beefsteak.  Perhaps it was the feeling about the butter, which of itself was a thing unusual.  At any rate, as he went out, he quietly hung up his six-shooter behind the door.  This act meant, of course, that for the time he was legally dead; he no longer existed.  The six-shooter hung there for nearly four months, and Uncle Jim said nothing of pay, and the meals were regular and good.  The intention of every man in that little valley to do “about what was right” was silently and fully evidenced.  That a man would give up his gun was proof enough of that.  So this became the custom of the place, the unwritten law.  When by any chance a man got hold of enough of the three hundred dollars to settle his bill with Uncle Jim, he walked in, handed over the cash, and without comment of his own or of any one else, took down his gun from behind the door, and then walked off down the street with his head and his chest much higher in the air.  It is astonishing how much business, how much safe and valid business, can be done in a community with three hundred dollars and a good general supply of six-shooters.

On this particular day in question, thanks to certain pernicious activity of Johnny Hudgens, junior partner at the Lone Star, on the night previous, nearly all the six-shooters of Heart’s Desire were hanging behind the door of Uncle Jim Brothers, pending the arrival of better days.  The financial situation stood thus:  Johnny Hudgens had all the three hundred dollars, and Uncle Jim Brothers had all the guns.  Temporarily, male Heart’s Desire did not exist.

Certainly, there could have been no time more unhappy than this to display the charms of the community to the critical eyes of the man who—­as the rapid word spread to all—­had come to look into the gold-mines on Baxter side of the valley, and the new coal-fields up Patos way; and who, moreover, so said swift rumor, was the real head and front of the railroad heading northward from El Paso!  Humiliated, Heart’s Desire stepped aside and let its chosen representative, Dan Anderson, do the talking.

“I didn’t know you had a militia company here, Mr. Anderson,” said Ellsworth, as they entered Uncle Jim’s hotel.  “Lately organized?” He swept an inquiring hand toward the array behind the door.

“That?  Oh, that’s not the arsenal,” replied Dan Anderson; “that’s the clearing-house.  If a man’s broke, he just hangs up his gun, you know.  I don’t know that I can just explain everything in this country to you right at once, sir.  You see, it’s different.  Now, out here, a six-shooter is part of a man’s clothes.  That’s why the fellows stay out.  They’re ashamed—­don’t feel properly dressed, you know.”

“Not much law and order, eh?”

“Not much law, but plenty of order, and not the least pretence about it.”

“The courts—­”

“No courts at all, or at least within sixty miles.  Why, we haven’t even a town organization—­not a town officer.  There was never even a town-site plat filed.”