ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an
Ananias with Spurs_
Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the
bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and
hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed. The mad horse,
Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears
back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an
antelope. The two swept down the long cañon from Heart's Desire,
traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed
then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle
thieves and those who pursued them. At last they swung down into the
beautiful valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to the
southward, until at length they reached the defiles of the Sacramentos.
They pulled up after more than a day and a night of travel, weary but
not hopelessly the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up the
mountains to the Sky Top hotel.
Curly, a trifle gaunt, gave his first attention to his horse, which he
unsaddled with a slap of approval, and turned loose to feed as best it
might on the coarse herbage of the upper heights. His next thought was
for himself, and he realized that he was hungry. Immediately there
dawned upon his mind another great conviction. He was scared!
He looked about at the long galleries of the ornate modern log house,
wherein civilization sought to ape the wilderness; but it was not the
arrogant pretentiousness of the building itself which caused him to
shift his glance and stand dubiously upon one foot. It was the thought
of what the edifice might contain. There, as he began too late to
reflect, was the queen! He, the trusted henchman, was bearing to her a
missive regarding whose nature he now experienced sudden misgivings.
Suppose Willie, the sheepherder, had not, after all, been able to meet
the requirements of a situation so delicate and so important! Curly
had known the plains and the mountains all his life. He had ridden in
the press of the buffalo herd in the Panhandle, had headed cattle
stampedes in the breaks of the Pecos, had met the long-toed cinnamon
bear all over these mountains that lay about him--had even heard the
whisper of hostile lead as part of his own day's work,--but never
before had his heart failed him.
Nevertheless, his face puckered into a frown of determination, he
stumbled, a trifle pigeon-toed in his high-heeled boots, across the
floor of one gallery after another, and knocked at one door after
another, until finally, by aid of lingering Mexican servants, he found
himself in the presence of the beautiful queen whom he had sought.
He ratified her title when she came toward him where he stood, twirling
his hat in his hands; so tall was she, so grave and dignified, yet so
very sweet and simple. Curly was a man, and he felt the spell of
smooth brown hair and wide brows, and straight, sincere eyes; not to
speak of a queen's figure clad in such raiment as had not often been
given Curly to look upon. He gazed in a frank admiration which
lessened his fear.
Constance Ellsworth held out her hand, with questions for his own
household at Heart's Desire. Was everything right with them? Was
Arabella quite well of her accident? Was his wife well? And so on.
But all the time she questioned him deeper with eyes large, wistful,
eager. She had had no news since leaving Heart's Desire, and now she
dreaded any. This, then, she said with tightening heart, was news, but
fatal news, long withheld. Had Dan Anderson come back unhurt from his
sheriff's errand, there would have been no message at all, and silence
would have been sweeter than this certainty of evil. This messenger,
reticent, awkward, embarrassed, brought her news of Dan Anderson--of
the boy whom she had loved, of the man she loved, debonair, mocking,
apparently careless, but, as she herself knew, in his heart indomitably
resolved. Now he was gone forever from her life. He was dead! She
could never see him again. Ah! why had they not used the days of this
life, so brief, so soon ended? It was of his death that the messenger
must speak.
Curly, already sufficiently perturbed, witnessed all this written on
her face, stumbled, stammered, but was unable to find coherent speech;
although he saw plainly enough the subterfuge with which even now the
girl sought to hedge herself against prying eyes that would have read
her secret. She began again, to ask him of his family, the same
questions. "Is anything wrong?" she demanded. In some way they were
seated before he could go on.
"It ain't the twins, ma'am," he began. "I got--I got a letter for you.
It's from him--from us--that is, I got a letter from Mr. Anderson--Dan
Anderson, you know."
He fumbled in his pocket. The girl, thoroughbred, looked him straight
in the face, pale, meeting what she felt to be the great moment of her
life.
"Then he's alive! He must be!"
Curly shook his head; meaning that he was feeling in the wrong pocket.
"He is dead! And I did not see him. He--went away--" Her chin
quivered. "Tell me," she whispered, "tell me!"
Curly, busy in his search for the letter, lost the tragedy of this.
"Tell me, _tell_ me, how did it happen?"
"Well, ma'am, he ain't hurt so awful," remarked Curly, calmly. "He
just got a finger or so touched up a little, so's he couldn't write
none to speak of, you see."
Her heart gave a great bound. She feared to hope, lest the truth might
be too cruel; but at length she dared the issue. "Curly," said she,
firmly, "you are not telling me the truth."
"I know it, ma'am," replied Curly, amiably; he suddenly realized that
he was not making his own case quite strong enough. "The fact is, he
got hurt a _leetle_ bit worse'n that. His hand, his _left_--no, I
mean his _right_ hand got busted up plenty. Why, he couldn't cut his
own victuals. The fact is, it's maybe even a little worse'n that."
"Tell me the truth!" the girl demanded steadily. "Is his arm gone?"
"Sure it is," replied Curly, cheerfully, glad of assistance. "Do you
reckon Dan Anderson would be gettin' _anybody_ to write to _you_ for
him if he had even a piece of a arm left in the shop? I reckon not!
He ain't that sort of a _man_."
Curly's sudden improvement gave him courage. "The fact is, ma'am,"
said he, "I got to break this thing to you kind of gentle. You know
how that is yourself."
