Heart's Desire: The Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two Fortunate Lovers; A NovelHough, Emerson
General
Heart's Desire: The Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two Fortunate Lovers; A Novel
Hough, Emerson
City and town life -- Fiction; Western stories
He moved up the street to the adobe where the barber had his shop. The
barber was gloomily sitting inside, waiting. McGinnis entered, and
looked about him with the ease of one revisiting familiar scenes.
In a case upon the wall were rows of shaving mugs, now dusty and
abandoned, mute witnesses of a former era of glory. Indeed, they
remained an historical record of earlier life in Heart's Desire.
Once there had been rivalry between McGinnis and Tom Redmond for the
affections of a widow who kept a boarding-house in Heart's Desire, the
same long since departed. There came by express one day, addressed to
Tom Redmond, a shaving mug of great beauty and considerable size,
whereon the name of Tom Redmond, handsomely emblazoned, led all the
rest. The fame of this work of art so spread abroad that Tom Redmond,
as befitted one who had attained social distinction, became the
recipient of increased smiles from the widow aforesaid. McGinnis bided
his time. Thirty days later, there arrived by stage for him a shaving
mug of such stature and such exceeding art as cast that of Tom Redmond
completely in the shade! Thenceforth the widow smiled upon McGinnis.
Tom Redmond, unable to endure this humiliation, and in the limitation
of things wholly unable to raise the McGinnis ante in shaving mugs, was
obliged to leave the town. McGinnis hung upon the handle of the
Redmond mug a goodly card bearing the legend, "Gone, but not
forgotten." Shortly after that McGinnis himself left town. Alas! at
the instance of the widow the barber hung upon the McGinnis mug a
similar card; it having appeared that McGinnis had emigrated without
paying either his board bill or his barber's bill.
This evidence of his early delinquency now confronted McGinnis as he
stepped into the shop for the first time in these years. He regarded
it with displeasure. "Take it off," said he to the barber, sternly.
"I paid the widdy in Butte, two years ago. As for yourself, I have
come six hundred miles to pay my bill to you. Take it out of that."
He presented his heavy button of gold.
The barber protested that he could not make change on this basis, but
cheerfully extended the credit. He was glad to see McGinnis back
again, for he was most promisingly hairy.
"I am back, but I'll not be stayin' long," said McGinnis. "Have ye
annything to drink?"
The barber mournfully shook his head, even as had Billy Hudgens.
McGinnis, refusing to believe such heavy news, walked up to the mantle,
picked up a tall bottle labelled "Hair tonic," smelled of it, and
without asking leave, raised it to his lips and drained it to the
bottom.
"For industhrial purposes, friend," said he. In twenty minutes he was
lying in a deep and dreamless sleep.
"In some ways this fellow has talent," said Billy Hudgens, as he looked
in on McGinnis later; "but like enough he's come to a show-down now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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