Heart's Desire

ost through the Strange Pe

r of the hotel consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might rest if very weary from one caus

s. No one could be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all wealth, as was very well known. To many this may seem a restricting and narrowing feature; but, a

ens of weapons. Excellent weapons they were, too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills, none the less were very clean about the barrels and

ess he needed to eat, as Uncle Jim also knew very well. There were no printed rules or regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel. There was no hotel register. There were no questions ever asked. Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his duty, was to feed men

tered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed! "Get 'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better." The young man "got 'round" the beefsteak. Perhaps it was the feeling about the butter, which of itself was a thing unusual. At any rate, as he went out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door. This act meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer existed. The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good. The intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was right" was silently and

rly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of better days. The financial situati

o all-had come to look into the gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real h

id Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel. "Lately organiz

know. I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country to you right at once, sir. You see, it's different. Now, out h

law and

y of order, and not the

cou

hy, we haven't even a town organization-not a town o

him suddenly. "Where's

. Now that you've come, with t

at's just talk. I'm not

fond of beefsteak. There won't be much else till Tom Osby gets back from Las Vegas with

n hour later he went out on the street with his host, whose conduct thus far, he was forced to admit, had been irreproachable. They strolled up the rambling street, past many

ty and might get poisoned. You have to do these things gradually, till you get immune. Now, under my bed, I've got a bottle which n

er," demurred Ellsworth, "but, ahem

er felt himself in some fashion at a disadvantage before this penniless adventurer, this young man

," he spoke after a long period of si

ensuous, you know." Ellsworth looked at him without any comprehension, from him to the bed with blankets, and the bare ta

, who was now on his hands and knees and searching under the bed.

real ones. All the female earth, Mr. Ellsworth, comes fro

what muffled under the bed, but now emer

ter all, he was not a bad judge of men. "How long

ple of yea

ve never

h, Mr. Ellsworth-the health of the man who told me not to come around his house-told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and

his knees. He looked at Dan Anderson steadily. "You've got me guess

N

rospects you find here. For instance, about ho

the county-seat? There is no law cour

es

ty-eight dollars and

ha

a heap of money

or tobacc

in the least, did you ever come that near to corralling the whole visible supply of cash in your own town? Moreover, I am attorney for the men who own the coal-mines. I'm the lawyer for both the gold mills. We've got one or two mine

in his pockets, wondering. "But why?" he demanded sternly, "why? What are you doing o

quality in his voice, "I think that'll about d

is no plac

looking at him calmly. "Now let me tell you one thing," said he. "If you heard of our coal-mines here through me, at least I didn't ask you to

,"-began

re might be somethi

s there

just as much here as there i

He turned suddenly to the young man. "I'll tell you," said he. "There's something to you-I don't

u ever stop to think that y

ortal soul on your hat-rack? Me live scared of my life, like all the rest of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that

t out here?" repeated

his hand to the mountains, and an unconscious s

sworth, feeling around for the neck of

somewhere near our valley if you have luck later. I'm going to be your kind and loving partner in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you. You watch me.

Ellsworth. "You talk as though I were

ll of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like yourself. You're Glad Tidings in this town. You couldn't walk to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys would offer you. You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes. You wouldn't know where you were; and when you

er-" said Mr. Ellswort

ey'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of you. Everybody w

very terrible about me

Adam was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreadi

y dear sir, you s

her," said Dan A

least bit in the world. She could only see what I wasn't doing. I knew what I was going to do, and I know it now." There was a gravity and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through th

, her coming is a little inopportune. You see, Mr. Ellsworth, the morning

and in his discomfort murmured somethi

taken you back to Uncle Jim's, I am going over there-alone. Wait till I get my coat. I don't wear it very

alone, he met Curly coming the other way. Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expres

new girl is the absolute limit. She dropped in just like we'd

. It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl. "I was just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and ever

alf-wistfulness in his voice, yet she rose and joined him. All human beings in Heart's Desire th

he end of this pipe, where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of her own. Here th

enjoyed your stroll along the boulevard. I hope, also, that

eek flushing; "you shall not rail

ted herself. Presently Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat in silence. The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old Carrizo, there rose the burnis

" the girl spoke at length,

sweeping his hand toward the mounta

autiful," she

a man who'll learn something in such a place as this. I don't k

she whisper

seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life of five years ago-almost,

in his speech she could not tell, but she f

ley of Heart's Desire, now bathed in the full flood

ere," he said, "right at this very place, a thousand

rld," she whi

power to control. "It is Eden, it is Paradise, bu

d heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered. Now, beneath a limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world-in this Eden which they two alone occupied-she heard him, the man whom in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in v

red, his face close to hers. "Yo

ude of an Eden incomplete! She turned to him trembling, her lips ha

reveller-far down the street, a tawdry, unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just. Dan Anderson turned to look down the long str

I saying?" he mur

ent citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodde

s was past and gone! The light of the moon lay ghostly over all t

ude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of Heart's Desire. It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in which he had lived. For a woman-for her-for this sweet girl of a gent

g herself from the lassitude which su

say. Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not know that in her

," she said, as he turned back at le

crossed on the heavens the long red line of a shooting star. Dully he wa

o. Far off, along the pathway of the morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the

as his own misdirected life-a wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion. Longer he