_ CHAPTER XIII. BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE
This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way with a Maid Dan Anderson sat for a long time on his blanket roll, looking at the dribbling smoke from the ends of the charred pinon sticks. So deep was his preoccupation that he did not at first hear the shuffle of feet approaching over the carpet of pine needles; and when the sound came to his consciousness, he wondered merely how Tom Osby had gotten around the camp and come in on that side of the mountain. Then he looked up. It was to see the face that had dwelt in his dreams by night, his reveries by day, the face that he had seen but now--the "face that was the fairest"! He sat stupid, staring, conscious that Fate had chided him once more for his unreadiness. Then he sprang up and stared the harder--stared at Constance Ellsworth coming down the slope between her father and a well-groomed stranger.
The girl looked up, their eyes met; and in that moment Porter Barkley discovered that Constance Ellsworth could gaze with brightening eye and heightened color upon another man.
When Ellsworth and Barkley had started from the hotel in search of the engineer's camp, Constance had joined them ostensibly for the sake of a walk in the morning's sun. If it had been in her mind to discover the mystery of this man from Heart's Desire, she had kept it to herself. But now as they approached the dying fire, she gained the secret of this stranger who had travelled a week by wagon to listen to a bedizened diva of the stage! The consciousness flashed upon her sharply. Despite her traitorous coloring, she greeted him but coolly.
Porter Barkley, noticing some things and suspecting others, drew a breath of sudden conviction. With swift jealousy he guessed that this could be none other than the man to whom Ellsworth had referred,--Anderson, the lawyer of Heart's Desire. Why had not Ellsworth told him that Constance also knew him? Porter Barkley ran his eye over the tall strong figure, the clean brown jaw, the level eyes, sizing up his man with professional keenness. He instantly rated him as an enemy dangerous in more ways than one.
After the first jumbled speeches of surprise, Ellsworth introduced the two. Maugre his coatless costume, Dan Anderson was Princeton man upon the moment, and Barkley promptly hated him for it, feeling that in the nature of things the stranger should have been awkward and constrained. Yet this man must, for business reasons, be handled carefully. He must be the business friend, if the personal enemy, of Hon. Porter Barkley, general counsel for the A. P. and S. E. Railway.
The States had come to Sky Top, as Tom Osby had said, and this group, gathered around a mountain fireside, became suddenly as conventional as though they had met in a drawing-room. "Who could have suspected that you were here, of all places, Mr. Anderson?" Constance remarked with polite surprise.
"Why, now, Dolly," blundered Mr. Ellsworth, "didn't the hotel fellow tell you that some one had come down from Heart's Desire to hear the latest from grand opera--private session--chartered the hall, eh? You might have guessed it would be Mr. Anderson, for I'll warrant he's the only man in Heart's Desire that ever heard an opera singer before, or who would ride a hundred miles--that is--anyhow, Mr. Anderson, you are precisely the man we want to see." He finished his sentence lamely, for he understood in some mysterious fashion that he had not said quite the right thing.
"I am very glad to hear that," replied Dan Anderson, gravely, "I was just sitting here waiting for you to come along."
"Now, Mr. Anderson," resumed Ellsworth, "Mr. Barkley, here, is our general counsel for the railroad. He's going up to Heart's Desire with us in a day or so to look into several matters. We want to take up the question of running our line into the town, if proper arrangements can be made."
"Take chairs, gentlemen," said Dan Andersen, motioning to a log that lay near by. He had already seated Constance upon the corded blanket roll from which he himself had arisen. "I will get you some breakfast," he added.
"No, no," Mr. Ellsworth declined courteously. "We just came from breakfast. We were moving around trying to find our engineer's camp; Grayson, our chief of location, was to have been here before this. By the way, how did you happen to come down here, after all, Anderson?"
Dan Anderson was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue. He glanced at the battered phonograph which leaned dejectedly against a tree.
"As near as I can figure," said he, "I made this pilgrimage to hear a woman's voice." Saying which he leaned over and deliberately kicked the phonograph down the side of the hill.
"I hope you enjoyed it," commented Constance, viciously, her cheeks reddening.
"Very much," replied Dan Anderson, calmly, and he looked squarely at her.
