But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil,
bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization,
seeds of discontent. He wailed aloud that the pride of the community,
meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of
the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught
left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the
mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of
his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large
designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking
off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and
one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his
neighbor.

Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed
black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but
the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the
town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population,
began to attract attention. It began to play upon the nicely attuned
instrument of Public Spirit. What, indeed, asked the community
gravely, was to separate Heart's Desire in the eye of Eastern Capital,
from any other camp in the far Southwest? Once the town could claim a
pig, which no other camp of that district could do. Now it could do so
no more forever. This began to put a different look upon the face of
things.

"It seems like the ole man took it some hard," said Curly, lighting a
_cigarrillo_. "He don't seem to remember that I was due to be a
member of the family right soon, same as the pig. I don't like to
think I'm shy when it comes to comparison with a shoat. Gimme time,
and I reckon I could take the place of the pig in my new dad's