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

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 heartwritin'. 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."

CHAPTER XXVI THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better

As Curly stumped away, his spurs clinking on the gallery floor, he encountered Mr. Ellsworth, who held out his hand in recognition.

"I just heard some one was down from the town," he began. "How are you, and what's the news?"

"Mighty bad," said Curly, "mighty bad." Then to himself: "O Lord! I'm in for it again, and worse. I'd a heap rather lie to a woman than a man—it seems more natural."

"Bring any word down with you from up there?" asked Ellsworth. Curly nodded. "I brung a letter," said he.

"That so? What's it about?"

"Well, sir, it bein' a letter to a lady—"

"You mean my daughter? Now, what—"

"Yes, it's for her," admitted Curly; "but it's personal."

"Well, I didn't know but it might be news from that young man, Anderson. You know he went with the posse. Do you happen to know?"

"You ask her. It is, though."

"Did he send you down here?"

"I'm almighty hungry; I ain't had no breakfast, nor nothing." Whereupon Curly bolted.

Ellsworth, disturbed, went in search of Constance. He found her, a crumpled and pathetic figure. The news then had, indeed, been bad!

"Now, now, child," he began, "what's up here? You've a letter, the man tells me."

She covered it with her hand as it lay in her lap. "Is it from him, young Anderson?" he asked. She nodded.

"It's written by a friend of his," she answered presently. "He himself couldn't write. He was too—ill."

"Sent for you?" His voice was grave.

"Yes," she whispered, "when it was too late."

"We'll go," he said with decision. "Get ready. Maybe there is some mistake."

"Don't," she begged, "there is no mistake. I knew it would happen; I felt it."

"By Jove, I hope it's not true; I was beginning to think a good deal of that boy myself."

Constance was passing through the door on her way to her room. She turned and blazed at him. "Then why didn't you talk that way before?"

She disappeared, and left him staring after her, through the open door.

An hour later a buckboard, driven by a silent Mexican, rolled down the Sky Top cañon, bound for the northern trail.

Curly finished his breakfast, and then went out in search of his horse, which presently he found standing dejectedly, close where it had been left, apparently anchored by the reins thrown down over its head and dragging on the ground. Curly seated himself on the ground near by and addressed his misanthropic steed in tones of easy familiarity.

"Pinto," said he, "you remind me of a heap of folks I know. You think them reins holds you, but they don't. They ain't tied to nothing. You're just like them, hitched tight to