_ CHAPTER XXIII. PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby Tom Osby's freight wagon made not so bad a conveyance after all. The first fifty miles of the journey were passed in comparative silence, Constance and her father for the most part keeping to the shelter of the wagon tilt. Tom Osby grew restless under solitude ere long, and made friendly advances.
"You come up here and set by me on the seat," said he to Constance, "and let the sun shine on you. The old man can stay back there on the blankets with my kerosene can of whiskey if he still thinks his health ain't good. Like enough he'll learn to get the potato off'n the snoot of the can before long.
"You see," he went on, "I don't make no extry charge for whiskey or conversation to my patients. Far's I know, I'm the only railroad that don't. I got a box of aigs back there in the wagon, too. Ever see ary railroad back in the States that throwed in ham and aigs? I reckon not."
"Twenty dollars extra!" remarked Ellsworth, "You've made the girl laugh."
"Man, hush!" said Tom Osby. "Go on to sleep, and don't offer me money, or I'll make you get out and walk." This with a twinkle which robbed his threat of terror, though Ellsworth took the advice presently and lay down under the wagon cover.
"Don't mind him, Miss Constance," apologized Tom Osby. "He's only your father, anyhow, if it comes to the worst. But now tell me, what ails
you? Say, now, you ain't sick, are you?" He caught the plaintive droop of the girl's mouth; but, receiving no answer, he himself evaded the question, and began to point out antelope and wolves, difficult for the uneducated eye to distinguish upon the gray plains that now swept about them. It was an hour before he returned to the subject really upon his mind.
"I was hearin' a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he began tentatively. "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't have more'n half time enough to git the news." From the corner of his eye he watched the face of his passenger.
"A great way to do, wasn't it!" exclaimed Constance, in sudden indignation. "I asked them why they didn't hire men to do such work."
"Ma'am," said Tom Osby; "I used to think you had some sense. You ain't."
"Why?"
"You can't think of no way but States ways, can you? I s'pose you think the
police ought to catch a bad man, don't you?"
"Well, it's officer's work, going after a dangerous man. Wasn't this man dangerous?"
He noted her eagerness, and hastened to qualify. "Him? The Kid? No, I don't mean him.
He's plumb gentle. I mean a
real bad man--if there was any out here, you know. Now, not havin' any
police, out here, the fellers that believes in law and order, why, onct in a while, they kind of help go after the fellers that don't. It works out all right. Now I don't seem to just remember which ones it was of our fellers that Stillson took with him the other day, along of your hurrying me out of town so soon after I got in."
"It was Mr. Tomlinson, and Mr. McKinney from the ranch, you know; and Curly wanted to go, but they wouldn't let him."
"Why wouldn't they?"
"Because he was a married man, they said. And yet you say this criminal is not dangerous?"
"He'd ought to been glad to go, him a married man. I've been married a good deal myself. But was them two the only ones that went?"
"They two--and Mr. Anderson."
Tom smoked on quietly. "Well, I don't see why they'd take a tenderfoot like him," he remarked at length, "while there was men like Curly standin' around."
"I thought you were his friend!" blazed the girl, her cheeks reddening.
Tom Osby grinned at the success of his subterfuge.
"If he wasn't a good man, Ben Stillson wouldn't 'a' took him along," admitted he.
"Then it
is dangerous?"
"Ma'am," said Tom Osby, tapping his pipe against the side of the wagon seat, "they're about even, a half dozen good ones against about that many bad ones. They're game on both sides, and got to be. And we all know well enough that Dan Anderson's game as the next one. The boys figured that out the other night. Why, he'll come back all right in a few days; don't worry none about
that." He looked straight ahead of him, pretending not to notice the little gloved hand that stole toward his sleeve. In her own way, Constance had discovered that she might depend upon this rough man of the plains.
"Ma'am," he went on after a while, "not apropy of nothing, as they say in the novels, I wish you and your dad would hurry and get your old railroad through here. Us folks may some of us want to go back to the States sometime, and it's a long way to ride from Heart's Desire to any railroad the way it is, unless you've got mighty good company, like I have, this trip. I get awful lonesome sometimes, drivin' between here and Vegas. I had a parrot onct, and a phonygraph, as you may remember, but the fellers took 'em both away from me, you know. I'm thinkin' of makin' up to that oldest girl from Kansas and settlin' down. She makes fine pies. I've knew one of her pies to last two hundred miles--all the way up to Vegas--they're that permernent. She reminds me a heap of my third wife. Now, allowin' I did take one more chanct, and make up to that oldest girl, we'd look fine, wouldn't we, takin' a weddin' trip in this here wagon, and not on no railroad!"
