There was in Heart’s Desire, at least before this coming of Eastern Capital, only three hundred dollars in the total and combined circulating medium.  That was all the money there was.  No one could be richer than three hundred dollars, for that was the limit of all wealth, as was very well known.  To many this may seem a restricting and narrowing feature; but, as a matter of fact, three hundred dollars is not only plenty of money for one man to have, but it is plenty for a whole town to have, as any man of Heart’s Desire could have told you.

A stranger dropping into that hostelry, and taking a glance behind the front door, might have thought that he was in an armory or some place devoted to the sale of firearms.  There were many nails driven into the wooden window-facings, the door-jambs, and elsewhere, and all these nails held specimens of weapons.  Excellent weapons they were, too, as good and smooth-running six-shooters as ever came out of Colt’s factory; and Winchesters which, if they showed fore-ends bruised by saddle-tree and stocks dented by rough use among the hills, none the less were very clean about the barrels and the locks.  At times there were dozens of these guns and rifles to be seen on the wall at Uncle Jim’s hotel.  The visible supply fluctuated somewhat.  Any observer of industrial economics might have discovered it to move up or down in unison with the current amount visible of the circulating medium.

Uncle Jim never asked cash or security of any man.  If a man paid, very well.  If he did not pay, it would have been unkind to ask him, for assuredly he would have paid if he could, as Uncle Jim very well knew.  And if he could not pay, none the less he needed to eat, as Uncle Jim also knew very well.  There were no printed rules or regulations in Uncle Jim’s hotel.  There was no hotel register.  There were no questions ever asked.  Uncle Jim felt that his mission, his duty, was to feed men.  For the rest, he often had to do his own cooking, for Mexicans are very undependable; and if a man is busy in the kitchen, how can he attend to the desk?  Indeed, there was no desk.  The front door was always open, the tables were always spread.

That any man should take advantage of this state of affairs was something never dreamed in Heart’s Desire.  Yet one day a sensitive young man, fresh from the States, who had blundered, God knows how, down into Heart’s Desire, and who was at that time reduced to a blue shirt, a pair of overalls, one law book, one six-shooter, and one dime, slipped into the hotel of Uncle Jim Brothers, since by that time he was very hungry.  He sat on the edge of the bench and dared not ask for food; yet his eyes spoke clearly enough for Uncle Jim.  The latter said naught, but presently returned with a large beefsteak which actually sputtered and frizzled with butter, a thing undreamed!  “Get ’round this,” said Uncle Jim, “and you’ll feel better.”  The young man “got ’round” the