“The girl, she’s the one,” said Willie, vaguely.

“What’s that you mean?” commanded Doc Tomlinson.

“The funniest thing,” said Willie, “is how things is mixed.  Lord John, he rides on the front seat; and Lord Peter Berkeley,—­that’s the lawyer for the railroad,—­he rides on the back seat with her, and he sues for her hand, he does, all the way up from the Sacramentos.  Says he to Lord John, says he, ’Gimme the hand of this fair daughter of thine, and the treasure shall be yours,’ says he.”

“Ah, ha!” said Doc Tomlinson.  “I shore thought that girl was mixed up in this somehow.  But I didn’t understand.  Wonder if Dan Anderson told us everything he knew?”

“They set on the back seat,” continued Willie, glancing importantly at the listeners to his romance, “a-lookin’ into each other’s eyes.  And says the bold juke, to her, says he, ‘Constance!’ like that.  ‘Constance,’ says he, ‘I’ve loved you these many years agone.’”

“What did she say then?”

“I didn’t ketch what she said.  But by’m by the proud earl—­”

“You said the bold juke.”

“It’s the same thing.  The proud earl laughs, scornful of restraint, like earls always is, and says he agin, ’Lord John, the treasure shall be thine, but the proudest treasure of me life is this fair daughter of thine that sets here by me side, Lord John,’ says he.  From that I thought maybe the Lady Constance had said something I didn’t ketch.  Of course, I was busy drivin’ the coach.”

The men of Heart’s Desire looked from one to the other.  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Doc Tomlinson.

Curly chewed tobacco vigorously.  “To me,” he said, “it looks like Dan was throwed down.  That girl was over to my house, too; and I didn’t think that of her.”

“Throwed down hard,” affirmed Uncle Jim Brothers; “but now, hold on till we get all this straight.  Maybe Dan wouldn’t work for this outfit if he knew all that’s goin’ on.  Seems to me like, one way or another, the girl’s kind of up at auction.  If she’s part of the railroad’s comin’ into Heart’s Desire, why, then, we want to know about it.  I wish ’t Dan Anderson was here,”

But Dan Anderson was not there, neither was he to be found at his casita across the arroyo.  As fate would have it, he had caught Willie in his wanderings and had done some questioning on his own account.  Willie escaped alive, and presently left town.  Whereafter Dan Anderson, half dazed, walked out into the foot-hills, seeking the court of old Carrizo, to try there his own case, as he had promised; and that of the woman as well.

At first his fairness, his fatal fairness, had its way with him.  Resolutely he slurred over in his own mind the consequences to himself, and set himself to the old, old task of renunciation.  Then, in his loneliness and bitterness, there came to him thoughts unworthy of him, conclusions unsupported by fair evidence.