Heart's Desire Part 12

"Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here b.a.l.l.s and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, they're a disgrace to civilization."

"_p.r.o.nto_! _p.r.o.nto_! Hurry up!" called Dan Anderson from his perch on the fence of Whiteman's corral, from which he was observing what was probably the first game of croquet ever played between the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. There were certain features of the contest in question which were perhaps not usual. Indeed, I do not recall ever to have seen any other game of croquet in which two of the high contracting parties wore "chaps" and spurs and the other two overalls and blue s.h.i.+rts. But in spite of all admonition Curly stood perplexed, with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his mallet held gingerly between the fingers of one hand, while a cigarette graced those of the other.

"The court rules," resumed Dan Anderson, "that this game can't wait for arguments of counsel. Curly, you are a disgrace. You and McKinney ought to skin Doc and the Learned Counsel easy if you had a bit of savvy. Can't you hit that stake?"

"I could if you'd let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly. "I ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me.

If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over Carrizy Mountain that last carrom. You watch me when onct I get the hang of this thing."

"You can't get the hang of nothing," said McKinney. "A cow puncher ain't got no sense except to ride mean horses and eat canned tomatoes."

"Maybe you don't like your pardner," said Curly. "Now you change around next game, and I'll bet me and the lawyer can skin Doc and you to a finish. Bet you three _pesos_. Of course, I can't play this thing first jump like a borned tenderfoot. I wonder what my mammy'd say to me if she caught me foolin' around here with this here little wooden tack hammer."

"It all comes of Mac's believin' everything he saw in an advertis.e.m.e.nt," said Dan Anderson.

"Well, you put me up to it," retorted McKinney, flus.h.i.+ng.

"Now, there you go!" exclaimed Dan Anderson. "I didn't figure on what it might do to our mortality tables. You fellows can't play the game wearin' spurs, and I'm afraid to see you try any further with your guns on. Here, all of you, come over here. The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game. I don't mind bein' umpire in the ancient and honorable game of croquet, but I ain't goin' to a.s.sume no unpaid obligations as coroner."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'The umpire decides that you've got to check your guns during the game.'"]

With some protests all those engaged handed their belts to Dan Anderson, who casually flung them over a projecting cedar limb of the fence. "For shame! Curly," said he. "Talk about tenderfeet! Here you are, wearin' a pearl handle on your gun, just like a cheap Nebraska sheepherder with social ambitions. I thought you was a real cowman.

The court fines you--"

"It ain't my fault," said Curly, blus.h.i.+ng. "The girl--the little woman--that's my wife--she done that last Christmas. She allowed it was fine--and it goes."

"Yes, and put enough money into this handle to buy a whole new croquet set for the family. Ain't that awful! All this comes of takin' a daily newspaper once a month and readin' the advertisin' columns.

We're going to be plumb effete, if we ain't mighty careful, down in here."

"That's so," said McKinney, scratching his head. "Times is changin'.

That reminds me, I ordered a new suit of clothes by mail from Philadelphy, and they ought to be just about due when Tom Osby comes down; and that ought to be to-day."

"That's so," a.s.sented Doc Tomlinson. "He's got a little bill of goods for me, too."

"Oh, why, oh, why this profligacy, Doc?" said Dan Anderson. "Didn't you order two pounds of alum the last trip Tom made? What do you want of so many drugs, anyhow?"

"Hush, fellers," said Curly. "Listen a minute!"

Curly's ears had detected the rattle of distant wagon wheels. "That's Tom comin' now," said he. "He's a heap more regular than the Socorro stage. That's him, because I can hear him singin'."

"Tom, he's stuck on music," said McKinney.

Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle coming down the canon; and presently there was borne to our ears the sound of Tom Osby's voice in his favorite melody:--

"I never _lo-o-oved_ a fo-o-o-o-nd ga-a-a-z-elle!"

He proclaimed this loudly.

We knew that Tom would drive up to Whiteman's store, hence we waited for him near the corral fence. As he approached and observed our occupation he arrested his salutations and gazed for a moment in silent meditation.

"Prithee, sweet sirs," said he, at length, "what in blazes you doin'?"

