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Title: Heart's Desire
Author: Emerson Hough
Release Date: February 24, 2005 [eBook #15159]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART'S DESIRE***
E-text prepared by Al Haines
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
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.
This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the Girl from Kansas
This continuing the Relation of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the Girl from Kansas; and introducing Others
Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig of the Man from Kansas
Continuing the Story of the Pig from Kansas, and the Deep Damnation of his Taking Off
This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding Loneliness of Adam
How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to the Interest of All, and the Embarrassment of Some
Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a Craven Adam
This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy Legs
How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions of Croquet and Other Pastimes
How Tom Osby, Common Carrier, caused Trouble with a Portable Annie Laurie
Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by Mere Chance collided with a Side-tracked Star
Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same
This describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way with a Maid
Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern Capital and Able Corporation Counsel
This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed Horse
Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable Considerations
Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens, and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator
How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events
Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman the Jew
How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken
The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work, and a Man's Medicine
The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience in Foreign Parts
Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby
This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen
The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an Ananias with Spurs
The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better
"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
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