, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a
long time, as we sat moodily in the sun. At about this time, Tom Osby
drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of
Whiteman the Jew, just across the street. 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. Tom came up, rifle in hand, like
a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.

"Shut up," said Dan Anderson.

"Well, I ain't so sure," said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin. "It's
a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don't get quite
so funny, by a leetle shade."

I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire
over smaller things than this. "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked
Tom Osby.

"I hadn't noticed it," said he.

"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson. "You come here, and tell me what
time the stage gets in from Socorro."

"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."

"He's _loco_, Tom," said I.

"Well, I reckon _so_. When a man begins to worry about what time the
Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."

"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital--Eastern Capital, Eve and
the Serpent, all on one stage. The only comfort is that no Eastern
Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day. She'll go
back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again." But the dumb
supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.

There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire. It was ninety miles to the
nearest wire. The stage came in but occasionally from the distant
railroad. Yet--and this was one of the strange things of that strange
country, which we accepted without curiosity and without
argument--there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by
which news got about over great distances. Perhaps it was a rider in
by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had
seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the canon, the white
smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming. This news
brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him
in query.