Porter Barkley, quiet and alert, once more saw the glance which passed between these two. Into his mind, ever bent upon the business phase of any problem, there flashed a swift conviction. This was the girl! Here, miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom her father had referred! If so, there was certainly a solution for the riddle of Heart's Desire. Piqued as he was, his heart exulted. For the time his own jealousy must be suppressed. His accounting with Dan Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must handle the situation carefully--literally for what it is worth.
"As I was saying," continued Dan Anderson, "what's a breakfast or two among friends?"
"If it is among friends," replied Ellsworth, "and if you'll remember that, we'll eat with you."
In answer Dan Anderson began to kick together the embers of the fire and to busy himself with dishes. He was resolved to humiliate himself before this girl, to show her how absolutely unfit was the life of this land for such as herself.
Suddenly he stopped and listened, as there came to his ear the distant thin report of a rifle. Ellsworth looked inquiringly at his host.
"That's my friend, Tom Osby," explained Dan Anderson, "He went out after a deer. Tom and I came down together from the town."
"I presume you do have some sort of friends in here," began Barkley, patronizingly.
"I have never found any in the world worth having except here," replied Dan Anderson, quietly.
"Oh, now, don't say that. Mr. Ellsworth tells me that he has known you for a long time, and has the greatest admiration for you as a lawyer."
"Yes, Mr. Ellsworth is very fond of me. He's one of the most passionate admirers I ever had in my life," said Dan Anderson.
Barkley looked at him again keenly, realizing that he had to do with a quantity not yet wholly known and gauged.
Socially the situation was strained, and he sought to ease it after his own fashion. "You see," he resumed, "Mr. Ellsworth seems to think that he can put you in a way of doing something for yourself up at Heart's Desire."
It was an ugly thing for him to do under the circumstances, but if he had intended to humiliate the other, he met his just rebuke.
"I don't often talk business at breakfast in my own house," said Dan Anderson. "Do you use tabasco with your
frijoles?"
"Oh, we'll get together, we'll get together," Barkley laughed, with an assumed cordiality which did not quite ring true.
"Thank you," Dan Anderson remarked curtly; "you bring me joy this morning."
He did not relish this sort of talk in the presence of Constance Ellsworth. Disgusted with himself and with all things, be arose and made a pretence of searching in the wagon. Rummaging about, his hand struck one of the round, gutta-percha plates which had accompanied the phonograph. With silent vigor he cast it far above the tree tops below him on the mountain side.
"That," he explained to Constance as he turned, "is the 'Annie Laurie' record of the Heart's Desire grand opera. The season is now over." The girl did not understand, but he lost the hurt look in her eyes. Irritated, he did not hear her soul call out to him.
"It's the luckiest thing in the world that you happen to be here." Mr. Ellsworth took up again the idea that was foremost in his mind. "You fit in like the wheels in a clock. We're going to run our railroad up into your town--I don't mind saying that right here--and we're going to give you plenty of law business, Mr. Anderson; that is to say, if you want it, and will take it."
"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, quietly. But now in spite of himself he felt his heart leap suddenly in hope. Suppose, after all, there should be for him, stranded in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, a chance for some sort of business success? Suppose that there should be, after all, some work for him to do? Suppose that, after all, he should succeed--that, after all, life might yet unfold before him as he had dreamed and planned! Unconsciously he stole a glance at the gray-clad figure on the blanket roll.
Constance sat cool, sweet, delicate but vital, refreshing to look upon, her gray skirt folded across her knees, the patent-leather tips of her little shoes buried in the carpet spread by the forest conifers. He could just catch the curve of her cheek and chin, the droop of the long lashes which he knew so well. Ah, if he could only go to her and tell her the absolute truth--if only it could be right for him, all his life, to tell her the truth, to tell her of his reverence, his loyalty, his love, through all these years! If, indeed, this opportunity should come to him, might not all of this one day be possible? He set his mind to his work, even as the girl held her heart to its waiting.
There came the sound of a distant whistle approaching up the trail, and ere long Tom Osby appeared, stumbling along in his pigeon-toed way, his rifle in the crook of his arm. Tom saluted the strangers briefly, and leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel. Dan Anderson made known the names of the visitors, and Tom immediately put in action his own notions of hospitality. Stepping to the wagon side he fished out a kerosene can, stoppered with a potato stuck on the spout. He removed the potato, picked up a tin cup, and proceeded calmly to pour out a generous portion.
