The Heart of Canyon Pass

The roar of the storm as the men came out upon the open bank of the East Fork made the human voice quite inaudible. Nor could they communicate by signs, for only the dim outlines of the man before him could be seen by the man behind. A tug of the rope was the only signal understood between the searchers.

The driven hail churned the surface of the river to a livid foam. The reflection of this sheet of ruffled water lent them more light than the sun itself. The storm beat upon the string of men with a savageness that appalled Hunt, who had never experienced nature in so bitter a mood.

But what these men of Canyon Pass could do, the parson would not shrink from. And were not the two beings he loved most in this world – Nell Blossom and his sister Betty – in desperate peril somewhere on the other side of the wind-lashed stream?

The water was all of knee-depth over the bar, but Joe waded in without hesitation. They were none of them shod properly for the wading of the stream; but their personal discomfort – or, indeed, their personal peril in any way – did not enter into their consideration in this emergency. Two girls were somewhere up there among the rocks, harassed by the storm and in danger of their lives. The men’s job was to get them.

The ice – it was more than mere sleet that whipped them so unmercifully – cut such parts of their faces as were bare, needle sharp and stinging. From under the peak of his cap each man could now see scarcely a yard before him. They stumbled on as though they were in an unlighted cavern. Once Joe stepped off the track and plunged waist deep in a hole. Hunt hauled him back by the rope, and after a moment they went on again.

They reached the farther bank and stumbled up the sleet-covered strand, standing in a group together for a minute to get their breath and to ease the binding-rope about their bodies.

“I reckon I can smell out the path, boys,” said their leader, so they started off again.

As they pressed upward, now and then they shouted – sometimes in unison. But their voices could not penetrate the gale far. The sounds were blown back into their faces as though rebounding from a blank wall.

At a point some distance up the path Hurley halted again and allowed the others to approach. He bawled at them:

“There’s a place yonder somewhere under the cliff – I remember it – a half-shelter. They might have reached it.”

“Don’t get off the path, Joe!” warned Jib Collins.

“But if the girls got off the path?”

“We don’t want to lose our way,” objected Mack.

“I’m going to take a look!” ejaculated Hurley obstinately. But he could not untie the knot which held him. He fumbled at it. “Got a knife, Willie?”

The parson had already drawn out his pocket-knife. But he slashed the rope between Collins and himself.

“I’m going with you, Joe,” he declared.

“Keep shoutin’!” bawled Collins, as the two younger men started off at a tangent from the path.

The bowlders were glassed with ice. The two friends floundered and slipped about in an awkward way, straining themselves enormously and not seldom falling. The one aided the other. It was fortunate, Hunt realized, that they had come together, for one man alone could never have accomplished the journey to the sheer wall of the cliff.

Of a sudden there seemed to be a lull in the gale. Really, they had reached a more sheltered spot. The storm sang around them, but they were not so terribly buffeted.

Joe shouted again:

“Nell! Nell Blossom! Betty!”

Hunt joined his voice to that of his friend. They continued to bellow the girls’ names. Hurley grabbed the parson’s arm suddenly.

“Hush!”

There was a response. A wailing voice replied.

“It’s Betty! Your sister!” shouted Joe, and plunged forward, half-dragging the equally excited Hunt with him.

Something loomed up before the latter. He ran into the barrel of a standing horse!

“Here they are!” yelled Hurley.

Somehow, the two young men got around the horses. There was a sheltered place between the beasts and the wall of rock. Hunt heard his sister crying and laughing somewhere near. But it was not she whom he first found.

“Oh, Mr. Hunt! Oh, Mr. Hunt!” sobbed Nell Blossom’s voice. “Are you real? You ain’t another ghost, are you? Oh! Oh!”

Hunt’s arms were around the girl, and he held her fast. Near by, he knew, Joe and Betty were talking – perhaps were whispering. His own lips were close to Nell’s ear.

“My dear! My dear!” the parson said over and over again. “God is good to me! I’ve found you safe.”

Nell snuggled into his arms like a frightened child and clung to him.

CHAPTER XXV – UNDERSTANDING

It was Betty Hunt, who, after all, seemed to possess the bolder spirit of the two girls. Nell clung to the parson like a frightened child. He realized, however, after the first flush of his emotion that he had allowed his own overpowering desire for the singer to confuse his mind. The barrier between them was down for a moment only; he raised it again himself, for he knew he was taking advantage unfairly of the terrified girl.

