CHAPTER XII
THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same
In the morning the travellers arose with the sun, and after breakfast Tom Osby began methodically to break camp as though preparing for the return up-country. Neither made reference to any event occurring since their arrival, or which might possibly occur in the near future. Dan Anderson silently watched his partner as he busied himself gearing up his horses. All was nearly ready for the start on their journey down the east side of the Sacramentos, when they heard afar a faint and wheezy squeak, the whistle of a railway train climbing up the opposite slope.
"There's the choo-choo cars," said Tom, "comin' a-rarin' and a-pitchin'. The ingine has to side-step and back-track about eight times to get up the grade. Didn't notice my old grays a-doin' that none, when we come up, did you? I'm the railroad for our town, and I've got that one beat to a frazzle. Now listen to that thing, Dan; that's the States comin' to find us out." Dan Anderson made no reply.
"Well, let her come," Tom resumed cheerfully; "I come from Georgy, and in that country, it ain't considered perlite to worry if you've got one square meal ahead. Which, by the way, reminds me that that's about all we've got ahead now. You just set here with the team a while, while I take a pasear down the cañon to see if I can get a deer for supper to-night. I hope the old railroad ain't scared 'em all away. Besides, we might as well stay here for a hour or so anyway, now, and see what the news is, since the cars has got in."
He tapped the muzzle of his old rifle against the wagon wheel to shake out the dust, and then took a squint into the barrel. "I can see through her," he said, "or any ways, halfway through, and I reckon she'll go off." Next he poked the magazine full of cartridges, and so tramped off down the mountain side.
Dan Anderson sat down on a bundle of bedding, and fell into a half dream in the warm morning sun. There was time even yet for him to escape, he reflected. He had but to step into the wagon, and drive on down the cañon. Constance Ellsworth—if indeed it were true that she had come again so near to him—need never know that he had been there. How could he learn if she had indeed come? How could he ever face her now? Surely she could never understand. She could only despise him. Dan Anderson sat, irresolute, staring at the breakfast dishes piled near the mess-box ready for packing.
Meantime, in the dining room at Sky Top hotel, there was a certain flutter of excitement as there entered, just from the train, the party of Mr. Ellsworth, president of the new railway company now building northward. Ellsworth beckoned Porter Barkley to him for talk of business nature, so that Constance sat well-nigh alone when Madame Alicia Donatelli came sweeping in, tall, comely, sombre, and, it must be confessed, hungry. Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of class other than her own.
"And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli, catching a remark made by one of the men. "I wish I could go as well. You go by buckboard?"
Constance nodded. "I like it," said she. "I am sure we shall enjoy the ride up to Heart's Desire."
"Heart's Desire?" repeated the diva, with an odd smile.
Constance saw the smile and challenged it. "Yes," she replied briefly, "I was there once before."
"What is it like?" asked Donatelli.
"Like nothing in the world—yet it's just a little valley shut in by the mountains."
"A man was here from Heart's Desire last night," began Donatelli. "You know, I am a singer. He had heard in some way. My faith! He came more than a hundred miles, and he said from Heart's Desire. I've wondered what the place was like."
The Donatelli face flushed hotly in spite of herself. A queer expression suddenly crossed that of Constance Ellsworth as well. She wondered who this man could be!
"It was just a couple of campers who travelled down by wagon," explained the diva. "Only one of them came up to the house. Their camp is by the springs, a half mile or so down the east side. He told me they had no music at Heart's Desire."
In the heart of Constance Ellsworth there went on jealous questionings. Who was this man from Heart's Desire, who had come a hundred miles to hear a bit of music? What other could it be than one? And as to this opera singer, surely she was beautiful, she had charm. So then—
Constance excused herself and returned to her room. She did not even descend to say farewell to Donatelli and her bedraggled company, who steamed away from Sky Top slopes in the little train whose whistlings came back triumphantly. She admitted herself guilty of ignoble joy that this woman—a singer, an artist, a beautiful and dangerous woman as she felt sure—was now gone out of her presence, as indeed she was gone out of her life. But as to this man from Heart's Desire, how came it that he was not here at the hotel, near to his operatic divinity? Why did he not appear to say farewell?
