“That old fool, Bill Godfrey, is showin’ them our sign,” said he, in exasperation.  “That’s a nice thing, ain’t it, for Eastern Capital, or a woman, to see the first thing?”

It was Charlie Lee, a landscape artist of Heart’s Desire, who subsequently turned his studio into a shop for sign-painting, who had prepared the grim blazonry on the canon wall to which Dan Anderson had made reference.  “Prepare to meet thy God!” was the sign that Charlie Lee had painted there.  It was the last thing he did on his way out of town.  That was the day after certain outlaws had killed a leading citizen.  Charlie’s emotions, of necessity, turned to paint for expression; and there had never been any other funeral sermon.  The inhabitants had always left the sign standing there.  But at this time it seemed not wholly suitable, in the opinion of Dan Anderson.

“They ain’t goin’ to understand that,” said he.  “They can’t think the way we do.  Oh, why didn’t that old fool Godfrey call their attention the other way?  Oh, that’ll set fine, won’t it, with a man comin’ to buy a coal mine, and a girl with a pot of white vaseline on her face and a consumin’ vision of tarantulas in her soul!  This’ll be another case of New Jersey Gold Mill.  Old Mr. Eastern Capital, why, he’ll run out at the same door wherein he went; that’s what he’ll do.  And, oh, doctors and saints, look at that, now!” Bill Godfrey was leaning out of the coach-box and pointing with his whip.  “He’s showin’ them the town now,” said Dan Anderson.  “Why—­I hadn’t thought before but what this place was all right.”

I looked anxiously about, sharing his consternation.  It had been our world for these years, a world set apart, distant and unknown; but it had been satisfactory until now.  Never before that moment had the scattering little one-story cabins of log and adobe seemed so small and insignificant, so unfit for human occupancy.  We were suddenly ashamed.

Dan Anderson, awaiting his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim’s hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, dry trail.

He waited, and as the stagecoach, stopped, arose and walked steadily forward.  Another man might have smiled and stammered and nervously have offered assistance to the newcomers; but Dan Anderson was master of his faculties.

The curtains still concealed the tenant of the farther side of the rear seat, when there appeared the passenger nearest to our side of the coach,—­a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache.  He was well shod and well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs.  He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored.  A flush of recognition crossed his face when he saw the tall figure approaching him.