Nell led the way imperturbably around to the back door of the shack. This door was open and a thin blue haze—odorous and appetizing—floated out of the kitchen.
“Just getting a nice breakfast for you, honey,” said Mother Tubbs, filling the doorway and seeing Nell first of all. “Now, if only Sam would come along—IsthatSam? He ain’t dead, is he?”
“Only dead drunk,” said Nell in scorn.
“Where shall I put him?” asked Hunt quietly.
“Well, I reckon it don’t much matter. You can drop him down anywhere, mister. I’ll fetch a dish-pan o’ water and sluice him down when I get a chance. But I can’t let them cakes sp’ile.” Then she saw and recognized the parson’s face, for Mother Tubbs had been at the Wild Rose Hotel the day before when the stagecoach had arrived. “Goodness me! I declared, Mister—er—Brother Hunt, thisisgood of ye.”
Nell stared. The note of respect in MotherTubbs’ voice revealed in a flash Hunt’s identity to the cabaret singer.
“I am sartain sure obliged to you,” went on the old woman. “Nell Blossom never could have got him home alone.” Hunt had lowered her husband to a seat on the porch floor and propped his back against a post. “Sleeping like a baby, ain’t he? Well, he can stay thataway till after Nell has her breakfast.”
Hunt was not giving her his attention. The name “Nell Blossom” had revealed to him instantly the familiarity of the girl’s description. This was the golden-haired, blue-eyed, high-spirited beauty Joe Hurley had written about—the girl who could really sing.
They stared at each other while the old woman went back to her cakes. Nell was obviously shifting the gears of her opinion about this stranger. He, a parson? No lunger, this husky six-footer!
“Mebbe you ain’t acquainted,” Mother Tubbs said, bustling back from the stove. “Nell Blossom is a-living with me and has been doing so—off and on—for more than three years. Ever since her pa, old Henry Blossom, up and died. She’s a singer, Nell is—the sweetest you ever heard, Brother Hunt. I’m hoping, when you get to holding meetings, that we can get her to sing in the choir.”
Hunt bowed, smiling, to the girl. Her expressionof countenance was no less forbidding than before. She offered him no encouragement.
“Won’t you stop for breakfast with me and Nell, Brother Hunt?” went on the hospitable old woman. “I always try to have something hot and tasty for Nell when she comes home after her night’s work.”
Nell started—was it angrily? She opened her lips to speak, then shut them in a straight, red line. In any case, Hunt caught the significance of her attitude of objection, had he been tempted to accept the old woman’s hearty invitation.
“Not this morning, Mrs.—er—Tubbs, is it? Sister Tubbs? I am glad to have met you.” He met her huge hand with a warm clasp of his own. “When we get started here, I am sure I can depend on your aid and good wishes?”
“Youbetcha!” exclaimed the old woman. “And you’ll see me in one of the front seats—mebbe in two of ’em if they ain’t bigger than usual,” she added with twinkling eyes.
He laughed boyishly, lifting the dilapidated old hat to both Mother Tubbs and the girl as he turned the corner of the shack. The old woman looked down admonishingly at Nell Blossom.
“You weren’t a mite perlite to the minister, Nell,” she complained.
That eastern mountain range was all etched with rose color now as Hunt went back to the hotel. But the town had scarcely quieted after its night’s revelry. Inebriates were still dribbling along the streets from the all-night places.
He thought of Nell Blossom. She certainly was a flower in the mire of Canyon Pass. Joe Hurley had written none too enthusiastically about the girl, as far as concerned her beauty. And although Hunt was by no means given to impulsive judgments, he knew there was a refined atmosphere about the girl despite her gruff independence of manner and speech.
His return to the hotel was unheralded save by the cheerful grin of Cholo Sam, the Mexican proprietor of the hostelry, who was sluicing out the barroom.
“Some morning, thees, Señor Hunt.” He flashed a tentative, toothful smile toward the array of bottles behind his bar. “Weel you have one leetle drink, Señor? A ‘pick-my-up,’ you call eet, eh?”
“Coffee, Sam,” replied Hunt briskly, acknowledgingthe offer in the spirit it was meant. “Coffee only—and perhaps a bit of bread with it. Service for two, please. My sister will want some. Will you bring it up?”
“But surely, señor.” He hesitated. “Ees eet the truth that the señor ees a meenister—the padre? Si?”
“Quite true, Sam. That is my business—my trade. And I have come here to Canyon Pass hoping to exercise it.”
Hunt mounted to his room to find that Betty was already astir. She had been into his room during his absence. One of the bags he had brought upon the stagecoach had been opened and across the foot of the bed was carefully laid his ordinary Sunday garments—frock-coat, high-cut waistcoat, and narrow trousers of dead black sheen.
With the outer garments was the stiff-bosomed white shirt—“boiled” Joe Hurley would have designated its variety—the silk socks, with a pair of low, gun-metal kid shoes set primly on the floor under the edge of the bed.
Ford Hunt looked at all these once—then again. He thought of what he had been doing already on this Sunday morning. Then he burst into loud laughter.
Sunday afternoon when the weather was propitious was the time for social intercourse in Canyon Pass. Those who had worked or played or hadbeen intoxicated the night before had slept off the effects of their super-exertions for the most part. They came forth now shaved and in clean garments and strolled to Main Street.
It was still too early for the cabarets and gambling places to be open, and even the saloon bars were somnolent save for the flies buzzing about them or drunkenly crawling in the spilled beer. The pivotal point of the town’s rendezvous and gossip on Sunday afternoon was the Three Star Grocery. In front of that old Bill Judson held forth between his exertions of waiting on such customers as might claim his attention.
“Dad burn it!” ejaculated Judson. “I bet Tom Hicks has crawled into his hole and pulled the hole in after him. I should want to if I was him. And you take it from me, boys, a parson that can do that to a bad actor like Tom Hicks will make Canyon Pass sit up and take notice before he’s through.”
“It showed sand, I allow,” agreed one of his hearers judiciously. “But it’s r’iled Boss Tolley all up and he swears the parson sha’n’t stay.”
“You don’t say!” drawled Judson sarcastically. “And who ever elected Tolley to be boss of the Pass? If for no other reason, I’m strong for this yere Reverend Hunt.”
“As a man—a reg’lar he-man—I’m for him, too,” agreed another. “But I’m thinkin’ we can get alongyere at Canyon Pass without much psalm-singing and preaching.”
“Yeppy. You’re right,” declared a third of Judson’s hearers.
“Let alone that you’re all wrong,” put in Judson again with energy, “let’s look at the thing in a practical way, as the feller said. If a man come in yere and opened a shoe shop or a candy pop or wanted to sell shoestrings, we’d give him the glad hand, wouldn’t we? ‘Live and let live,’ has always been the motto of Canyon Pass, ain’t it?”