"These gentlemen," said Dan Anderson from the fence, "are engaged in showin' the endurin' quality of the Anglo-Saxon temperament. Wherever the Saxon goes he sets up his own peculiar inst.i.tutions. What! Shall New Mexico be behind New York, or New England? This croquet set cost eighteen dollars to get here from Chicago. Get down, Tom, you're in on the game."

But Tom picked up his reins and clucked to his team. "Excuse _me_, fellers," said he. "That there looks too frisky for me. I got to think of my business reputation." He pa.s.sed on up the street.

"What's the matter with Tom?" asked Curly. "Seems like he wasn't feelin' right cheerful, some way." Dan Anderson gazed after the teamster pensively.

"Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom," said he. "Let's go find out what it is, fellows." He disengaged the respective six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman's commercial emporium, where Tom Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon.

This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers's restaurant, but to his own adobe down the _arroyo_. We looked at each other in silence.

"Something on his mind," said Dan Anderson.

"He didn't bring my clothes," said McKinney.

"Nor my drugs," said Doc Tomlinson.

"And yet," said Curly, who was observant, "he kep' one box in the wagon. Couldn't see the brand, but she's there all right."

"Curly," said Dan Anderson, "you are appointed a committee of one to follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means."

Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom Osby's adobe. The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters. He then began to search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not determine. With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom Osby's team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher can command on foot. When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled in a frown.

"Fellers," said he. "I didn't think it of him! This here ain't right.

Tom Osby's got a baby in there, and he's squeezin' the life out of it.

Listen! Come on now. Do you hear that? How's that? Why, I tell you--why, dang _me_ if it ain't _singin'_!"

There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody, thin, quavering, distant, weird. As it rose upon the hot afternoon air it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible. The spine of each man crawled.

Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who maintained his self-possession. He smiled gently. "Now," said he, "we certainly are fixed; Heart's Desire ain't benighted any after this."

"What's the matter with you?" Curly questioned.

"Poor cow puncher," replied Dan Anderson, "I have to do the thinkin'

for you, and I ain't paid for it. Who, if not the Learned Counsel on my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this community? Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city?

Who put up the electric lightin' and heatin' plant, and installed the forty-eight miles of continuous trolley track all under one transfer system? Who built the courthouse and the red brick schoolhouse, with nine school-teachers fresh from Connecticut? Who planned the new depot? Who got a new leather lounge for the managin' editor of our daily newspaper? Who built the three new smelters? Who filled our busy streets each evenin' with throngs of happy-faced laborers pacin'

home at night after four hours' pleasant work each day in our elegantly upholstered quartz mines? Was it you, Curly, who made these different and several _pasears_ in progress? Was it you, Doc, you benighted stray from the short-gra.s.s Kansas plains, where they can't raise Kafir corn? Was it you, McKinney, you sour-dispositioned consumer of canned peas? Nay, nay. It was myself and my learned brother. You ought to send us both to Congress."

We gazed up the long, silent street of Heart's Desire, asleep in the all-satisfying sun, and it almost seemed to us that we could indeed see all these things that he had named. The spell was broken by a renewal of the thin, high voice of this mysterious Thing in Tom Osby's house.

"And now," resumed Dan Anderson, "as I remarked, havin' turned our hands to the stable things of life, and havin' builded well the structure of an endurin', permanent society, there remained for us no need save for the softenin' and refinin' touch of a higher culture. We lacked nothing but Art. Now, here she is!

"What you're listenin' to, my countrymen, is music. It ain't a baby, Curly. Music, heavenly maid, is young in Heart's Desire, but it ain't any baby that you're listenin' to. I told Tom Osby myself to look into the phonograph business some time if he got a chance. Gentlemen, I now bid you follow me, to greet Art upon its arrival in our midst. I must confess that Tom Osby is actin' like a blamed swine over this thing, tryin' to keep it all to himself."

The phonograph inside the adobe switched from one tune to another.

"Don't that sound like the Plaza Major in old Chihuahua by moonlight?"

cried McKinney, as a swinging band march came squealing out through the door. "That's a piece by a Mexican band. Can't you hear the choo-choo, and the wee-wee, and the b.u.m-b.u.m? They're all there, sure's you're born!"

"If she plays 'La Paloma,' or that 'Golondrina' thing, I'm goin' to shoot," threatened Curly. "I've done danced to them things at more'n a thousand _bailes_ here and in Texas, and if this is Art, she's got to do different."