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.