The Heart of Canyon Pass

The two old men grinned, their watery eyes blinking, and “stood the gaff” as patiently as they always did. Why did they spend half the year in the ungodly loneliness of the desert places, and in the end bring nothing back with them? Not even an additional coating of tan, for their leathery faces and hands were already so darkened that the sun and wind had no effect upon them.

“You old duffers ain’t right in your minds,” said Judson to Andy McCann. “Just as loco as you can be. Ye never did make a strike and ye never will – ”

“Lots you know about it, Bill,” grumbled McCann, his jaws moving stiffly.

“Well, you never did, did you?” demanded the storekeeper, with twinkling eyes.

“If you were yere twenty years ago – ”

“You know derned well I was, Andy,” put in Judson. “Reckon I was. And before.”

“You recommember the flood then?”

“I ain’t lost my mem’ry,” muttered Judson.

“All right. Keep that in yer mind,” said Andy, shaking his head in senile fashion. “There was a discovery made that year that you – nor nobody else in Canyon Pass – knowed anything about. Talk about the mother lode! Well!”

“Is that so?” cried the storekeeper eagerly. “Then why wasn’t it worked? I knowed you and Steve brought in samples of the right stuff; but – ”

“Steve,” snarled McCann, his whole manner changing. “That derned rat? Him? He didn’t have no more to do with findin’ that vein – Huh! Huh!” He coughed, fell silent, went out of the store, deaf to any further questions.

It was Joe Hurley, standing with Hunt on Main Street, who was first to welcome Steve Siebert as he came along, riding his lean mare and towing the burro that looked as though it might have been carved rudely out of desert rock.

“Well, old-timer, I certainly am glad to see you,” the mining man said. “What luck?”

“Oh, so-so,” croaked the prospector.

“Ain’t going to tell us you worked all summer just to get free air?” and Joe chuckled.

“Sumpin’ like it,” replied Siebert, and grinned toothlessly.

“You do beat my time! Goin’ to come over to the Great Hope? There’s a job for you.”

“Mighty nice of you, Joe. I’ll come,” said the old man, nodding.

“And not a darn thing to show for all your pickin’ and smellin’ about the Topaz since spring?”

“Not what you’d call a bonanza.”

“Youbetcha!” ejaculated Hurley. He turned with a grin to Hunt. “Meet Parson Hunt, Steve. We’ve done more in the Pass this summer than you have on the desert. We’ve got us a real parson, and we’re aimin’ to have a sure-enough church.”

“That’s a good word,” agreed Steve solemnly, leaning to shake Hunt’s hand. The old man’s palm was as dry and scaly as a lizard’s back. “There’s a heap o’ folks yere that need religion. I understand that derned Andy McCann’s got back.”

The gibe was obvious. Joe grinned with appreciation.

“Yep,” he said. “And he hasn’t got any more to show for his summer’s work than you have.”

“Him!” snarled Steve. “Of course he ain’t. That dumb-head wouldn’t find gold in the mint. No, sir! Never did find any – ”

“I thought he did make a ten-strike once, but that the slide twenty years ago knocked his claim into a cocked-hat?”

“What? Him? Does he say so?” ejaculated Siebert, his wrinkled, tanned countenance flaming angrily.

“I heard tell,” and Joe chuckled.

“He’s a plumb liar. He didn’t find any such thing. If there was any such discovery made in them days, it was me that done it. Youbetcha! But him! Huh! Anyway, it’s all buried deeper ’n the Pit – take it from me,” and, grumbling, Steve Siebert rode on.

“Believe me, Willie,” said Hurley, “there’s a case for you. Try to get those two together.”

“These two old men are enemies?” asked Hunt quietly.

“That’s no name for it. They hate each other as only two fellers can who once were the closest friends. Old Steve and Andy were once as close as twins. But they tell me for twenty years they have been snarling at and back-biting each other something scandalous. If you want to introduce love and kindness into the hearts of Canyon Pass folks, Willie, just give those two old ruffians a whirl.”

He laughed – not the kind of laugh he would have uttered some weeks before. There was a sneering note in Joe Hurley’s voice now when he spoke of Hunt’s work and the better things of life. The parson noted it now as he had often noticed it of late, but he said nothing in comment at this time. He merely observed, before separating from Joe to return to the hotel for supper:

“Drop into the meeting room to-night, Joe. You haven’t shown much interest in the Men’s Club lately, and the work should have your approval. Besides, there are certain business matters that must be discussed at once.”

