HE men of Paradise were sitting in gloomy silence under the wooden awning in front of Beaver Smith's store. The only sound among the flat-roofed adobe buildings which stood like two rows of dismal sepulchers in the blistering sunlight was a penetrating voice emerging from the house of Beaver Smith across the way.
Within the narrow strip of shade afforded by the awning, the men of Paradise remained immobile; their backs were bent; they regarded the hard-beaten earth of the roadway before them with eyes in which there was no light of interest. They hardly seemed to heed the voice, whose arid vibrancy increased as time dragged by.
The store's long, cool interior behind them was empty of human kind. In the rear of the room, which was the only spot in all the town affording comfort to a human being on a summer day, there was no occupant. The whisky-barrel stood in solitude, surmounted by a pine board which bore the announcement: “.”
Even a stranger would have been able to understand that all was not well in Paradise after reading that legend. Nor would the rankest stranger, had he been passing through the town that afternoon, have been in any doubt as to the smallness of esteem in which Ma Smith at present held her lord and master.
But it had needed neither the sign on the whisky-barrel nor the evidences of domestic infelicity which were assailing their ears to banish light-heartedness from the citizens out there on the sidewalk. The depression which had settled upon them and the whole town was but aggravated by these sour revelations of human frailty.
For Paradise was in a moribund condition. The mules which were indulging themselves in a series of skirmishes down in Pony Deal's corrals had been bickering there in idleness for a fortnight now. The wagons had not turned a wheel. And as one day had succeeded another, the listless pessimism which comes with idleness had grown among the leading citizens. So they sat now with backs bowed down by an indifference which was not serene, until at length the sun began to steal away their little strip of shade. Bull Louis was first to stir. He straightened slowly and looked across the street.
“Well,” he said drearily, “'we all have got our troubles.”
“She shore's a vig'rous woman.” Curt Wilcox stroked his mustache.
A door banged within the house opposite; and a moment later the leading merchant of Paradise appeared crossing the street. His manner was that of a man who has been undergoing an ordeal. When he had wiped his brow and stowed away his red bandana in a rear pocket of his overalls, he halted before them.
“That ol' woman of mine is plumb on the peck.” He shook his head. “What d'yo' reckon she wants? Why, she's got it into her haid she's goin' to buy a parlor organ. An organ!” He swore. “An' business this-a-way!” he stood there for a moment twiddling with his goat's beard. “Any word from the Bronco Mine?”
“I done rode over there this mo'nin',” Pony Deal growled, “an' they're still waitin'.”
RONCO BOB LEE, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore were holding down the mine that summer. Where the cañon opened to the mesa, the gray dump scarred the hill's bare flank. Cacti and dry tumbleweeds showed among its sharp rock fragments; the planks at the shaft-mouth were warped by the suns of many seasons, and the weather had stained the disused windlass a pale gray. There may have been some old tools rusting about the place, for all that any of the partners knew. Such things as picks or drills did not beget their interest.
The adobe house with the bullet-marks on its thick walls stood a stone's-throw or so below the dump overlooking the mesa. A road wound like a dun-colored ribbon into the west, where the town of Paradise showed at the bluff's brink. Southward the plateau stretched away, to merge with distant mountains down in Mexico whose saw-toothed peaks took on new glories of gold and amethyst or cloaked themselves in new mantles of mauve and purple, according to the hour of the day.
Bronco Bob Lee, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore were standing before the adobe's open door. The torrid wind was cuffing their cheeks; and the sun, which had just crept over the eaves, was pouring its first volleys upon them as if from ambush. There was that in their spare frames and their lean, hard faces which made them fit into the savage border landscape; and as if they were a part of it, they neither took note of its beauties, nor did they heed its discomforts. They were gazing toward the southern mountains, from out of whose mysteries a line of dots was overdue to resolve itself, and crawling along the mesa's tawny surface, to swell into a train of pack-mules flanked by sombreroed outriders.