Heart's Desire Part 35

"That," said Tom Osby, "sounds like the old man had got the potato loose."

"I'm ashamed of him," declared Constance.

"Natural," said Tom; "but why special?"

"He oughtn't to touch that whiskey. I hate it."

"So do I, when it ain't good. That in the can is good. It's only fair your dad should break even for some of the whiskey he give the Lone Star. They didn't have a drop when I got in. Now, that's another reason why we ought to have a railroad at Heart's Desire. It might prevent a awful stringency, sometime. There's d.i.c.k McGinnis, why, he nearly--"

"But it's not coming. It will not be built. They wouldn't let us in.

We couldn't get the right of way."

"Now listen at you! You mean your daddy couldn't, nor his lawyer couldn't. Of course not. But you haven't tried it your own self yet."

"How could I?"

"Well, you'd a heap more sense than to size up things the way your pa did. The boys told me all about what happened. A man out here don't holler if you beat him fair, but if you stack the cards on him, that's different. Dan Anderson done just right."

"He broke up all our plans," Constance retorted hotly; and at once flushed at her own speech.

"What was he to do? Sell out? Turn the whole town over to you folks?

Soon as he knows what's up, he throws back the money and tells the road to go to h.e.l.l. He kept his promise to me, and to all the other fellers that had spoke to him about lookin' after their places. He done right."

Constance looked for a moment at the far shimmering horizon. At length she faced about and bravely met Tom Osby's eyes. "Yes, he was right,"

she said. "He did what was right." But she drew a long breath as she spoke.

"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, regarding her keenly, "not referrin' to the fact that you're squarer than your men folks, I want to say that, speakin' of game folks, you're just as game as any man I ever saw.

Lots of women is. Seems like they have to be game by just not lettin'

on, sometimes."

She felt his eyes upon her, and this time turned away her own. For a time they were silent, as the well-worn wagon rolled along behind the long-stepping grays; but Tom Osby was patient.

"A while ago," he resumed after a time, "you said 'we,' and 'our railroad.' That's mighty near right. You two folks right here in this wagon, yourself particular, can save that there railroad, and save Heart's Desire, both at the same time. And that's something, even if them was all that was saved."

"I don't quite see what you mean," answered Constance.

"Oh, now, look here," said Tom, filling another pipe, "I ain't so foolish. I ain't goin' to say that the old days'll last forever. We all know better'n that when it comes right down to straight reasonin'.

A country'll sleep about so long, same as a man; and then it'll wake up. I've seen the States come West for forty years. They're comin'

swifter'n ever now."

"When we first came here," said Constance, "I thought this was the very end of all the world."

"It has been. And the finest place in all the world, ma'am, is right at the end of the world. That's where a man can feel right independent. A woman can't understand that, no way on earth. A man's a right funny thing, ma'am. He's all the time hankerin' to git into some country out at the end of the world, where there ain't a woman within a thousand miles; and then as quick as he gets there, he begins to holler for some woman to come out and save his life!"

She turned upon him again, smiling in spite of herself.

"The boys have been mighty slow to let go of the old days," he went on.

"In some ways there won't never be no better days. We never had a thief in our valley, until your pa come in here last summer. There ain't been a lock on a door in four hundred miles of this country in the last twenty years. When the railroad comes the first thing it'll bring will be locks and bolts. At the same time, it's got to come--I know that. We've about had our sleep and our dream out, ma'am."

"It was beautiful," Constance murmured vaguely; and he caught her meaning.

"Yes, plumb beautiful. Folks that hasn't tried it don't know. A man that's lived the old life here, with a real gun on him as regular as pants, why, in about three years he gets what we call galvanized.

He'll never be the same after that. He'll never go back to the States no more. That's hard for you to understand, ain't it? And yet that sort of feelin' catches almost any man out here, sooner or later, if he's any good. It's the country, ma'am."

A strange spell seemed now to fall upon Constance herself, as she sat gazing out in the sunlight. She felt the fatalism, the unconcern of a child, of a young creature. She understood perfectly all that she had heard, and was ready to listen further.

"Of course," continued Tom, "this, bein' South, and bein' West, it ain't really a part of the United States; so I can't save the whole country. But, such as this part of the country is, I reckon I'll have to save it. You'll see my name wrote on tablets in marble halls some day; because I've got a hard job. I've got to reconcile these folks to your dad! And yet I'm going to make 'em say, 'Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son-of-a-gun from New York.'

You didn't know I read Shakespeare? Why, I read him constant, even if I do have to wear specs now for fine print."

Constance, in spite of herself, laughed outright with so merry a peal that she wakened her father from his slumber. "What's that? What's that?" broke in Mr. Ellsworth, suddenly sitting up on his blankets.

"Never mind, friend," said Tom Osby, "you go back to sleep again; me and Miss Constance is savin' things. I was just talkin' to her about her railroad."

Ellsworth rubbed his eyes. "By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly, "that's a good idea. It shall be hers if she says so. I'll give her every share I own if that road ever runs into the valley."

"Now you are beginnin' to _talk_," said Tom Osby, calmly. "Not that you'd be givin' her much; for you and your lawyer wouldn't be able to get the railroad in there in a thousand years. The girl can play a heap stronger game than both of you."

"Well, if she can," responded Ellsworth, "she's going to have a good chance to do it. We're going to build the railroad on north, and we don't feel like hauling coal down that canon by wagon."

Tom Osby seemed to have pursued his game as far as he cared to do at this time. "S'pose we stop along somewhere in here," he suggested, "and eat a little lunch? My horses gets hungry, and thirsty, the same as you, Mr. Ellsworth. Whoa, boys!"

Descending from his high seat, he now unhitched his team and strapped on their heads the nose-bags with the precious oats, after a pail of not less precious water from the cask at the wagon's side.

Methodically he kicked together a little pile of greasewood roots.

"We're to have some tea, you know," he remarked. "I don't charge nothin' extry for tea, whiskey, or advice on this railroad of mine.

Get down now, ma'am," he added, reaching up his arms to a.s.sist Constance from her place. "Come along, set right down here on the ground in the sun. It's good for you. Ain't it nice?

"There's the back of old Carrizy just beginnin' to show," he explained; "and there's the Bonitos comin' up below. That's Blanco Peak beyond, the tallest in the Territory; and them mountings close in is the Nogales. There ain't a soul within many and many a mile of here. And now, with them old mountings a-lookin' down at us on the strict _cuidado_, not botherin' us if we don't bother them, why, ain't it comfortable? This country'll take hold of you after a while, ma'am.

It's the oldest in the world; but somehow it seems to me onct in a while as if it was about the youngest, too."

Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full glare of the Southwestern sun. She looked about her and felt an unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle and under some watchful eye. "Dad," said she, quietly, "I'm not going home. I'm going to spend a month at Sky Top."

"Has it caught _you_, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, simply.

"She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be taken care of," grumbled her father.

"Oh, now, interests ain't exclusive for the States," said Tom Osby.

"You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn't do it.

Give the girl a month, an' she'll just about have the town--or her and me together will. You settin' there talkin' about goin' home! Go on home if you feel like it. Me and Miss Constance will stay out here, and take care of the business interests ourselves."

"We're personally conducted, dad," laughed Constance.

"Listen," said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon his knee. "Now, you folks has got money behind you that's painful.

You don't _have_ to steal, Mr. Ellsworth. It's only a _habit_ with you. Now s'pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin' that G.o.d can plat a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin' that the first fellers that finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones--which she _does_ allow, and _know_. Now, here's what she says. Says she, 'We'll go in with this outfit, and we won't try to steal the landscape. We'll pay for every foot of ground that's claimed by anybody that seen it first.

We won't try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates back to Jack Wilson. We'll put in the yard at the lower end of the town, provided that Mr. Thomas...o...b.., Esquire, gives his permission--always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr.

Thomas...o...b.., Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he feels like goin' there. Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas...o...b.., Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."

"Of course," a.s.sented Constance; and her father nodded.