“Well,” said Joe gruffly.

He did not promise to attend. He did not attend.

“I wonder what kept Joe away?” Hunt ventured to Judson, as they, the last of the company, left the meeting room and the parson locked the door. That was never left unlocked since Nell Blossom’s trick with Mother Tubbs’ Bible. “I expected him to-night to give us his views on that matter.”

The old storekeeper turned to him and grinned. “Joe’s mighty busy, I reckon,” he said.

“In the evening?”

“This evening, youbetcha!”

“In just what way, Judson? What’s up your sleeve?”

“My funnybone,” chuckled the storekeeper. “And I have to laugh. Just about once in so often Joe seems to lose ev’ry mite of sense he was born with. He thinks he can beat the man that got the first patent out on stud poker.”

“Ah! I know Joe used to like cards. When he was East. But now – Is it as bad as you intimate, Judson?”

“Some worse, I’m free to say,” declared the old man. “Joe’s gone up against Colorado Brown’s dealer, Miguel, several times lately. They get up a round game of a few fellers – all friends. But Miguel is always playin’ for the house. He’s a wonder. ‘Last Card Mike’ they sometimes call him. He seems to be able to read clean through the backs of any pack o’ cards you put up to him. He’s a wizard – no mistake.”

“You mean that Joe is losing money in this game?” asked Hunt, with some apprehension.

“Me, I’d just as soon bet on flies with their shoes stuck in molasses as to play stud. Youbetcha!” returned Judson, with a chuckle.

Hunt separated from the storekeeper and walked slowly toward the Wild Rose. He passed Colorado’s place; then he turned back. It is a matter of much moment for one man to interfere in another’s private affairs, and no one realized this fact better than the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. His office could not excuse any unasked advice or intervention in Hurley’s chosen course, no matter how much Hunt desired to restrain his friend.

He hesitated again when he faced the swinging doors. There was not much noise inside. This was not a Saturday night and the amusement places along Main Street were not crowded. Most of the Passonians who wasted their money in the several places of this character spent it all and spent it quick. The mid-week nights were lean for the dive keepers.

It was not lack of courage that restrained Mr. Hunt from preaching a general revival and a bitter war against the cohorts of the devil in this town. Merely, the time was not yet ripe. Sometimes he feared that it never would be ripe. Certainly he had not yet reached the heart of Canyon Pass. Since the first shack had been built here at the junction of the two forks, the enemy had been in power; and it was now well entrenched.

But to-night Hunt was impressed by the feeling that his friend needed him. Joe was slipping away from him. For some unexplained reason the very man who had brought him here to the Pass and coaxed the idea of a spiritual uplift of the place into germination, was backsliding.

The parson began to feel that he could not stand by and see this thing go on. He pushed through the flaps of the door. He had seldom entered this, or any of the other saloons, in the evening.

His entrance now, however, did not serve to startle any of the habitués. Brown himself came forward to shake hands with the parson. Some of the players at the green-covered tables nodded to Hunt. The three-piece orchestra in the dance hall at the back was droning out a fox-trot. Nell was not singing. The principal interest seemed to be about a corner table at which the parson saw Joe Hurley sitting.

After a word to Brown in greeting, the parson walked over to this corner table and joined the group standing about it. Hurley looked up, grinned, and said:

“Hullo, Willie! Want me?”

“I’ve something to ask you – by and by, when you are done.”

“Looks like an all-night session,” returned Hurley, immediately giving his attention to the cards again. “Mike, here, is trying to skin me alive and the sheep is bleatin’. Deal ’em, Mike.”

Hunt said nothing more; but he remained. By the grim set of Joe’s lips and the silence of the company about the table, he knew that the moment was unpropitious for any insistence on his part that his friend give him his attention. Yet he had the feeling that something was going to happen, that his place was here at this gambling table rather than at the hotel with Betty.

The event that he subconsciously expected, however, came from outside. There was a sudden clamor at the door, the flaps swung in sharply, and several men entered. Smithy, Judson’s gangling young clerk, was the most noticeable member of the new group. He had a cut over his right eye, a puff on his cheek-bone that could have been made by nothing but a heavy fist, and when he spoke a crimson gap in his upper jaw betrayed the absence of two teeth.

“What’s happened to you, Smithy?” demanded Colorado Brown, coming forward quickly. It would not be to the benefit of the house to have the gamblers disturbed at this moment. “Somebody punch you?”

“I’ll thay they did!” lisped Smithy. He was half sobbing, but he was mad clear through.

