_ CHAPTER VII. TEMPTATION AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing how Paradise was lost through the Strange Performance of a Craven Adam The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, to which Dan Anderson led Mr. Ellsworth, was a long, low adobe, earthen roofed. The window-panes were very small, where any still remained. The interior of the hotel consisted of a long dining room, a kitchen, a room where Uncle Jim slept, and a very few other rooms, guest chambers where any man might rest if very weary from one cause or another. The front door was always open. The hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, not being civilized but utterly barbaric, was anchorage for the Dead Broke, in a way both hotel and bank.
There was in Heart's Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined circulating medium. That was all the money there was. No one could be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all wealth, as was very well known. To many this may seem a restricting and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for a whole town to have, as any man of Heart's Desire could have told you.
A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place devoted to the sale of firearms. There were many nails driven into the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all these nails held specimens of weapons. Excellent weapons they were, too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of Colt's factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills, none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks. At times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the wall at Uncle Jim's hotel. The visible supply fluctuated somewhat. Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the circulating medium.
Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man. If a man paid, very well. If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him, for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well knew. And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as Uncle Jim also knew very well. There were no printed rules or regulations in Uncle Jim's hotel. There was no hotel register. There were no questions ever asked. Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his duty, was to feed men. For the rest, he often had to do his own cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk? Indeed, there was no desk. The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.
That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was something never dreamed in Heart's Desire. Yet one day a sensitive young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how, down into Heart's Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time he was very hungry. He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim. The latter said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed! "Get 'round this," said Uncle Jim, "and you'll feel better." The young man "got 'round" the beefsteak. Perhaps it was the feeling about the butter, which of itself was a thing unusual. At any rate, as he went out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door. This act meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer existed. The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good. The intention of every man in that little valley to do "about what was right" was silently and fully evidenced. That a man would give up his gun was proof enough of that. So this became the custom of the place, the unwritten law. When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in, handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air. It is astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general supply of six-shooters.
On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart's Desire were hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of better days. The financial situation stood thus: Johnny Hudgens had all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the guns. Temporarily, male Heart's Desire did not exist.
Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man who--as the rapid word spread to all--had come to look into the gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso! Humiliated, Heart's Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan Anderson, do the talking.
"I didn't know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson," said Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim's hotel. "Lately organized?" He swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.
"That? Oh, that's not the arsenal," replied Dan Anderson; "that's the clearing-house. If a man's broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know. I don't know that I can just explain everything in this country to you right at once, sir. You see, it's different. Now, out here, a six-shooter is part of a man's clothes. That's why the fellows stay out. They're ashamed--don't feel properly dressed, you know."
"Not much law and order, eh?"
"Not much law, but plenty of order, and not the least pretence about it."
"The courts--"
"No courts at all, or at least within sixty miles. Why, we haven't even a town organization--not a town officer. There was never even a town-site plat filed."
Mr. Ellsworth turned on him suddenly. "Where's your titles?" he asked.
"We haven't needed any, so far. Now that you've come, with talk of a railroad and all that--"
"Oh, well, you know, that's just talk. I'm not responsible for that."
"I hope you like canned tomatoes," said Dan Anderson, "or, if you don't, that you're very fond of beefsteak. There won't be much else till Tom Osby gets back from Las Vegas with a load of freight. Tom Osby's our common carrier. I hope the new railroad will do as well."
Mr. Ellsworth was a gentleman, and a very hungry one, so there was no quarrel over the tomatoes, which were Special XXX, nor over the beefsteak, which might have been worse. An hour later he went out on the street with his host, whose conduct thus far, he was forced to admit, had been irreproachable. They strolled up the rambling street, past many straggling buildings, and at length paused before the little building, made of sun-dried brick, and plastered with mud, where Dan Anderson had his residence and his law office.
"You'll excuse me, Mr. Ellsworth," said that young gentleman, "for bringing you here, but the truth is I thought you might be thirsty and might get poisoned. You have to do these things gradually, till you get immune. Now, under my bed, I've got a bottle which never has been opened and which ought to be safe. I don't bother corks a great deal, only when we are welcoming distinguished guests."
"It's just a little soon after dinner," demurred Ellsworth, "but, ahem! That dust--yes, I believe I will."
There was a dignity about Dan Anderson now which left Ellsworth distinctly uncomfortable. The latter felt himself in some fashion at a disadvantage before this penniless adventurer, this young man whom once he had not cared to have as a regular visitor at his own home back in the far-off East.
"You don't mean to tell me, young man," he spoke after a long period of silence, "that this is the way you live?"
"Certainly," said Dan Anderson. "I know I'm extravagant. I don't need a place as good as this, but I always was sort of sensuous, you know." Ellsworth looked at him without any comprehension, from him to the bed with blankets, and the bare table. "Come in," said Dan Anderson, "and sit down. Better sit on the chair, I reckon. One leg of the bed is sort of dicky."
"So this is the way you live?" repeated Ellsworth to Dan Anderson, who was now on his hands and knees and searching under the bed. "Now, about my daughter--is there any hotel--are there any women?"
