“Methinks you are concealing something from us, Tom,” said he.  “Let’s go find out what it is, fellows.”  He disengaged the respective six-shooters from their place on the fence, and thus again properly clad, we wandered over toward Whiteman’s commercial emporium, where Tom Osby was now proceeding to discharge the cargo of his freight wagon.  This done, he did not pause for a pipe and a parley, but, climbing up to the high front seat, picked up the reins and drove off; not, as was his wont, to the corral, or to Uncle Jim Brothers’s restaurant, but to his own adobe down the arroyo.  We looked at each other in silence.

“Something on his mind,” said Dan Anderson.

“He didn’t bring my clothes,” said McKinney.

“Nor my drugs,” said Doc Tomlinson.

“And yet,” said Curly, who was observant, “he kep’ one box in the wagon.  Couldn’t see the brand, but she’s there all right.”

“Curly,” said Dan Anderson, “you are appointed a committee of one to follow the accused down to his house and find out what all this means.”

Curly deployed as a skirmisher, and finally arrived in front of Tom Osby’s adobe.  The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters.  He then began to search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not determine.  With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work for Tom Osby’s team and came up the street at as fast a gait as any cow puncher can command on foot.  When he reached us his freckled brow was wrinkled in a frown.

“Fellers,” said he.  “I didn’t think it of him!  This here ain’t right.  Tom Osby’s got a baby in there, and he’s squeezin’ the life out of it.  Listen!  Come on now.  Do you hear that?  How’s that?  Why, I tell you—­why, dang me if it ain’t singin’!”

There came to our ears, as we approached, a certain wailing melody, thin, quavering, distant, weird.  As it rose upon the hot afternoon air it seemed absolutely strange, unimaginable, impossible.  The spine of each man crawled.

Dan Anderson, of the entire party, seemed to be the only one who maintained his self-possession.  He smiled gently.  “Now,” said he, “we certainly are fixed; Heart’s Desire ain’t benighted any after this.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Curly questioned.

“Poor cow puncher,” replied Dan Anderson, “I have to do the thinkin’ for you, and I ain’t paid for it.  Who, if not the Learned Counsel on my right and myself, organized the social and legal system of this community?  Who paved these broad boulevards of our beauteous city?  Who put up the electric lightin’ and heatin’ plant, and installed the forty-eight miles of continuous