“What’s that got to do with it, Bill?”
“Why, you big gump! Ain’t this parson got something to peddle? His stock in trade is religion, and he’s got just as much right to show goods and try to drum up trade as the next one, ain’t he? He’s entitled to a fair deal. And Boss Tolley, Tom Hicks, and them other highbinders can sulk in their dens and suck their paws. I ain’t never gone ironed since I opened this shack, nigh thirty years ago. But I’ll sling a gun on my hip and act as bodyguard if it’s necessary for any feller that ain’t getting a fair deal in this town. That’s gospel!”
“I never knowed ye was so all-fired religious, Bill,” complained one of his surprised hearers.
“Religious!” retorted the storekeeper. “It ain’t that I’m religious—not so’s you’d notice it. But I got a sense of fair play,—dad burn it! Here comes the parson now, boys.”
Hunt and Joe Hurley came out of the Wild Rose Hotel. The minister had not donned his clerical garments. He was dressed as he had been the day before when he arrived on the stagecoach, except for the hat he wore. That flopping-brimmed headgear which he had taken from Tom Hicks crowned the parson’s brush of crisp, dark hair.
“Boys,” said Hurley, when they came near, “meet Willie Hunt. He’s one of the best old scouts I met when I was East, that time I stood that college on its head, like I told you. I reckon you know Willie is a real man, if heisa parson. Mr. Hunt, meet Jib Collins, Cale Mack, Jim Tierney, and—last but not least—Bill Judson, who is the honored mentor of this camp.”
“Whatever that is,” and the storekeeper grinned, shaking hands in turn with Hunt. “This yere Joe Hurley slings language at times that sartainly stops traffic. He can’t seem to get over it. It was wished on him when he lived East that time he is always telling us about.”
Hunt knew how to meet these men—he was by nature a “good mixer.” There is much in the grasp of a hand, a steady look, an unafraid smile, that recommends the stranger to such bold spirits. The timid, even the hesitant, make no progress with them.
“Parson,” pursued Judson, “we was just discussin’ your business as you and Joe come along. Inmy opinion we need you yere at Canyon Pass. I’m speakin’ for myself alone,” and he glared at the other men in the group accusingly; “but I can’t put it too strong. We need ye. To my mind religion is a mighty good thing. We’re loose livin’, we’re loose talkin’, and we need to be jacked up right smart.
“You can count on me, parson, to back any play you make, clean across the board. I’m for you, strong. We need meetin’s started. We ought to have a Sunday school for the young ’uns. We need to be preached at and prayed with. I come of right strict Presbyterian stock, and when I was a lad I was used to all the means of grace, I was.”
“You are interested, then, Mr. Judson, in any attempt we may make to inaugurate services here on Sunday?” Hunt asked cheerfully.
“Youbetcha!” was the hearty rejoinder.
“Of course, Mr. Judson,” Hunt pursued, “you understand that, to have successful and helpful services, some of us at least must have the spirit of service?”
“Sure. That’s what I tell ’em.”
“I take it from brief observation that this day—the Sabbath—is observed very little at present in Canyon Pass?”
“True as true,” said the storekeeper.
“To get people really interested in divine services on this day, don’t you think we should begin by making some difference—a real difference—betweenthe First Day and the other six?” Hunt continued, eyeing Judson reflectively. “If we who are interested in the betterment of the community are not willing to lead in this matter, those we wish to help can scarcely follow.
“Sunday should not be like the other six days of the week. Your mines and gold washings shut down on this day. How about other secular activities ceasing—as far as it may be possible?”
“I—I reckon you’re right, parson,” Judson said, though with some hesitation. “Of course, the boys have been used to having their freedom on Sundays, and their fun. I don’t believe you could go far in shutting down the saloons and gambling tables—not right at first.”
“But would you go as far as you could personally to establish a better standard of Sunday observance?” pursued Hunt.
“Heh?” ejaculated the puzzled Judson.
Hunt, still smiling, mounted the steps of the store, closed the door, and turned the great key which had been left in the outside of the lock. He removed the key and handed it to Bill Judson as he came down the steps again.
“Mr. Judson,” he said in a perfectly unmoved voice, “if you will begin by keeping that door locked on Sundays you will be leading the way in this community toward a proper observance of the Lord’s Day.”
Joe Hurley was on the point of bursting out laughing. But he thought better of joining Collins, Mack, and Tierney in wild expressions of joy at the old man’s discomfiture.
Judson’s face turned from its usual weather-beaten tan to a purple-red. His rheumy eyes sparked. Then slowly, reflectively, a grin wreathed his tobacco-stained lips and crinkled the outer corners of his eyelids.
“Parson,” he said, thrusting out his hand again, “you’re on! I’ll show these fellers I’m a good sport. Nobody was ever able to say honestly that Bill Judson took water; and I won’t give ’em the chance’t to say it now.”
It was Joe Hurley who saw Betty appear on the porch of the hotel. Perhaps his gaze had been fixed in that direction for that very purpose. It was a vision to draw the eyes of any man hungry for a picture of a well-dressed and modest young woman. Betty Hunt was like nothing that had ever before stepped out upon the Main Street of Canyon Pass.
“Come on, Willie,” urged Hurley, seizing the minister’s sleeve. “You’ve jarred Judson clean to bedrock. Spare him any more for now. Come on. Your sister is waiting for us to take her to the Great Hope.”
Betty was not gaily appareled. Her frock was black and white, and so was her hat. She still remembered Aunt Prudence’s death—and that she was a parson’s sister! But it was the way the frock was made, and how it and the hat became her that marked Betty as an object of approval, to the male Passonians at least.
“Such a beautiful day, Mr. Hurley,” Betty ventured. “One might think it a respectable country town if only one could forget last night.”
She stared at Hurley with accusation. He dropped his head sheepishly. Somehow Betty Hunt put the matter as though it were his fault!
“We’re going to change all that in time,” said Hunt cheerfully. “These people are not so bad, Betty——”
“That they couldn’t be worse? Yes, I know,” retorted his sister.
“Why, Betty!” murmured Hunt, “isn’t that a bit uncharitable?”
“I have no thought for charity in a place like this,” declared the girl. “Such dirt, vileness and disorder I never dreamed of! These people are not even human! I cannot excuse them. No branch of the human family could possibly be ignorant enough for us to excuse what I have already seen about me in Canyon Pass.”
“Great saltpeter!” murmured Hurley.
“You did not tell my brother the half of it!” she cried, flaring at the mining man. “You hid the worst. You only said things in your letters that you knew would attract him here.”
