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 pa