“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 you, just fresh from New York.”

“But didn’t you live in New York once yourself?”

“Yes, once.”

“What made you come away?”

“Objected to, as irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; and objection sustained,” replied Dan Anderson.  “The first thing I learned in this country was not to inquire about any man’s past.  That’s a useful thing for you to learn, too.”

Porter Barkley, accustomed to dominating those around him, flushed red, but managed to suppress his rising choler for the time.  “And by the way, what’s that old shell over there, across the ditch?” he asked.

“I regret your irreverence,” said Dan Anderson.  “That’s the New Jersey Gold Mills.  Eighty thousand of Eastern Capital went in there at one time.  They didn’t understand the ways of the country.”

“Humph!  Well, it’s a more practical layout you’ve got in here this time.  You can gamble that Ellsworth and our gang are not going to sink their roll here, by a long ways, unless they get something for it.”

“You’ll get a run for your money, in all likelihood,” remarked Dan Anderson.

“As I said, now, Grayson, don’t pay any attention to this gully here,” went on Barkley.  “We’ll fill this ditch and put in drains at the crossings, and run the main street north and south.  We’ll take the ramshorn crooks out of this town in about two days, when we get started.”

“I see no reason why we could not run the cross streets at right angles,” said Grayson, the constructive.  “Of course, we’ll catch a good many of these buildings—­” he hesitated, pointing at the time to Doc Tomlinson’s drug store.

“The corner of this fence would be inside the line of the main street,” he went on, sighting along his lead pencil to the angle of Whiteman’s corral.  It was the very spot where Dan Anderson had sat in council with his cronies many a time.  He bit his lip now as he followed the gaze of the engineer.

“How about the stone house down the arroyo?” asked he of Grayson.  This was Uncle Jim Brothers’s hotel, sanctuary for the homeless of Heart’s Desire, a temple of refuge, a place where the word “Friendship,” unspoken, never written, was known and understood among men gathered from all corners of this unfriendly world.

“That would have to go,” replied Grayson.

“As to that shanty down below, at the head of the canon,” growled Barkley, pointing to Tom Osby’s adobe, “that’s going to be the first thing we’ll tear down, street or no street.  We need that place for our depot yard, and we’re going to take it.  Besides, there was something about that Osby fellow I didn’t like when we met him over at Sky Top.  He’s too damned independent to suit me.”