Joe Hurley started back a step. If a kitten he had stooped to pet had suddenly turned and gouged him with its claws he could have been no more startled.
But Betty Hunt proved herself no kitten. She was usually a very self-contained and quite unexcitedyoung woman. It was only for a minute that she allowed her anger to flame out.
“Now, that’s enough about that,” she pursued, still with a frown. “The thing is done. We are here. I do not believe that Ford will ever be happy in Canyon Pass; and I know I shall not.”
“Better not speak so positively, Bet,” said Hunt coolly. A brother seldom is much impressed by his sister’s little ruffles of temper. “You may have to change your opinion. My belief is that none of us can find happiness in a new environment. We must take the happiness with us to any new abode.”
Hurley was much subdued during their walk through the town. His knowledge of girls like Betty was very slight. He had never had a sister and he could not remember his mother.
Even girls like Nell Blossom had not been frequent events in the mining man’s life. His two years spent in the East had been almost as barren of feminine society as his years in the West.
Now, it must be confessed, Betty Hunt had “got him going,” to quote his own thought in the matter. Not that Hurley was of a fickle temperament. But he was not a man to eat his heart out in an utterly impossible cause.
Nell had shown him plainly that she had no use for him save as an acquaintance. He could not even count himself her friend now, for since herreturn from Hoskins she had seemed more remote from the men of Canyon Pass than ever before.
So, Joe Hurley had already put Nell out of his mind in that way before Betty Hunt had appeared on the scene. And, it seemed, he was fated to be attracted by a distant star. The minister’s sister was distinctly of another world—and a world far, far above that of Canyon Pass, Hurley told himself.
It was not Betty’s finnicky ways, as her brother bluntly called them, that held the girl from the East so dear in Joe’s eyes. It was in spite of her disapproval of Canyon Pass and all that lay therein. The mining man was deeply interested in the development of the camp. He had done much in a business way to improve conditions here. He hoped to do more.
He had quite realized that the place needed something besides modern business methods to raise it out of the slough in which it wallowed as a community. This realization, shared with such people as Bill Judson and old Mother Tubbs, had led Hurley to interest the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt in Canyon Pass. He foresaw the camp in time as well governed a place as Crescent City.
Betty’s scorn and vituperation regarding the shortcomings of the Pass actually pained Hurley. Was it so bad as she seemed to think it was? This girl from the East was very positive in her dislike for the place and its people.
Then he looked over her head at the quietly smiling face of Hunt. He did not seem to share his sister’s opinion that the Pass was beyond redemption. There was, after all, a quality of sanity and stability about Hunt that bolstered Hurley’s hope.
“That boy is all right,” thought Hurley finally. “He sees things with a clear eye. And our crudeness doesn’t scare him. His sister——Well! what could you expect of a pretty, fluffy little thing like her? This place is bound to look rotten to her at the first. But at that, she may change her opinion.”
In fact, Joe Hurley had determination enough to believe that he was just the chap who could change these opinions of Betty Hunt! His non-success with Nell Blossom had not convinced him that he would never be able to attract other girls.
Right at the start Joe had been enamored of the fragile beauty of the parson’s sister. Hers was not the robust, if petite, prettiness of Nell Blossom. It was a beauty of spirit and character that looked out of Betty’s gray eyes. Her very calmness and primness intrigued the mining man.
Opposite is attracted by opposite. Because he was so open and hearty himself, Hurley admired the daintiness and delicacy of Betty. Her primness, even her shrinking from the things to which he was so used in and about Canyon Pass, pleased the young man in a way.
Here was just the sort of girl he desired to establishin his home—a real home—when he got one. Joe Hurley did not propose to live in a bachelor shack in the purlieus of Canyon Pass all his life—by no means! He was getting on. The Great Hope was panning out well. It had every promise of being a big thing in time. He was going to be rich. Betty Hunt would grace the head of the table of a millionaire—wear the clothes a prince might buy for his wife—hold the respect and admiration that the highest lady in the land might claim.
“I’ve got to have that girl,” thought Hurley. “And I’m going after her!”
They climbed the steep road of rolled rock to the highland overlooking the town and giving them a view to the first turn of the canyon bed of Runaway River. When the squalid sight of Canyon Pass could be shut out of the mind, even Betty admitted that the dimming light in the canyon lent a fairylike charm to all its ruggedness. It was a slot made by giants in the hills without doubt. She expressed a desire to see more of it.
“I’ll get you a good cayuse,” said Hurley eagerly. “Got any riding duds with you?”
“I have my habit in one of my trunks.”
The Westerner looked at her doubtfully. “Don’t know about long skirts flapping around the legs of these Western critters——”
“Habits are not made with skirts nowadays, Mr. Hurley,” Betty interrupted coldly. “Fashion—evenin the Fenway—demands that the feminine riding suit shall be mannish.”
“Oh! If you ride astraddle,” replied Hurley, without realizing that his phrase shocked her, “we can find you a horse that will fill the bill. I’ve got one that I ride myself, and I can pick up one for Willie.”
“Most agreeable to me, I’m sure,” agreed the parson. “I can ride after a fashion. Bet got her training at boarding school. If Aunt Prudence knew all her niece got at that institution the dear old lady would have been shocked.”
Betty did not smile. There were things that had happened to her at boarding school that Ford knew nothing about. His words aroused in her mind the carking memory of the secret that had changed Betty Hunt’s life completely—the secret that had killed all the sparkle and winsome lightness in the girl’s nature. She became silent and after that only listened to the talk of the two young men.
Not that she was not interested as they went on and Hurley pointed out the several claims being worked with the most modern methods of the Oreode Company, and the Nufall Syndicate, and by himself and his associates at the Great Hope. This mining business was all new to the girl, and she had an inquiring mind. She did not shrink at all, when Hurley suggested a descent into the shaft and producedslickers and rubber boots and tarpaulins to put on over their clothes.
The man in charge let them down in the bucket, and a gasoline torch showed them all that there was to see under the surface. Hurley explained with pride how he had found and developed the first paying lead in the Great Hope, but that the name of the mine foreshadowed a much richer vein that he was confident was soon to be opened. Science and that “sixth sense” of the miner assured him that the big thing was coming.
“We’re always looking toward El Dorado, we miners,” he said with a laugh. “It’s hope that keeps us up.”
“‘El Dorado’—the hoped-for land,” repeated Betty softly. And then, standing there in the flickering radiance of the torch, she repeated, while the men were silent, that concluding paragraph of Robert Louis Stevenson’s essay:
“‘O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, traveling ye know not whither! Soon, soon it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop and, but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness, for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.’”
“Amen,” Hunt commented seriously.
