EVE AT HEART"S DESIRE
_How the Said Eve arrived on the Same Stage with Eastern Capital, to the Interest of All, and the Embarra.s.sment of Some._
The sun drew on across the enchanted valley and began to sink toward the rim of the distant Baxter Peak. The tremendous velvet robes of the purple evening shadows dropped slowly down upon the majestic shoulders of Carrizo, guardian of the valley. A delicious kindness came into the air, sweet, although no flower was in all that land, and soft, though this was far from any sea, unless it were the waters immeasurably deep beneath this sun-dried soil. There was no cloud even at the falling of the sun, but the gun had no harshness in his glow. There was a blue and purple mystery over all the world, and calm and sweetness and strength came down as it were a mantle. Ah, never in all the world was a place like this Eden, this man"s Eden of Heart"s Desire!
A gentle wind sighed up the valley from the narrow canon mouth, as it did every day. There was no variableness. Surprises did not come thither. The world ran always in one pleasant and unchanging groove.
But the breeze this evening brought no smile of content to Dan Anderson"s face as he sat waiting for the coming of the new and fateful visitor to our ancient Eden.
"They"ll be about at the Carrizoso Springs now," said Dan Anderson, "twelve miles away down the trail. Can"t you smell the cold cream?"
This was beyond ken, but he became more explicit. "Cold cream to the eyes and ears," said he. "To the untutored face, the sun of this heathen district is something sinful; and like enough she never heard of collodion for cracked lips in an alkali country. And a veil--oh, sacred spirits! that veil and its contents is now hatin" Carrizoso flats and all the inarticulate earth till fare-ye-well! Wrapped up to the topmast in a white veil,--or one of was-white,--gray travelling gown, common-sense boots. Gloves--ah, yes. And hate--hate--why, can"t you feel the simmerin", boilin" hatred of that States girl just raisin"
the temperature of this land of Canaan? Hate us? Why, she"ll be poisonous. Ninety miles in the sun, at ninety in the shade. Water once at the Mal Pais, and it alkali."
I reminded Dan Anderson that in view of his promise to absent himself at the time of the arrival of the Socorro stage, he was not conducting himself with the proper regard either to decorum or historical accuracy.
"I want to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go. I ought to go climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the lady and her dad. I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this faintness out of my legs. But somehow I can"t get started. I"d look well, tryin" to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn"t I? Man, haven"t you any sympathy?"
So we sat on a log out in front of Uncle Jim Brothers"s hotel, and waited for the worst to happen.
"Don"t you go away," said Dan Anderson. "I want you for my second.
You can go for the doctor. I ain"t feelin" very well."
Now, there was no doctor in Heart"s Desire, nor had there ever been, as Dan Anderson knew. Neither did he look in need of any help whatsoever.
He made no foolish masculine attempt at personal adornment, but his long figure, with good bony shoulders and a visible waist line, looked well enough in the man"s garb of blue shirt and belted trousers. A rope of hair straggled from under his wide hat; for in Heart"s Desire wide hats were worn of right and not in affectation. He was a manly man enough, in a place where weak men were rare. The one most vitally concerned in all the population of Heart"s Desire, he was now the one least visibly affected. All the rest of the settlement, suddenly smitten by the news that the stage was coming with Eastern Capital and a live Woman, had hastened under cover in search of coats and neckties.
Dan Anderson sat out on the street just as he had been, and watched the purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that which was to come to him. True, there was the slight moisture on his brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor.
For my own part, I remained unreconciled to these impending events.
"What will you do?" I asked Dan Anderson bitterly, "now that you"ve been a.s.s enough to allow this girl to come on down in here? You"ll have some one killed in this town before long. Besides, where can a white girl live in this place? There"s not a bedspread or a linen sheet in the whole town."
"You talk like a chambermaid," said Dan Anderson, scornfully. "Do you suppose a Wellesley girl, accustomed steady to high thinkin", can"t get along with a little plain livin" once in a while? As for women folks, why can"t Curly"s girl take care of her? Does a chance lady caller in this city need a _thousand_ women to entertain her? And blankets--why, you know well enough, that blankets are better after sundown here than much fine linen. Heart"s Desire"ll be here calm and confident after this brief pageantry has pa.s.sed from our midst."
