order. There was no such thing as want or
hunger; for did temporary poverty encompass one, was there not always
the house of Uncle Jim Brothers, and could not one there hang up his
gun behind the door and so obtain credit for an indefinite length of
time, entitling him to eat at table with his peers? Had there been
such a thing as families in Heart's Desire, be sure such a thing as a
woman or child engaged in any work had been utterly unknown. It was a
land of men, big, grave, sufficient men, each with a gun upon his hip,
and sometimes two, guaranty of peace and calm and content. And any man
who has ever lived in a Land Before the Law knows that this is the only
fit way of life. Alas! that this scheme, this great, happy simple,
perfect scheme of society should be subverted. And, be it remembered,
this was by reason of nothing more than a pig, an artless, lissom pig,
it is true; an infrequent, somewhat prized, a little petted and perhaps
spoiled pig, it is true; yet, after all, no fit cause of elemental
strife.

But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil,
bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization,
seeds of discontent. He wailed aloud that the pride of the community,
meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of
the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught
left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the
mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of
his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large
designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking
off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and
one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his
neighbor.

Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed
black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but
the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the
town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population,
began to attract attention. It began to play upon the nicely attuned
instrument of Public Spirit. What, indeed, asked the community
gravely, was to separate Heart's Desire in the eye of Eastern Capital,
from any other camp in the far Southwest? Once the town could claim a
pig, which no other camp of that district could do. Now it could do so
no more forever. This began to