Heart's Desire Part 39

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 a.s.sistance. "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 Pinos 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 d.a.m.n 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. n.o.body _said_ it was his handwriting It _ain't_ his handwritin'. It's his _heart_writin'. 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."