ure shall be yours,' says he."

"Ah, ha!" said Doc Tomlinson. "I shore thought that girl was mixed up
in this somehow. But I didn't understand. Wonder if Dan Anderson told
us everything he knew?"

"They set on the back seat," continued Willie, glancing importantly at
the listeners to his romance, "a-lookin' into each other's eyes. And
says the bold juke, to her, says he, 'Constance!' like that.
'Constance,' says he, 'I've loved you these many years agone.'"

"What did she say then?"

"I didn't ketch what she said. But by'm by the proud earl--"

"You said the bold juke."

"It's the same thing. The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint,
like earls always is, and says he agin, 'Lord John, the treasure shall
be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of
thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,' says he. From that I
thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn't ketch. Of
course, I was busy drivin' the coach."

The men of Heart's Desire looked from one to the other. "Well, I'll be
damned!" said Doc Tomlinson.

Curly chewed tobacco vigorously. "To me," he said, "it looks like Dan
was throwed down. That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn't
think that of her."

"Throwed down hard," affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; "but now, hold on
till we get all this straight. Maybe Dan wouldn't work for this outfit
if he knew all that's goin' on. Seems to me like, one way or another,
the girl's kind of up at auction. If she's part of the railroad's
comin' into Heart's Desire, why, then, we want to know about it. I
wish 't Dan Anderson was here,"

But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his
_casita_ across the _arroyo_. As fate would have it, he had caught
Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own
account. Willie escaped alive, and presently left town. Whereafter
Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the
court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised;
and that of the woman as well.

At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him.
Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself,
and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation. Then, in his
loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him,
conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.

Far up on the flank of Carrizo he sat and looked down upon the little
st