"At any station!" said Learned Counsel.

There were no hats on at that moment. To be sure, the evening air was a trifle warm.

"And now," said Dan Anderson, after a while, "it's got Tom. Now, why couldn't it have been a man-Dago to sing that air into the tuneful horn of the mechanical heavenly maid yonder? No reason, only it's got to be a woman to sing that man's song of 'Annie Laurie.' A man couldn't any more sing 'Annie Laurie' than you could make c.o.c.ktails without bitters.

The only way we can get either one of them here is in bulk, which we have done. It's canned Art, that's all. Owin' to our present transportation facilities, everything has to come here in cans."

Dan Anderson arose and stretched out his arm. "Gentlemen," said he, "I present to you Art!" He raised before him an imaginary gla.s.s, which we all saw plainly. "I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it.

Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art! We are not quite provincial. Listen at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . . Shoot him up, boys!" he cried suddenly. "I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to look all my days on the picture of a girl in a blue sash! The chief end of man is to witness an ecru coyote and a few absolute human failures like you and me. Down with the heavenly maid! Shoot him up! He's a destroyer of the peace!"

So we shot up Tom's adobe for a time, joyously peppering the thick walls, until at length that worthy came out annoyed, a phonograph record in one hand and a gun in the other.

"Don't, fellers," said he. "You might break something."

"Come out," said Dan Anderson. "Not even grand opera lasts all night.

Besides, the price of the box seats is exorbitant. Come on. Get ready to play croquet to-morrow. It's safer."

And so Tom Osby's entertainment came to an end for that evening. Our little party straggled on up the long, deserted street of Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson turned in at the post-office to see if the daily paper from El Paso had come in that month.

It was something that Dan Anderson saw in the daily paper that caused him on the following day to lead Tom Osby aside. "Did you know, Tom,"

said he, "that that opera singer you've got in your box, the 'Annie Laurie' artist, is goin' to be down in this part of the world before long?"

"I never _loved_ a fo-o-o-nd ga-aze-ll-lle!" began Tom Osby, defensively.

"Well, it's true."

"What are you tellin' me?" said Tom, scornfully. "Comin' down here?

Why, don't it say that them things is all sung by _artists_?"

"So they are."

"Well, now, a artist," said Tom Osby argumentatively, "ain't never comin' within a thousand miles of this here country. Besides, a _artist_ is somebody that's _dead_."

"There's something in that," admitted Dan Anderson. "You've got to be dead to make a really well-preserved, highly embalmed success in art, of course. It's true that in a hundred years from now that song will be just what it is to-day. That's Art. But I'm tellin' you the truth, Tom. The woman who sang into that machine is alive to-day. She belongs to a grand opera troupe under the management of a gent by the name of Blauring, who is in hot water with these stars all his life, but makes so much money out of them that he can't bear to be anything but boiled continuous.

"Now, these people are bound for California, for an early season. They are goin' six hundred miles at a jump, and they stop at El Paso for a moment, to catch a little of their financial breath. The Southern Pacific raineth on the just and the unjust in the matter of railroad fares. Now, as they are still goin' to be too early for the season on the coast, Monsieur Blauring has conceived in his fertile brain the idea that it will be an interestin' and inexpensive thing for him to sidetrack his whole _rodeo_ for a few weeks up in the Sacramentos, at the Sky Top hotel,--that new railroad health resort some Yankees have just built, for lungers and other folks that have money and no pleasure in livin'."

"How do you know _she'll_ be there?" asked Tom.

"Well, this El Paso daily has got about four pages about it. They think it's news, and Blauring thinks it's advertising so they're both happy. And this very lady who sang into your tin horn, yonder, will be down there at Sky Top just about ten days from now."

Tom Osby was silent. The Sacramentos, as all men knew, lay but a hundred miles or so distant by wagon trail. "It ain't so," said Tom, at length. "A singin' artist would choke to death in El Paso. The dust's a fright."