“You said it,” agreed the mining man with that bluff emphasis that did not shock Betty so much now as it might at the beginning. “That’s what keeps me going. Stevenson knew what he was writing about. But, we would have considered him a weakling out here, I am afraid. We are inclined to judge everything here in terms of muscle and brawn.”
“But it has been your brains, Joe, not your brawn, that has carried you so far in this work,” Hunt declared warmly.
Hurley sighed as they went back to the shaft. “Let me tell you I have had to use considerable brawn, Willie, in handling these roughnecks that work for me.”
He laughed again. Joe Hurley could not be sober for long. And his temper exploded when he had to shout at the top of his lungs to attract the attention of the watchmen when they wanted to get up to the surface.
“This feller isn’t worth the powder to blow him from here to Jericho,” grumbled Hurley. “I always miss old Steve Siebert when he slopes for the desert, as he’s bound to do every spring. That old desert rat is always here over Sunday to see that everything is all right, when he’s on the job. But he just has to go off prospecting once in so often.”
He told them more about Siebert and Andy McCann asthey went away from the claim. Betty listened as before with quiet interest, but she made no comment. Hurley was not at all sure that she had enjoyed, or even approved of their visit to the mine when she and Hunt parted from him at his own shack, although she thanked him politely.
The walk did not end for Hunt and his sister without a more adventurous incident. The sun had disappeared and the dusk had begun to thicken in corners and by-streets as they approached the hotel. There, at the mouth of a narrow lane, two figures stood, a man and a girl, and their voices were sharp and angry.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” the man’s voice drawled, a note in it that at once raised in Hunt that feeling that any decent man experiences who hears one of his own sex so address a woman. “You got to come to it, and you might as well come now as later. I got you on the hip—that I have. Understand?”
“I understand nothing of the kind, Tolley. You’re a bluffer and a beast! And if you don’t let me alone——”
“Don’t fool yourself,” interrupted the man. “I won’t let you alone till you come back to the Grub Stake. But I won’t talk to you about it again. I’ll talk to others.”
Then the girl told him angrily to do his worst.Betty attempted to pass on swiftly; but the young man hesitated.
“Do for goodness’ sake come along, Ford!” whispered his sister, looking back at him.
Back in Ditson Corners—or in almost any other Eastern town—the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt would scarcely have shown his interest in such a scene on the street, save perhaps to speak to a constable or policeman about it.
But there was something here he could not ignore. Nor was it entirely because he recognized the angry voice of the girl, although he had not as yet seen her face in the dusk.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” muttered the bully with an oath, as Hunt stepped nearer. “If you don’t come back to the Grub Stake to sing to-morrow night, I’ll let the whole o’ Canyon Pass know——”
It was just then that Hunt’s hand dropped upon Boss Tolley’s shoulder. Nor did it drop lightly. The parson twisted the big man around by one muscular exertion and looked into his flushed face.
“Don’t you think you’ve said enough to the young lady?” Hunt asked quietly. “You have evidently forgotten yourself.”
“What—why, you fool tenderfoot!”
“Suppose you go, Miss Blossom,” suggested Hunt with unruffled voice. “Let me speak to this man.”
But the minister had quite mistaken Nell Blossom’s temper. She turned on him like a shot.
“What are you butting in for, I’d like to know? I can take care of myself—always have and always expect to.” Then she laughed harshly, turning to Tolley again. “Better beat it, Tolley, or the parson will do something to you besides grabbing your hat.”
The dance-hall keeper, swearing still, jerked away from Hunt’s grasp. He did not seek to continue the quarrel, however. He abruptly turned up the alley and disappeared.
“For goodness’ sake, Ford!” ejaculated Miss Betty.
Nell Blossom, thus attracted to the other girl, stepped nearer and stared at her. Her own face was unsmiling. If it had not been so really pretty one might have said it was a black look that she gave Betty. But it was an impish look, too.
“There are some things you’d better learn if you are going to stay in this camp, parson,” said the singer. “The principal thing is to mind your own business. If I ever need your help in any little thing, I’ll call on you.”
She passed them both, still staring—now with curiosity—at Betty and went on along the street. Betty seized her brother’s arm.
“What a horrid little creature!” she said.
There was a strangely paradoxical feeling in the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt’s mind. Nell Blossom was a subject of thought he could not escape. He could not wholly overlook her manners and speech; yet he did not feel that she was blameworthy for either.
What chance had this wild blossom of a girl ever had, out in this wilderness, the daughter of a drunken ne’er-do-well, as he had been told, taught from her childhood to sing for her own living and for her father’s in the saloons of mining camps? Why, almost any other girl would have gone bad—as bad as could be. And he knew Nell Blossom was not bad.
He really wished he might make Joe Hurley his confidant about the girl, but, harking back to that letter of Joe’s in which the latter had spoken so enthusiastically of Nell, the parson felt that his friend was too strongly prejudiced in Nell’s favor to risk his criticizing her in any way.
One question recurred again and again to him: What did that man Tolley, who he knew was theproprietor of the Grub Stake saloon and dance hall, mean by commanding Nell to return to his employment?
Betty saw her brother’s more serious mien, and it must be confessed, wickedly hoped that the situation as it opened before him here at Canyon Pass was beginning to appall him. How could it do otherwise? Let alone the crudeness and lack of conveniences in their dwelling place, the nature of the people with whom they must associate, and the utter forlornness of life here in the mining town, that last incident as they walked back from the Great Hope Mine should impress Ford with the utter impracticability of his trying to begin a pastorate here.
The awful ruffian who had sworn at the girl—horrid as she seemed to be—shocked Betty beyond expression. And what a look that Nell Blossom, she had asked her brother the singer’s name, had given her, Betty Hunt! As unfriendly, as hateful, as though the Eastern girl had done the singer some grievous wrong.
The strange girl had insulted and flouted Ford, too. Betty’s loyalty to her brother was up in arms at that, if the truth were told. She could not but admire after all Ford’s cool assumption of authority with the ruffian and with the cabaret singer as well. Why, Ford did not seem to be afraid of these people at all. Even Joe Hurley could have been no moresure of himself in such a situation than her brother had proved to be.
For in spite of her disapproval of the mining man she realized that Joe was perfectly able to handle such situations and such rude people with equanimity. But then, he was of this soil. He was of the West. To tell the truth, Betty was inclined to think of Hurley as being quite as bad in manners, speech, and outlook on life as the other people of Canyon Pass.
She would say nothing about all this to her brother. Betty Hunt was quite capable of thinking things out for herself. Prejudiced she had been—and was—against the town and their visit to it; but she did not utterly lack logic. She went to bed that second night in the Wild Rose Hotel with somewhat different thoughts in her mind after all. At least, she did not drag the washstand in front of her locked door as a barrier.
