_ CHAPTER XIV. THE GROUND FLOOR AT HEART'S DESIRE
Proposing Certain Wonders of Modern Progress, as wrought by Eastern Capital and Able Corporation Counsel Tom Osby and Constance walked up the trail toward the hotel, and Dan Anderson from a distance saw them pass. He watched the gray gown move through sun and shadow, until it was lost beyond the thickening boles of mountain pines. She turned once and looked back, but he dared not appropriate the glance to himself, although it seemed to him that he must rise and follow, that he must call out to her. She had been there, close to him. He had felt the very warmth of her hand near to his own. There flamed up in his soul the fierce male jealousy. He turned to this newcomer, this man of the States, successful, strong, fortunate. In his soul was ready the ancient challenge.
But--the earth being as it is to-day, a compromise, and love being dependent upon property, and chastity upon chattels, and the stars of the Universe upon farthing dips--though aching to rise and follow the gray gown, to snatch its wearer afar and away into a sweet wild forest all their own, Dan Anderson must sit silent, and plan material ways to bring the gray gown back again to his eyes according to the mandates of our society. Because the gray gown was made in the States, he must forget the lesson of Curly and the Littlest Girl. Because the wearer of the gown lived in the States, he must pull down in ruins the temple of Heart's Desire. Such is the sweet logic of these days of modern progress, that independence, friendship, faith, all must yield if need be; even though, and after all, man but demands that himself and the woman whom he has sought out from all the world may one day be savage and sweet, ancient and primitive, even as have been all others who have loved indeed, in city or in forest, from the beginning of the world.
"As Mr. Ellsworth has told me," went on Porter Barkley, "you are an able man, Mr. Anderson,--far too able to be buried down here in a mountain mining town."
"Thank you," said Dan Anderson, sweetly; "that's very nice of you."
"Now, I don't know what induced you to hide yourself out here--" went on Barkley, affably.
"No," replied Dan Anderson, "you don't. As for myself personally, it's no one's damned business. I may say in a general way, however, that the prevailing high prices of sealskins and breakfast food in the Eastern States have had a great deal to do with our Western civilization. The edge of the West is mostly inhabited by fools and philosophers, all mostly broke."
"I think I follow you," assented Barkley; "but I'd rather classify you as a philosopher."
"Perhaps. At least I am not fool enough to talk about my own affairs. You say you are here to talk business. It is your belief that I understand some of the chemical constituents of the population of Heart's Desire. Now, in what way can we be useful to each other?"
Ellsworth broke in, "It's as Barkley says; I've been watching you, Mr. Anderson, and I've had an interest in you for quite a while."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, I have. I want to see you win out. Now, if you won't go to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to you. If you won't go back and live in the States, we will have to bring the States to you; and they'll follow mighty quick when the railroad comes, as you know very well."
"My friend Tom Osby used those very words this morning, when he heard the whistle of your esteemed railroad train."
"Precisely," Ellsworth went on. "We'll give you a town to live in. We'll give you professional work to do."
"So you'll build me a town, in order to get me work? That's very nice of you, indeed."
"Now, there you go with your infernal priggishness," protested Ellsworth, testily. "Have we asked you to do anything but straight business?"
"Exactly," said Barkley.
They were playing now with Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face did not show it. They were putting him in the balance against Heart's Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it. They were making Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did not divulge it, as he sat and looked at them.
"Gentlemen," said he, at length, "I am a lawyer, the best one in Heart's Desire. The law here is complex in practice. The titles are very much involved. Between Chitty on Pleading and the land grants of the Spanish crown, the law may be a very slow and deliberate matter in this country. Now, I understand the practice. I speak the language--I don't need an interpreter--so that I am probably as good as any lawyer you can secure at this time. In straight matters of business I am open for employment."
"Now you are beginning to talk," said Barkley. "And just to get right
down to business, and show you we're not all talk, I want to give you a little retainer fee. I'm sorry it isn't larger, but it'll grow, I hope." He drew a goodly wallet from his breast pocket, and counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, which he threw down carelessly on the pine needles in front of Dan Anderson. "Is that satisfactory?" he asked.
"Yes," said the latter; but he did not take up the money.