It was Hunt, however, who lifted Nell Blossom into her pony’s saddle with one of the blankets wrapped well about her, and when Joe Hurley started away leading Betty’s mount, the parson followed close behind. The two young men had freed themselves of each other; but the horses and their riders bulked so big against the driving curtain of the storm that they could scarcely lose each other.

They heard the other searchers shouting and Joe pulled his gun from its holster and fired two shots into the air. The signal was replied to immediately. In a minute or two Joe ran, head-on, into Jib Collins.

“Hey! did you find ’em both?” bawled the man.

“Youbetcha!” responded Hurley. “When the parson and I go out, we bring home the bacon, every time.”

They took up the march to the ford. At the water’s edge one of the other men came to the off side of each pony, and they forced the snorting animals into the stream. The foaming barrier did not look encouraging to the storm-beaten beasts.

They all got through safely and up into the town. The driving storm was changing to snow and sleet; but the foundation of ice that had first fallen made walking difficult. The girls were lifted off their horses and carried up into Betty’s room, where Maria gave them every assistance in her power. Somebody put away the horses. Joe scurried off to his own bachelor shack, while Hunt stripped in his room and gave himself a savage rub-down with coarse towels. It had been a terrible experience; but his spirits and his blood were both in glow!

Surely Nell Blossom could not be unfriendly hereafter. It must be confessed that the parson’s thought was more entangled with Nell and his recent association with her than in anything else.

Cholo Sam brought up a steaming pot of coffee, his dark face expanded with delight.

“Ah, Señor Hunt!” the Mexican said, “you an’ de Señor Hurley – you are de pure queel, eh? De boys all cheer you – my goodness, yes!”

When Hunt was dressed again he went to Betty’s door and knocked. His sister’s response to his summons was brisk and cheerful, as usual. Yet, when he entered and looked keenly at her, he thought there was something feverish – or was it expectant? – in the look she gave him.

The girls were both in the big bed, heaped with blankets. Nell’s petite face, ruffled about by one of Betty’s boudoir caps, was pale. Indeed, the parson’s sister looked in much the better condition of the two. The excitement and danger of the adventure which had befallen them seemed to have affected the girls in a paradoxical manner. Whereas the Eastern girl might be expected to be overcome by the affair and Nell have suffered the adventure as an ordinary experience, the result seemed really to be the other way around! Nell lay in the bed pale, almost hysterical it would seem. Betty could scarcely control her excitement.

“Ford!” she exclaimed, “I need you. Try to convince this foolish girl that there is no such thing as a ghost – a real ghost.”

Hunt smiled, but he could not be unsympathetic. He realized that Nell Blossom, being brought up as she had been – even associating so long with Mother Tubbs – was probably hopelessly superstitious. He could not find it in his heart to oppose roughly any fear Nell might hold regarding supernatural things. He tried to put his admonition in a kindly way.

“If there is any truth at all in the matter of ghosts,” he said, “it must be of a somewhat unreal nature, must it not? Ghosts are supposed to be too ethereal for sight or touch or sound. And the only smell, even, accompanying their visitations, is supposed to be of brimstone, isn’t it?”

“That feller ought to smell of brimstone all right!” muttered Nell suddenly hectic in her language. “He ought to come plumb from the bad place.”

“What does she mean?” Hunt asked Betty. Yet he half suspected what was in the singer’s mind. “Did you girls see – ”

“Nell declares,” interrupted Betty, still with that strange excitement, “that she has seen the ghost of a man she calls Dick Beckworth.”

“Dick Beckworth,” Hunt repeated calmly. “You saw him, I presume,” he watched the pale face on the pillow all the time, “on the side of the cliff over yonder? He rode down behind you – ”

“Do you mean – ” gasped Nell.

A flame of color flashed into both her cheeks. Her blue eyes grew round with surprise.

“He says he came into town by that path,” the young man rejoined. “He put us on to the track of you girls. He said he saw you start down the path ahead of him.”

“He is alive!” murmured Nell.

“His horse was in bad shape, I believe,” Hunt told her. “But the last I knew – just before we left the Grub Stake to look for you – Dick Beckworth gave every promise of getting on quite well.”

“Dick the Devil!” muttered Nell. “That sure is his name.”

