Heart's Desire Part 38

"Shut up!" admonished Tom Osby. "Go on, Willie."

"It's always that-a-way," said Willie. Tears stood in his eyes. He looked vaguely out over the blue hills which hedged in the enchanted valley of Heart's Desire. "It's always that-a-way," he repeated.

"Somehow, somewhere, there's always a beautiful queen, for every fellow, just over the mountains. It's always that-a-way."

Tom Osby reached out a hand and gently shook him.

"Set up, Willie," said he. "Come down now, till we get this business fixed. Now, what happens after that?"

Willie winked his eyes and smiled amiably. "The sick knight, he writes a missive to the beautiful queen," he went on. "He sets his signet ring on to the missive, and he hands it to his trusted henchman, and his trusted henchman flies to do his bidding."

"That's you, Curly," nodded Tom Osby. "You're the trusted henchman."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I am!" replied Curly. "I'm nothin' but a plain cow hand from the Brazos; but I don't take 'henchman' from n.o.body!"

"Hush!" said his friend. "This feller's a genius. If he don't get side-tracked on Dead Shot d.i.c.k, or something of that kind, this letter is just as good as wrote, right now."

"The good knight presses his signet ring on to the missive," resumed Willie, "and his trusted cow hand wraps the missive in the folds of his cloak, and climbs on to his trusted steed, and flies far, far away, to the side of the beautiful queen."

"That's good!"

"And the beautiful queen reads the missive, and clasps her hands, and says she, 'My Gawd!'"

"Oh, _now_ we're gettin' at it!" said Tom Osby. "Say, this is pretty _poor_, ain't it, Curly?"

"And then," went on Willie, frowning at the interruption, "the beautiful queen sends for her milk-white palfrey, and she flies to the distant bedside of the sufferin' knight."

"She'll take a milk-white buckboard, more likely," said Tom Osby. "You got any palfreys on your ranch, Curly? But we'll let it go at that.

She's got to fly to the distant bedside somehow."

"Oh, that'll be all right," agreed Willie, sweetly. "She'll fly.

She'll come. It's always the same. It's always the same."

"Write it down, Willie," ordered Tom Osby, thrusting the paper before him. Willie hesitated, and glanced up at Tom.

The latter balked in turn. "What! Have I got to start it for you?

Well, then, begin it, 'Dear Madam!'"

Curly shook his head. "You couldn't never marry a woman writin' to her that-a-way." And Tom, rubbing a finger over his chin, had to admit the justice of the a.s.sertion.

"Leave it to Willie," suggested Curly. "He'll get it started after a while. Go ahead, Willie. How did he say it to her, now, when he sent for the beautiful queen?"

Tom Osby's pencil followed rapidly as it might.

"He writes," said Willie, "like they always do. He says: 'Light of my heart, I have loved you for these years, and they have seemed so long.

I could love no other woman after seeing you, and this you should know with no proof but my word. If I have drawn apart from you, 'twas through no fault of mine, and this I pray you to believe. If I have not acted to my own heart the full part of a man, 'tis for that reason I have hidden away; but believe me, my faith and my love have been the same. If I have missed the dear sight of your face, 'twas because I could not call it mine with honor, nor dare that vision with any plea on my lips, or any feeling in my heart, but that of honor. Heart's Heart, and life of my life, could you not see? I could not doom you to a life unfit, and still ask you to love me as a man.'"

He pa.s.sed his hand across his face, as though it were not himself he heard speaking; but he went on.

"'Now I lie here hurt to death,' says the good knight Lancelot. 'This is the end. Now, at the time when truth must come from the soul, I say to you, my queen'--she's always queen to him--'I say to you, I have loved you more than I have loved myself. But if you could come, if you could stand at my bedside before it is too late, before it is too late--too late--'" Willie's voice broke into a wail. The ray of light was almost fading from his clouded brain.

"Go on," whispered Tom Osby.

"'My queen, my darling--' says Lancelot."