Constance was smiling now. "I've got her gentled and comin' along right easy now," thought Tom Osby to himself.
"I knowed a feller up in Vegas onct," he went on, "got married and went plumb to New York, towering around. He got lost on a ferry-boat down there somewhere, and rode back and forrard all day; and says he to me, 'Blamed if every man in that town didn't get his boots blacked every day.' That's foolish."
The girl laughed outright, rolling the veil back from her face now, and taking a full look up at the sky, with more enjoyment in life than she had felt for days. Further conversation, however, was interrupted by a deep snore from the rear of the wagon.
"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 Dick 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 hell. 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 assist 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 God 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 Osby, Esquire, gives his permission--always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he feels like goin' there. Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."
"Of course," assented Constance; and her father nodded.
"That'd be fair, and it'd be easy," went on Tom. "We'll fix it up that-a-way, me and Miss Constance--not you. And as soon as we get to a telegraft office, we fire the general counsel, Mr. Barkley; don't we, Miss Constance?" The girl nodded grimly.
"He's fired," said Tom. "You can take care of that the first thing you do, Mr. Ellsworth. Then you can make out my papers as yardmaster and general boss of the deepot. You can be clerk.
"Now here we go, the railroad cars a choo-chooin' up our canon, same as down here at Sky Top. In the front car is the president, which is Miss Constance, with me clost along, the new yardmaster. Your pa is somewhere back on the train, Miss Constance, with the money to pay off the hands. He's useful, but not inderspensible."
"Go on!" applauded Constance. "Who besides us and poor old dad?"
Tom Osby turned and looked at her gravely.
"And there comes down to meet us at the station," he concluded, "the only man we needed to help us put this thing through." Tom Osby finished his tea in silence. Constance herself made no comment. Her gaze was on the far-off mountains.
"That there man," he resumed, shaking out the grounds from his tea-cup, "is the new division counsel for the road, the first mayor of Heart's Desire,--after Miss Constance,--and mighty likely the next Congressional delergate from this Territory. Now can you both guess who that man is?"
"I'll admit he's a bigger man than Barkley," said Ellsworth, slowly. "That boy would make a grand trial lawyer. They couldn't beat him."
"No," said Tom Osby, "they'd think he was square, and that means a lot. They
do think he's square; and the boys are goin' to do something for him if they can. Now if he gets back--"
Constance turned upon him with a glance of swift appeal.
"As I was sayin',
when he gets back," resumed Tom, "some of us fellers may perhaps take it up with him, and tell him what Miss Constance wants to have done."
This was too much. The girl sprang to her feet. "You'll tell him nothing!" she cried.
Ellsworth turned to Tom Osby with a sober face. "Young Anderson rode away from us the other morning," said he, "and he hardly troubled himself to say good-by. We used to know him back East; and he needn't have taken that affair of the railroad meeting so much to heart."
"Come!" called Constance, "get ready and let's be going. I'm sick of this country!" She walked rapidly away from the others.
"A woman can change some sudden, can't she, Mr. Ellsworth?" remarked Tom Osby, slowly.
"Look here, Miss Constance," said he, presently, when he came nearer to her, standing apart from the wagon, "there's been mistakes and busted plans enough in here already. Now don't get on no high horse and break up my scheme."
"Don't talk to me!" She stamped her foot.
"Ma'am! ain't you ashamed to say them words?" She did not answer, and Tom Osby took the step for which he had been preparing throughout the entire morning.
"Ma'am," said he, "one word from you would bring that feller to you on the keen lope. He'd fix the railroad all right mighty soon. Then besides--"
She turned away. "The question of the railroad is a business one, and nothing else; talk to my father about it."
Tom went silently about his preparations for resuming the journey. When he came to put the horses to the wagon tongue, he found Constance sitting there, staring with misty eyes at the distant hills beyond which lay Heart's Desire. Tom Osby paused at the shelter of the wagon cover and backed away.
"Something has got to be did," he muttered to himself, "and did mighty blame quick. If we don't get some kind of hobbles on that girl,
she's goin' to jump the fence and go back home." _