He haled forth from beneath the wagon cover two solemn-eyed and sleepy little girls, perhaps five years of age, and of so close a personal resemblance to each other as impressed all as uncanny.  The four men stepped to the wagon side, and in silence gazed at the curly-headed pair, who looked back, equally silent, upon the strange group confronting them.  At length the twins buried their faces in Tom Osby’s overalls.

“Look here, friend,” said Tom Osby to Curly, with asperity, “if you don’t want these here twins, why, I’ll take ’em off your hands mighty damn quick.  They’re corral broke and right well gentled now, half good stock anyway, and is due to be right free steppers.  If you don’t want ’em, they’re mine for the board bill.”

But Curly stepped up and laid an awkward hand on the head of each of the twins.  “Fellers,” said he, “I ain’t got a whole lot of experience in this here twin game, but this goes.  These here twins is mine.  This is some sudden, but I expect it’ll tickle the little woman about half to death.  I reckon I can get enough for ’em all to eat, somehow.”

McKinney looked at him with anger in his gaze.  “I told you, Curly,” he reminded the cow puncher with undue emphasis, “that you was drawin’ ten extry from day before yestiday.  I reckon the stockholders can stand that.”

“That’ll make it about break even,” Curly answered simply.

“Now,” said Doc Tomlinson, “if either of them twins should need any drugs—­”

“Drugs!” snorted Dan Anderson.  “What would they want with drugs?  After they’ve run around in here for two weeks, you couldn’t kill ’em with an axe.  If the coyotes don’t catch ’em, there’s nothing else can happen to ’em.”

“I’ll give you about eight dollars for the green canary, Tom,” said Doc Tomlinson.  “I want to hang him in my store.”

“But I want to hang him in my wagon,” objected Tom Osby.  “He’s company.  You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town.”  His voice was plaintive.

“The court rules,” observed Dan Anderson, judicially, “that the parrot goes with the twins.”  And it was finally so decided by the referendum.  Whereupon Tom Osby, grumbling and bewailing his hard lot as common carrier, drove off with Curly across the arroyo in search of a new mother for the twins.

The Littlest Girl, Curly’s wife, read the letter which Tom offered.  Tears sprang to her eyes; and then, as might have been expected of the Littlest Girl, she reached up her arms to the homeless waifs, who stood at the wagon front, each clasping a stubby forefinger of Tom Osby’s hand.

“Babies!” cried she.  “You poor little babies!  Oh!” And so she gathered them to her breast and bore them away, even though a curly head over each shoulder gazed back longingly at the gnarled freighter on his wagon seat.  Tom Osby picked up his reins and drove back across the arroyo.  Thus, without unbecoming ostentation, Heart’s Desire became possessed of certain features never before known in its history.