“They didn’t improve your looks none,” said Colorado.

“Never mind muh lookth,” said Smithy. “I want to know what you fellers think of this?”

“I just told you. Whoever done it didn’t make you any handsomer,” interposed the proprietor of the hall. “Now, if you’ve had a fight outside, don’t bring it in here. We’re plumb peaceable here to-night, we are.”

“Wait till you hear what the kid’s got to say, Colorado,” put in one of those that had entered with Smithy.

“Spit it out!” advised the proprietor.

“I want to know what Mr. Joe Hurley thinks of this?” Smithy managed to make plain. “What do you think they are saying about Nell Blossom?”

“Nell Blossom?”

Hurley’s voice did not join the general chorus which repeated the cabaret singer’s name. But he looked up, his gaze met that of the parson, and a lightning glance of understanding passed between them.

“What’s eatin’ on you, Smithy?” demanded Colorado Brown.

“Up in Tolley’s. I was just in there. I heard Tolley and Tom Hicks and some others of his gang talkin’. I couldn’t help hearin’ what was said, and when I went for ’em this – this is what I got.”

He almost choked on the words. Joe Hurley rose up as though a slow spring uncoiled beneath him.

“What did they say, Smithy?” he asked, and the tone of his voice seemed to quell all other sounds.

“Why, the skunks!” cried Smithy, “they said Nell Blossom shot Dick the Devil last spring and flung him over the wall of the canyon into Runaway River.”

CHAPTER XXI – THE DRAMA OF A LIE

The tense silence that followed Smithy’s half-sobbing speech marked the poignancy of the moment and the utter stupefaction of his hearers. To all but Joe Hurley and Hunt such an accusation as this aimed at Nell Blossom was entirely unlooked for. If the crowd understood anything at all, they understood that Boss Tolley, if he had started the scandal, courted annihilation!

Indeed the first question fired at Smithy following his statement was:

“Why didn’t you fill ’em with lead, Smithy?”

“I didn’t have no gun,” replied the grocery clerk. “And Tom Hicks downed me before I could get at Tolley.”

“Did he say it, Smithy?” demanded Colorado Brown.

“’Twas him says he knows all about it. Says that Nell killed Dick Beckworth.”

They talked. But it was Joe Hurley who acted. He threw down the hand of cards he held.

“Mike,” he said to the Mexican, Miguel Santos, “you know I ain’t in the habit of betraying cold feet. But I got some business to tend to. Colorado,” he added to the proprietor, “I’ll settle when I come in again. I’m in a hurry.”

With the quickness of a cat he slipped through the crowd about the table and Smithy and shot for the door. But the parson was at his elbow before he could get through the portal.

“You’d better keep out of this, Willie,” Hurley said between his teeth. “There’s goin’ to be the devil to pay in a minute.”

“It is as much my business as it is yours, Joe,” said Hunt, in step with his long stride on the side-walk where they headed toward the Grub Stake. “And we must do something before those fellows back there wake up.”

“What?” was Joe’s startled ejaculation.

“That stupid Smithy has started something. Some of those fellows will be out after us in a minute, and if they get to the Grub Stake before we straighten things out, there will be trouble.”

“Trouble? Youbetcha there’ll be trouble! And you’d better keep out of it, Willie.”

“I mean to stop it,” said Hunt softly.

But Joe Hurley did not hear him. He turned abruptly and burst into the main entrance of the Grub Stake. It did not take Joe Hurley’s trained glance to see that something had happened here. Hunt sensed, too, that if there had already been trouble, more of the same kind was expected.

The girl who usually presided at the door – the girl who parked your gun if you wanted to play, or your spurs if you wanted to dance and gave you checks in return for them – had got out of the way. Several of the gaming tables were empty. There was not a man standing in front of the bar, and Boss Tolley’s assistants behind the “rosewood” had “stepped out.”

Hunt knew at first glance that some of the toughest men in the camp were gathered here – either about the remaining tables or with Boss Tolley at the far end of the bar by the door of his tiny office where the safes stood. That office, Joe had told the parson, was an arsenal. There was a bodyguard around the dive keeper of at least six men.

Joe Hurley saw that all this group was armed. A flash of the several men at the gaming tables assured the mining man that they might be neutral, save perhaps the dealers for the house. But he realized that Tolley’s gang was primed for mischief. It was a wonder that Smithy, the poor fool, had got out of the place alive!

