Heart's Desire by Emerson Hough (best free novels .TXT) 📖

the parlor. The hour of temptation, as is always the case, found all things well ordered for the success of evil.

"Everybody's gone," whispered Suzanne. "There ain't nobody here at all."

"Only Bill," said Arabella, looking at the parrot, which regarded them with a badly bored aspect. "I wonder if he'd tell?"

"Oh, dang it all!" remarked Bill; "I'm tired!"

"He's awful," remarked Arabella. "He swears. Folks that swears goes to the bad place. Besides, Bill wouldn't tell, would you, Bill?"

"He'll go to sleep," said Suzanne. "Besides, we ain't goin' to bite off only just a little bit of a bite! Nobody'll never notice it."

Twofold Eve edged up to the centre table. "You first," said Arabella.

"No, you."

"You first," insisted Arabella. "I'm afraid. Bill, he's lookin'."

"I ain't afraid," Suzanne asserted boldly, and stretched out her hand.

That was the time when the first heel disappeared. Even as Suzanne's white teeth closed upon it, the parrot gave a vast screech of disapproval. "Quork!" cried he. "Look out! Look out!" At which warning both the twins fled precipitately underneath the bed; whence presently their heads peered out, with wide and frightened eyes.

"I didn't have my bite," whimpered Arabella.

"It's only Bill!" Suzanne was disgusted with herself for running. "Come on. Who's afraid?" Arabella chose the toe of the other foot.

Thus it was that temptation, at first insidious, at length irresistible, had its way. The lustre paled and dimmed on one gaudily bepainted leg. The remaining heel disappeared. A slight nick became visible on the cap of the right knee.

"Well, I'll be darned!" said Curly, scratching his head, as he observed these developments.

"So'll I," remarked Bill, in frank friendship. "Ha! Ha!"

Curly looked at him pugnaciously for a moment. "For one cent, Bill," said he, "I'd wring your cussed green neck for you. I'll bet a hundred you're the feller that's been a-doin' all this devilment. Here you,—Susy—Airey,—have you seen Bill a-eatin' the ornyment?" Both the young ladies solemnly and truthfully declared that they had never noticed any such thing; and pointed out that parrots, in their belief, did not eat candy.

The next day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further. Only Bill was present when Arabella broke out into tears.

"What's the matter?" asked stout-hearted Suzanne.

"Why, we—we—we—can't eat it but once," mourned Arabella. "Now—now—now it's most gone! OO—oo—oo!"

"It's good," said Suzanne.

"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.

Suzanne evaded this question. "How can we help it, when it looks so pretty, and tastes so good? They ought to put 'em in a box. I c-c-can't help it!" And now tears broke from her eyes also. They leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept. But even as they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table, reached out toward the disfigured remnant. A week later the last bite was taken. The parlor table was bare and vacant. Heart's Desire, in all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!

That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of Whiteman's corral. "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he, gloomily. "The finish ain't far off. You all come on over across the arroyo with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."

It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the arroyo. They found Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in aprons full of piñon chips for the kitchen stove.

The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one in Heart's Desire. The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of the other room was swept clean, spick and span. A chair stood exactly against the wall. The parlor table—ah, appalling spectacle! the parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any sort whatever!

"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!" His hand instinctively reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.

"All over now!" remarked Bill. "All over! Too late! Quork!"

"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person. We got to look in his teeth."

"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson. "He hasn't got any teeth." The entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his honor.

Dan Anderson, his hands in his pockets, turned and strolled alone into the other room, and thence out of the door into the sunlight, where the twins were still continuing their unwonted industry at the chip pile. He stood and looked at them, saying no word, but with a certain smile on his face. A corner of each apron fell down, spilling the chips upon the ground. The other hand of each twin was raised as though to wipe a furtive tear. Dan Andersen put out his arms to them.

"Come here, little women," he said softly, and took them in his arms. One chubby face rested against each side of his own. His long arms tightened around them protectingly. Tears now began to wet his cheeks, falling from the eyes of the twins.

"You—you won't tell?" whispered Suzanne, in his right ear, and Arabella begged as much upon the left.

"No," said Dan Anderson, hugging them the tighter, "I won't tell."

