“Oh, yes,” said Dan Anderson, “but don’t dig too deep, or you may run against a land grant from Ferdinand and Isabella to some well-beloved hidalgo whose descendants may now be herding sheep on the Pecos, or owning the earth along the Rio Grande.  Cabeza de Vaca may own this valley, for all I know.  Maybe Coronado owns it. Quien sabe?  We only borrowed the place.  We thought that probably Charles IV, or Philip II, or whoever it was, wouldn’t mind very much, seeing that he’s dead anyhow, in case we returned the valley in good condition, reasonable wear and tear excepted, after we were dead ourselves.  Of course, this railroad coming in complicates matters a good deal.  Do I make all this clear to you, gentlemen?  I never did see a place just like this, myself.”

“No?” snapped Barkley.

“So we called it Heart’s Desire.”

“We’ll call it Coalville now,” retorted Barkley.

They passed out into the bright 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,”