nch Colt in either hand, each arm at full
length, one gun shooting joyously down the centre of the street of your
chosen town, the other shooting as cheerfully up the same street--to do
this actually, with bark of powder and attending puffs of dust
cut--this is indeed delightsome when the heart is full of red blood,
and the chest swells with charged wine o' life, and the eyes gleam and
the muscles harden for very search of some endeavor immediate and
difficult! It is the more delightsome when this moment of man-frenzy
finds one in such a town as was this of Heart's Desire; where, indeed,
a man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted
wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so
of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of
the joy of living. To own this little world, to live free of touch or
taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of
the free sky--to live in Heart's Desire and be a man--ah! would that
were possible for all of us to-day! Were it so, then assuredly we
should exult and take unto ourselves all the privileges of the domain,
perhaps even to the extent of attempting the "double roll."

Curly's wooing of the Littlest Girl, sped apace by his unrighteous
appropriation of our can of oysters, in which he had held no fee
simple, but only an individual and indeterminate interest, had
prospered beyond all just deserts of a red-headed cow puncher with a
salary of forty-five dollars a month. He had already, less than two
months after the installation of the new postmaster, announced to his
friends his forthcoming nuptials, and ever since the setting of the
happy date had comported himself with an air of ownership of the town
and a mere tolerance of its inhabitants.

Perhaps, if we were each and every one of us a prospective bridegroom,
as was Curly upon this morning in question, we should be all the more
persuaded to execute the "double roll" in mid-street, as proof to the
public that all was well. Perhaps, also, if there should thus appear
to any of us, adown street upon either hand, an object moving slowly,
pausing, resuming again across the line of gun-vision its slow
advance--ah! tell me, if that slow-moving object crossing the
bridegroom's joyous aim were a pig,--a grunting, fat, conceited
pig,--arrogating to itself much of that street wherefrom one's
fellow-citizens had for a moment of grave courtesy withdrawn-