"I know all about it now," she said calmly. "I knew he would not come
back--I saw it in his face. It was all because of that miserable
railroad trouble that he went away--that he didn't ever come. It was
all my own fault--my fault,--but I didn't mean it--I didn't--"
Curly, for the first time in his life, found himself engaged in an
important emotional situation. He rose and gazed down at her with
solemn pity written upon his countenance.
"Ma'am," he said, "I don't like to see you take on. I wish't you
wouldn't. Why, I've seen men shot like Dan Anderson is, bullets clean
through the middle of their body, and them out and frisky in less'n six
weeks."
"He _will_ live?"
"Oh, _well_," and Curly rubbed his chin in deliberation, "I can't say
about _that_. He _might_ live. You see, there ain't no doctor at
Heart's Desire. The boys just took care of him the best they could.
They brung him home from quite a ways off. They--they cut his arm off
easy as they could, them not bein' reg'lar doctors. They--they sewed
him up fine. He was shot some in the fight with the Kid's gang, out to
the Piños Altos ranch. The sherf tole me hisself Dan was as game a man
as ever throwed a leg over a saddle. When he got back from takin' the
Kid up to Vegas, the sherf--that's Ben Stillson--he starts down to
Cruces. Convention there this week, ma'am. Ben, he allowed he'd get
Dan Anderson nomernated for Congress--that is, if he hadn't 'a' got
killed."
"I knew he was a brave man," said the girl, quietly. "I've known that
a long time."
"You didn't know any more'n us fellers knowed all along," said Curly.
"There never was a squarer, nor a whiter, nor a gamer man stood on
leather than him. He come out here to stay, and he's the sort that we
all wouldn't let go of. Some of 'em goes back home. He didn't. What
there was here he could have. For one while we thought he was throwin'
us down in this railroad deal, but now we know he wasn't. We done
elected him mayor, and right soon we're goin' to elect him something
better'n that--if they ain't started it already over to Cruces--that
is, I mean, if he ever gets well, which ain't likely--him bein' dead.
Now I hate to talk this-a-way to you, ma'am; I ought to give you this
letter. But I leave it to you if I ain't broke it as gentle as any
feller could."
Curly saw the bowed head, and soared to still greater heights.
"Ma'am," said he, "I don't see why you take on the way you do. We all
know that you don't care a damn for Dan Anderson, or for Heart's
Desire. Dan Anderson knowed that hisself, and has knowed it all along.
_You_ got no right to cry. You got no right to let on what you don't
really feel. I won't stand for that a minute, ma'am. Now I'm--I'm
plumb sincere and _truthful_. No frills goes." There was the
solemnity of conscious virtue in his voice as he went on.
"I'm this much of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you
don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson. That's everdent. I
ain't in on that side of the play. I'm just here to say that, so far
as he's concerned _hisself_, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any
minute of his life for _you_."
She flung upward a tearful face to look at him once more.
"He just worships the place where your shadow used to fall at, that's
all," said Curly, firmly. "He don't talk of nothing else but you,
ma'am."
"How dare he talk of me!" she flashed.
"Oh, that is--well, that is, he don't talk so blamed much, after
_all_," stammered Curly. "Leastwise, not none now. He's out of his
head most of the time, now."
"Then you've not told me everything, even yet," exclaimed she,
piteously.
"Not quite," said Curly, with a long breath; "but I'm a-comin' along."
"He's dying!" she cried with conviction. Curly, now taking an
impersonal interest in the dramatic aspect of the affair, solemnly
turned away his head.
"Ma'am," said he, at length, "he thought a heap of you when he was
alive. We--we all did, but _he_ did special and private like. Why,
ma'am, if you'd come and stand by his grave, he'd wake up _now_ and
welcome you! You see, I am a married man my own self, and Tom Osby,
he's been married copious; and Tom and me, we both allowed just like I
said. We knew the diseased would have done that cheerful--if he had
any sort of chanct."
The girl sprang up. "He's not dead!" she cried, and her eyes blazed,
her natural courage refusing to yield. "I'll not believe it!"
"I didn't ast you to, ma'am," said Curly. "He ain't plumb dead; he's
just threatened. Oh, say, you've kind of got me rattled, you see.
I've got a missage--I mean a missive--anyways a letter, from him. I
had it in my pants pocket all the time, and thought it was in my coat.
Them was the last words he wrote."
She tore the letter from his hand, and her eyes caught every word of it
at the first glance.
"This is not his letter!" she exclaimed. "He never wrote it! It's not
in his hand!"
"Ma'am," said Curly, virtuously grieved, "how could you! I didn't
_say_ he wrote it. He had to have a amanyensis, of course,--him
a-layin' there all shot up. Nobody _said_ it was his handwriting It
_ain't_ his handwritin'. It's his _heart_writin'. They sign it with
their _hearts_, ma'am! Now I tell you that for the truth, and you can
gamble on _that_, anyways.
"I think I had better go away. I'm hungry, anyhow," he added, turning
away.
"Soon!" she said, stretching out her hand. "Wait!" her other hand
trembled as she devoured the pages of the message to the queen. Her
cheeks flushed.
"Oh, _read_ it, ma'am!" said Curly, querulously. "Read it and get
sorry. If you can read that there letter from Dan Anderson--signed
with his heart--and not hit the trail for his bedside, then I've had a
almighty long ride for nothing."