The Heart of Canyon Pass

“I reckon,” he sneered, “that that old gray-backed lizard has got him a poke full o’ nuggets out in the Topaz, and he’s goin’ to hand it over for to pay for a church edifice,” and his senile giggle was more maddening than the laughter of the crowd.

“I likely brought in full as much as yonder ground-owl ever scooped out o’ the ground. But ye don’t answer my question, neither. Why ain’t you fellers made some preparation for buildin’?”

“Mr. Siebert,” said the parson soothingly, “the men and women interested in our work have subscribed several hundred dollars toward a building fund. But we are none of us prepared to finance such a work as yet. We wish to put up a fairly good structure when we get at it. We cannot freight in the frame and heavier timbers. They must be cut and sawn on the spot. The expense of getting in a mill, aside from the labor, is enormous.”

“I reckon these hard-shells have tol’ you that because their pockets squeal ev’ry time they put their hands in ’em,” growled Siebert. “I know ’em.”

“Look here, old-timer,” said Joe Hurley, sharply, “we figure it will cost close to ten thousand dollars to put up a church. What do you say to that?”

“Put your hand in your poke and hand over ten thousand in dust, you miser’ble desert rat!” cackled Andy McCann.

“And how much of it can you rake up, after prospectin’ this country for nigh on to thutty years?” was Steve’s answer, glowering at his enemy.

“Wal, dern your hide! there was a time when I might ha’ done my share of it without weepin’ none,” muttered Andy. “And if it hadn’t been for you – ”

“Is that so?” cried the other old man, his face ablaze with wrath. “And how about me bein’ right in sight once’t of the most promisin’ lead that ever was uncovered in Canyon County?”

“If it hadn’t been for you,” rejoined Andy, “I would ha’ been rollin’ in wealth. And you know it – dad burn your hide!”

“Look here,” interjected Joe Hurley, interested rather than amused. “If you both tell the truth, you must have together struck a rich streak. Why didn’t you develop it? You were partners, weren’t you?”

“Me, pardners with that yere!” croaked Steve.

“D’ye think for one moment,” demanded Andy, “that I’d help make that feller’s fortune? Not on your tintype!”

Here Judson, with enormous disgust, broke into the discussion. “Dad burn it!” he exclaimed, “this ain’t helpin’ none to build the parson a church.”

The others were laughing uproariously. Steve and Andy glared at each other like two angry dogs with a strong fence between them. But slowly their fierce expressions changed. Hunt, who was watching them with something more than idle curiosity, saw that both old men began to look slyly at each other as they calmed down. The others paid no further attention to Steve and Andy, the flurry of their verbal battle being over. But in the rheumy eyes of Andy there grew a light which seemed to register some secret amusement, while Steve’s toothless grin displayed a humorous appreciation of a phase of the argument that the bystanders in general quite failed to catch.

“Now,” thought the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt, “I wonder, to use one of Joe’s favorite expressions, what those two old fellows have up their sleeves. Perhaps the joke is on Canyon Pass, rather than on these two queer old prospectors. I wonder!”

CHAPTER XXVII – SEVERAL CONCLUSIONS

Nell Blossom had not gone back to sing at Colorado Brown’s place. It was some time before Hunt found this out, and he wondered why she had broken her agreement with Colorado, for he knew she had entirely recovered from the effects of her adventure in the storm.

Had the parson asked his sister, Betty might have illuminated his mind not a little regarding this and other mysteries about Nell; but he was chary of ever speaking of the singer in other than a general way before Betty.

To tell the truth, he shrank from any argument regarding the Blossom of Canyon Pass. He had learned just how sweet and innocent Nell Blossom was. But he did not know how far Betty might approve of the younger girl, especially if he showed any personal interest in the latter.

He was firm in his conviction that Nell Blossom was a being set apart as his mate from the beginning! Strange as it might seem at first view, Hunt was positive that he and the half-tamed mining-camp girl held much in common. He had found opportunity to talk with her of late – both at Mother Tubbs’ and elsewhere – and he knew her tastes and aspirations far better than before. She had confided to him, although with much timidity, some of her girlish desires and her conclusions upon topics which she had thought seriously about.