“From what I have heard about him,” said Hunt, “I think his nickname quite fits him. But it was probably Tolley’s meanness alone that made you – that is,” he hastened to correct himself, “that made all of the trouble. That was thrashed out last evening, Miss Nell. Steve Siebert and Andy McCann proved Dick was not dead, although he did go over the cliff back there in the spring.”

“I don’t know what you are both talking about,” Betty interposed. “Who is this – this – Dick Beckworth, do you call him?”

“A gambler, Betty,” said her brother. “You would scarcely know such a person. But unfortunately both Miss Nell and I have been obliged to mix with all classes of society,” he smiled again, “and so we know such people.”

“Nell should not sing in those places.” Betty said it with conviction. But in a moment she turned again to the identity of the man whose reappearance had startled Nell Blossom so greatly that she had fainted in the storm. “What – what does this man, Dick, look like?”

“Not an unhandsome fellow,” said the parson generously. “A somewhat cruel face – ruthless perhaps would be the better term. Good features; a beautiful complexion – if such a term should be applied to a man’s skin,” and he laughed.

“You do not like him, Ford!” exclaimed Betty quickly.

“Would I be likely to?” mildly asked her brother.

“Oh! But I do not want a psychoanalysis of the man,” said Betty, and she used a handkerchief to half hide her own face. “Just what does he look like?”

“Mildly dark. A beautiful, oiled mustache – like a crow’s wing as the Victorian lady novelists would say. Heavy black hair. Under different circumstances – you must remember I saw him only after he was dragged out of the storm and on the border of a collapse – I judge Dick Beckworth would be quite the gentleman in all appearance, and quite the devil at heart.”

“You said it!” agreed Nell.

“A mustache – and thick black hair,” murmured Betty. “Yes. I saw him go by when we were cowering there under that wall, too. Well, I am relieved.” Her laugh did not sound right in her brother’s ears. “I am glad that it did not turn out to be a real ghost.”

Hunt sat down upon a chair at Nell’s side of the bed. The singer looked at him, and there suddenly flashed into her eyes a warm light that enhanced her beauty. She put out a little brown hand and gripped his, which was only too ready to be seized.

“Parson – Mr. Hunt, you are a good man!” she said, chokingly. “I heard about what you did last night. But I didn’t hear all about it; so I didn’t know Dick was alive. I – I’m mighty wicked, I reckon. I ain’t glad he didn’t die – ”

“No need to go into that,” urged Hunt quickly. “All such things are in the hands of Providence. But your mind, I hope, Nell, is relieved.”

Betty looked from the face of the girl on the pillow to her brother’s glowing countenance. It was another shock for Betty Hunt, but she understood.

The sudden, sharp blizzard that tore across the country blew itself out by nightfall. In the morning the sun shone brilliantly, a warm wind followed the gale, and the snow and ice melted like a September frost. It had been only a foretaste of winter.

The effect of the incidents of that day remained longer in the hearts of some of the participators in the events than it did upon the earth or the rivers, the rocks and gorges, the frosted herbage, or other physical and material matters about Canyon Pass. To be in mutual peril, to suffer alike the buffetings of the storm, had linked Betty Hunt and Nell Blossom with a chain that could not lightly be severed.

There was, too, a secret knowledge on the Eastern girl’s part that made this chain stronger than Nell imagined. The latter had no suspicion that Dick Beckworth – Dick the Devil – was a link in the chain that bound her to the parson’s sister. There was as well another thing that made the cabaret singer an object of Betty’s deeper interest. The latter had seen in her brother’s face something which had vastly surprised her and something which – had it been revealed to her before this time – would have horrified Betty as well as startled her.

The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was plainly and frankly more concerned in Nell Blossom than he had any right to be – unless he proposed to declare himself the singer’s suitor. It was a somewhat shocking thought for Betty – no two ways about it. She had scarcely ever considered her brother in the light of a marrying man, and never here at Canyon Pass! For it to have been suggested that Hunt would find an object of sentimental interest in this Western mining camp would have completely confounded Betty at an earlier date.

And Nell Blossom? A singer in a rough amusement place that Betty would consider herself smirched if she entered? Yet – and Betty was surprised to consider it – she was much less amazed by her brother’s seeming choice than she presumed she would be. Besides, there was a reason why Betty Hunt felt that she might not criticise her brother’s course in this affair.

