"It's good," said Suzanne.
"Will we go to the bad place?" asked Arabella.
Suzanne evaded this question. "How can we help it, when it looks so pretty, and tastes so good? They ought to put 'em in a box. I c-c-can't help it!" And now tears broke from her eyes also. They leaned their heads upon each other's shoulders and wept. But even as they did so, the hand of either, upon the side nearest to the table, reached out toward the disfigured remnant. A week later the last bite was taken. The parlor table was bare and vacant. Heart's Desire, in all its length and breadth, contained no parlor ornament!
That was the last day when Curly reported to the group at the side of Whiteman's corral. "They're gone, up to both knees now," said he, gloomily. "The finish ain't far off. You all come on over across the arroyo with me, and if you can find a sign showin' how this thing happened, I'll make you a present of the whole shootin' match."
It was thus that Curly, Dan Anderson, Doc Tomlinson, McKinney, and Learned Counsel rose and adjourned across the arroyo. They found Suzanne and Arabella industriously carrying in aprons full of piñon chips for the kitchen stove.
The clean-swept room at which the visitors entered was the neatest one in Heart's Desire. The tall, narrow fireplace of clay in the corner of the other room was swept clean, spick and span. A chair stood exactly against the wall. The parlor table—ah, appalling spectacle! the parlor table, bare and empty, held upon its surface no object of any sort whatever!
"They're gone!" cried Curly, "plumb gone!" His hand instinctively reached toward his hip, and he cast a swift glance upon Bill, the parrot, who sat blinking at the edge of the table.
"All over now!" remarked Bill. "All over! Too late! Quork!"
"Rope him and throw him," urged Doc Tomlinson, "Search his person. We got to look in his teeth."
"Not necessary," said Dan Anderson. "He hasn't got any teeth." The entire party looked with enmity at Bill, but the latter turned upon them so brave and unflinching a front that none dared question his honor.