In the morning the mining man appeared at the door of the hotel riding his big bay and leading two other saddled horses. The freight wagons had come in the evening before, and Betty had got her trunks. Out of one she had resurrected the riding habit which she had not worn of late, but which still fitted her perfectly and was chic.
But Betty was daunted by the look of the mount Hurley had selected for her.
“Mr. Hurley!” exclaimed Betty emphatically, “on your honor, is that horse safe?”
“As safe as a church. You hitch him on a railroad track, and he’d only step just far enough aside for the lightning express to go by without shaving him.”
She looked at him, both puzzled and disapproving. “I never know when you are serious,” she finally said.
“You can bet your last blue chip on the fact that I am taking no chances of a hoss throwing you or cutting up rusty while you’re on his back,” the man returned earnestly. “Hardscrabble is all right, Miss Betty.”
He offered his hand to Betty for her to step into with all the grace of a courtier. He looked up into her eyes, too, as she mounted past his shoulder into the saddle, and his smile was so friendly that she could not help smiling in return.
Hunt swung himself on to his own mount—a rather rangy cayuse that promised speed as well as endurance. Hurley bounded into his own saddle from the step without touching the stirrups until he was seated. Bouncer stood up on his hind legs, snorted, came down stiff-legged, and bucked once just to show that he was in fine fettle. The other horses cantered away from the hotel more sedately.
They spattered through the West Fork and went into the canyon along the river trail. There wasnot a soul in sight but themselves when they turned the first out-thrust of the cliff. Runaway River brawled in its bed. The huge, threatening cap of the Overhang cast its shadow almost to the opposite wall. The mighty rocks, the deep cracks in which the brush clung with tenuous roots, the wind-wrung, anguished, stunted trees, all held the visitors spellbound. Such a devil’s slot in the hills they could never have imagined without actually seeing it.
“Suppose that should fall?” Betty broke out pointing up at the frowning cap of the cliff.
“That’s what we are supposing all the time, Miss Betty,” replied Hurley quietly. “Part of it did fall about twenty years ago. That was long before my time, of course. But Bill Judson and some of the other old-timers can tell you about it. It came pretty near ringing the death-knell for Canyon Pass.”
“Backed up the river into the town, did it?” asked the logical Hunt.
“I’ll say it did! And over the town. Judson says it was so deep over his store that he went out from the headlands in a flatboat and grappled through the skylight of his joint for tobacco out of the showcase. Takes that old-timer to spread it on thick,” and he chuckled.
“But is it likely to happen again?” cried Betty.
“Any day—any hour—any minute,” repeated Hurley quietly. “There are thousands of tons ofstuff up there that may fall. Choke the canyon half-wall high. If it does, there’ll be a lake here that’ll furnish water enough to irrigate blame near all of the Topaz Desert—believe me. Canyon Pass will have to go into raising frogs or such,” and he laughed.
“Oh! I felt that it was a dangerous place to live in,” murmured Betty.
“Great saltpeter!” exclaimed Hurley again. “No worse than folks who live on the sides of volcanoes in Italy, for instance. Or in the earthquake belt along the Pacific coast. Pshaw!”
“But—but there is so much room out here, Mr. Hurley,” cried Betty. “Why not choose a safer place in which to establish a town?”
“The mines and washings. Gold established Canyon Pass. It isn’t a beautiful spot, but it’s handy. We got to just keep on hoping that the Overhang doesn’t fall.”
“There is a place where some of it has fallen—and recently,” Hunt broke in, with some gravity.
Half blocking the trail, and bulking along the river’s edge for perhaps ten yards, was a heap of gravel and soil on which no grass or other verdure grew. Looking up the sloping canyon wall they could trace the downfall of this small slide for more than half the distance to the summit.
“What is that sticking out of it?” asked Betty. “A stick?”
Hurley sniffed like a bird-dog that has just raised a covey. He was to windward of the heap. Hunt had forced his mount nearer from the other side.
“That is not a stick,” he said quietly. “It looks to me like——”
Hurley ejaculated something that was very near an oath. He flung himself out of his saddle and strode over the rubble. He stopped and examined the thing Betty had seen, even touching it with his gauntleted hand.
“Never heard of this,” he muttered. “Odd, I must say!”
“What is it?” asked Hunt.
“A horse’s leg. Been pecked clean by the vultures—not by coyotes, or the bones would be torn apart. Well!”
“Oh, there has been a dreadful accident here! Is somebody buried under that pile of gravel?” demanded Betty.
“Not likely. Just a cayuse. Maybe a wandering critter. Happened to be right here—taking a drink at the riverside, maybe—when the slide fell. Or it might have been the cause of the slip. Came down with it,” Hurley explained in jerky sentences. “The weight of the hoss might have broke off a piece of the Overhang and—here he is!”
This seemed to satisfy him. He went back to his own horse and mounted again.
They rode several miles farther, but Joe Hurleydid not seem quite so volatile as usual. Was he “studying” on the buried horse by the riverside? At least, when they rode back toward noon, he fell behind at the point where the small landslip had landed, halting his horse beside it for a moment. He overtook his friends in a short time, however, but did not say anything.
As they sighted the ford again, down from the upland on this side came a dashing and brilliant-hued figure—a girl on a cream-colored pony. Hunt recognized Nell Blossom at first glance.
“Hi, Nell!” shouted Hurley, raising his hand and arm, palm out, in the Indian peace sign.
She scarcely nodded to him, but she grinned elfishly as she rode down into the shallows and her pony’s flying feet spattered them all at the river’s edge. She scarcely seemed to give Hunt and his sister a glance. She plied the quirt that hung from her wrist, and the cream-colored pony recklessly forded the stream and climbed the further bank.
“How impolite,” murmured the Eastern girl, brushing the drops from her sleeve.
“She’s a little devil,” agreed Hurley frankly. “That’s the lady I was telling you of, Willie. She’s as wild as a jack rabbit.”
Hunt nodded soberly. He made no other comment. As they rode up into Main Street they heard wild yells and hootings from the far end, then thepattering of a pony’s rapid hoofbeats. Back toward the ford tore the cream-colored pony bearing the bizarre figure of the cabaret singer.
Now Nell rode without touching the bridle reins. She swung the whip and cracked it sharply. In the other hand she gripped a six-shooter of practical size and weight.
“What is the matter with that crazy creature?” asked Betty.
Hurley merely laughed. Nell Blossom approached at a wild gallop. Men appeared at the doors of various stores and saloons along the street and yelled their delight.
“Ye-yip! Yip-py-yip!” shrieked the appreciative audience. “Oh, you Nell! Ye-yow! Git out o’ town!”