"I always carry my liquor this way, gentlemen," said he, "because it's convenient to pour in the dark, and ain't so apt to get spilled. This here liquor sometimes makes folks forget their geogerphy. 'Missin' me one place, search another,' as Walt Whitman says. If a fellow gets a drink of this, he may take to the tall trees, or he may run straight on out of the country. You never can tell. Drink hearty."
Ellsworth and Barkley, for the sake of complacency, complied with such show of pleasure as they could muster.
"Now," said Tom, "I'll cook you a real breakfast. My
compadre, here, can't drink and he can't cook."
"Three breakfasts before ten o'clock?" protested Constance.
But Tom was inexorable. "Eat when you get a chanct," he insisted. "That's a good rule."
Barkley drew Ellsworth to one side. "I can't figure these people out," he complained.
Ellsworth chuckled. "I told you you'd need help, Barkley," he said. "They've got ways of their own. You can't come in here and take that whole town without reckoning with the people that live there. Now suppose we get Anderson to himself and talk things over with him a little? We may not have another chance so good."
Ellsworth beckoned to Dan Anderson, and he readily joined them. The three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy of Tom Osby.
"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the knives by sticking them into the sand. "I don't reckon you do that way back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean."
"So this is the way men live out here?" mused Constance, half to herself.
"Mostly. You ought to see him"--he nodded toward Dan Anderson--"cook flap-jacks. The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home. We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe."
Constance missed the irrelevance of this. "I wonder," said she, gently, "how he happened to come out here--how any one happened to come out here?"
"In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as far away from Washington as he could--his mileage will amount to more. This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to Congress from." Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every feller come out here because of a girl somewheres. They allow that a woman sent most of us out here. For me, it was my fifth wife, or my fourth, I don't remember which. She never did treat me right, and her eyes didn't track. Yes, I'll bet, ma'am, without knowing anything about it, there was a girl back somewhere in Dan Anderson's early ree-cords, though whether it was his third or fourth wife, I don't know. We don't ask no questions about such things out here."
He went on rubbing sand around in the bottom of the frying-pan, but none the less caught, with side-long glance, the flush upon the brown cheek visible beneath its veil.
"I'm mighty glad to see you this mornin', ma'am," he went on; "I am, for a fact. It more'n pays me--it more'n pays him--" and he nodded again toward Dan Anderson, "for our trip down here. We wasn't expectin' to meet you."
"How did you happen to come?" asked Constance, feeling as she did so that she was guilty of treachery.
Tom Osby again looked her straight in the face. "Just because we was naturally so blamed lonesome," said he. "That is to say, I was. I allowed I wanted to hear a woman sing. It wasn't him, it was me. He come along to take care of me, like, because he's used to that sort of thing, and I ain't. He's my chaperoon. He didn't know, you know--didn't either of us know--but what I might be took advantage of, and stole by some gipsy queen."
"But--but the phonograph--"
Tom looked around. "Where is it?" he asked.
"Mr. Anderson kicked it down the hill."
"Did he? Good for him! I was goin' to do it my own self. You see, ma'am, I come down here to hear a song about Annie Laurie. I done so. Ma'am, I heard about a 'face that was the fairest.' Him? Was he surprised to see you-all this morning? Was, eh? Well, he didn't seem so almighty surprised, to my way of thinkin', last night when I told him you was comin' up here from El Paso. I don't know how he knowed it, and I ain't sayin' a word."
A strange lightening came to Constance Ellsworth's heart. The droop at the corners of her mouth faded away. She slid down off the blanket roll and edged along across the ground until she sat at his side. She reached out her hand for the skillet.
"That spider isn't clean in the least," said she.
"Oh, well," apologized Tom Osby, leaning back against the wagon wheel and beginning to fill a pipe. "I suppose there might be just a leetle sand left in it, but that don't hurt. Do you want a dish towel? Here's one that I've used for two years, freightin' from Vegas to Heart's Desire. Me and it's old friends."
"Let your dishes dry in the sun if you can't do better than that," reproved Constance. "Ah, you men!"
"You're right hard to get along with, ma'am. Us gettin' you two breakfasts, too!"
