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.