The girl, her face glowing, her hair flying from under her hat, her whole figure electric with life and abundance of spirit, rode faster and faster. As she approached the front of the Grub Stake she saw the slouching figure of its proprietor backed against the wall by the door, smoking. He grinned evilly at the rider.
Nell pressed the trigger. Five staccato shots whistled skyward. The sixth ruffled the lank hair on Boss Tolley’s head and splintered the door frame just above it!
The divekeeper dodged and crouched, as though expecting another bullet. He almost slunk into hisbarroom. Then he realized that the girl had made a show of him and was riding on, applauded by the laughter and shrieks of the onlookers.
He whirled, and, lifting both hands, shook the clenched fists after the flying Nell. He was almost apoplectic with rage. He burst forth:
“You crazy, derned hoptoad of a gal! Somebody ought to grab you off that animal. Shootin’ at folks thataway! Is that what you done when you drove poor Dick Beckworth over the edge of the Overhang?”
The incoming trio of riders—Hurley, Hunt and Betty—were almost opposite the Grub Stake as Tolley emitted these words. In a flash the mining man was out of the saddle and standing in front of the startled Tolley.
“What do you mean, you miserable scoundrel?” demanded Joe in so threatening a tone that Tolley fell back against the side of the building again. “What do you mean about Dick Beckworth?”
Hunt had spurred his own horse nearer. He feared Joe would do something rash. The rolling, bloodshot eye of the divekeeper expressed fear of the other; but he was too much enraged to call caution to his aid at that moment.
“I mean what I say,” he rumbled. “You don’t know it, and nobody else in Canyon Pass, I reckon, knows it but me. But I know that derned crazygal was the cause of Dick Beckworth’s end. And a mean end it was.”
“Dick the Devil,dead?”
“That’s what he is,” said Tolley with less vehemence. He sensed that it would not be wise to be so vociferous with Joe Hurley’s eyes glaring into his own. “Dick come to a mighty mean end. I seen it; but I didn’t know what it meant.”
“It’s more likely you killed him, Tolley—if he’s dead. Or did you have him gunned by Tom Hicks or some other of your friends?” demanded Hurley sharply.
“I never! Poor Dick wasn’t expectin’ nawthin’, I allow. That crazy gal——”
“Be blamed easy how you bring Nell’s name into this,” muttered Hurley, his hand upon the butt of his own gun.
Hunt leaned from his saddle and laid his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. Hurley did not look back—he knew better, for there was likewise a gun at Boss Tolley’s belt.
“All right, Willie,” the mining man said. “Let’s listen to what this rat has to say. But be blame careful, Tolley, that you don’t raise your voice too high. If you do, I’ll certainly maul you a pile.”
Hunt had a feeling that he was present at one of those tense scenes of a Western cinema drama, where the heroic gunman holds the villain under the muzzle of his lethal weapon.
He might have leaned from his horse again and plucked both Joe Hurley’s gun and that of the divekeeper from their holsters. But he thought twice about that. Neither of the men was in the mood to brook interference. Besides, the parson was keenly alive to the mystery manifested in Tolley’s words regarding Nell Blossom and the man called Dick the Devil.
Nobody else was near enough to have overheard what passed between Tolley and Joe Hurley. None of the other Passonians, amused by Nell’s wild escapade, drew nearer, and Betty had ridden on to the hotel, refusing to betray the least interest in such a rude scene.
“Speak up, Tolley!” commanded Hurley again. “You’ve been telling us Dick Beckworth went to Denver to deal faro at a gambling house there. Now you come out with such a thing as this—mixingNell’s name up in some blamed lie about Dick’s being killed.”
“He was killed. It was murder—or mighty close to it. And that gal——”
He halted again. There was something in Joe Hurley’s eyes that stopped him.
“Suppose you start this thing right,” said the mine owner more quietly. “I understand Dick Beckworth left town the morning old Steve and Andy McCann broke out, the same as usual, this spring?”
“And the same morning that gal left me and the Grub Stake flat, and went kitin’ off,” retorted Tolley.
“Well, let’s hear the particulars.”
“I didn’t know Nell had gone at first.” He winced, having spoken the girl’s name again, because of the darting threat from Hurley’s brown eyes. “When Dick told me he was off I didn’t scarce believe him. But then I seen him and that—er—gal riding down to the ford. I thought they was up to some game. Anyway, I thought I could talk Dick into coming back. He was the best dealer I ever had.”
“Well?” snapped Hurley.
“I saddled a hoss and went after them. They’d followed the wagon track to the top of the cliff. But I thought they’d took the river trail. When I got a piece along the road, I heard something gobam—a fall of rock, or something, down the cliff. I hurried my nag and come around a turn where I could see. I looked up—never thought to look ahead along the edge of Runaway River, I see her—Nell—looking over the edge of the cliff.
“I see then I was follering the wrong lead,” pursued Tolley. “I didn’t think much about the slip I’d heard—not then. I wanted to get at Dick. So I turned back, got to the foot of the wagon track up the cliff yonder,” he pointed, “and hurried after them.
“When I got up there neither of ’em was in sight. I hustled along the road and went clean past the fork of the Hoskins’ trail. Never thought of either of ’em going to that dump,” grumbled Tolley.
“Well, I give it up after a while. I thought I’d lost too much time, starting out wrong at first as I had. They was too fast for me. So I rode back. It wasn’t till then, when I come to that place I’d seen Nell looking over from, that I saw how big a lump had broke off the edge of the Overhang.”
Hurley sucked in his breath sharply. “Go on!” was all he said.
“I looked down there. I seen how big the slide was. And I seen something more. There was something sticking out of that heap of stuff on the river bank. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was the hind parts of a hoss, only upside down.
“I pushed my hoss along the river trail again and come to the heap of stuff that had come down the cliff. It hadn’t come down alone.”
Hunt, listening as closely as Hurley, had no idea how his friend felt; but for his own part his flesh crawled at the inference he drew from Tolley’s tale. The man let his last words sink into their minds for fully a minute before he went on.
“It hit me right where I lived. Something bad had happened. It hadn’t happened to the gal. So I figgered it must be Dick.
“And I wasn’t mistook,” continued Tolley with a certain satisfaction in his tone. “I’d been right when I thought there was a hoss in that pile of gravel. There was—but not much of it stickin’ out. However, I clawed down to the saddle, undid it, and hauled it out. It was Dick’s all right. I got it now stuck into the bottom of my big safe.”
“But where was Dick?” demanded Hurley.
“How shouldIknow?” retorted the other. “Maybe under the heap—but I didn’t think so. I reckon he was throwed clean into the river. And you know what the current of Runaway River is!”
Hurley groaned.