They looked into each other's faces and Constance laughed. "The air is delightful--isn't it a beautiful world?" she exclaimed joyously.
"It shore is, ma'am," rejoined Tom Osby, "if you think so. It's all in the way you look at things."
"I came out here for my health, you know," said she, carefully explanatory.
"Yes, I know. You ain't any healthier than a three-year-old deer on good pasture. Ma'am, I'm sorry for you, but I wouldn't really have picked you out for a lunger. You know, I don't believe Dan Andersen's health is very good, either. He's needin' a little Sky Top air, too,"
She froze at this. "I don't care to intrude into Mr. Andersen's affairs," she replied, "nor to have him intrude into my own."
"Who done the intrudin'?" asked Tom Osby, calmly. "Here's me and him have flew down here as a bird to our mountings. We was wantin' to hear about a 'face that was the fairest.' We was a-settin' here, calm and peaceful, eating
frijoles, who intruded? Was it us? Or, what made us intrude?" He looked at her keenly, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.
Constance abandoned the skillet and returned to the blanket roll.
"Now," went on Tom Osby, "things happens fast out here. If I come and set in your parlor in New York, it takes me eight years to learn the name of your pet dog. Lady comes out and sets in my parlor for eight minutes, and I ain't such a fool but what I can learn a heap of things in that time. That don't mean necessary that I'm goin' to tell any
other fellow what I may think. It
does mean that I'm goin' to see fair play."
The girl could make no protest at this enigmatic speech, and the even voice went on.
"How I know things is easy," he continued. "If you think he"--once more nodding his head toward the group beyond--"come down here to hear a op'ry singer sing, I want to tell you he didn't. That was me. He come to give me fair play in regards to a 'face that was the fairest.' I'm here to see that he gets fair play in them same circumstances--"
"I just came down with my father," Constance interrupted hotly, suddenly thrown upon the defensive, she knew not why. "He's been ill a great deal. I've been alarmed about him. I
always go with him."
"Of course. I noticed that. Your dad's goin' to run the railroad into Heart's Desire, and we'll all live happy ever after. You come along just to see that your dad didn't get sun stroke, or Saint Vitus dance, or cerebrus meningittus, or something else. I understood all that perfectly, ma'am. And I understand too, perfectly, ma'am," he continued, tapping his pipe on a wagon wheel, "that back yonder in the States, somewhere, Dan Anderson knowed a 'face that was the fairest'; I reckon he allowed it was 'the fairest that e'er the sun shone on.' Now, I'm old and ugly, and I don't even know whether I'm a widower any or not; so I know, ma'am, you won't take no offence if I tell you it's a straight case of reasonin'; for
yore own face, ma'am,--and I ain't sayin' this with any sort of disrespect to any of my wives,--is about the fairest that Dan Anderson ever did or could see--or me either. I don't reckon, ma'am, that he's lookin' for one that's any fairer."
Constance Ellsworth turned squarely and gazed hard into the eyes of the man before her. She drew a breath in sharply between her lips, but it was a sigh of content. She felt herself safe in this man's hands. Again she broke into laughter and flung herself upon the convenient frying-pan, which she proceeded to scrub with sudden vigor. Tom Osby's eyes twinkled.
"Whenever you think that skillet's clean enough, us two will set up and cook ourselves some breakfast right comfterble. As for them fellers over there, they don't deserve none."
So presently they two did cook and eat yet again. A strange sense of peace and content came to Constance, albeit mingled with remorse. She had suspected Dan Anderson of worshipping at the shrine of an operatic star, whereas he had made the long journey from Heart's Desire to see herself! She knew it now.
"I'm goin' to take you up to the hotel, ma'am," said Tom Osby, after Constance had finished her third breakfast, "and then, after that, I'm goin' to take Dan Anderson back home to Heart's Desire. We'll see you up there after a while.
"One thing I want to tell you, ma'am, is this. We've got along without a railroad, all right, and we ain't tearin' our clothes to have one now. If that railroad does get into our town, it's more'n half likely that it'll be because the boys has took a notion to you. I never did see you before this mornin'; but the folks has told me about you--Curly's wife, you know, and the rest. We'd like to have you live there, if only we thought the town was good enough for you. It's been mostly for men, so far." _