Wait," said he; "it'll be night before long. Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around a little. If you get scared, come back, and I'll—I'll take care of you. I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right on in alone, you know. Tell her you know her preserved songs, and liked them so much you just had to come down here. Tell her about the watermelons. Tell her—"
"You're actin' a leetle nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby, keenly. "But you watch Papa. I been married four times, or maybe five, so what's a woman here or there to me? What is there to any woman to scare a feller, anyway?"
"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;—"there isn't—of course there isn't, of course not. You're perfectly safe. Why, just go right on up. Have your sand along!"
"Sure," said Tom Osby. "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trail after a while."
And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on the wagon tongue. "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back. "If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and view the remains."
Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top. She was in effect a prisoner. El Paso seemed like a dream, San Francisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spot upon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space. She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face that which boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor. Unhappy Peruchini! He started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now resumed.
"How dare you!" cried the diva. "How dare you intrude on me?"
"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini. "What service is zere here? I knock, but you do not hear. Madame, what horror is zis place!"
"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage. "The beast! How dare he bring me here—me!" (she smote her bosom)—"who have sung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent—in Italy, Paris, London, St. Petersburg! I shall not survive this!"
"Perfide!" cried Peruchini, in assent. "Perfide! R-r-rascal! Cochon! Pig unspikkab'!"
"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for the scene. "Behole! It is I who have lofe you so long. To lofe—ah, it is so divine! How can you riffuse?"
Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity. "Never!" she cried. "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this. I bid you go. Begone!"
"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling. "I vill not be teniet! Your puty, it is too much! Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret? Py Heaven, I—"
With a swift motion he grasped her wrists. Color rose to the Donatelli cheek. Her eyes flashed. She was about to sing. She checked herself in time. "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined. And now the log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to light for them this unusual stage. They did not hear the door open behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack servant been directed thither.
The door did open. In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced. He was dressed in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which did not disguise him nor the region which was his home. His boots were new, sharp at toe and heel. His hat, now removed, was new, but wide and white. His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat, neither did white collar confine his neck.
A quick glance took in the scene before him. A little dark man was contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty that he had ever seen or dreamed. Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into the room. There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice that brought an instant conviction. This—this was the Voice that he had worshipped! This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights afar in the desert lands. She was assailed. She was beset. There swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life in that comer of the world. In a flash his weapon leaped from its scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby. "Leggo! What are you doin' there? Break, now, and git out. This ain't right."
And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion. Tom Osby from that instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence. Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for warlike action rather than that now grown needful.
Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of wide-eyed astonishment. She had read in certain journals wild stories of doings of wild men. Was that sort of thing actually true?
"Sir," she said, "how dare you!" At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length. "I didn't know anybody was in here. I just come in lookin' for somebody."
She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep, dark eye, studying him curiously.
"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom. "I'm camped down the hill by the spring. I left my compadre there. I—I belong to Heart's Desire, up north of here. I—I come along in here this mornin'. They said there wasn't any one in the parlor—they said there might be some one in the parlor, though, maybe. And I was—I was—ma'am, I was lookin'—I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand against its edge. "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice. "From Heart's Desire? What an exquisite name! Where is it? What is it? That sounds like heaven," she said.
"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't. The water supply ain't reg'lar enough. It's just a little place up in the mountains. Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something like a hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!" And he laughed so sudden and hearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out of all her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing. It seemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matter where one found them.
"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was her habit when perturbed. "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much. It's mostly men."
"But how do you live? What do you do?"
"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that. But now you mention it, I can't say I really know. The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
"But yourself?"
"Me? I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire. There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon. We held a co'te there, onct. You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for a good many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of the country. Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to the States. Some stayed. And it's—why, I can't rightly explain it to you, ma'am—but it's—it's Heart's Desire."
The face of the woman before him softened. "It's a beautiful name," said she. "Heart's Desire!" She said it over and over again, wistfully. The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocable loss. "Heart's Desire!" she whispered—"I wonder—
"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what do you do at Heart's Desire?"
"Nothing," said Tom Osby. "I just told you, I reckon."
"Do you have any amusements? Are there ever any entertainments?"
"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
She threw back her head and laughed. There rose before her the picture of a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart, saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't do no good. Why—I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'ry singers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more. We couldn't afford it. Onct we had a singin'-school teacher. Fellow by the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music. He used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.' Used to have a daughter, and she sung, too. Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.' They made quite a lot of money holdin' singin'-school. The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and that broke up the singin'-school. There ain't been any kind of show at Heart's Desire for five years. But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about that feller that had hold of you when I come in. Did he hurt you any?"