She was, too, of the very stuff these Canyon Pass people were made – one of themselves. If he got Nell Blossom for a wife she would be of greater aid to him in his work here than any other one person possibly could be. With Nell Blossom for his very own, the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt would indeed have won the Heart of Canyon Pass.

Hunt kept all this a secret and said little to Betty about the cabaret singer. Nothing indeed that gave her a chance to tell him that her eyes had seen already most of what he thought was hidden from her, and seen it in a single glance.

As her brother sat beside the bed the day of the ice-storm and held Nell Blossom’s hand, Betty saw how it was with the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. The only matter that puzzled her at all was Nell’s possible attitude. Unsophisticated as the mining-camp girl was, Betty could not know for sure what Nell’s feeling for the parson was.

But Betty might have given Hunt a pretty correct explanation of why Nell did not go back to sing at Colorado Brown’s place. The girls were together almost every day after their adventure in the storm.

Betty did not go to Mother Tubbs’. She scarcely left the hotel at all in the day time, though going out on the first Sunday following their perilous adventure to attend church service.

But Nell came to the Wild Rose, and the two girls grew to know each other better than before. This because they both wished a closer understanding. Nell had begun to admire something about Betty Hunt besides her frocks and the way she manicured her nails. The parson’s sister now desired to know Nell better for the parson’s sake.

“I’m sick to death, Betty, singing for those roughnecks,” Nell had burst forth on one occasion. “I used to think it was great to have ’em cheer me and clap me off and have ’em throw money at me. But I’m plumb sick of it.”

“It’s a great gift to be able to move people with one’s voice so.”

“It ain’t nothing of the kind!” Nell declared vehemently. “It’s because they ain’t got no brains – at least, what they’ve got are addled with hootch. I’ve only got just a nice, sweet, singing voice. Them fellers are so plumb ignorant that they hoot and holler for me because I please ’em. I’d love to be really able to sing!”

“I am not so sure that you cannot sing, as you mean it,” was Betty’s sympathetic rejoinder. “Merely, you do not sing worth-while songs – altogether.”

“I’m mighty ashamed about singing that ‘This Is No Place for a Minister’s Son,’” burst out Nell suddenly.

“Why, I think it’s funny,” and Betty laughed. “I’ve often heard Ford humming it.”

“Oh! I – I sang it at him, Betty. I did!”

“I am quite sure it never disturbed Ford in the least.”

“Well, no, I reckon not. Nothing a girl like me done – ”

“Did!”

“Did– could bother a man like Parson Hunt.”

“I am not so sure of that,” Betty rejoined, eyeing the other girl keenly.

But Nell Blossom, if she had a secret, hid it successfully. Betty did not miss the opportunity, however, of trying to help her friend.

“Suppose you learn some better songs – some really worth-while pieces? I brought my music with me, although I do not know if I shall ever touch a piano again.” She sighed. “But I sometimes sit and hum over my favorites. You read music of course, Nell?”

“I don’t know a note – to speak the name of it, I mean,” confessed the singer. “But I never saw the piece yet that I couldn’t pick up pretty easy. Rosabell Pickett says I’m a natural sight-reader with a great ear for harmony.”

She accepted with gratitude the selections Betty made from her library. Betty had chosen the songs with some little guile. That fact was proved by what occurred later.

“Anyway,” Nell concluded, “I ain’t going back to Colorado’s place for a while. I got some money, and Sam’s bringing his pay home to Mother Tubbs pretty reg’lar now. I can live for a while without singing for those roughnecks, that’s a sure thing!”

But Betty had her own grave thoughts – thoughts that kept her awake at night. Hollow eyes and certain twitching lines about her sensitive mouth were the result of these secret cogitations. Hunt noticed his sister’s changed appearance but he misunderstood its source. He feared that Betty found the life at Canyon Pass, with winter coming on, too hard to bear. Yet he saw that she always cheered up when Joe Hurley ran in to see them.

The Eastern girl’s trouble did not arise from the locality in which she was forced to live; it was the presence of one person in the town that caused her such serious thoughts. The man who had passed Nell Blossom and her in the storm, whose unexpected appearance had made Nell faint, had shocked Betty much more deeply than he did the singer!