"Oh, there'll be more," suggested Mr. Ellsworth. "This business ought to net you between five and ten thousand dollars this year. It might mean more than that if we got into town without a fight."
"That would be about the only way you would get in at all," and Dan Anderson smiled incomprehensibly.
"Exactly! And now, since you are our counsel--" Barkley spoke with an increased firmness--"we want to know your idea on the right-of-way question. What's the nature of the titles in that town, anyhow?"
"As near as I can tell," replied Dan Anderson, "since you retain me and ask my legal opinion, the fundamental title to the valley of Heart's Desire lies in the ability of every fellow there to hit a tin can at forty yards with a six-shooter. There's hardly a tin can in the street that you could cook a meal in," he added plaintively.
"I see," said Barkley, his laughter a little forced. "But now, I heard there never was a town site filed on."
"There was a story," replied Dan Anderson, ruminatingly, "that Jack Wilson laid out a town there soon after he made the Homestake strike. He had McDonald, the deputy surveyor, plat it out on a piece of brown paper,--which was the only sort they had,--and Jack started over with the plat to file at the county seat. He got caught in a rain and used the paper to start a fire with. After that he forgot about it, and after that again, he died; so there never was any town site. The boys just built their houses where they felt like it; and since then they have been so busy about other things--croquet, music, embroidery, antelope hunting, and the like--that they haven't had time to think about town lots or town sites, or anything of that sort."
Barkley's eyes gleamed. "That will simplify matters very much," said he.
"You really do need local counsel," Dan Anderson observed. "On the contrary of that, it will complicate matters very much."
"Well, we'll see about that," rejoined Barkley, grimly. "We'll see if a little mining camp can hold up a railroad corporation the size of this! But why don't you put your money in your pocket? It's yours, man."
Dan Anderson slowly picked up the bills, folded them, and tucked them into a pocket. "This," said he, "is a great deal more than the entire circulating medium of Heart's Desire. I'm likely to become a disturbing factor up there."
"That's what we want you to become," said Barkley. "We know there're a lot of good mining claims in there, especially the coal lands on the east side of the valley. It isn't the freight and passenger traffic that we're after--we want to get hold of those mines. Why, the inside gang of the Southern Pacific--you'll keep this a professional secret, of course--has told us that they'll take coal from us for their whole system west of Houston. In a couple of years there'll be a town there of eight or ten thousand people. Why, man, it's the chance of your life. And here's Mr. Ellsworth putting you in on the ground floor."
Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.
"By the way," began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer's blue-print map, "one of the first things we want to settle is the question of our depot site. The only place we can lay out our side tracks is just at the head of the canon, and at the lower end of the valley. Do you know anything about this house here? It's the first one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley."
Dan Anderson bent over the map. "Yes, I know it perfectly," said he. "That's the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down with me from Heart's Desire. He just went up the trail with your daughter, sir."
"The yards'll wipe him out," said Barkley.
"The valley is so narrow," went on Ellsworth, "according to what our engineers say, that we've got to clean out the whole lower part of the town, in order to lay out the station grounds."
Dan Anderson started. The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.
"The trouble with your whole gang," resumed Barkley, striking a match on a log, "has been that you've been trying to stop the world. You can't do that."
Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many months, the crack of the whip of modern progress. Yet, before his eyes he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his young manhood.
"I'll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen," said he, at length, rising; "we'll talk it over up at the town itself. I don't know just what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my opinion force isn't the way to go about it."
"Well, we'll use force if need be; you can depend on that!" said Barkley, harshly. "I've got to get back home before long, and it will be up to you after that."
He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the clinging dust and pine needles. The three turned towards the trail and walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky Top edifice.
"Quite a house, isn't it?" said Ellsworth, admiringly.
Dan Anderson did not look at the building. Constance was sitting alone at the edge of the gallery. Wishing nothing so much in the world as to go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.
Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him. They seemed to call out to him to pause, to return. The whispering of the pines called over and over to him, "Constance! Constance!"
Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still whispering. At the edge of the opening he paused unseen. He saw the girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley, laughing gayly and walking across the gallery. Each had offered her an arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most natural one in the world. Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose, solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very end of all the world. _