_ 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 coarse 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 title 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, embarrassed, 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. 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 assistance. "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 damn 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. Nobody
said it was his handwriting It
ain't his handwritin'. It's his
heartwritin'. 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." _