SCIENCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath, and a Cross-eyed Horse
THE PARTITION OF HEART'S DESIRE
Concerning Real Estate, Love, Friendship, and Other Good and Valuable Considerations
TREASON AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing the Dilemma of Dan Anderson, the Doubt of Leading Citizens, and the Artless Performance of a Pastoral Prevaricator
THE MEETING AT HEART'S DESIRE
How Benevolent Assimilation was checked by Unexpected Events
COMMERCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing Wonders of the Thirst of McGinnis, and the Faith of Whiteman the Jew
MEDICINE AT HEART'S DESIRE
How the Girl from the States kept the Set of Twins from being broken
JUSTICE AT HEART'S DESIRE
The Story of a Sheriff and Some Bad Men; showing also a Day's Work, and a Man's Medicine
ADVENTURE AT HEART'S DESIRE
The Strange Story of the King of Gee-Whiz, and his Unusual Experience in Foreign Parts
PHILOSOPHY AT HEART'S DESIRE
Showing further the Uncertainty of Human Events, and the Exceeding Resourcefulness of Mr. Thomas Osby
THE CONSPIRACY AT HEART'S DESIRE
This being the Story of a Sheepherder, Two Warm Personal Friends, and their Love-letter to a Beautiful Queen
ROMANCE AT HEART'S DESIRE
The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle Lady, and an Ananias with Spurs
THE GIRL AT HEART'S DESIRE
The Story of a Surprise, a Success, and Something Else Very Much Better
CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
This being in Part the Story of Curly, the Can of Oysters, and the Girl from Kansas
"It looks a long ways acrost from here to the States," said Curly, as we pulled up our horses at the top of the Capitan divide. We gazed out over a vast, rolling sea of red-brown earth which stretched far beyond and below the nearer foothills, black with their growth of stunted pines. This was a favorite pausing place of all travellers between the county-seat and Heart's Desire; partly because it was a summit reached only after a long climb from either side of the divide; partly, perhaps, because it was a notable view-point in a land full of noble views. Again, it may have been a customary tarrying point because of some vague feeling shared by most travellers who crossed this trail, — the same feeling which made Curly, hardened citizen as he was of the land west of the Pecos, turn a speculative eye eastward across the plains. We could not see even so far as the Pecos, though it seemed from our lofty situation that we looked quite to the ultimate, searching the utter ends of all the earth.
"Yours is up that-a-way;" Curly pointed to the northeast. "Mine was that-a-way." He shifted his leg in the saddle as he turned to the right and swept a comprehensive hand toward the east, meaning perhaps Texas, perhaps a series of wild frontiers west of the Lone Star state. I noticed the nice distinction in Curly's tenses. He knew the man more recently arrived west of the Pecos, possibly later to prove a backslider. As for himself, Curly knew that he would never return to his wild East; yet it may have been that he had just a touch of the home feeling which is so hard to lose, even in a homeless country, a man's country pure and simple, as was surely this which now stretched wide about us. Somewhere off to the east, miles and miles beyond the red sea of sand and grama grass, lay Home.
"And yet," said Curly, taking up in speech my unspoken thought, "you can't see even halfway to Vegas up there." No. It was a long two hundred miles to Las Vegas, long indeed in a freighting wagon, and long enough even in the saddle and upon as good a horse as each of us now bestrode. I nodded. "And it's some more'n two whoops and a holler to my ole place," said he. Curly remained indefinite; for, though presently he hummed something about the sun and its brightness in his old Kentucky home, he followed it soon thereafter with musical allusion to the Suwanee River. One might have guessed either Kentucky or Georgia in regard to Curly, even had one not suspected Texas from the look of his saddle cinches.
It was the day before Christmas. Yet there was little winter in this sweet, thin air up on the Capitan divide. Off to the left the Patos Mountains showed patches of snow, and the top of Carrizo was yet whiter, and even a portion of the highest peak of the Capitans carried a blanket of white; but all the lower levels were red-brown, calm, complete, unchanging, like the whole aspect of this far-away and finished country, whereto had come, long ago, many Spaniards in search of wealth and dreams; and more recently certain Anglo-Saxons, also dreaming, who sought in a stolen hiatus of the continental conquest nothing of more value than a deep and sweet oblivion.
It was a Christmas-tide different enough from that of the States toward which Curly pointed. We looked eastward, looked again, turned back for one last look before we tightened the cinches and started down the winding trail which led through the foothills along the flank of the Patos Mountains, and so at last into the town of Heart's Desire.
"Lord!" said Curly, reminiscently, and quite without connection with any thought which had been uttered. "Say, it was fine, wasn't it, Christmas? We allus had firecrackers then. And eat!