Without that heavy mustache, with his waving hair cut more to conform to Eastern ideas of propriety, the girl visualized the fellow as she had once known Andy Wilkenson. He was the man, thought of whom had so worried Betty’s mind for these long months since she had left Grandhampton Hall. Andy Wilkenson! The man she had hoped never to see or hear from again. Her worst fears on coming West were now realized. And his reappearance here at Canyon Pass warned Betty that she could never allow Joe Hurley to see just how much she had learned to care for him.

She went to church on that next Sunday morning in fear and trembling. She sat well forward as usual. But she knew when “Dick Beckworth” came in and sat down in one of the rear seats.

His coming here surprised them all. Heads were turned, and there was whispering. Dick was dressed in the same flashy way, for he had left a trunk at the Grub Stake when he went away in the spring. He sat during the sermon with a sneer on his handsome face and the dancing light of the demon flickering in his hard eyes. Hunt usually met strangers after the meeting with a cordial handclasp. He did not approach Dick Beckworth.

Betty drew a veil across her face before she arose for the benediction. She waited to return to the hotel with her brother.

She was the only person in the assembly who was not amused by the appearance of the two old prospectors, Siebert and McCann, at the service. They did not come in together; and when Andy McCann entered to see Steve seated at one side, he chose a seat just as far from the other old-timer as he could and on the other side of the house. Their scowls turned on each other were more significant than words.

Hunt did not let Steve and Andy get away without a personal word with them.

“I am very glad to welcome you among us, Mr. McCann,” he said to that individual when he shook the pocket-hunter’s wrinkled claw.

“Wal, it’s all right, I reckon,” muttered Andy. “In a meetin’ you’ve got to stand for most anybody droppin’ in. But that old rip,” nodding toward the distant Steve, “would look a heap better ’cordin’ to my idee in jail than at church.”

“We must be charitable, Mr. McCann,” said the parson, moving toward the other prospector.

Old Steve was quite as bitter in his comment. But he added something, too, that gave Hunt pause.

“It seems a good deal like old times. I used to go to church reg’lar, onc’t,” said Siebert. “But I miss something, parson – I sure do.”

“What’s that?” asked Hunt smiling.

“Let alone I never expected to see that old has-been at meetin’ – an’ I don’t reckon he’s come for any good – I see you don’t look jest like a preacher ought to look. Say, don’t ministers dress different no more from other folks? You might be a banker or a gambler as far as your coat goes to show.”

The blunt criticism shocked Hunt not a little. Up to this time he had carefully eschewed clerical dress. He began to wonder if, after all, he was not making a mistake.

Dick Beckworth was not on the street when the parson and his sister went back to the hotel. In fact Dick had slipped out very soon after the meeting ceased and was then in conference with Boss Tolley in the little office at the end of the long bar in the Grub Stake.

“Well,” said Tolley, eagerly, “did you see her?”

“Sure as sure.”

“Is it her?” demanded the dive keeper, grinning like a wolf.

“It sure is. It’s her that was Betty Hunt.”

“Dad burn it! And she paradin’ ’round here like an unmarried woman. Dick, we got that parson on the hip.”

CHAPTER XXVIII – CATASTROPHE

No more snow or ice had followed that first sharp, furious blizzard; but with the higher temperature had come heavy rainstorms which the natives declared were quite unseasonable. The rivers were bank full. The lower end of Main Street was washed by the water from both Forks. Several families had been obliged to move into the higher part of the town.

But the flood had not driven Mother Tubbs and her little family out of their home. The wise old woman did not know just why Nell Blossom sang no more at the dance hall; but in her mind she knew that “suthin’ was workin’ on that gal.” Meanwhile she proceeded to “work on” Sam as usual.

Rocking on her back porch with the vista of dreary yards under her eye, but the rugged beauties of the Topaz Range in the distance, she philosophized as usual on all things both spiritual and mundane. Sam was pottering about a broken table that she had convinced him he must mend before he left the premises for a stroll into the town, it being Saturday afternoon.

“I must say, too, that it seems as peaceful as Sunday back in Missouri – or pretty near,” Mother Tubbs observed. “Things is changed yere in Canyon Pass. Ye must admit it, Sam.”

