ht sunlit street of Heart's Desire.
Stern-browed Carrizo, guardian through centuries of calm and secrecy,
gazed down on them unwinking. Dan Anderson looked up at the grim
sentinel of the valley, and mockery left his speech. He looked about at
the wide and vacant spaces of the little settlement, lying content,
secure, and set apart, and a horror came upon his soul. He was about to
be a traitor, a traitor to Heart's Desire! Law--title--security--what
more of these could these men bring to Heart's Desire than it had long
had already? What wrong here had ever been left unrighted? Truth, and
justice, and fairness, and sincerity, those priceless things--why, he had
known them here for years. Were they now to be made more obvious, or
more strong? He had believed his friends, had had friends to believe;
would these walking at his side be better friends? These men of Heart's
Desire, these simple children who had left the smother of civilization to
seek out for themselves a place of strength and simplicity, these strong
and fearless giants, these friends of his--had he not promised them that
they would be safe in his hands? Hitherto there had never been a traitor
among all the men of Heart's Desire. Was he, their accepted friend, to
be the first? Dan Anderson passed his hand over a forehead suddenly
grown moist. He dared not look up at the chiding front of old Carrizo.

"I was saying," said Porter Barkley, turning from the taciturn engineer
as they walked along the hillside, "that this place seems to have been
laid off with a circular saw. I can't see any idea of streets at all."

"There is a sort of a street along the _arroyo_," said Dan Anderson,
dully. "There never were any cross streets. The boys just built where
they felt like it."

"And great builders they were! I didn't know men ever lived in such
places. What's that joint there?" He pointed out a ruined _jacal_ of
upright mud-chinked logs, now leaning slantwise far to one side. "Was
that a house, too? It hasn't even a chimney,"

"That was the residence and law office of a former supreme judge of the
State of Kansas," replied Dan Anderson. "He didn't need any chimney.
You've no idea how useless a chimney really is. He never stopped to cut
any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and
let the smoke go out the window. He had a pet wildcat that shared his
legal studies--oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to