“Now, Pinto,” he pondered, “whatever in the world am I goin’ to do when we all pull into town?  Deathbed—­and him like enough settin’ up and playin’ solitaire, or out pitchin’ horse shoes.  Shucks!  If I could git around behind Dan Anderson’s house, I believe I’d shoot him a few for luck, so’s to make some sort of death-bed scene like is announced in the small bills.  We’ve been playin’ it low down on them two folks, and for one, I wish’t I was out of it.  Pinto, this here particular trusted henchman has shore got cold feet right here.”

He trailed behind the buckboard hour after hour, dropping back into a gully for concealment now and then, and putting off the unpleasant hour of meeting as long as possible.  He kept in the rear until the vehicle turned in at the mouth of the canon which led up to the valley of Heart’s Desire.  Then Curly hastened, and so finally clattered up alongside the buckboard.  Ellsworth was gray with fatigue, and Constance worn and pale; seeing which Curly cursed himself, Tom Osby, and all animate and inanimate things.  “It’s a shame, that’s what it is!” he muttered to himself reproachfully, and averted his face when Constance smiled at him bravely and disclaimed fatigue.

The sun was beginning to sink beyond Baxter peak as they came in view of the little straggling town, clinging hard to the earth as it had through so many years of oblivion.  It was an enchanted valley upon which they gazed.  The majestic robes of the purple shadows, tremendous, wide-spreading, yet soft as the texture of thrice-piled velvet, were falling upon the shoulders of the hills.  An unspeakable, stately calm came with the hour of evening.  It was a world apart, beautiful, unreal, sweet and full of peace.  Far, far from here were all the tinselled trappings of an artificial world, distant the clamorings of a disturbing civilization with its tears and terrors.  Battle and striving, anxiety and doubt, apprehension and repinings—­the envy and the jealousies and little fears of life—­none of these lay in the lap of old and calm Carrizo.  Peace, rest, and pause,—­these things were here.

The ravens of the Lord had cared for those who had come hither, pausing, dreaming, for a pulse-beat in a frenzied century of rapacity and greed.  Would the ravens care for a now pale-faced, trembling girl?

“It’s perty, ain’t it, ma’am?” said Curly.  She looked at him and understood many things.

But Curly left them traitorously, almost as soon as they entered the lower end of the street, intent upon plans of his own.  Those in the slower buckboard, whose tired team could ill afford any gait beyond a walk, saw him set spurs to his horse and dash ahead.  There came more and more plainly to their ears the sound of a vast confused shouting, mingled with rapid punctuation of revolver fire.  As they came into full view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the entire population of Heart’s Desire, all apparently gone mad with some incomprehensible emotion.