Here, indeed, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a long time, as we sat moodily in the sun.  At about this time, Tom Osby drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of Whiteman the Jew, just across the street.  Tom tore open a bale of hay, and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a pipe, he began to sing his favorite song.

  “I never loved a fond gazel-l-l-e,”

he drawled out.  Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot through the top of Tom Osby’s wagon.  Tom came up, rifle in hand, like a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.

“Shut up,” said Dan Anderson.

“Well, I ain’t so sure,” said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin.  “It’s a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don’t get quite so funny, by a leetle shade.”

I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart’s Desire over smaller things than this.  “Don’t you know it’s Sunday?” I asked Tom Osby.

“I hadn’t noticed it,” said he.

“Well, it is,” said Dan Anderson.  “You come here, and tell me what time the stage gets in from Socorro.”

“I ain’t no alminack,” said Tom Osby, “and I ain’t no astrollyger.”

“He’s loco, Tom,” said I.

“Well, I reckon so.  When a man begins to worry about what time the Stage’ll come in, he’s gettin’ too blamed particular for this country.”

“This,” said I, “is a case of Eastern Capital—­Eastern Capital, Eve and the Serpent, all on one stage.  The only comfort is that no Eastern Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day.  She’ll go back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again.”  But the dumb supplication in Dan Anderson’s eye caused me swift regret.

There was no telegraph at Heart’s Desire.  It was ninety miles to the nearest wire.  The stage came in but occasionally from the distant railroad.  Yet—­and this was one of the strange things of that strange country, which we accepted without curiosity and without argument—­there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by which news got about over great distances.  Perhaps it was a rider in by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the canon, the white smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming.  This news brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him in query.

“Man,” said he, as he gripped my arm, “you see, up there on Carrizo, the big canon where we hunt bear.  You know, up there at the end, there’s a big pine tree.  Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late Daniel Anderson, you go up the canon and look up the tree.  I’ll be there.  I’m scared.”