finger of his left hand as he searched in his pocket for a match. He
had rolled a cigarette with one hand, and now he called it a
_cigarrillo_. These facts alone would have convicted him of coming
from somewhere near the Rio Grande.

"Shore you couldn't," repeated Curly, after he had his bit of brown
paper going. "I reckon not in a hundred years. Champagne! Whole
quart! Yes, sir. Cost eighteen dollars. Mac, he got it. Billy
Hudgens had just this one bottle in the shop, left over from the time
the surveyors come over here and we thought there was goin' to be a
railroad, which there wasn't. But Lord! that ain't all. It ain't the
beginnin'. You guess again. No, I reckon you couldn't," said he,
scornfully. "You couldn't in your whole life guess what next. We got
a _cake_!"

"Go on, Curly," said I, scoffingly; for I knew that the possibilities
of Heart's Desire did not in the least include anything resembling
cake. Any of the boys could fry bacon or build a section of bread in a
Dutch oven--they had to know how to do that or starve. But as to cake,
there was none could compass it. And I knew there was not a woman in
all Heart's Desire.

Curly enjoyed his advantage for a few moments as we wound on down the
trail among the pinons. "Heap o' things happened since you went down
to tend co'te," said he. "You likely didn't hear of the new family
moved in last week. Come from Kansas."

"Then there's a girl," said I; for I was far Westerner enough to know
that all the girls ever seen west of the Pecos came from Kansas, the
same as all the baled hay and all the fresh butter. Potatoes came from