Ellsworth and Barkley betook themselves to the gallery after breakfast, and paced up and down, each with his cigar. "I ordered our head engineer, Grayson, to meet us," said Ellsworth, "and he ought to be camped not far away. I told him not to crowd the location so that those Heart's Desire folks would get wind of our plans. For that matter, we don't want to take those men for granted, either. Somehow, Barkley, I believe we've got trouble ahead."
"Nonsense!" said Barkley. "The whole thing's so easy I'm almost ashamed of it."
"That last isn't usually the case with the Hon. Porter Barkley," Ellsworth observed grimly.
Barkley laughed a strong, unctuous laugh. He was a sturdy, thick-set man, florid, confident, masterful, with projecting eyebrows and a chin now beginning its first threat of doubling. Well known in Eastern corporation life as a good handler of difficult situations, Ellsworth valued his aid; nor could he disabuse himself of the belief that there would be need of it.
"If I don't put it through, Ellsworth," reiterated Barkley, biting a new cigar, "I'll eat the whole town without sugar. If I failed, I'd be losing more than you know about." He turned a half glance in Ellsworth's way, to see whether his covert thought was caught by the suspicion of the other. The older man turned upon him in challenge, and Barkley retreated from this tentative position.
"Maybe you can do it," said Ellsworth, presently, "but I want to say, if I'm any judge, you've got to be mighty careful. Besides, you've never been out here before. We'll have to go slow."
"Why'll we have to? I tell you, we can go in and take what we want of their blasted valley, and they can't help themselves a step in the road."
"I don't know," demurred Ellsworth. "They're there, and in possession."
"Nonsense!" snorted Barkley. "How much title have they got? You say yourself they've never filed a town-site plat. We can go in there and take the town away from under their feet, and they can't help themselves. More than that, I'll bet there's not one mining claim out of fifty that we can't 'adverse' in the courts and take away from its dinky locater. These fellows don't work assessments. They never complete legal title to a claim. There never was a mine in the Rocky Mountains that was located and proved up on without a fight, if it was worth fighting for. Bah! we just walk in and see what we want, and take it, that's all."
"Well," said Ellsworth, "it's the best-looking deal I've seen for a long while, that's sure, and I don't see how it's been covered up so long. And yet if you come to talk of law-suits, I've noticed it a dozen times that when Eastern men have gone against these Western propositions, they've got the worst of it. They're a funny lot, these natives. They'll live in a shirt and overalls, without a sou marqué to bless 'emselves with. They'll holler for Eastern Capital, and promise Eastern Capital the time of its life, if it'll only come; and when Eastern Capital does come—why, then they give it the time of its life!"
"Nonsense," rejoined Barkley, walking up and down with his hands under the tails of his coat. "We'll eat 'em up. I'm not afraid of this thing for a minute. What I want to do now is to get in touch with that Grayson fellow, the head engineer."
"I'm not so sure about that," commented Ellsworth, seating himself in the sun at the edge of the gallery. "If you want to see the real head engineer of this whole Heart's Desire situation, the man you want isn't Grayson, but a young fellow by the name of Anderson, a lawyer up there."
"Lawyer?"
"Yes, and I shouldn't wonder if he was a pretty goodish one, too. Oh, don't think these people are all easy, Barkley, I tell you. This isn't my own first trip out here."
"What about this lawyer of yours?"
"Well, he's a young man that I knew something about before he went West. He knows every foot of the ground up there, and every man that lives there, and I want to tell you, he's got the whole situation by the ear. That gang will do pretty hear what he tells them to do. He's got nerve, too. He's the most influential man in that town."
"Oh, ho! Well, that's different. I'm always right after the man who's got the goods in his pocket. We'll trade with Mr. Anderson mighty quick, if he can deliver the goods. What does he hold out for? What does he want?"
"Well, I don't know. He talked to me rather stiff, up there, and we didn't hitch very well. He sort of drifted off, and I didn't see him at all the day I left, when I'd laid out to talk to him. He's the fellow that put me on to this deal, too. It was through him I got word there was coal in that valley."