When Nell Blossom had recovered from the exposure sufficiently to go home to Mother Tubbs, and that was not until late in the day following the storm, Betty had gained from her brother all he knew and much that he surmised regarding Nell’s association with the gambler who had returned to the Grub Stake at so dramatic a moment.

For his part, Hunt had not the first suspicion that Betty held any personal interest in the man, Dick Beckworth. But he knew that his sister suspected his love for Nell Blossom.

Hunt braced himself for an argument, and a serious one. Betty veered from Nell herself in a most surprising manner and seemed to feel interest only in Dick the Devil.

“He is scarcely a person in whom you would find any interest did you meet him, Betty,” declared the parson. “Believe me, as Joe says, the fellow is one of those fungi attached to society that would much better be lopped off than allowed to develop and spread their vile spawn about.”

“Oh!” gasped Betty. “You mean it would have been better had you and – and Mr. Hurley found the man’s remains where you found his horse? Oh, Ford!”

“Somehow,” said the parson gravely, “I feel that way.”

“Ford!” cried his sister vehemently. “This is an awful place! Let – let us go back East.”

The parson shook his head slowly. “No, Betty. You may go if you wish. I do not blame you for wanting to give it up. There is no reason why you should sacrifice yourself. But for me – Canyon Pass is mine. I will not own to failure. Indeed, my work is not without promise. I am going to reach the heart of Canyon Pass in some way, and I will keep on in the quest as long as I am given strength.”

It was Betty’s last outbreak against conditions. Nor did her brother suspect for a moment the reason for the sudden renewal of her hatred of the mining town.

CHAPTER XXVI – THREATENING WEATHER

Joe Hurley had taken a new lease on cheerfulness; yet he scarcely could have explained why his condition of mind had so suddenly improved. But it was not difficult for him to put a digit upon that very moment of time when this new feeling had dawned in his mind.

It was when, with Hunt, he had plowed his way through the driving storm to the nook under the sheltering cliff and had, seemingly, by instinct, found Betty Hunt rather than Nell Blossom.

Joe told himself that this very fact – that he had stumbled upon Betty rather than Nell – was a miracle of love.

All the time they were beating through the blizzard, crossing the icy river and climbing the steep path, it seemed to Joe that Betty had been calling to him. It had been the most natural thing in the world that at the end of the fearful struggle he should find in his arms the girl whom he loved and whose peril had caused him such anguish.

And Betty did, quite of her own volition, enter that shelter. It was no mistake, no chance happening. Betty did not think he was her brother. “Oh, Joe! I was sure you would find us,” she had said.

Joe did not overlook the confession Betty had made that there was a man back East who must, in some way, hold her promise if not her affections. But Joe hoped that by now Betty had taken time to compare that unknown with himself; and that he, Joe, had a chance. He decided to await Betty’s good pleasure.

At least, Joe Hurley’s recklessness was submerged once more in those better qualities that the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt warmly liked. Joe was bound to be the parson’s chief assistant and backer in all his efforts for the betterment of Canyon Pass. And Hunt faced now – he had seen it coming of course – a situation that must practically make effective or mar seriously all that he had striven for since he had come West.

This emergency came up for discussion that Saturday night in Bill Judson’s Three Star Grocery. The interest of the more decent element of the town’s population was centering in the church and in Parson Hunt’s work. This was a rallying point for all progressive effort and determination in Canyon Pass.

In addition, the happenings of the past week seemed to have focused on Hunt and the good work the eyes of all those Passonians who possessed vision at all. The almost tragic brawl in Tolley’s Grub Stake had aroused a great deal of warm discussion. What did Canyon Pass and Canyon County have a sheriff for, if roughnecks were to go armed – and use those arms – just as they had been wont to do in the old days?

“Why, we’re plumb civilized now. We ain’t supposed to go around wearin’ shootin’-irons and pluggin’ holes in store-fronts and citizens’ hats. If a bunch of cow-punchers came riotin’ in yere and started to shoot up the camp, Sheriff Blaney would show ’em what-for, blame sudden.”

“Youbetcha!” agreed one of the storekeeper’s listeners. “That’s a true word, Bill. If a man means to be peaceable, why go ironed at all?”

“That’s just it,” complained the gangling Smithy. “There’s them that ain’t for peace. That’s why the rest of us hafter go heeled.”

