that girl from Kansas, and I
serve notice right here. No use for you or Mac or any of you to be
a-tryin' to cut out any stock for me. I seen it first."

We dropped down and ever down as we rode on along the winding mountain
trail. The dark sides of the Patos Mountains edged around to the back
of us, and the scarred flanks of big Carrizo came farther and farther
forward along our left cheeks as we rode on. Then the trail made a
sharp bend to the left, zigzagged a bit to get through a series of
broken ravines, and at last topped the low false divide which rose at
the upper end of the valley of Heart's Desire.

It was a spot lovely, lovable. Nothing in all the West is more fit to
linger in a man's memory than the imperious sun rising above the valley
of Heart's Desire; nothing unless it were the royal purple of the
sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling
hills, which guarded it round about. In Heart's Desire it was so calm,
so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring. Perhaps
the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the
early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands. Perhaps again he
named it at sunset, and did so reverently. God knows he named it right.

There was no rush nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor
thieving there. Heart's Desire! It was well named, indeed; fit
capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they
might, that Life can be left aside when one grows weary of it;
dreaming--ah! deep, foolish, golden dream--that somewhere there is on
earth an Eden with no Eve and without a flaming sword!

The town all lay along one deliberate, crooked street, because the
_arroyo_ along which it straggled was crooked. Its buildings were
mostly of adobe, with earthen roofs, so low that when one saw a
rainstorm coming in the rainy season (when it rained invariably once a
day), he went forth with a shovel and shingled his roof anew, standing
on the ground as he did so. There were a few cabins built of logs, but
very few. Only one or two stores had the high board front common in
Western villages. Lumber was very scarce and carpenters still scarcer.
How the family from Kansas had happened to drift into Heart's
Desire--how a man of McKinney's intelligence had come to settle
there--how Dan Anderson, a very good lawyer, happened to have tarried
there--how indeed any of us happened to be there, are q