"How would it do to charter him for our local counsel? Is he strong enough man for that?"
"Strong enough! I'm only afraid he's too strong."
"Well, now, let's not take everything for granted, you know. Let's go at this thing a little at a time. There's got to be a system of courts established in here, and we've got to know our judiciary, as a matter of course. Then we've got to know our own lawyers, as another matter of course. Did you say you knew him before, that is, to get a line on him, before he came out here?"
Ellsworth colored just a trifle. "Well, yes," he admitted. "He's a Princeton man. He comes of good family—maybe a little wild and headstrong—wouldn't settle down, you know. Why, I offered him a place in my office once, and he—well, he refused it. He started out West some five years ago. Of course—well, you know, in a good many cases of this sort, there's a girl at the bottom of the Western emigration."
"What girl?" asked Porter Barkley, sharply.
"One back East somewhere," said Ellsworth, evasively.
Porter Barkley came and seated himself beside the older man, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, meditatively crumbling a bit of bark in his hands.
"I was just going to say, Mr. Ellsworth," said he, "that a girl in a case like this—always provided that this man is as influential as you think—may be a mighty useful thing. Maybe you couldn't buy the man for himself, but you could buy him for the girl. Do you see?"
Ellsworth did not answer.
"He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley. "He wants to go back East with a little roll. Now, we give him a chance to make good. We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing. For the sake of going back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap of things for us. You've seen it a thousand times yourself. A woman can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work. Now, Ellsworth, you furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me. I'll deliver Heart's Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to think he is."
Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling his bits of bark in the sunshine.
CHAPTER XIII
BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way with a Maid
Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred piñon sticks. So deep was his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the camp and come in on that side of the mountain. Then he looked up. It was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries by day, the face that he had seen but now—the "face that was the fairest"! He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him once more for his unreadiness. Then he sprang up and stared the harder—stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her father and a well-groomed stranger.
The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and heightened color upon another man.
When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a walk in the morning's sun. If it had been in her mind to discover the mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself. But now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva of the stage! The consciousness flashed upon her sharply. Despite her traitorous coloring, she greeted him but coolly.
Porter Barkley, noticing some things and suspecting others, drew a breath of sudden conviction. With swift jealousy he guessed that this could be none other than the man to whom Ellsworth had referred,—Anderson, the lawyer of Heart's Desire. Why had not Ellsworth told him that Constance also knew him? Porter Barkley ran his eye over the tall strong figure, the clean brown jaw, the level eyes, sizing up his man with professional keenness. He instantly rated him as an enemy dangerous in more ways than one.
After the first jumbled speeches of surprise, Ellsworth introduced the two. Maugre his coatless costume, Dan Anderson was Princeton man upon the moment, and Barkley promptly hated him for it, feeling that in the nature of things the stranger should have been awkward and constrained. Yet this man must, for business reasons, be handled carefully. He must be the business friend, if the personal enemy, of Hon. Porter Barkley, general counsel for the A. P. and S. E. Railway.
The States had come to Sky Top, as Tom Osby had said, and this group, gathered around a mountain fireside, became suddenly as conventional as though they had met in a drawing-room. "Who could have suspected that you were here, of all places, Mr. Anderson?" Constance remarked with polite surprise.
"Why, now, Dolly," blundered Mr. Ellsworth, "didn't the hotel fellow tell you that some one had come down from Heart's Desire to hear the latest from grand opera—private session—chartered the hall, eh? You might have guessed it would be Mr. Anderson, for I'll warrant he's the only man in Heart's Desire that ever heard an opera singer before, or who would ride a hundred miles—that is—anyhow, Mr. Anderson, you are precisely the man we want to see." He finished his sentence lamely, for he understood in some mysterious fashion that he had not said quite the right thing.
"I am very glad to hear that," replied Dan Anderson, gravely, "I was just sitting here waiting for you to come along."
