-tell me,
if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the
"double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if
while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek
pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over
its back, what, as a man, would you do? What, as a man, _could_ you
do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a
court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law had been
known? Consider, what would be the abstract right and justice of this
matter, repeating that you were a bridegroom and twenty-three, and that
the air was molten wine and honey mingled, and that this pig--but then,
the matter is absurd! There is but one answer. It was right--indeed,
it was inevitable--that Curly should shoot the pig; because in the
first place it had intruded upon his pastime, and because in the second
place he felt like it.

And yet over this act, this simple, inevitable act of justice, arose
the first law case ever known in Heart's Desire, a cause which shook
that community to the centre of its being, and for a time threatened
its very continuance. Ah, well! perhaps the time had come. Perhaps
the sun was now to set over all the valleys of Heart's Desire. Perhaps
this was the beginning of the end. The law, they say, must have its
course. It had its course in Heart's Desire.

But not without protest, not without struggle. There were two factions
from the start. Strange to say, that most bitterly opposed to Curly
was headed by no less a person than his own intended father-in-law, the
man from Leavenworth. It was his pig. The rest of us had lived at
Heart's Desire for a considerable time, but there had hitherto seemed
no need for law. Order we already had in so far as order is really
needed; though the importance of order, or indeed the importance of
law, is a matter very much overrated. No man at Heart's Desire ever
dreamed of locking his door. His horse might doze saddled in the
street if he liked. No man spoke in rudeness or coarseness to his
neighbor, as do men in the cities where they have law. No man did
injustice to his neighbor, for fair play and an even chance were gods
in the eyes of all, eikons above each pinon-burning hearth in all that
valley of content. The speech of man was grave and gentle, the
movements of man were easy and unhurried; neither did any man work by
rule, or by clock, or by