Smithy had been waiting on customers with a gun belted to his waist ever since the night he had lost two teeth and gained a black eye. Perhaps the evidence of this gun so prominently displayed had saved the gangling clerk from much hectoring comment that he might otherwise have suffered from some of the patrons of the Three Star.

However, Smithy basked in a certain heroic light. He had been the first to resent Tolley’s scurrilous tale about Nell Blossom, and no matter what Joe Hurley and the parson had done later, Smithy’s small share of glory could not be ignored. On this very afternoon Nell herself had come into the Three Star Grocery and thanked Smithy very sweetly for his courageously expressed opinion on her behalf, the result of which had rather marred what good looks Smithy had ever been able to lay claim to.

“Layin’ off whatever that boy’s mother said about him when he was an infant,” drawled Judson, “nobody ever could honestly say that Smithy should take a medal for good looks. Now he looks plumb woeful! I come pretty near bustin’ out crying when I look at him.”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that, Bill Judson, and you know it,” Nell declared. “Don’t you believe him, Smithy. I don’t think it hurts your looks any.”

“It couldn’t,” was Judson’s grim comment.

But this missed Smithy. He fairly gasped with pleasure at Nell’s statement.

“Don’t you mind about it, Miss Nell,” he said. “I was goin’ to have them teeth drawed, anyway. I’ll get gold ones. And I’d have ’em all knocked out if ’twould do you a mite of good.”

Now that the conclave between the serious-minded citizens had begun, even Smithy was listened to with some respect. Besides, the gangling one put forward an unmistakably pregnant fact.

“If it wasn’t for Tolley and his gang, wouldn’t none of us hafter tote guns,” Smithy observed.

“Surest thing you know!” exclaimed Collins. “Run them out o’ town and the decent men here wouldn’t hafter develop saddle-galls from wearing ten pound or more of iron and lead belted around their waists. Yes, sir! I’m in favor of reviving the old vigilance committee and running these yere undesirable citizens out into the Topaz.”

“What would become of them?” put in Hunt mildly.

“Let ’em ‘root, hog, or die’!” muttered Judson. “Tolley, of course, has got a stake yere. We can’t take a man’s property away from him. But those hangers-on of his – ”

“It is a part of Tolley’s stake that is the immediate cause of this discussion, gentlemen,” put in the parson again. “Tolley still owns the place in which we hold our meetings, and Judson’s lease will soon run out.”

“Run Tolley out,” said Smithy, who had now enthusiastically taken sides with the church people, “and you needn’t worry about that shack.”

“Maybe he would sell,” Hurley suggested.

“You try to buy it,” and Judson grinned. “His eye teeth has done been cut a far time back. Tolley ain’t that kind of a fool. He is wise to the idea that we’d like to buy that place. If you paved the shack floor with gold eagles Tolley wouldn’t bite.”

“He’d like to bust up the church and run the parson out, if you ask me,” was the comment of another bystander. “And he’s got a sharp side-pardner now, boys. I hear tell Dick the Devil is a-hintin’ that things will go different in Canyon Pass, now that he’s come back.”

“How’s that?” asked Hurley quickly, his eyes sparkling as they always did when his temper was ruffled. “What’s Dick got to say about it?”

“He don’t favor no parson. He says so.”

“Looks to me,” drawled Judson, “that it’s comin’ close to a show-down. Either we folks that want a church and decency has got to cave in, or we got to fight.”

“The right kind of fighting, I hope,” said Hunt quickly. “We must hold our own without open quarreling.”

“Well, it won’t be peaceful when we try to hold onto Tolley’s shack,” growled Jib Collins.

“Look yere,” queried a voice from the dark end of the store, “what have you shorthorns been doin’ all this time you’ve had a parson? Why ain’t ye built him a church?”

“Another county heard from!” snapped Judson, as old Steve Siebert came forward. “Easy enough to ask that.”

“Why don’t ye answer it?” asked the old prospector. “I see you have got yere in Canyon Pass a blame good parson. I never seen one I liked better. I ain’t heard him preach, and I ain’t been to your meetin’s. But any parson that can walk barehanded up to a gang like that Boss Tolley and his whelps gets my vote, and he can have everything I’ve got when he wants it for his church.”

“Them that ain’t got nawthin’ can easy give it away,” muttered Judson.

But it was another voice that ruffled the serenity of Steve Siebert. On a box by the door the hooped figure of Andy McCann straightened up.