"Now, Mr. Anderson," resumed Ellsworth, "Mr. Barkley, here, is our general counsel for the railroad. He's going up to Heart's Desire with us in a day or so to look into several matters. We want to take up the question of running our line into the town, if proper arrangements can be made."
"Take chairs, gentlemen," said Dan Andersen, motioning to a log that lay near by. He had already seated Constance upon the corded blanket roll from which he himself had arisen. "I will get you some breakfast," he added.
"No, no," Mr. Ellsworth declined courteously. "We just came from breakfast. We were moving around trying to find our engineer's camp; Grayson, our chief of location, was to have been here before this. By the way, how did you happen to come down here, after all, Anderson?"
Dan Anderson was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue. He glanced at the battered phonograph which leaned dejectedly against a tree.
"As near as I can figure," said he, "I made this pilgrimage to hear a woman's voice." Saying which he leaned over and deliberately kicked the phonograph down the side of the hill.
"I hope you enjoyed it," commented Constance, viciously, her cheeks reddening.
"Very much," replied Dan Anderson, calmly, and he looked squarely at her.
Porter Barkley, quiet and alert, once more saw the glance which passed between these two. Into his mind, ever bent upon the business phase of any problem, there flashed a swift conviction. This was the girl! Here, miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom her father had referred! If so, there was certainly a solution for the riddle of Heart's Desire. Piqued as he was, his heart exulted. For the time his own jealousy must be suppressed. His accounting with Dan Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must handle the situation carefully—literally for what it is worth.
"As I was saying," continued Dan Anderson, "what's a breakfast or two among friends?"
"If it is among friends," replied Ellsworth, "and if you'll remember that, we'll eat with you."
In answer Dan Anderson began to kick together the embers of the fire and to busy himself with dishes. He was resolved to humiliate himself before this girl, to show her how absolutely unfit was the life of this land for such as herself.
Suddenly he stopped and listened, as there came to his ear the distant thin report of a rifle. Ellsworth looked inquiringly at his host.
"That's my friend, Tom Osby," explained Dan Anderson, "He went out after a deer. Tom and I came down together from the town."
"I presume you do have some sort of friends in here," began Barkley, patronizingly.
"I have never found any in the world worth having except here," replied Dan Anderson, quietly.
"Oh, now, don't say that. Mr. Ellsworth tells me that he has known you for a long time, and has the greatest admiration for you as a lawyer."
"Yes, Mr. Ellsworth is very fond of me. He's one of the most passionate admirers I ever had in my life," said Dan Anderson.
Barkley looked at him again keenly, realizing that he had to do with a quantity not yet wholly known and gauged.
Socially the situation was strained, and he sought to ease it after his own fashion. "You see," he resumed, "Mr. Ellsworth seems to think that he can put you in a way of doing something for yourself up at Heart's Desire."
It was an ugly thing for him to do under the circumstances, but if he had intended to humiliate the other, he met his just rebuke.
"I don't often talk business at breakfast in my own house," said Dan Anderson. "Do you use tabasco with your frijoles?"
"Oh, we'll get together, we'll get together," Barkley laughed, with an assumed cordiality which did not quite ring true.
"Thank you," Dan Anderson remarked curtly; "you bring me joy this morning."
He did not relish this sort of talk in the presence of Constance Ellsworth. Disgusted with himself and with all things, be arose and made a pretence of searching in the wagon. Rummaging about, his hand struck one of the round, gutta-percha plates which had accompanied the phonograph. With silent vigor he cast it far above the tree tops below him on the mountain side.
"That," he explained to Constance as he turned, "is the 'Annie Laurie' record of the Heart's Desire grand opera. The season is now over." The girl did not understand, but he lost the hurt look in her eyes. Irritated, he did not hear her soul call out to him.
"It's the luckiest thing in the world that you happen to be here." Mr. Ellsworth took up again the idea that was foremost in his mind. "You fit in like the wheels in a clock. We're going to run our railroad up into your town—I don't mind saying that right here—and we're going to give you plenty of law business, Mr. Anderson; that is to say, if you want it, and will take it."
