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HEART'S DESIRE
The Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two
Fortunate Lovers
A Novel by EMERSON HOUGH
Author of _The Mississippi Bubble_, _The Law of the Land_, _The Girl at
the Half Way House_, etc
[Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1905, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Copyright, 1903, BY OUT WEST COMPANY.
Copyright, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY.
Copyright, 1905, BY EMERSON HOUGH.
Copyright, 1905, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1905. Reprinted November,
1905: January, April, 1907; November, 1908.
Norwood Press
J. B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
Girl from Kansas_
CHAPTER II
THE DINNER AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
Girl from Kansas; and introducing Others_
CHAPTER III
TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig
of the Man from Kansas_
CHAPTER IV
THE LAW AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of
his Taking Off_
CHAPTER V
EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
Loneliness of Adam_
CHAPTER VI
EVE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to
the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some_
CHAPTER VII
TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a
Craven Adam_
CHAPTER VIII
THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
Legs_
CHAPTER IX
CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions
of Croquet and Other Pastimes_
CHAPTER X
ART AT HEART'S DESIRE
_How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie
Laurie_
CHAPTER XI
OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by Mere Chance collided with a
Side-tracked Star_
CHAPTER XII
THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE
_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_
CHAPTER XIII
BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way
with a Maid_
CHAPTER XIV
THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern
Capital and Able Corporation Counsel_
CHAPTER XV
SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed
Horse_
CHAPTER XVI
THE PARTITION OF HEART'S DESIRE
_Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable
Considerations_
CHAPTER XVII
TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens,
and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator_
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
_How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events_
CHAPTER XIX
COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman
the Jew_
CHAPTER XX
MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken_
CHAPTER XXI
JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work,
and a Man's Medicine_
CHAPTER XXII
ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience
in Foreign Parts_
CHAPTER XXIII
PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding
Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby_
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and
their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen_
CHAPTER XXV
ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
Ananias with Spurs_
CHAPTER XXVI
THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
_The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much
Better_
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece: "He looked up--to see _her_ standing at his door!"
"'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the
game.'"
"A voice which sang of a face that was the fairest, and of a dark blue
eye."
"'Something has got to be did, and did mighty blame quick.'"
HEART'S DESIRE
CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
_This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the
Girl from Kansas_
"It looks a long ways acrost from here to the States," said Curly, as
we pulled up our horses at the top of the Capitan divide. We gazed out
over a vast, rolling sea of red-brown earth which stretched far beyond
and below the nearer foothills, black with their growth of stunted
pines. This was a favorite pausing place of all travellers between the
county-seat and Heart's Desire; partly because it was a summit reached
only after a long climb from either side of the divide; partly,
perhaps, because it was a notable view-point in a land full of noble
views. Again, it may have been a customary tarrying point because of
some vague feeling shared by most travellers who crossed this
trail,--the same feeling which made Curly, hardened citizen as he was
of the land west of the Pecos, turn a speculative eye eastward across
the plains. We could not see even so far as the Pecos, though it
seemed from our lofty situation that we looked quite to the ultimate,
searching the utter ends of all the earth.
"Yours is up that-a-way;" Curly pointed to the northeast. "Mine was
that-a-way." He shifted his leg in the saddle as he turned to the
right and swept a comprehensive hand toward the east, meaning perhaps
Texas, perhaps a series of wild frontiers west of the Lone Star state.
I noticed the nice distinction in Curly's tenses. He knew the man more
recently arrived west of the Pecos, possibly later to prove a
backslider. As for himself, Curly knew that he would never return to
his wild East; yet it may have been that he had just a touch of the
home feeling which is so hard to lose, even in a homeless country, a
man's country pure and simple, as was surely this which now stretched
wide about us. Somewhere off to the east, miles and miles beyond the
red sea of sand and _grama_ grass, lay Home.