As he spoke, he half turned and started, with a broken exclamation. I followed his gaze. The street was vacant, barren of the accustomed throng that usually awaited near the post-office the arrival of the infrequent stagecoach. But there, at the mouth of the canon, almost under the edge of the deepening shadow from the purple-topped mountain, appeared the dusty top of the creeping vehicle that bore with it the fate of Heart"s Desire. Dan Anderson was pale now, and he put his hand to his shirt collar, as though it were too tight; but he sat gazing down the valley.
"That old fool, Bill G.o.dfrey, is showin" them our sign," said he, in exasperation. "That"s a nice thing, ain"t it, for Eastern Capital, or a woman, to see the first thing?"
It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart"s Desire, who subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had prepared the grim blazonry on the canon wall to which Dan Anderson had made reference. "Prepare to meet thy G.o.d!" was the sign that Charlie Lee had painted there. It was the last thing he did on his way out of town. That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading citizen. Charlie"s emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon. The inhabitants had always left the sign standing there. But at this time it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.
"They ain"t goin" to understand that," said he. "They can"t think the way we do. Oh, why didn"t that old fool G.o.dfrey call their attention the other way? Oh, that"ll set fine, won"t it, with a man comin" to buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face and a consumin" vision of tarantulas in her soul! This"ll be another case of New Jersey Gold Mill. Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he"ll run out at the same door wherein he went; that"s what he"ll do. And, oh, doctors and saints, look at that, now!" Bill G.o.dfrey was leaning out of the coach-box and pointing with his whip. "He"s showin" them the town now," said Dan Anderson. "Why--I hadn"t thought before but what this place was all right."
I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation. It had been our world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it had been satisfactory until now. Never before that moment had the scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy. We were suddenly ashamed.
Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim"s hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.
He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily forward. Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously have offered a.s.sistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master of his faculties.
The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear seat, when there appeared the pa.s.senger nearest to our side of the coach,--a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache. He was well shod and well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs.
He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored. A flush of recognition crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.
"Well, Andersen," Mr. Ellsworth said, extending a hand, "how are you?
Got here at last--awful drive. Where do we stop? You know my daughter, of course."
What treachery to Heart"s Desire was here! Dan Anderson, a man who had come to stay, shaking hands on terms of old acquaintanceship, apparently, with Eastern Capital itself; and not content with that, advancing easily and courteously, hat in hand, to greet the daughter of Eastern Capital as though it were but yesterday that last they met.
Moreover, and bitterest of all for a loyal man of Heart"s Desire, was there not a glance, a word between them? Did Dan Anderson whisper a word and did she flush faint and rosy? or was it a touch of the light?
Certain it was he reached up his hand to take hers, shaking it not too long nor too fervently.
"I do remember Miss Ellsworth very well, of course, Mr. Ellsworth,"
said he. "We are all very glad to see you."
"And we"re very glad to _see_ you!" echoed the girl. "Oh! the dust, the dust!" She spoke in a full, sweet voice, excellent even for outlanders to hear. If there were agitation in her tones, agitation in Dan Andersen"s heart, none might know it. This meeting, five years and two thousand miles from a parting, seemed the most natural and ordinary thing in all the world. Mr. Ellsworth was of the belief that he himself had planned it so far as himself and Dan Anderson were concerned.
"My daughter was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up here to see about the climate--lots of folks go West nowadays, you know, even in the spring. I"ll warrant she"s sick of the trip by now.
A good climate has to have dust to season it. One of the mules went lame--thought we would never get here. And now tell me, where"ll she stop?" The personification of Eastern Capital looked about him dubiously at the only hotel of Heart"s Desire, before which the coach had pulled up as a matter of course. "Any women folks in town, anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan Andersen"s impa.s.sive face.