"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, quietly. But now in spite of himself he felt his heart leap suddenly in hope. Suppose, after all, there should be for him, stranded in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, a chance for some sort of business success? Suppose that there should be, after all, some work for him to do? Suppose that, after all, he should succeed—that, after all, life might yet unfold before him as he had dreamed and planned! Unconsciously he stole a glance at the gray-clad figure on the blanket roll.
Constance sat cool, sweet, delicate but vital, refreshing to look upon, her gray skirt folded across her knees, the patent-leather tips of her little shoes buried in the carpet spread by the forest conifers. He could just catch the curve of her cheek and chin, the droop of the long lashes which he knew so well. Ah, if he could only go to her and tell her the absolute truth—if only it could be right for him, all his life, to tell her the truth, to tell her of his reverence, his loyalty, his love, through all these years! If, indeed, this opportunity should come to him, might not all of this one day be possible? He set his mind to his work, even as the girl held her heart to its waiting.
There came the sound of a distant whistle approaching up the trail, and ere long Tom Osby appeared, stumbling along in his pigeon-toed way, his rifle in the crook of his arm. Tom saluted the strangers briefly, and leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel. Dan Anderson made known the names of the visitors, and Tom immediately put in action his own notions of hospitality. Stepping to the wagon side he fished out a kerosene can, stoppered with a potato stuck on the spout. He removed the potato, picked up a tin cup, and proceeded calmly to pour out a generous portion.
"I always carry my liquor this way, gentlemen," said he, "because it's convenient to pour in the dark, and ain't so apt to get spilled. This here liquor sometimes makes folks forget their geogerphy. 'Missin' me one place, search another,' as Walt Whitman says. If a fellow gets a drink of this, he may take to the tall trees, or he may run straight on out of the country. You never can tell. Drink hearty."
Ellsworth and Barkley, for the sake of complacency, complied with such show of pleasure as they could muster.
"Now," said Tom, "I'll cook you a real breakfast. My compadre, here, can't drink and he can't cook."
"Three breakfasts before ten o'clock?" protested Constance.
But Tom was inexorable. "Eat when you get a chanct," he insisted. "That's a good rule."
Barkley drew Ellsworth to one side. "I can't figure these people out," he complained.
Ellsworth chuckled. "I told you you'd need help, Barkley," he said. "They've got ways of their own. You can't come in here and take that whole town without reckoning with the people that live there. Now suppose we get Anderson to himself and talk things over with him a little? We may not have another chance so good."
Ellsworth beckoned to Dan Anderson, and he readily joined them. The three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy of Tom Osby.
"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the knives by sticking them into the sand. "I don't reckon you do that way back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean."
"So this is the way men live out here?" mused Constance, half to herself.
"Mostly. You ought to see him"—he nodded toward Dan Anderson—"cook flap-jacks. The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home. We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe."
Constance missed the irrelevance of this. "I wonder," said she, gently, "how he happened to come out here—how any one happened to come out here?"
"In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as far away from Washington as he could—his mileage will amount to more. This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to Congress from." Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every feller come out here because of a girl somewheres. They allow that a woman sent most of us out here. For me, it was my fifth wife, or my fourth, I don't remember which. She never did treat me right, and her eyes didn't track. Yes, I'll bet, ma'am, without knowing anything about it, there was a girl back somewhere in Dan Anderson's early ree-cords, though whether it was his third or fourth wife, I don't know. We don't ask no questions about such things out here."
He went on rubbing sand around in the bottom of the frying-pan, but none the less caught, with side-long glance, the flush upon the brown cheek visible beneath its veil.
"I'm mighty glad to see you this mornin', ma'am," he went on; "I am, for a fact. It more'n pays me—it more'n pays him—" and he nodded again toward Dan Anderson, "for our trip down here. We wasn't expectin' to meet you."
"How did you happen to come?" asked Constance, feeling as she did so that she was guilty of treachery.
Tom Osby again looked her straight in the face. "Just because we was naturally so blamed lonesome," said he. "That is to say, I was. I allowed I wanted to hear a woman sing. It wasn't him, it was me. He come along to take care of me, like, because he's used to that sort of thing, and I ain't. He's my chaperoon. He didn't know, you know—didn't either of us know—but what I might be took advantage of, and stole by some gipsy queen."