"Oh, I reckon it's so," said Dan Anderson. "Now, the bull-ring over at Juarez would be a fine place for grand opera--especially for 'Carmen'--which, I may inform you, Tom, is all about a bull-fight, anyway. Yes," he went on softly, "I hope they'll sing 'Carmen' over there. I hope, also, they won't see the name on the Guggenheim smelters and undertake to give Wagner under a misapprehension. If Blauring has any judgment at all, he'll stick to 'Carmen' at El Paso.

He'd have to hire a freight train to get away with the money.

"But now," resumed he, "after they get done at El Paso, whatever they sing, the grub wagon will be located in the Sacramentos, while old Blauring, he goes on in advance and rides a little sign out near 'Frisco and other places, where Art is patronized copious. Yes, friend, 'Annie Laurie,' she'll be up in Sacramentos; and from all I can figure, there'll be trouble in that particular health resort."

"Sometimes I think you're _loco_," said Tom Osby, slowly; "then again I think you ain't, quite. The man who allows he's any better than this country don't belong here; but I didn't think you ever did."

"No!" cried Dan Anderson. "Don't ever say that of me."

"Of course, I know folks is different," went on Tom Osby, presently.

"They come from different places, and have lived different ways. Me, I come from Georgy. I never did have much chanct for edication, along of the war breakin' out. My folks was in the fightin' some; and so I drifted here,"

"You came from Georgia?" asked Dan Anderson. "I was born farther north. I had a little schooling, but the only schooling I ever had in all my life that was worth while, I got right here in Heart's Desire.

The only real friends I ever had are here.

"Now," he went on, "it's because I feel that way, and because you're going to punch your freight team more than a hundred miles south next week to see if you can get a look at that 'Annie Laurie' woman--it's because of those things that I want to help you if I can. And that's the truth--or something resemblin' it, maybe.

"Now listen, Tom. Madame Donatelli is no Dago, and she's not dead.

She was a Georgia girl herself--Alice Strowbridge was her name, and she had naturally a wonderful voice. She went to Paris and Italy to study long before I came out West. She first sang in Milan, and her appearance was a big success. She's made thousands and thousands of dollars."

"About how old is she?" asked Tom Osby.

"I should think about thirty-five," said Dan Anderson. "That is, countin' years, and not experience."

"I'm just about forty-five," said Tom, "countin' both."

"Well, she came from Georgia--"

"And so did I," observed Tom Osby, casually.

Dan Anderson was troubled. His horizon was wider than Tom Osby's.

"It's far, Tom," said he; "it's very far."

"I everidge about twenty mile a day," said Tom, not wholly understanding. "I can make it in less'n a week."

"Tom," cried Dan Anderson, "don't!"

But Tom Osby only trod half a pace closer, in that vague, never formulated, never admitted friendship of one man for another in a country which held real men.

"Do you know, Dan," said he, "if I could just onct in my life hear that there song right out--herself singin', words and all--fiddles, like enough; maybe a pianny, too--if I could just hear that! If I _could_ just hear--_that_!"

"Tom!"

They wandered on a way silently before the freighter spoke. "There is some folks," said he, "that has to do things for keeps, for the rest of the folks that can't do things for keeps. Some fellers has to just drive teams, or run a ore bucket, or play the cards, or something else common and useful--world's sort of fixed up that way, I reckon. But folks that can do things for _keeps_--I reckon they're right proud, like."

"Not if they really do the things that keep. That sort ain't proud,"

said Dan Anderson.

"Now, I can just see her a-settin' there," went on the freighter. "It sounded like there was fiddles, and horns, and piannys all around."

"She was maybe standin' up."

"She was a-settin' there," said Tom Osby, frowning; "right there at the pianny herself. Can't you see her? Don't you ever sort of imagine things yourself, man?"

"G.o.d forbid!" said Dan Anderson. "No, I can't imagine things. That's fatal--I try to forget things."