"And yet," said Curly, taking up in speech my unspoken thought, "you
can't see even halfway to Vegas up there." No. It was a long two
hundred miles to Las Vegas, long indeed in a freighting wagon, and long
enough even in the saddle and upon as good a horse as each of us now
bestrode. I nodded. "And it's some more'n two whoops and a holler to
my ole place," said he. Curly remained indefinite; for, though
presently he hummed something about the sun and its brightness in his
old Kentucky home, he followed it soon thereafter with musical allusion
to the Suwanee River. One might have guessed either Kentucky or
Georgia in regard to Curly, even had one not suspected Texas from the
look of his saddle cinches.
It was the day before Christmas. Yet there was little winter in this
sweet, thin air up on the Capitan divide. Off to the left the Patos
Mountains showed patches of snow, and the top of Carrizo was yet
whiter, and even a portion of the highest peak of the Capitans carried
a blanket of white; but all the lower levels were red-brown, calm,
complete, unchanging, like the whole aspect of this far-away and
finished country, whereto had come, long ago, many Spaniards in search
of wealth and dreams; and more recently certain Anglo-Saxons, also
dreaming, who sought in a stolen hiatus of the continental conquest
nothing of more value than a deep and sweet oblivion.
It was a Christmas-tide different enough from that of the States toward
which Curly pointed. We looked eastward, looked again, turned back for
one last look before we tightened the cinches and started down the
winding trail which led through the foothills along the flank of the
Patos Mountains, and so at last into the town of Heart's Desire.
"Lord!" said Curly, reminiscently, and quite without connection with
any thought which had been uttered. "Say, it was fine, wasn't it,
Christmas? We allus had firecrackers then. And eat! Why, man!" This
allusion to the firecrackers would have determined that Curly had come
from the South, which alone has a midwinter Fourth of July, possibly
because the populace is not content with only one annual smell of
gunpowder. "We had trees where I came from," said I. "And eat! Yes,
man!"
"Some different here now, ain't it?" said Curly, grinning; and I
grinned in reply with what fortitude I could muster. Down in Heart's
Desire there was a little, a very little cabin, with a bunk, a few
blankets, a small table, and a box nailed against the wall for a
cupboard. I knew what was in the box, and what was not in it, and I so
advised my friend as we slipped down off the bald summit of the
Capitans and came into the shelter of the short, black pinons. Curly
rode on for a little while before he made answer.
"Why," said he, at length, "ain't you heard? You're in with our rodeo
on Christmas dinner. McKinney, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, the
other lawyer, and me,--we're going to have Christmas dinner at
Andersen's 'dobe in town to-morrer. You're in. You mayn't like it.
Don't you mind. The directions says to take it, and you take it. It's
goin' to be one of the largest events ever knowed in this here
settlement. Of course, there's goin' to be some canned things, and
some sardines, and some everidge liquids. You guess what besides that."
I told him I couldn't guess.
"Shore you couldn't," said Curly, dangling his bridle from the little
finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match. He
had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
_cigarrillo_. These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
from somewhere near the Rio Grande.
"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
paper going. "I reckon not in a hundred years. Champagne! Whole
quart! Yes, sir. Cost eighteen dollars. Mac, he got it. Billy
Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
railroad, which there wasn't. But Lord! that ain't all. It ain't the
beginnin'. You guess again. No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
scornfully. "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next. We got
a _cake_!"
"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
cake. Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
Dutch oven--they had to know how to do that or starve. But as to cake,
there was none could compass it. And I knew there was not a woman in
all Heart's Desire.
Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
trail among the pinons. "Heap o' things happened since you went down
to tend co'te," said he. "You likely didn't hear of the new family
moved in last week. Come from Kansas."
"Then there's a girl," said I; for I was far Westerner enough to know
that all the girls ever seen west of the Pecos came from Kansas, the
same as all the baled hay and all the fresh butter. Potatoes came from
Iowa; but butter, hay, and girls came from Kansas. I asked Curly if
the head of the new family came from Leavenworth.
"'Course he did," said Curly. "And I'll bet a steer he'll be
postmaster or somethin' in a few brief moments." This in reference to
another well-known fact in natural history as observed west of the
Pecos; for it was matter of common knowledge among all Western men that
the town of Leavenworth furnished early office-holders for every new
community from the Missouri to the Pacific.
Curly continued; "This feller'll do well here, I reckon, though just
now he's broke a-plenty. But what was he goin' to do? His team
breaks down and he can't get no further. Looks like he'd just have to
stop and be postmaster or somethin' for us here for a while. Can't be
Justice of the Peace; another Kansas man's got that. As to them two
girls--man! The camp's got on its best clothes right this instant,
don't you neglect to think. Both good lookers. Youngest's a peach.
I'm goin' to marry _her_." Curly turned aggressively in his saddle
and looked me squarely in the eye, his hat pushed back from his tightly
curling red hair.
"That's all right, Curly," said I, mildly. "You have my consent. Have
you asked the girl about it yet?"
"Ain't had time yet," said he. "But you watch me."
"What's the name of the family?" I asked as we rode along together.
"Blamed if I remember exactly," replied Curly, scratching his head,
"but they're shore good folks. Old man's sort o' pious, I reckon.
Anyhow, that's what Tom Osby says. He driv along from Hocradle cañon
with 'em on the road from Vegas. Said the old man helt services every
mornin' before breakfast. More services'n breakfast sometimes. Tom,
he says old Whiskers--that's our next postmaster--he sings a-plenty,
lifts up his voice exceeding. Say," said Curly, turning on me again
fiercely, "that's one reason I'd marry the girl if for nothing else.
It takes more'n a bass voice and a copy of the Holy Scriptures to make
a Merry Christmas. Why, man, say, when I think of what a time we all
are going to have,--you, and me, and Mac, and Tom Osby, and Dan
Anderson, with all them things of our'n, and all these here things on
the side--champagne and all that,--it looks like this world ain't run
on the square, don't it?"
I assured Curly that this had long been one of my own conclusions.
Assuredly I had not the bad manners to thank him for his invitation to
join him in this banquet at Heart's Desire, knowing as I did Curly's
acquaintance with the fact that young attorneys had not always
abundance during their first year in a quasi-mining camp that was
two-thirds cow town; such being among the possibilities of that land.
I returned to the cake.
"Where'd we git it?" said Curly. "Why, where'd you s'pose we got it?
Do you think Dan Anderson has took to pastry along with the statoots
made and pervided? As for Dan, he ain't been here so very long, but
he's come to stay. We're goin' to send him to Congress if we ever get
time to organize our town, or find out what county we're in. How'd our
Delergate look spreadin' jelly cake? Nope, he didn't make it. And
does it look any like Mac has studied bakery doin's out on the
Carrizoso ranch? You know Tom Osby couldn't. As for me, if hard luck
has ever driv me to cookin' in the past, I ain't referrin' to it now.
I'm a straight-up cow puncher and nothin' else. That cake? Why, it
come from the Kansas outfit.
"Don't know which one of 'em done it, but it's a honey," he went on.
"Say, she's a foot high, with white stuff a inch high all over. She's
soft around the aidge some, for I stuck my finger intoe it just a
little. We just got it recent and we're night-herdin' it where it's
cool. Cost a even ten dollars. The old lady said she'd make the price
all right, but Mac and me, we sort of sized up things and allowed we'd
drop about a ten in their recep_ti_cle when we come to pay for that
cake. This family, you see, moved intoe the cabin Hank Fogarty and Jim
Bond left when they went away,--it's right acrost the 'royo from Dan
Anderson's office, where we're goin' to eat to-morrer.
"Now, how that woman could make a cake like this here in one of them
narrer, upside-down Mexican ovens--no stove at all--no nothing--say,
that's some like adoptin' yourself to circumstances, ain't it? Why,
man, I'd marry intoe that fam'ly if I didn't do nothing else long as I
lived. They ain't no Mexican money wrong side of the river. No
counterfeit there regardin' a happy home--cuttin' out the bass voice
and givin' 'em a leetle better line of grass and water, eh? Well, I
reckon not. Watch me fly _to_ it."
The idiom of Curly's speech was at times a trifle obscure to the
uneducated ear. I gathered that he believed these newcomers to be of
proper social rank, and that he was also of the opinion that a certain
mending in their material matters might add to the happiness of the
family.