"Three, from Kansas," said Dan Anderson. "That is, three real ones. All the female earth, Mr. Ellsworth, comes from Kansas, same as all the baled hay. Oh, yes, here she is!"
He had been speaking with his voice somewhat muffled under the bed, but now emerged, bearing a dusty bottle in his hand.
Mr. Ellsworth looked at him a bit keenly; for, after all, he was not a bad judge of men. "How long has that bottle been there?" asked he, abruptly.
"Oh, a couple of years, maybe."
"And you've never opened it?"
"No, why should I? You hadn't come yet. Of course, I knew you'd be along some day. I kept it to drink to your very good health, Mr. Ellsworth--the health of the man who told me not to come around his house--told me I was an unsettled ne'er-do-well, and not suitable company for his--why, I don't think I have any corkscrew at all." His voice was slow, but harder now in quality.
Ellsworth sat on the chair, the bottle in his hand hanging between his knees. He looked at Dan Anderson steadily. "You've got me guessing in a good many ways," he said; "I don't know why you came here--"
"No?"
"Nor how you live, nor what encouragement or prospects you find here. For instance, about how much did you make last year in your business?"
"My law practice? Oh, you mean down at the county-seat? There is no law court here. How much did the boys pay me?"
"Yes."
"Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents."
"What?"
"Oh, I know it's a heap of money; but I made it."
"Enough for tobacco money!"
"Sir," said Dan Anderson, "more. I ate frequent. Why, sir, did you ever stop to think that our total circulating medium here is only three hundred dollars? I had almost all of it one time or another. Now, not doubting your intentions in the least, did you ever come that near to corralling the whole visible supply of cash in your own town? Moreover, I am attorney for the men who own the coal-mines. I'm the lawyer for both the gold mills. We've got one or two mines here, and I'm in. Besides, I've just got the law business from Pitzer Chisum, down on the Seven Rivers, He's got maybe a hundred thousand head of cattle. Now, I'm going to rob Pitzer, because he needs it. He's got money scandalous."
Mr. Ellsworth put the bottle down on the floor, and sat up on the chair with his hands in his pockets, wondering. "But why?" he demanded sternly, "why? What are you doing out here? Why have you thrown away your life? Come--you're a bright young man, and you--"
"Friend," said Dan Anderson, with a sudden cold quality in his voice, "I think that'll about do. I am no brighter than I was a few years ago."
"But this is no place to live."
"Why isn't it? It takes a man to live here. Do you reckon you could qualify?" The older man raised his head with a snort, but Dan Anderson stood looking at him calmly. "Now let me tell you one thing," said he. "If you heard of our coal-mines here through me, at least I didn't ask you to come out here, and I didn't ask you to bring anybody along with you. I've played fair with you. You don't come here to do me any favor, do you?"
"Oh, well,"--began the other.
"Then you think there might be something here, after all?"
"What is there here?"
"A very great deal. There's just as much here as there is anywhere else in the world."
Mr. Ellsworth arose and stepped to the door. For a moment he stood looking out at the twilight. He turned suddenly to the young man. "I'll tell you," said he. "There's something to you--I don't know what. Drop all this. Come on back. I'll think it over--I'll give you a place in my office."
"You'd give me
what? Did you ever stop to think that you can't give me
anything?"
Surprise sat on his visitor's face. "
Nada!" cried Dan Anderson. "Me go back there and work on a salary for you? Me check my immortal soul on your hat-rack? Me live scared of my life, like all the rest of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell? If I should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me you once expressed, before you really knew me."
"But what have you got out here?" repeated the other, stupidly.
Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his blue shirt.
"What made you come?" insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.
"You know almighty well why I came. But let that go. Let's say I came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley if you have luck later. I'm going to be your kind and loving partner in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you. You watch me. I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to work all I want to. When I don't want to, there isn't any living mortal soul that's going to crack a whip over me and tell me I've got to."
"Things seem rather strange," began Mr. Ellsworth. "You talk as though I were obliged to put money into these mines."
"Of course you will. You can't help it. You never saw a better opportunity for investment in all your life. But now let me tell you another thing, which I oughtn't to tell you if I served you right. You go slow while you're here. There is plenty of gold in this valley. There isn't a fellow in this settlement who hasn't got a quart glass fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like yourself. You're Glad Tidings in this town. You couldn't walk to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys would offer you. You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes. You wouldn't know where you were; and when you came to; you'd own about fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid. Now, I oughtn't to take care of you. I don't owe you a thing on earth. But because you brought--well, because--anyhow, I'm
going to take care of you, while you're here, and see that you get a square deal."
"By the way, my daughter--" said Mr. Ellsworth, sitting up uneasily.
"Never mind," said Dan Anderson, gently. "Miss Constance is all right. They'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of you. Everybody will be more sociable by about noon to-morrow. The whole town's scared yet."
"I don't see anything very terrible about me," said Mr. Ellsworth.
"Oh, it isn't
you," said Dan Anderson, calmly. "Nobody's afraid of
you. It's your daughter--it's the woman. Don't you reckon Adam was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreading fig tree? I don't know that I make myself right plain--you see, it's sort of funny here. We aren't used to women any more."