Hunt had pushed ahead of Joe the moment they stepped inside the door. They were both big men, and Joe’s advantage of height could not hide the parson’s bulk. In a flash, before a word was spoken, Joe took two long strides sideways and got behind the first table, which was empty. And he, by this act, left Hunt out of the line of any bullet aimed by the gang standing at the end of the bar at himself.

A gun had not yet been drawn, however, on either side. Nor had a word been spoken by either Tolley and his gang or by the two men who had entered so suddenly. Still, not a man in the barroom missed the significance of Joe Hurley’s strategic move.

Sam Tubbs, withered old scarecrow that he was, had been facing the door at a near-by table. It was evident that Steve Siebert, the returned desert rat, had been treating Tubbs to more liquor than was good for him. But Sam had some wit left.

Joe’s action forecast the popping of guns – instantly! Sam had seen too many such brawls to play the part of “innocent bystander” if he could help it. He let his feet slide out from under him, shot down in the chair on the small of his back, and passed out of sight under the table with all the celerity of an imp in a pantomime.

Steve Siebert, however, did not even remove his pipe from his lips, but wheeled in his chair and glared from Joe to Tolley and his bodyguard. The old man swung a heavy, old-style six-gun low on his hip. But he did not touch it – then.

Joe’s attitude was as wary as that of a puma about to spring. He crouched. By one quick motion he could overturn the table, drop behind it, and use it as a bulwark. But he must move quickly enough to escape, perhaps, seven bullets from as many guns.

It was Joe Hurley who first spoke.

“Tolley!” he said fiercely but clearly, “I warned you what I’d do if you repeated that lie about the girl. You remember, well enough, you hound! Stand out from those bootlickers of yours and take your medicine.”

The challenge got no response from Tolley but a grimace like that of a wolf in a trap. He did not make a motion to draw his own gun. He was too wise to do that in any event, for he knew he could not beat Joe to it! And then – what did he subsidize these gunmen for if not for such an emergency as this?

“Open your trap, you hound!” commanded Joe. “If you won’t fight, speak!”

“Wait a moment.”

The parson had actually not halted at all when he entered with Joe Hurley. He had merely slowed up. He was approaching Tolley and his men down the long length of the bar. But when he spoke Tom Hicks half drew his gun.

“Mr. Tolley,” Hunt said in the same clear but quiet voice, “will undoubtedly explain and apologize for what we understand he has said about the young woman in question. Come now, Mr. Tolley! you are ready to take back your words, aren’t you? You have no more proof, have you, of your – er – mis-statement than you had several weeks ago when you discussed the affair with Mr. Hurley in my hearing?”

“What are you butting in for?” returned Tolley with a threatening growl.

“For the sake of peace, Mr. Tolley,” explained the parson determinedly.

“Get back, Willie!” Joe ordered from the background.

He dared not draw his gun, for if he did Hunt would be right in the line of fire again. With a single motion Tom Hicks could get into action.

“You derned buttinsky!” spat out Tolley vengefully. “Mind what you are doing, or you’ll stop lead.”

“That will not make a lie the truth, Mr. Tolley,” rejoined Hunt, now squarely between the group of desperadoes and Joe Hurley’s position.

“You mean to say I’m a liar?” blustered Tolley.

“I mean to say that the story you have repeated about the young woman and the man you say has disappeared has no foundation in fact and that you have in your possession no proof to back your statement. If that is calling you a liar, Mr. Tolley, then consider yourself so called!”

There was a little stir among the listeners at the tables – a stir of approval, and one voice ejaculated:

“What’s it all about?”

Evidently not all of these men now present had been at hand when Smithy had taken offense at Tolley’s words earlier in the evening which precipitated this situation. Hunt, without raising his voice at all, continued:

“I take it that you have no new evidence of a crime having been committed? You did not see the man fall? You merely saw the young woman at the summit of the declivity? Later you recovered a saddle you recognized from the fallen rubbish? Am I right? Isn’t that the extent of your evidence?”

“Well! Look yere! I reckon I know what I am talkin’ about – ”

“But you do not talk about what you know,” interposed Hunt. “To my personal knowledge – and that of Mr. Hurley – the missing man was not buried under that heap of rubbish with his horse.”

“Then he went into the river!” cried Tolley.

Here Joe Hurley put in a very pungent word:

“And that might easily be true. If you found his horse and removed the saddle, you might have found the man, too, Tolley, and removed some of his harness.”

“What’s that?” was the startled demand.