“Wait!” said Hunt suddenly. “The man you call Dick might not have gone over the cliff with the horse. You did not see the accident.”
“He didn’t come back to town. And he wouldn’t have gone on afoot to Hoskins or any place else,”Tolley said surlily. “Nobody ain’t seen him around yere from that day to this.”
“And you lied about Dick and kept it under your hat all this time?” was Hurley’s comment.
“Well, I had a right, didn’t I?” blustered Tolley.
“Every right in the world.” The mining man spoke evenly now, coldly. “And you’ve got a better right to keep the story to yourself right along.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“What I say. Keep your mouth shut about it. Don’t let me hear of you opening your yawp the way you did just now. I don’t half believe this yarn, anyway. You couldn’t tellallthe truth about anything, Tolley. The truth isn’t in you. But sometimes a half-truth does more harm than a whole lie. You stick to your first story about Dick the Devil going to Denver. Understand?”
“I don’t understand why I should do what you say, Hurley.”
The latter patted the butt of his own gun. “Notice that?” he said with a deadly fierceness that shocked Hunt. “If you repeat this yarn, I’ll come after you. And if I come after you, Tolley, I’ll get you!”
He went back to the waiting Bouncer and mounted into the saddle without another word or a glance at Tolley. But Hunt, his nerves strained to a tension he had never before experienced, watched the owner of the Grub Stake sharply. Hurley’sdisregard of the fellow amazed the man from the East. He did not realize that Tolley was so unstrung that he could not have hit the broad side of a barn if he had drawn his gun. But Joe Hurley knew it.
The two young men rode on to the door of the hotel, both silent. Cholo Sam was watching Betty’s pony. The girl had dismounted and gone up to her room.
“Joe, what is going to be the end of this?” asked Hunt in a low voice.
“I don’t know, Willie.”
“Will you speak——”
“To Nell? Not on your life!”
“But the truth will come out some time. Who was that Dick?”
Hurley told him. He went further and told of the interest the cabaret singer had shown in the gambler for some time previous to Dick’s disappearance—before Nell had gone to Hoskins to sing in the Tin Can Saloon.
“It—it looks bad,” faltered Hunt.
“Bad is no name for it.”
“The girl should be questioned.”
“Not by me!” cried Hurley. “I don’t think Tolley will run the risk of speaking to her about it,” he added.
“He has already,” said Hunt.
He explained about what he and Betty hadoverheard pass between Nell Blossom and the owner of the Grub Stake the evening previous.
“Great saltpeter!” gasped Hurley. “Then that’s why Nell cut that caper just now. She didn’t do it just for deviltry. She was warning Tolley on her own hook.”
“Joe, there must be no bloodshed over this. If one man has died, that is enough,” Hunt said sternly. “We must get at the truth.”
“Not me!” cried Hurley again. “I wouldn’t tackle Nell for a farm.”
“And—and you are so close to her—know her so well?” murmured Hunt.
“That ain’t no never-mind,” the mining man said earnestly. “That girl’s got teeth, I tell you.”
“But she is in danger. She must be questioned.”
“Great saltpeter! You wouldn’t get nothing out of Nell Blossom—nothing that she didn’t want to tell.”
“She should be convinced that her greater danger lies in silence.”
“Convince Nell? What did I tell you, Willie? You couldn’t make her do a thing, or even see a thing, that she did not want to do or see.”
“There is one thing I can do,” said Hunt finally.
“What’s that, Willie?” and his friend sighed.
“Find me a pickax and shovel.”
“What’s that?”
“A pickax and a shovel. At once.”
“Great——Say, that’s a new one. I never thought of getting an idea into Nell Blossom’s stubborn head with those tools. But it might work at that,” and Hurley rode off to get the instruments of labor, but without a smile.
Hurley brought back with him two shovels instead of one, and the pick. The two young men took a roundabout way to the ford so that Boss Tolley might not spy them and suspect where they were going.
They did not talk much. Both were thinking too deeply—were much too disturbed by the uprearing of this tragic thing—for idle chatter. Hunt wondered how his friend really thought of Nell Blossom. For his own part he was heavily depressed by this thing that had come to light.
The situation threatened serious consequences for the cabaret singer. In a more law-abiding community the coroner’s office would have summoned Nell Blossom for examination if the district attorney did not. And in any case, Hunt believed, the whole miserable business must come at last to the light of day.
It was past noon when Hunt and his friend arrived at that heap of dirt and débris that had before attracted their attention. But neither of them thought of the hour or of the midday meal.
Hunt, dismounting, allowed the reins to trail upon the ground before his horse’s nose as he saw Hurley did with Bouncer. Both animals were well trained. He removed coat, vest, and Tom Hicks’ broad-brimmed hat which he still affected. Rolling up his sleeves he seized the pick and went at the task with the skill as well as the strength of a trained ditch-digger. Hurley admired the parson’s ability thus displayed.
“Some boy, you, Willie. I’ll tell the world you know something besides pounding the pulpit. Where’s that shovel?”
They uncovered the dead animal and threw it into the swift, deep current of the Runaway.
They did not cease digging, however, until every square yard of the fallen soil and rubble from the top of the cliff had been combed over. They covered one section with the upturned windrow of another. Nothing which had fallen with that fatal landslide remained unseen. But what they had feared to find was not in evidence.
“Either Tolley’s guess was right, or Dick Beckworth never came down that wall with his horse,” Hurley said with finality.
Hunt nodded, finally leaning on his spade. “At least, we have satisfied our own minds,” he said. “That is something.”
“And mighty little. Dick isn’t here. I bet a thousand he didn’t go to Hoskins with Nell. Hewouldn’t have walked in any case. Then, where the devil is he?”
“That is not the main question,” rejoined the parson thoughtfully. “The principal thing is to get at the truth about this accident. What happened up there at the top of the cliff? Did the man come down with the horse and these several tons of gravel and soil? And if he came down, what became of his body?”
“Great saltpeter!” Hurley brought out his uncouth ejaculation with a new emphasis. “Do you suppose Tolley, after all, knows more about that than Nell does?”
“What?” Then Hunt understood. “It might be,” he said slowly. “Evidently Tolley was not pleased by that gambler’s leaving him, any more than he was pleased by Miss Blossom’s leaving him. It might be——”
“It might be,” finished Hurley with vigor, “that Boss Tolley is dragging a skunk after him to fool the hounds.”
Hunt admitted the truth of this rather homely expression. “All the more reason why the girl must be questioned,” he said.
“You’re crazy, Willie!” cried Hurley. “You will get nothing out of Nell—if she doesn’t want to talk. And if she knows anything at all about this, and is at all connected with the matter of Dick’s disappearance,you can just bet she’s got good reason for keeping her lips closed.”