"Oh, well, now, my dear sir, you see, my daughter--"
"I know all about her," said Dan Anderson, sharply.
"I don't doubt she thought I was a mere trifler. She couldn't understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until he's found the right thing to stick to. I don't blame her the least bit in the world. She could only see what I
wasn't doing. I knew what I was
going to do, and I know it now." There was a gravity and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through the self-consciousness of the man before him. Ellsworth looked at him intently. "We'll be here for a day or so," said he, "and meantime, it will seem a little strange for my daughter, I suppose--"
"You don't need to tell me about anything," said Dan Anderson. "Of course, her coming is a little inopportune. You see, Mr. Ellsworth, the morning stars are inopportune, and the sunrise every day, and the dew of heaven."
Ellsworth looked at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured something about going to look up his daughter.
"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson. "But I know the way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's, I am going over there--alone. Wait till I get my coat. I don't wear it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the evening here, the same as they do in the States."
As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets, crossed the
arroyo alone, he met Curly coming the other way. Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness of the importance of his position in society at the time.
"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new girl is the absolute limit. She dropped in just like we'd been expectin' her. I was some scared; but
she's just
folks!"
Dan Anderson hardly heard him. He passed on into the house, where he had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place. It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl. "I was just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to our city park. Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and light."
She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she rose and joined him. All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without possible resistance.
A short distance up the
arroyo, toward the old abandoned stamp mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the Patos spring, far up on the mountain side. At the end of this pipe, where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of her own. Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose bush, now blossomless. Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.
"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed your stroll along the boulevard. I hope, also, that the entertainment of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."
"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at them. These people are genuine."
"I'm not apologizing," he said quickly; "there are just a few things a fellow learns out here. One is not to apologize; and another is not to beg. Sit down." There were two white boulders beside which the trickle of water rippled. Obeying him, she seated herself. Presently Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat in silence. The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of Heart's Desire. The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified into a strange, half-ghostly beauty. The earth has few scenes more beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight. These two sat and gazed for a time.
"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself than to him.
"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the mountain-rimmed horizon. "Yes, it's mine."
"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.
"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful. Some time there'll be a man who'll learn something in such a place as this. I don't know but I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."
"The years!" she whispered to herself.
"It seems forever," said he. "The time when a fellow's taking his medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life of five years ago--almost, except a part of it. It's been another world here. Nothing matters much, does it?"
Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.
"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight. "Look! It is unspeakable."
He looked at her face instead. "I've seen you right here," he said, "right at this very place, a thousand times. It's Eden. It's the Garden. It's the Beginning."
"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.
"Yes, yes--" Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control. "It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete. Constance--"
The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life. Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not served to banish it. She had heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered. Now, beneath a limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world--in this Eden which they two alone occupied--she heard him, the man whom in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in very person, and speaking that very thought which was in her own heart that hour. Her bosom rose tumultuously, her throat fluttered. Instinctively she would have fled, but a hand on her shoulder pressed her back as she would have arisen, and she obeyed--as she had always obeyed him--as she always would.
"Paradise unfinished--" he whispered, his face close to hers. "You know what it is that's missing."
Ah! could not a woman also know the longing, the vacancy, the solitude of an Eden incomplete! She turned to him trembling, her lips half open, as though to welcome a long-hoped-for draught of happiness.
Alas! it was not happiness, but misery that came; for Constance Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are withheld from none. There was a sound of a distant shout--the chance call of some drunken reveller--far down the street, a tawdry, unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just. Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire. It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm, another mental world. He started, and half shivered as his hand dropped to his side. His face showed haggard even in the moonlight.
"My God! what am I saying?" he murmured to himself.
Then presently he drew himself up, smiling bitterly. "Some prominent citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodded toward the street. "Don't you think you'd like Heart's Desire?"
The moment of Eve--the woman's moment--the instant for her happiness was past and gone! The light of the moon lay ghostly over all the world, but there was no radiance, no joy nor comfort in it now.
The girl herself was silent. She sat looking out over the street below, instinctively following Dan Anderson's gaze. Voices came to them, clamorous, strident, coarse. There lay revealed all that was crude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of Heart's Desire. It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in which he had lived. For a woman--for her--for this sweet girl of a gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous. "Be just! Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.
"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in."
His face was averted as he walked beside her. There was no word that he could say. Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood and in some part forgave.
"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at length from the door of Curly's house.
Choking, he left her. As he stumbled blindly back, over the
arroyo, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a shooting star. Dully he watched it, and for him it was the flaming sword barring the gates of Eden.
Hours later--for sleep was not for him--Dan Anderson stood waiting for the sun to rise over old Carrizo. Far off, along the pathway of the morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the combat, and the grovelling. "No, not for me; not there!" he said, conviction coming to him once more.
He turned then and glanced down the single street of Heart's Desire, a street as straggling and purposeless as his own misdirected life--a wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion. Longer he looked, and stronger the conviction grew. "No, no," he said, clenching his hand; "not here for her--not here!" _