“From the first,” Joe said sternly, “I suspected you, Tolley. Your dust won’t hide what you have done. You are altogether too sure the man is dead – after first reporting that you had heard from him in Denver.

“In fact, you are too anxious to cast suspicion on another person. Your conscience – if you have such a thing – is troubling you, Tolley. At least, your fears have made you try to invent a lie that doesn’t work out just the way you expected it to.”

“I’ll show you – ”

“You’ll show me nothing, Tolley!” retorted Hurley. “You’ll listen – and these other gentlemen. You got the man’s saddle. It is just as probable that you found his body, as well as that of the horse. And he was known to wear a money-belt around his waist. He was likewise known to be well-fixed when he left Canyon Pass. He’d been doing well here. You knew it, if anybody did. You confess that you rode after the man. And you confess that you got his saddle. Confess the rest of it, you dog. What else have you got in your safe that belonged to – ”

Boss Tolley threw caution to the winds at this juncture. Hurley’s scathing denunciation pricked to life in him such personal courage as he possessed. He flung himself forward with a howl of rage and whipped the gun from the holster at his hip.

“Get down, Willie!” shouted Hurley and flung the table on its edge with a crash, dropping behind it.

CHAPTER XXII – A FACE IN THE STORM

An interruption – a voice as hoarse as the croak of a vulture – rose above the din of other voices:

“Tolley! You other fellers! Put ’em up! H’ist ’em!”

Tolley halted – it seemed in midflight. Even the gun hand of Tom Hicks relaxed. From the other side of the room old Steve Siebert commanded the situation – and the group of desperate men. The black muzzle of his gun gaped like the mouth of a cannon. Hunt did not stand between him and Tolley’s crowd. The old man steadied the barrel of his weapon on the edge of the table behind which he sat and covered the bunch perfectly.

“H’ist ’em!” he said again, and as Tolley’s gun clattered to the floor and Hicks thrust back his weapon into his sheath, he added: “I don’t aim to mix in what ain’t my business, as a usual thing. But when I see seven skunks goin’ after two boys – an’ one o’ them a parson and not ironed a-tall – I reckon on takin’ a hand. Put ’em up!”

The ruffians obeyed. Seven pairs of hands reached for the smoke-begrimed ceiling. Several startled faces appeared under the archway between the barroom and the dance hall. One was the desert-bitten countenance of Andy McCann. He would not have sat to drink in the same room with his one-time partner; but Steve Siebert’s voice had stung McCann to action. Steve saw him.

“Andy, you derned old rat!” Steve cried, “shut that office door and lock it. Then, just frisk them rustlers and remove their irons. There ain’t goin’ to be no shootin’. Whatever the row is, it’s goin’ to be settled plumb peaceful.”

McCann snarled at the other old pocket-hunter like a tiger cat; but he obeyed – and not without some enjoyment of the chagrin of Tolley and his gangsters.

“It takes us old sourdoughs to be slick,” he chuckled, when he had dumped an armful of guns on an empty table. “You boys ain’t dry behind the ears yet when it comes to shootin’ scrapes.”

“There ain’t goin’ to be no shootin’,” repeated Steve Siebert. “Not ’nless them fellers start it with their mouths,” and he grinned such a toothless grin that he almost lost his grip on the pipestem clamped in one corner of his mouth.

“Now, what’s it all about? What’s the row? What gal you talkin’ about? Who’s the feller that was killed? I’m sort o’ curious.”

Joe Hurley stood erect again. He laughed.

“Great saltpeter!” he exclaimed, “you certainly are a friend in need, old-timer.”

“Come on,” rejoined Steve. “Let’s have the pertic’lars.”

It was the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt who took upon himself the explanation.

“Nell Blossom!” cried Steve. “That leetle songbird? You mean to say all this row is over her?”

“Mr. Tolley has made the statement that Miss Blossom was the cause of this Beckworth’s death. His horse went over the cliff into the canyon. Whether or not the man went with it – ”

“He did!” cried Andy McCann, smiting his thigh resoundingly with his palm. “By gravy! Is that what’s eatin’ all you fellers?”

“Say! Who’s runnin’ this court, I’d like to know?” demanded Steve Siebert angrily.

“Aw, shut up – you old lizard,” said McCann, flaming at him. “’Tain’t no court. It ain’t nothin’ like it. Put up your gun. It’s all off. Dick the Devil ain’t dead at all. At least he wasn’t killed that time he went over the cliff. He’s Dick the Devil sure ’nough, and he’s got more luck than a hanged man.”