"But—but the phonograph—"
Tom looked around. "Where is it?" he asked.
"Mr. Anderson kicked it down the hill."
"Did he? Good for him! I was goin' to do it my own self. You see, ma'am, I come down here to hear a song about Annie Laurie. I done so. Ma'am, I heard about a 'face that was the fairest.' Him? Was he surprised to see you-all this morning? Was, eh? Well, he didn't seem so almighty surprised, to my way of thinkin', last night when I told him you was comin' up here from El Paso. I don't know how he knowed it, and I ain't sayin' a word."
A strange lightening came to Constance Ellsworth's heart. The droop at the corners of her mouth faded away. She slid down off the blanket roll and edged along across the ground until she sat at his side. She reached out her hand for the skillet.
"That spider isn't clean in the least," said she.
"Oh, well," apologized Tom Osby, leaning back against the wagon wheel and beginning to fill a pipe. "I suppose there might be just a leetle sand left in it, but that don't hurt. Do you want a dish towel? Here's one that I've used for two years, freightin' from Vegas to Heart's Desire. Me and it's old friends."
"Let your dishes dry in the sun if you can't do better than that," reproved Constance. "Ah, you men!"
"You're right hard to get along with, ma'am. Us gettin' you two breakfasts, too!"
They looked into each other's faces and Constance laughed. "The air is delightful—isn't it a beautiful world?" she exclaimed joyously.
"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so. It's all in the way you look at things."
"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully explanatory.
"Yes, I know. You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good pasture. Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you out for a lunger. You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is very good, either. He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
She froze at this. "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly. "Here's me and him have flew down here as a bird to our mountings. We was wantin' to hear about a 'face that was the fairest.' We was a-settin' here, calm and peaceful, eating frijoles, who intruded? Was it us? Or, what made us intrude?" He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here. If I come and set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name of your pet dog. Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes, and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that time. That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any other fellow what I may think. It does mean that I'm goin' to see fair play."
The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even voice went on.
"How I know things is easy," he continued. "If you think he"—once more nodding his head toward the group beyond—"come down here to hear a op'ry singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't. That was me. He come to give me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see that he gets fair play in them same circumstances—"
"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why. "He's been ill a great deal. I've been alarmed about him. I always go with him."
"Of course. I noticed that. Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after. You come along just to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or cerebrus meningittus, or something else. I understood all that perfectly, ma'am. And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued, tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States, somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know, ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of reasonin'; for yore own face, ma'am,—and I ain't sayin' this with any sort of disrespect to any of my wives,—is about the fairest that Dan Anderson ever did or could see—or me either. I don't reckon, ma'am, that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."
Constance Ellsworth turned squarely and gazed hard into the eyes of the man before her. She drew a breath in sharply between her lips, but it was a sigh of content. She felt herself safe in this man's hands. Again she broke into laughter and flung herself upon the convenient frying-pan, which she proceeded to scrub with sudden vigor. Tom Osby's eyes twinkled.
"Whenever you think that skillet's clean enough, us two will set up and cook ourselves some breakfast right comfterble. As for them fellers over there, they don't deserve none."
So presently they two did cook and eat yet again. A strange sense of peace and content came to Constance, albeit mingled with remorse. She had suspected Dan Anderson of worshipping at the shrine of an operatic star, whereas he had made the long journey from Heart's Desire to see herself! She knew it now.
"I'm goin' to take you up to the hotel, ma'am," said Tom Osby, after Constance had finished her third breakfast, "and then, after that, I'm goin' to take Dan Anderson back home to Heart's Desire. We'll see you up there after a while.
"One thing I want to tell you, ma'am, is this. We've got along without a railroad, all right, and we ain't tearin' our clothes to have one now. If that railroad does get into our town, it's more'n half likely that it'll be because the boys has took a notion to you. I never did see you before this mornin'; but the folks has told me about you—Curly's wife, you know, and the rest. We'd like to have you live there, if only we thought the town was good enough for you. It's been mostly for men, so far."