“For her own sake, she should confide in us—in you, at least. She will need our help and our support if this comes out.”
“She’s got mine, whether or no,” Hurley said, slinging on his belt and gun again.
Perhaps Hunt thought he spoke significantly as he hitched the weapon into place. He wagged a disagreeing head.
“That sort of support will not save Nell Blossom’s soul,” he observed thoughtfully. “To blow off Tolley’s head will not help her one iota in cleansing her mind and heart of anguish if she has guilty knowledge of that man’s death—if he is dead.”
“I tell you that Dick the Devil was well named,” cried Hurley furiously. “Why some man before this had not beaten him to death is a mystery. If Nell shot him off the edge of that cliff, he got what was coming to him, and no more.”
“Oh!” murmured Hunt, with a shudder. “It might not be that she has such a terrible sin as that on her conscience!”
“I don’t give a hang,” returned his friend. “If she had, there ain’t twelve men in Canyon County that would convict her of it. Don’t tell me!”
“Oh, Joe! You don’t see. You don’t understand,” urged his friend sadly. “What mattersman’s conviction of her crime? It is of what her own heart may convict her.”
“’Twouldn’t bother me none if I’d sent Dick the Devil over that cliff,” declared Hurley. “But I leave it to you, parson. You maybe know more about such things than I do. To tell the truth, you do. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had any hopes of your doing any good in Canyon Pass. Maybe you know more about womankind than I do, as well,” he added, a bitter smile wreathing his lips once more. “I wish you all the luck in the world when you tackle Nell Blossom on this topic. But I wouldn’t be in your shoes for half my stock in the Great Hope.”
Anxious as he was made by the outbreak of this affair the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt did not forget the work that he earnestly hoped to begin in Canyon Pass. Nor did he delay in laying plans for the efforts he hoped would aid in changing the moral tone of the town.
It was that evening in the Three Star Grocery where he went with Joe Hurley that the first tentative plan was discussed. Jib Collins, who seemed to have been much impressed by the young minister on Sunday afternoon, was there, as well as the old storekeeper himself. With them several of the more sober citizens joined in conversation.
Hunt struck while the iron was hot. The first thing, he thought, was to find some place in whichservices could be held on Sunday. He had seen at least one empty store, or warehouse, he told them, which might be cleaned out and put into fairly decent shape. He had looked into the windows. There was a dingy sign on the front which said it was for sale.
“Dad burn it, parson!” exclaimed Judson, “you must mean that old place of Tolley’s.”
“Tolley?” repeated Hunt with disappointment. “Does it belong to that man?”
“Sure does,” said Jib Collins.
“It used to be where Tolley had his honkytonk before he built his bigger place. He owns it, of course,” Hurley remarked.
“Then I presume we could scarcely count on getting it,” said Hunt with reflection. “Tolley is vigorously opposed, I understand, to this thing we wish to do.”
“Hold on,” put in the storekeeper. “Let’s study on it. In the first place, you all keep it under your hats, and maybe I can do something with Tolley.”
“You’ll do a fat lot with him,” prophesied Collins.
“Mebbe so. We’ll see. How ’bout that ‘wisdom of sarpints’ the Good Book speaks of, parson?” said the storekeeper. “You lemme try to fix it with Tolley. That’s all.”
“Oh, we’ll leave it to you, old-timer,” Hurleysaid laughingly. “Nobody will begrudge you that job.”
“If we get that place—or some other—we must have seats,” Hunt went on. “There are many things to think of—and many things to get together before next Sunday. A week is none too long to prepare for such a work.”
“And a pulpit,” Collins proposed. “Me and Cale could knock up a pulpit—of a kind. We are some carpenters—me and Cale. If I can get him to help.”
Hunt was perfectly willing to put such burdens as he might upon the friendly citizens of Canyon Pass. In fact, that is just what he wanted them to do—take hold of the new idea as though they really supported it. The discussion, although of generalities, brought forth some concrete results.
Judson knew that Tolley was anxious to do something with the old shack. Judson intimated that he expected to need more room for goods. He did not say exactly when he would need it; but he got Tolley down to an agreement, and they made a bargain. The storekeeper paid a nominal rent for the shack six months in advance, agreeing to make such repairs as the place might need himself.
The business was kept secret, although Collins and Cale Mack went to work on their part of the job the very next day. Others collected seats and a few other furnishings. Everything was of theplainest; even the pulpit was built of unpainted boards. But Hunt saw that the place was clean.
Judson furnished lamps from his stock. “We’ll want evening meetings, too,” he said. “After we get to going, I mean. It won’t be a bad idea to commence running a show that will compete with the Grub Stake and Colorado Brown’s and those other joints. The boys drop into the saloons because there ain’t another derned place in the town to go to after dark.”
On Wednesday Hunt, walking toward the mines, confronted unexpectedly the withered, baldheaded man he had carried home over his shoulder on Sunday morning. Sam Tubbs stopped him.
“I reckon you’re the parson, ain’t you?” he asked, cocking his head in a birdlike way to look up at Hunt. “My old woman is right smart anxious to see you again. That woman’s all for this here religion they say you are going to deal out to the boys. Says she’s got something for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tubbs. I will go around and call on her.”
“Well, you can if you like. Miz Tubbs is pretty nigh big enough to be her own boss, and what I say don’t affect her no more than as though I shot my mouth off in the middle of Topaz Desert. That’s a fact. I hear you are a pretty decent feller, as parsons go; but I might as well tell you right now that I ain’t—and don’t ever mean to be—a convert.”
“I shall like you none the less for that, Mr. Tubbs,” said Hunt, smiling and offering his hand. “A man must always decide for himself, you know. I shall be glad to have you come to hear me preach; but you need not believe a word I say unless your own mind tells you I am right.”
“Huh!” grunted Sam, rather staggered. “That sounds fair. Mebbe I will come to hear you—sometime. If you last long enough.”
This opinion—that the parson would not last in his attempt to uplift Canyon Pass—seemed to be the view of the general run of Passonians.
He had a few very enthusiastic coworkers, however. He found one when he went to call upon Mother Tubbs.
“It’s been in my heart for many a long day, Brother Hunt,” the old woman said. “This here holding meetings, and the like. I said a long time back I’d give a pretty if a man of God would come in here and shake this camp like a snowslide in the mountains. We need to get a mighty bump. Youbetcha!
“Now the time’s come, I’m just as excited as a gal going to her first dance. I can’t make Sam enthuse none; and I’m disappointed in Nell, I do say. But I am going to do all I can myself to boost your job for you.”
“Thank you, Sister Tubbs,” said the young parson. “Is Miss Blossom here?”