"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini! He's a great artist." She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter. "No, don't bother him. We'll need him out on the Coast. Don't you know, we are just here in the mountains for a little while."
"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking back into his seat. "I always did. They always remind me of the Smokies, in Car'lina, back South."
"You came from the South?"
"Georgy, ma'am."
"Georgia! So did I! We should be friends," she said, and, smiling, held out her hand. Tom Osby took it.
"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you. I've not been back home for a good many years. I've been all over."
"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly. "I've been all over, too. But now, what brought you here? Tell me, did you want to see me?"
"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply. "I said that's why I come!"
"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing? Ah, I wish that were not impossible."
"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby. "Though, of course, the boys would do anything for you they could. What we want in Heart's Desire—why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again, everything. Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe we was just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled. "Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it. Up at Vegas I heard a funny sort of singin' machine. It had voices in it. Ma'am, it had a Voice in it. It—it sung—" he choked now.
"And some of the songs?"
Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes. She flushed like a girl as he nodded gravely. "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath. "It reconciles me to selling my art in that way. No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he. "I knew you sung it. Ma'am, I played her all the way from Vegas down."
"But why did you come?" She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll. The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you. I just come to see you, or to hear you, I can't rightly tell which. It must have been both." Now he arose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently. "Ma'am," he went on, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me. And I knowed that a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spot in her heart. I come to hear you sing. There's things that us fellers want, sometimes."
The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on. "You'll have to sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct, before I went away from home."
The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it herself, unconsciously.
"My friend," said she, "you're right. I reckon I'll have to sing."
"When?" said Tom Osby.
"Now," said Alice Strowbridge. She rose and stepped toward the piano open near the fire.
The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion. A splendid creature, bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang in public as a child. The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land. The red rose at her hair—the rose got from some mysterious source—half trembled. Fear, a great fear—the first stage fright known in years—swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. There sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire—a place where men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that which was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her, what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floor she stopped, her hand at her throat.
"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding, "for me to do this-a-way. It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you to try to oblige a feller like me. But, ma'am, all I can say is, all the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it. Tom Osby grew more confident, more bold.
"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the things you are singin' right then. Ain't that so?"
"We have many costumes," said she, simply. "We play many parts. Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume to go along with that?"
"You mean—"
"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right white." He blushed and hastened to apologize. "Not sayin' anything against that dress you've got on," he said. "I never saw one as fine as that in all my life. I never saw any woman, never in all my life, like you. I—I—ma'am"—he flushed, but went on with a Titanic simplicity—"I worship you, right where you stand, in that there dress; but—could you—"
"You are an artist yourself!" cried she. "Yes! Wait!"
In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening. In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared. The rich black laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone. She was clad in simple white—and yes! a blue sash was there. The piled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids. By the grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her that night. For once in many years she was sincere. Now she was a girl again, and back at the old home. Those were the southern mountains half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days, swinging up again. There was the gallery at the window of the old Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth—Youth, the unspeakable glory of Youth—it all was hers once more! The souls of a thousand Georgia mocking-birds—the soul of that heritage which came to her out of her environment—lay in her throat that hour.
And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor—nay, perhaps, after all, to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls—she sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat crumpled up, shaken, undone.
She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she could not deprive herself of her own little triumph. Or perhaps, deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear. She sang first the leading arias of her more prominent operatic roles. She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance on a critical stage. "Nobil signors," she sang, her voice lingering. And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in her rendition. Melody after melody, score after score, product of the greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never definitely realized what privilege had been his. She slipped on and on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no florid triviality from any land. With a voice which had mastered the world, she sang the best of the masters of the world. So music, with all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there in the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano broke, dropped, and paused. And then, with no more interlude, that great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie Laurie." At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery. Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to the hotel. Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never got even so far as the door. The voice of Donatelli caught and held him as it had her other auditor. He stopped midway of the gallery, listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away, returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines. He started even at the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the little fire. He could not sleep. A face looked at him out of the dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens. The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a Face that was the Fairest.
He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time. It was Tom Osby, who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure on the camper's bed. Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that his companion was not asleep.
"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back home with us."
"Passengers?" A voice came from the blankets.
"Yes. Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin' train from El Paso. Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow, Barkley, I believe his name is. I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
Deep silence greeted this. Tom reached forward and picked up a brand to light his pipe more thoroughly.
"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to take care of me."