Willie's hands, trembling, fell into his lap. "It's always that-a-way," he whimpered vaguely, coming now to himself.

"Willie," said Tom Osby, gently, "I ain't right sure I've got it all down straight, but I think I have. You read her over, and touch her up here and there where she needs it. Curly, look here. I don't believe Dan Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if he saw it."

"They sign it with their hearts," said Willie, vaguely. "They always do."

"He signs it with his heart," said Tom Osby, "and it goes!" He folded the paper and handed it to Curly.

"Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can," said he, "and make the run to Sky Top as fast as G.o.d'll let you. This letter's all right, and it goes!"

So presently there rode down the long sunlit street of Heart's Desire, mounted upon the mad horse Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a message from a mad brain and two simple hearts,--a courier bound upon a strange and kindly errand.

The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign, looked gently down, and the stern walls of the canon seemed to widen and make room for the messenger as he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent knight to his distant queen.

"It's like he said," mused Curly to himself, feeling in his pocket for tobacco as he rode. "It's that-a-way, and I reckon it always has been.

I've felt like that myself sometimes. _Ola, Pinto_! _Vamos_!"

CHAPTER XXV

ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE

_The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an Ananias with Spurs_

Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to the queen, but the bigness of his errand lightened the way, and his own courage and hopefulness communicated themselves to his steed. The mad horse, Pinto, indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head down and ears back, surly at touch of rein or spur, yet steady in his gait as an antelope. The two swept down the long canon from Heart's Desire, traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below, and climbed then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over paths known only to cattle thieves and those who pursued them. At last they swung down into the beautiful valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to the southward, until at length they reached the defiles of the Sacramentos.

They pulled up after more than a day and a night of travel, weary but not hopelessly the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up the mountains to the Sky Top hotel.

Curly, a trifle gaunt, gave his first attention to his horse, which he unsaddled with a slap of approval, and turned loose to feed as best it might on the coa.r.s.e herbage of the upper heights. His next thought was for himself, and he realized that he was hungry. Immediately there dawned upon his mind another great conviction. He was scared!

He looked about at the long galleries of the ornate modern log house, wherein civilization sought to ape the wilderness; but it was not the arrogant pretentiousness of the building itself which caused him to shift his glance and stand dubiously upon one foot. It was the thought of what the edifice might contain. There, as he began too late to reflect, was the queen! He, the trusted henchman, was bearing to her a missive regarding whose nature he now experienced sudden misgivings.

Suppose Willie, the sheepherder, had not, after all, been able to meet the requirements of a situation so delicate and so important! Curly had known the plains and the mountains all his life. He had ridden in the press of the buffalo herd in the Panhandle, had headed cattle stampedes in the breaks of the Pecos, had met the long-toed cinnamon bear all over these mountains that lay about him--had even heard the whisper of hostile lead as part of his own day's work,--but never before had his heart failed him.

Nevertheless, his face puckered into a frown of determination, he stumbled, a trifle pigeon-toed in his high-heeled boots, across the floor of one gallery after another, and knocked at one door after another, until finally, by aid of lingering Mexican servants, he found himself in the presence of the beautiful queen whom he had sought.

He ratified her t.i.tle when she came toward him where he stood, twirling his hat in his hands; so tall was she, so grave and dignified, yet so very sweet and simple. Curly was a man, and he felt the spell of smooth brown hair and wide brows, and straight, sincere eyes; not to speak of a queen's figure clad in such raiment as had not often been given Curly to look upon. He gazed in a frank admiration which lessened his fear.

Constance Ellsworth held out her hand, with questions for his own household at Heart's Desire. Was everything right with them? Was Arabella quite well of her accident? Was his wife well? And so on.

But all the time she questioned him deeper with eyes large, wistful, eager. She had had no news since leaving Heart's Desire, and now she dreaded any. This, then, she said with tightening heart, was news, but fatal 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, embarra.s.sed, 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.