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

Of all present, Curly seemed the happiest. "Didn't see the Littlest Girl?" he asked. McKinney shook his head.

"Well, I guess I'll be gettin' up to see about my wagon before long," said Tom Osby, rising and knocking his pipe upon his boot-heel. "I've got a few cans of stuff up here in my load that I don't really need. In the mornin', you know—well, so long, boys."

"I heard that Jim Peterson killed a deer the other day," suggested Dan Anderson. "I believe I'll just step over and see if I can't get a quarter of venison for those folks."

"Shore," said McKinney, "I'll go along. No, I won't; I'll take a pasear acrost the street and have a look at a little stuff I brung up from the ranch yesterday."

"No Christmas," said Curly, staring ahead of himself into the tobacco smoke, and indulging in a rare soliloquy. "No Christmas dinner—and this here is in Ameriky!"

It is difficult to tell just how it occurred; but presently, had any one of us turned to look about him, he must have found himself alone. The moonlight streamed brilliantly over the long street of Heart's Desire. . . . The scarred sides of old Carrizo looked so close that one might almost have touched them with one's hand. . . .

It was about three miles from the street, up over the foot-hills, along the fiat cañon which debouched below the spring where lay the snowbank. There were different routes which one could take. . . .

I knew the place very well from Curly's description, and found it easy to follow up the trickle of water which came down the cañon from the spring. Having found the spring, it was easy to locate the spot in the snowbank where the oysters had been cached. I was not conscious of tarrying upon the way, yet, even so, there had been feet more swift than mine. As I came up to the spring, I heard voices and saw two forms sitting at the edge of the snowbank.

"Here's another one!" called out Dan Anderson as I appeared; and forthwith they broke into peals of unrighteous laughter. "You're a little slow; you're number three; Mac was first."

"I thought I heard an elk as I came up," said I, as I sat down beside the others and tried to look unconcerned, although plainly out of breath.

"Elk!" snorted McKinney, as he arose and walked to the other edge of the snowbank. "Here's your elk tracks." McKinney, foreman on Carrizoso, was an old range-rider, and he was right. Here was the track, plunging through the snow, and here was a deep hole where an elk, or something, had digged hurriedly, deeply, and, as it proved, effectively.

"Elk!" said McKinney again, savagely. "Damn that cow puncher! He took to his horse, 'course he did, and not one of us thought of ridin'. Who'd ever think a man would ride up here at all, let alone at night? Come on, fellers, we might as well go home."

"Well, I'm pleased to have met you, gentlemen," said Anderson, lighting a philosophic pipe, "and I don't mind walking back with you. It's a trifle lonesome in the hills after dark. Why didn't you tell me you were coming up?" He grinned with what seemed to us bad taste.

When we got down across the foot-hills and into the broad white street of Heart's Desire, we espied a dark figure slowly approaching. It proved to be Tom Osby, who later declared that he had found himself unable to sleep. He had things in his pockets. By common consent we now turned our footsteps across the arroyo, toward the cabin where dwelt the family from Kansas.

The house of the man from Leavenworth was lighted as though for some function. There were no curtains at the windows, and even had there been, the shock of this spectacle which went on before our eyes would have been sufficient to set aside all laws and conventions. With hands in pockets we stood and gazed blankly in at the open window. There was a sound of revelry by night. The narrow Mexican fireplace again held abundance of snapping, sparkling, crooked pinon wood. The table was spread. At its head sat the next postmaster; near him a lately sorrowful but now smiling lady, his wife, the woman from Kansas. The elder daughter was busy at the fire. At the right of the man from Leavenworth sat none less than Curly, the same whose cow pony, with bridle thrown down over its head, now stood nodding in the bright flood of the moonlight of Heart's Desire. At the side of Curly was the Littlest Girl from Kansas, and she was looking into his eyes.

It was thus that the social compact was first set on in the valley of Heart's Desire.

A vast steaming fragrance arose from the bowl which stood at the head of the table. In the home of the girl from Kansas there was light, warmth, comfort, joy. It was Christmas, after all.

"By the great jumpin' Jehossophat!" said Tom Osby, "them's our oysters!"

"And to think," mused Dan Anderson, softly, as we turned away,—"we fried ours!"

CHAPTER III TRANSGRESSION AT HEART'S DESIRE Beginning the Cause Celebre which arose from Curly's killing the Pig of the Man from Kansas

A great many abdomens have been injured in the pastime known as the "double roll." Especially has this been the case with persons not native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof. Even those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man seized with a purpose of attaining speed and efficiency with firearms, did not always reach that smoothness and precision in the execution of this personal manoeuvre which alone could render it safe to themselves or impressive to the beholder. The owner of this accomplishment was never apt to find himself much crowded with company, in the way either of participants or spectators. Yet the art was a simple and harmless one, pertaining more especially to youth, enthusiasm, and the fresh air of high altitudes, which did ever evoke saltpetreish manifestations.

The evolution of the "double roll" is executed by taking a six-shooter—let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the East—upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is pointed away from the operator's person and not toward it.

It is best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty weapon. Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way, and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the weight of the heavy gun being commonly sufficient to pull back the trigger and so discharge the piece. When the ambitious soul has learned to do this "roll" with one empty gun, he may try it with two empty guns. If he finds it possible thus to content himself, it will perhaps be all the better for him. To stand upright, with a gun in each hand, even an empty gun, and so revolve the same while its own cylinder is revolving, is not wholly easy, though when one has finally gotten both hemispheres of his brain into accord with his forefingers, he will ever thereafter be able to understand fully the double revolution of the earth upon its axis and around the sun; provided always that he is able to perform the "double roll" without hitch or break, pulling right and left forefinger alternately and rapidly until he has heard what in his tentative case must be a series of six double clicks.

This performance with an empty six-shooter is but a pale and spiritless form of the sport of high altitudes. Instead there should be twelve reports, so closely sequent as to sound as one string of explosion. Thus executed the game is a fine one, the finer for being risky. So to stand erect, with an eight-inch Colt in either hand, each arm at full length, one gun shooting joyously down the centre of the street of your chosen town, the other shooting as cheerfully up the same street—to do this actually, with bark of powder and attending puffs of dust cut—this is indeed delightsome when the heart is full of red blood, and the chest swells with charged wine o' life, and the eyes gleam and the muscles harden for very search of some endeavor immediate and difficult! It is the more delightsome when this moment of man-frenzy finds one in such a town as was this of Heart's Desire; where, indeed, a man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of the joy of living. To own this little world, to live free of touch or taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of the free sky—to live in Heart's Desire and be a man—ah! would that were possible for all of us to-day! Were it so, then assuredly we should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain, perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll."

Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a salary of forty-five dollars a month. He had already, less than two months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.

Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom, as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the public that all was well. Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly, pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow advance—ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,—a grunting, fat, conceited pig,—arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn—tell me, if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the "double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over its back, what, as a man, would you do? What, as a man, could you do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been known? Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig—but then, the matter is absurd! There is but one answer. It was right—indeed, it was inevitable—that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second place he felt