CHAPTER XIV
THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern Capital and Able Corporation Counsel
Tom Osby and Constance walked up the trail toward the hotel, and Dan Anderson from a distance saw them pass. He watched the gray gown move through sun and shadow, until it was lost beyond the thickening boles of mountain pines. She turned once and looked back, but he dared not appropriate the glance to himself, although it seemed to him that he must rise and follow, that he must call out to her. She had been there, close to him. He had felt the very warmth of her hand near to his own. There flamed up in his soul the fierce male jealousy. He turned to this newcomer, this man of the States, successful, strong, fortunate. In his soul was ready the ancient challenge.
But—the earth being as it is to-day, a compromise, and love being dependent upon property, and chastity upon chattels, and the stars of the Universe upon farthing dips—though aching to rise and follow the gray gown, to snatch its wearer afar and away into a sweet wild forest all their own, Dan Anderson must sit silent, and plan material ways to bring the gray gown back again to his eyes according to the mandates of our society. Because the gray gown was made in the States, he must forget the lesson of Curly and the Littlest Girl. Because the wearer of the gown lived in the States, he must pull down in ruins the temple of Heart's Desire. Such is the sweet logic of these days of modern progress, that independence, friendship, faith, all must yield if need be; even though, and after all, man but demands that himself and the woman whom he has sought out from all the world may one day be savage and sweet, ancient and primitive, even as have been all others who have loved indeed, in city or in forest, from the beginning of the world.
"As Mr. Ellsworth has told me," went on Porter Barkley, "you are an able man, Mr. Anderson,—far too able to be buried down here in a mountain mining town."
"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, sweetly; "that's very nice of you."
"Now, I don't know what induced you to hide yourself out here—" went on Barkley, affably.
"No," replied Dan Anderson, "you don't. As for myself personally, it's no one's damned business. I may say in a general way, however, that the prevailing high prices of sealskins and breakfast food in the Eastern States have had a great deal to do with our Western civilization. The edge of the West is mostly inhabited by fools and philosophers, all mostly broke."
"I think I follow you," assented Barkley; "but I'd rather classify you as a philosopher."
"Perhaps. At least I am not fool enough to talk about my own affairs. You say you are here to talk business. It is your belief that I understand some of the chemical constituents of the population of Heart's Desire. Now, in what way can we be useful to each other?"
Ellsworth broke in, "It's as Barkley says; I've been watching you, Mr. Anderson, and I've had an interest in you for quite a while."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, I have. I want to see you win out. Now, if you won't go to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to you. If you won't go back and live in the States, we will have to bring the States to you; and they'll follow mighty quick when the railroad comes, as you know very well."
"My friend Tom Osby used those very words this morning, when he heard the whistle of your esteemed railroad train."
"Precisely," Ellsworth went on. "We'll give you a town to live in. We'll give you professional work to do."
"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work? That's very nice of you, indeed."
"Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested Ellsworth, testily. "Have we asked you to do anything but straight business?"
"Exactly," said Barkley.
They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face did not show it. They were putting him in the balance against Heart's Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it. They were making Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did not divulge it, as he sat and looked at them.
"Gentlemen," said he, at length, "I am a lawyer, the best one in Heart's Desire. The law here is complex in practice. The titles are very much involved. Between Chitty on Pleading and the land grants of the Spanish crown, the law may be a very slow and deliberate matter in this country. Now, I understand the practice. I speak the language—I don't need an interpreter—so that I am probably as good as any lawyer you can secure at this time. In straight matters of business I am open for employment."
"Now you are beginning to talk," said Barkley. "And just to get right down to business, and show you we're not all talk, I want to give you a little retainer fee. I'm sorry it isn't larger, but it'll grow, I hope." He drew a goodly wallet from his breast pocket, and counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, which he threw down carelessly on the pine needles in front of Dan Anderson. "Is that satisfactory?" he asked.
"Yes," said the latter; but he did not take up the money.
"Oh, there'll be more," suggested Mr. Ellsworth. "This business ought to net you between five and ten thousand dollars this year. It might mean more than that if we got into town without a fight."
