The next day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further.

Only Bill was present when Arabella broke out into tears.

"What's the matter?" asked stout-hearted Suzanne.

"Why, we--we--we--can't eat it but _once_," mourned Arabella.

"Now--now--now it's most _gone_! OO--oo--oo!"

"It's good," said Suzanne.

"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.

Suzanne evaded this question. "How can we _help_ it, when it looks so pretty, and tastes so good? They ought to put 'em in a _box_. I c-c-can't help it!" And now tears broke from her eyes also. They leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept. But even as they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table, reached out toward the disfigured remnant. A week later the last bite was taken. The parlor table was bare and vacant. Heart's Desire, in all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!

That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of Whiteman's corral. "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he, gloomily. "The finish ain't far off. You all come on over across the _arroyo_ with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."

It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the _arroyo_. They found Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in ap.r.o.ns full of pinon chips for the kitchen stove.

The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one in Heart's Desire. The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of the other room was swept clean, spick and span. A chair stood exactly against the wall. The parlor table--ah, appalling spectacle! the parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any sort whatever!

"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!" His hand instinctively reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.

"All over now!" remarked Bill. "All over! Too late! Quork!"

"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person. We got to look in his teeth."

"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson. "He hasn't got any teeth." The entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his honor.

Dan Anderson, his hands in his pockets, turned and strolled alone into the other room, and thence out of the door into the sunlight, where the twins were still continuing their unwonted industry at the chip pile.

He stood and looked at them, saying no word, but with a certain smile on his face. A corner of each ap.r.o.n fell down, spilling the chips upon the ground. The other hand of each twin was raised as though to wipe a furtive tear. Dan Andersen put out his arms to them.

"Come here, little women," he said softly, and took them in his arms.

One chubby face rested against each side of his own. His long arms tightened around them protectingly. Tears now began to wet his cheeks, falling from the eyes of the twins.

"You--you won't tell?" whispered Suzanne, in his right ear, and Arabella begged as much upon the left.

"No," said Dan Anderson, hugging them the tighter, "I won't tell."

"It's gone!" said Suzanne, vaguely.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's gone." He turned at the sound of voices. Curly appeared at the door, carrying in his hand a limp, bedraggled figure.

"That," said Dan Anderson, "I take to be the remains of our late friend Bill, the parrot. What made you, Curly?"

"Well," said Curly, defensively, as he held the body of Bill suspended by the head between two fingers, "I was lookin' for his teeth, to see if he had any candy in 'em, and he bit my finger nigh about off. So I just wrung his neck. Do you reckon he'd be good fried?"

"He'd like enough be tolerable tough," said McKinney. "Them parrots gets sh.o.r.e old."

"You ought to have some drugs to tan his hide," Doc Tomlinson volunteered hopefully. "It'd be right stylish on a hat."

Dan Anderson gazed at Curly with reproach in his eyes. "Now, I just wrung his neck," repeated the latter, protesting.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "and you've wrung the wrong neck. Bill was innocent."

"Then who done et the legs?"

"That," said Dan Anderson, "brings me again to the position which I enunciated this morning. In these modern days of engineers, mining companies, parrots, and twins, the structure of our civilization is so complex as to require the services of a highly intelligent corporation counsel. You ask who ate the candy ornament, representation, or image formerly existent on your premises. I reply that in all likelihood it was done by a corporation; but these matters must appear in court at a later time."

"Well," said McKinney, "it looks like the joke was on us."

Dan Anderson smiled gravely. "In the opinion of myself and the consolidation which I represent," said he, and he hugged the twins, who looked down frightened from his arms, "the joke is on Bill, the prisoner at the bar."

The group would have separated, had it not been for a sudden exclamation from Curly. "Ouch!" cried that worthy, and cast from him the body of Bill. supposedly defunct. "He bit me again, blame him!"

said Curly, sucking his thumb.

"If he bit you for true," said McKinney, who was of a practical turn of mind, "like enough he ain't been dead at all."

Corroboration was not lacking. The prisoner at the bar, thrown violently upon the ground, now sat up, half leaning against a pinon log, and contemplated those present with a cynical and unfriendly gray eye.

"Now," said Doc Tomlinson, regarding him, "you get him a few drugs, and he'll be just as good as new, right soon."

"All I got to say," grumbled Curly, "is, for a thing that ain't got no teeth, and that's dead, both, he can bite a leetle the hardest of anything I ever did see."

"Yet it is strange," remarked Dan Anderson, "that the innocent bystander should sit up and take notice, after all. How are you feeling, friend?"

This to Bill, who was now faintly fanning a wing and ruffling up his yellow crest.

"I'm mighty tired," said Bill.

"I don't blame you," remarked Dan Anderson, cheerfully, turning to put down Suzanne and Arabella safe within the door, "but as corporation counsel I am bound to protect the interests of my clients. Run, you kids!

"As to you, Curly," he continued, "you represent, in your ignorance, ourselves and all Heart's Desire. We have intrusted to us a candy palladium of liberty, which, being interpreted, means a man's chance to be a grown man, with whiskers, in a free state of Heart's Desire. What do we do then? Ask in a railroad corporation, and shut our eyes!"

"And a corporation," said Curly, meditatively, "can be a sh.o.r.e cheerful performer."

CHAPTER IX

CIVILIZATION AT HEART'S DESIRE

_How the Men of Heart's Desire surrendered to the Softening Seductions of Croquet and other Pastimes_

"Go on, Curly, it's your next shot. Hurry up," said McKinney, who was nervous.

"Now you just hold on, Mac," replied the former. "This here croquet is a new style of shootin', and with two dollars on the game I ain't goin'

to be hurried none."

"It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson.