t it?" said Curly, grinning; and I
grinned in reply with what fortitude I could muster. Down in Heart's
Desire there was a little, a very little cabin, with a bunk, a few
blankets, a small table, and a box nailed against the wall for a
cupboard. I knew what was in the box, and what was not in it, and I so
advised my friend as we slipped down off the bald summit of the
Capitans and came into the shelter of the short, black pinons. Curly
rode on for a little while before he made answer.

"Why," said he, at length, "ain't you heard? You're in with our rodeo
on Christmas dinner. McKinney, and Tom Osby, and Dan Anderson, the
other lawyer, and me,--we're going to have Christmas dinner at
Andersen's 'dobe in town to-morrer. You're in. You mayn't like it.
Don't you mind. The directions says to take it, and you take it. It's
goin' to be one of the largest events ever knowed in this here
settlement. Of course, there's goin' to be some canned things, and
some sardines, and some everidge liquids. You guess what besides that."

I told him I couldn't guess.

"Shore you couldn't," said Curly, dangling his bridle from the little
finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match. He
had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
_cigarrillo_. These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
from somewhere near the Rio Grande.

"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
paper going. "I reckon not in a hundred years. Champagne! Whole
quart! Yes, sir. Cost eighteen dollars. Mac, he got it. Billy
Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
railroad, which there wasn't. But Lord! that ain't all. It ain't the
beginnin'. You guess again. No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
scornfully. "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next. We got
a _cake_!"

"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
cake. Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
Dutch oven--they had to know how to do that or starve. But as to cake,
there was none could compass it. And I knew there was not a woman in
all Heart's Desire.

Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
trail among the pinons. "Heap o' things happened since you went down
to te