"It's gone!" said Suzanne, vaguely.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's gone." He turned at the sound of voices. Curly appeared at the door, carrying in his hand a limp, bedraggled figure.

"That," said Dan Anderson, "I take to be the remains of our late friend Bill, the parrot. What made you, Curly?"

"Well," said Curly, defensively, as he held the body of Bill suspended by the head between two fingers, "I was lookin' for his teeth, to see if he had any candy in 'em, and he bit my finger nigh about off. So I just wrung his neck. Do you reckon he'd be good fried?"

"He'd like enough be tolerable tough," said McKinney. "Them parrots gets shore old."

"You ought to have some drugs to tan his hide," Doc Tomlinson volunteered hopefully. "It'd be right stylish on a hat."

Dan Anderson gazed at Curly with reproach in his eyes. "Now, I just wrung his neck," repeated the latter, protesting.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "and you've wrung the wrong neck. Bill was innocent."

"Then who done et the legs?"

"That," said Dan Anderson, "brings me again to the position which I enunciated this morning. In these modern days of engineers, mining companies, parrots, and twins, the structure of our civilization is so complex as to require the services of a highly intelligent corporation counsel. You ask who ate the candy ornament, representation, or image formerly existent on your premises. I reply that in all likelihood it was done by a corporation; but these matters must appear in court at a later time."

"Well," said McKinney, "it looks like the joke was on us."

Dan Anderson smiled gravely. "In the opinion of myself and the consolidation which I represent," said he, and he hugged the twins, who looked down frightened from his arms, "the joke is on Bill, the prisoner at the bar."

The group would have separated, had it not been for a sudden exclamation from Curly. "Ouch!" cried that worthy, and cast from him the body of Bill. supposedly defunct. "He bit me again, blame him!" said Curly, sucking his thumb.

"If he bit you for true," said McKinney, who was of a practical turn of mind, "like enough he ain't been dead at all."

Corroboration was not lacking. The prisoner at the bar, thrown violently upon the ground, now sat up, half leaning against a pinon log, and contemplated those present with a cynical and unfriendly gray eye.

"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, regarding him, "you get him a few drugs, and he'll be just as good as new, right soon."

"All I got to say," grumbled Curly, "is, for a thing that ain't got no teeth, and that's dead, both, he can bite a leetle the hardest of anything I ever did see."

"Yet it is strange," remarked Dan Anderson, "that the innocent bystander should sit up and take notice, after all. How are you feeling, friend?"

This to Bill, who was now faintly fanning a wing and ruffling up his yellow crest.

"I'm mighty tired," said Bill.

"I don't blame you," remarked Dan Anderson, cheerfully, turning to put down Suzanne and Arabella safe within the door, "but as corporation counsel I am bound to protect the interests of my clients. Run, you kids!

"As to you, Curly," he continued, "you represent, in your ignorance, ourselves and all Heart's Desire. We have intrusted to us a candy palladium of liberty, which, being interpreted, means a man's chance to be a grown man, with whiskers, in a free state of Heart's Desire. What do we do then? Ask in a railroad corporation, and shut our eyes!"

"And a corporation," said Curly, meditatively, "can be a shore cheerful performer."

CHAPTER IX CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions of Croquet and other Pastimes

"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot. Hurry up," said McKinney, who was nervous.

"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former. "This here croquet is a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin' to be hurried none."

"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson. "Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace to civilization."

"Pronto! Pronto! Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. There were certain features of the contest in question which were perhaps not usual. Indeed, I do not recall ever to have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls and blue shirts. But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed, with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the other.

"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for arguments of counsel. Curly, you are a disgrace. You and McKinney ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of savvy. Can't you hit that stake?"

"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly. "I ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me. If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over Carrizy Mountain that last carrom. You watch me when onct I get the hang of this thing."

"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney. "A cow puncher ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."

"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly. "Now you change around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you to a finish. Bet you three pesos. Of course, I can't play this thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot. I wonder what my mammy'd say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little wooden tack hammer."

"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an advertisement," said Dan Anderson.

"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flushing.

"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson. "I didn't figure on what it might do to our mortality tables. You fellows can't play the game wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns on. Here, all of you, come over here. The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game. I don't mind bein' umpire in the ancient and honorable game of