"That would be about the only way you would get in at all," and Dan Anderson smiled incomprehensibly.
"Exactly! And now, since you are our counsel—" Barkley spoke with an increased firmness—"we want to know your idea on the right-of-way question. What's the nature of the titles in that town, anyhow?"
"As near as I can tell," replied Dan Anderson, "since you retain me and ask my legal opinion, the fundamental title to the valley of Heart's Desire lies in the ability of every fellow there to hit a tin can at forty yards with a six-shooter. There's hardly a tin can in the street that you could cook a meal in," he added plaintively.
"I see," said Barkley, his laughter a little forced. "But now, I heard there never was a town site filed on."
"There was a story," replied Dan Anderson, ruminatingly, "that Jack Wilson laid out a town there soon after he made the Homestake strike. He had McDonald, the deputy surveyor, plat it out on a piece of brown paper,—which was the only sort they had,—and Jack started over with the plat to file at the county seat. He got caught in a rain and used the paper to start a fire with. After that he forgot about it, and after that again, he died; so there never was any town site. The boys just built their houses where they felt like it; and since then they have been so busy about other things—croquet, music, embroidery, antelope hunting, and the like—that they haven't had time to think about town lots or town sites, or anything of that sort."
Barkley's eyes gleamed. "That will simplify matters very much," said he.
"You really do need local counsel," Dan Anderson observed. "On the contrary of that, it will complicate matters very much."
"Well, we'll see about that," rejoined Barkley, grimly. "We'll see if a little mining camp can hold up a railroad corporation the size of this! But why don't you put your money in your pocket? It's yours, man."
Dan Anderson slowly picked up the bills, folded them, and tucked them into a pocket. "This," said he, "is a great deal more than the entire circulating medium of Heart's Desire. I'm likely to become a disturbing factor up there."
"That's what we want you to become," said Barkley. "We know there're a lot of good mining claims in there, especially the coal lands on the east side of the valley. It isn't the freight and passenger traffic that we're after—we want to get hold of those mines. Why, the inside gang of the Southern Pacific—you'll keep this a professional secret, of course—has told us that they'll take coal from us for their whole system west of Houston. In a couple of years there'll be a town there of eight or ten thousand people. Why, man, it's the chance of your life. And here's Mr. Ellsworth putting you in on the ground floor."
Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.
"By the way," began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer's blue-print map, "one of the first things we want to settle is the question of our depot site. The only place we can lay out our side tracks is just at the head of the cañon, and at the lower end of the valley. Do you know anything about this house here? It's the first one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley."
Dan Anderson bent over the map. "Yes, I know it perfectly," said he. "That's the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down with me from Heart's Desire. He just went up the trail with your daughter, sir."
"The yards'll wipe him out," said Barkley.
"The valley is so narrow," went on Ellsworth, "according to what our engineers say, that we've got to clean out the whole lower part of the town, in order to lay out the station grounds."
Dan Anderson started. The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.
"The trouble with your whole gang," resumed Barkley, striking a match on a log, "has been that you've been trying to stop the world. You can't do that."
Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many months, the crack of the whip of modern progress. Yet, before his eyes he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his young manhood.
"I'll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen," said he, at length, rising; "we'll talk it over up at the town itself. I don't know just what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my opinion force isn't the way to go about it."
"Well, we'll use force if need be; you can depend on that!" said Barkley, harshly. "I've got to get back home before long, and it will be up to you after that."
He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the clinging dust and pine needles. The three turned towards the trail and walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky Top edifice.
"Quite a house, isn't it?" said Ellsworth, admiringly.
Dan Anderson did not look at the building. Constance was sitting alone at the edge of the gallery. Wishing nothing so much in the world as to go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.
Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him. They seemed to call out to him to pause, to return. The whispering of the pines called over and over to him, "Constance! Constance!"
Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still whispering. At the edge of the opening he paused unseen. He saw the girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley, laughing gayly and walking across the gallery. Each had offered her an arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most natural one in the world. Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose, solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very end of all the world.