iles of this here country. Besides, a
_artist_ is somebody that's _dead_."

"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson. "You've got to be
dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art,
of course. It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will
be just what it is to-day. That's Art. But I'm tellin' you the truth,
Tom. The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day. She
belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the
name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life,
but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything
but boiled continuous.

"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season. They
are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a
moment, to catch a little of their financial breath. The Southern
Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad
fares. Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on
the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the
idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to
sidetrack his whole _rodeo_ for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at
the Sky Top hotel,--that new railroad health resort some Yankees have
just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure
in livin'."

"How do you know _she'll_ be there?" asked Tom.

"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it. They
think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both
happy. And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be
down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."

Tom Osby was silent. The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a
hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail. "It ain't so," said Tom,
at length. "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso. The
dust's a fright."

"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson. "Now, the bull-ring over at
Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera--especially for
'Carmen'--which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight,
anyway. Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over
there. I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim
smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension. If
Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso.
He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.

"But now," resume