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At length the twins buried their faces in Tom Osby's overalls. "Look here, friend," said Tom Osby to Curly, with asperity, "if you don't want these here twins, why, I'll take 'em off your hands mighty damn quick. They're corral broke and right well gentled now, half good stock anyway, and is due to be right free steppers. If you don't want 'em, they're mine for the board bill."
"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.
"That is, countin' years, and not experience." "I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both." "Well, she came from Georgia " "And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually. Dan Anderson was troubled. His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's. "It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far." "I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly understanding. "I can make it in less'n a week."
"You might break something." "Come out," said Dan Anderson. "Not even grand opera lasts all night. Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant. Come on. Get ready to play croquet to-morrow. It's safer." And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening. Our little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's Desire.
Afar, but approaching steadily, might be heard the jolting vehicle coming down the cañon; 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.
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.
Tom tore open a bale of hay, and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a pipe, he began to sing his favorite song. "I never loved a fond gazel-l-l-e," he drawled out. Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot through the top of Tom Osby's wagon.
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.
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.
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