"But say," he began again shortly, "I ain't told you half about our
dinner."
"That is to say--" said I.
"We're goin' to have oysters!" he replied.
"Oh, Curly!" objected I, petulantly, "what's the use lying? I'll
agree that you may perhaps marry the girl--I don't care anything about
that. But as to oysters, you know there never was an oyster in Heart's
Desire, and never will be, world without end."
"Huh!" said Curly. "Huh!" And presently, "Is that _so_?"
"You know it's so," said I.
"Is that so?" reiterated he once more. "Nice way to act, ain't it,
when you're ast out to dinner in the best society of the place? Tell a
feller he's shy on facts, when all he's handin' out is just the plain,
unfreckled truth, for onct at least. We got oysters, four cans of 'em,
and done had 'em for a month. They're up there." He jerked a thumb
toward the top of old Carrizo Mountain. I looked at the snow, and in
a flash comprehended. There, indeed, was cold storage, the only cold
storage possible in Heart's Desire!
"Tom Osby brought 'em down from Vegas the last time he come down," said
Curly. "They're there, sir, four cans of 'em. You know where the
Carrizo spring is? Well, there's a snowbank in that cañon, about two
hundred yards off to the left of the spring. The oysters is in there.
Keep? They got to keep!
"Them's the only oysters ever was knowed between the Pecos and the Rio
Grande," he continued pridefully. "Now I want to ask you, friend, if
this ain't just a leetle the dashed blamedest, hottest Christmas dinner
ever was pulled off?"
"Curly," said I, "you are a continuous surprise to me."
"The trouble with you is," said Curly, lighting another cigarette, "you
look the wrong way from the top of the divide. Never mind about home
and mother. Them is States institooshuns. The only feller any good
here is the feller that comes to stay, and likes it. You like it?"
"Yes, Curly," I replied seriously, "I do like it, and I'm going to stay
if I can."
"Well, you be mighty blamed careful if that's the way you feel about
it," said Curly. "I got my own eye on that girl from Kansas, and I
serve notice right here. No use for you or Mac or any of you to be
a-tryin' to cut out any stock for me. I seen it first."
We dropped down and ever down as we rode on along the winding mountain
trail. The dark sides of the Patos Mountains edged around to the back
of us, and the scarred flanks of big Carrizo came farther and farther
forward along our left cheeks as we rode on. Then the trail made a
sharp bend to the left, zigzagged a bit to get through a series of
broken ravines, and at last topped the low false divide which rose at
the upper end of the valley of Heart's Desire.
It was a spot lovely, lovable. Nothing in all the West is more fit to
linger in a man's memory than the imperious sun rising above the valley
of Heart's Desire; nothing unless it were the royal purple of the
sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling
hills, which guarded it round about. In Heart's Desire it was so calm,
so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring. Perhaps
the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the
early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands. Perhaps again he
named it at sunset, and did so reverently. God knows he named it right.
There was no rush nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor
thieving there. Heart's Desire! It was well named, indeed; fit
capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they
might, that Life can be left aside when one grows weary of it;
dreaming--ah! deep, foolish, golden dream--that somewhere there is on
earth an Eden with no Eve and without a flaming sword!
The town all lay along one deliberate, crooked street, because the
_arroyo_ along which it straggled was crooked. Its buildings were
mostly of adobe, with earthen roofs, so low that when one saw a
rainstorm coming in the rainy season (when it rained invariably once a
day), he went forth with a shovel and shingled his roof anew, standing
on the ground as he did so. There were a few cabins built of logs, but
very few. Only one or two stores had the high board front common in
Western villages. Lumber was very scarce and carpenters still scarcer.
How the family from Kansas had happened to drift into Heart's
Desire--how a man of McKinney's intelligence had come to settle
there--how Dan Anderson, a very good lawyer, happened to have tarried
there--how indeed any of us happened to be there, are questions which
may best be solved by those who have studied the West-bound, the
dream-bound, the malcontents. At any rate, here we were, and it was
Christmas-time. The very next morning would be that of Christmas Day.