"I was upon the point of saying, Mr. Ellsworth," replied Dan Anderson--and vaguely one felt that his diction was once more that of Princeton--"that my friend here, a prominent member of the bar, will go with Miss Ellsworth to the house of a nice little woman, wife of--er--a cow gentleman of our acquaintance. That will be best for her. I"ll try to take care of you myself, sir, if you like, while the Learned Counsel goes with Miss Ellsworth."
There were introductions and further small talk, and presently Learned Counsel found himself climbing up to the seat beside Eve; beside the Temptress who, he made no manner of doubt, had come to put an end to Paradise.
But ah! she was Eve enough for any Eden--a tall girl, rounded, firm formed, with a ma.s.s of good brown hair, and a frank gray eye, and a regular and smooth forehead. Her garb was a cool, gray serge, and, a miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman might tell. A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim. Her hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray. Her foot, trim and well shaped,--for even a desolate pariah might note so much,--was shod in no ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels, all unsuited to gravel and slide-rock, yet exceeding good, as it seemed at that time. The girl raised her eyes, smiling frankly. There was no cold cream traceable. The first thought of Learned Counsel was that her complexion would brown nicely under sunburn; his second thought was that he had on overalls,--a fact which had escaped him for more than four years.
If Eve, new come within Heart"s Desire, felt any surprise, or if she even experienced any pique at the calm deportment of Dan Anderson, she masked it all and put all at ease with a few words spoken in that manner of voice which is an excellent thing in woman. In a sort of dream the coach trundled on up the street, to pause for half an instant in front of the commercial emporium of Whiteman the Jew. Whiteman came out with his hat above his head, and said, "Velgome."
The girl looked backward down the street as they turned to cross the _arroyo_ beyond which stood the house of the Kansas family, where Curly lived. The off mule limped. "Poor little fellow," she said; "I wanted them to stop. They have no pity--"
"No," said Learned Counsel to her, "there is no such thing as pity in all the world." She fell silent at this, and looked back once more, unconsciously, down the street, as one who would gladly pity, or be pitied. But soon the coach was at Curly"s house, and there came out to meet it, already forewarned of her guest, the Littlest Girl, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, which means Welcome on the frontier.
The Littlest Girl, uncertain and overawed by her visitor, came forward and took a first look. Then she suddenly held out her arms; and Constance Ellsworth, from the East, lonely, perhaps grieved, walked straight into the outstretched arms and straight into the heart of the Littlest Girl from Kansas.
CHAPTER VII
TEMPTATION AT HEART"S DESIRE
_Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a Craven Adam_
The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr.
Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed. The window-panes were very small, where any still remained. The interior of the hotel consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might rest if very weary from one cause or another. The front door was always open. The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both hotel and bank.
There was in Heart"s Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined circulating medium. That was all the money there was. No one could be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all wealth, as was very well known. To many this may seem a restricting and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for a whole town to have, as any man of Heart"s Desire could have told you.
A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place devoted to the sale of firearms. There were many nails driven into the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all these nails held specimens of weapons. Excellent weapons they were, too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of Colt"s factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills, none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks. At times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the wall at Uncle Jim"s hotel. The visible supply fluctuated somewhat.
Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the circulating medium.
Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man. If a man paid, very well. If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him, for a.s.suredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well knew. And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as Uncle Jim also knew very well. There were no printed rules or regulations in Uncle Jim"s hotel. There was no hotel register. There were no questions ever asked. Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his duty, was to feed men. For the rest, he often had to do his own cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk? Indeed, there was no desk. The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.
That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was something never dreamed in Heart"s Desire. Yet one day a sensitive young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, G.o.d knows how, down into Heart"s Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time he was very hungry. He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim. The latter said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which actually sputtered and frizzled with b.u.t.ter, a thing undreamed! "Get "round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you"ll feel better." The young man "got "round" the beefsteak. Perhaps it was the feeling about the b.u.t.ter, which of itself was a thing unusual. At any rate, as he went out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door. This act meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer existed. The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good. The intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was right" was silently and fully evidenced. That a man would give up his gun was proof enough of that. So this became the custom of the place, the unwritten law. When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in, handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air. It is astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general supply of six-shooters.
On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart"s Desire were hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of better days. The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the guns. Temporarily, male Heart"s Desire did not exist.