“Drat it!” snarled her husband, sucking a thumb he had just smashed with his hammer. “I admit it all right. The Pass is gettin’ plumb wuthless to live in. Psalm singin’, and preachin’, and singin’ meetings, and sech. Huh! Parson wants me to come to Bible class.”

After all he said it with some pride. Sam had, as he expressed it, “a sneakin’ likin’” for the parson. But he was determined not to show that this was so before Mother Tubbs.

“Ain’t you glad to live less like a savage – more decent and civilized like – than you useter, Sam Tubbs?” demanded the old woman.

“I was satisfied as I was,” grunted her husband. “I ain’t one o’ them that’s always wantin’ change and somethin’ new. If I had been, I’d picked me a new woman before now.”

“The pickin’ ain’t very good in Canyon Pass,” rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently. “Them that’s got husbands don’t want to exchange. ’Twould be like jumpin’ out of the skillet onto the coals. Them women that ain’t got nary man are well content, I reckon, to get on without one if you, Sam Tubbs, are the only hope they got.”

“Huh!”

Nell’s sweet, clear voice floated down from the upper chamber. In accents that caressed, she sang an old song which she had found in Betty Hunt’s music, arranged for solo use.

“Hear that child, Sam!” whispered the old woman, wiping her eyes when the pleading verse was finished. “Ain’t that heaven-born?”

“Huh!” said Sam, but in truth a little doubtfully. “I never considered our Nell as bein’ pertic’lar angelic. No ma’am! Not before.”

“She’s as good as any angel,” declared Mother Tubbs with conviction. “Only she’s flighty. Or useter be. And if she’d just go and sing them songs at meetin’, Canyon Pass would learn for once just what good singin’ is.”

“I dunno but you’re right, old woman,” said Sam softly, as the voice from above took up the song again. “I’ve heard Nell Blossom sing many a time before; but it never so sort o’ caught in muh cogs as that song does. But she can’t sing them kind o’ tunes in Colorado Brown’s or the Grub Stake.”

“Hush, Sam! Don’t mention it!” whispered his wife. “I hope to the Lord she won’t never hafter work in them places again.”

“Huh! How’s she going to live?” asked the startled Sam.

“You leave it to Parson Hunt,” declared Mother Tubbs in the same secretive way, “and Nell Blossom won’t never no more hafter sing for her livin’.”

Sam stared. His bald head flushed as his eyes began to twinkle and the knowing grin wreathed his sunken lips. He suddenly burst into a cackle of delight.

“D’ye mean it? The parson? By mighty! So he’s willin’ to go the way of all flesh, is he? Nell needn’t work no more for her livin’ if she don’t want?”

“You poor fool,” scornfully said his wife, holding up one of his enormous blue yarn socks with a gaping hole in the heel, “if the parson is as hard on his socks as you are, Sam Tubbs, Nell will have her work cut out for her – sure as sure!”

It was the very next night that Nell Blossom sang for the first time at the Canyon Pass church service. She had been twice to morning service before this, coming in alone, refusing to sit near Mother Tubbs or Betty, and remaining silent even through the hymns. In truth, she had never learned those hymns that chanced to be given out on those occasions. Rosabell Pickett did yeoman’s service at the badly tuned piano; but her own voice had the sweetness of a crow with the carrying power of that same non-soothing bird. Rosabell kept the hymns going; but sometimes Hunt could have wished for even Miss Pelter of the Ditson Corners’ choir to carry the air!

As has been said, the Sunday evening service at Tolley’s old shack was not so formal as the morning session. Hunt tried in the evening to lead the singing himself. He had managed through the summer to teach the young folks several of the newer and more sprightly songs out of the collection he had brought with him from the East. Some of the rougher young men who filled the rear benches in the evening were glad to make a noise with something besides their heavy boots, and they “went in” for the singing with gusto.

On this evening Nell came in with Mother Tubbs and Sam, but she sat down on the front bench between Betty and Rosabell Pickett. She handed some sheets of music to Rosabell, and Betty recognized them with a flush of pleasure. It was plain that the accompanist had been prepared for Nell’s new move.

“Do you think Mr. Hunt would let me sing a song?” whispered Nell to Betty.

“Let you!” returned Betty eagerly. “He’ll love you for it.”

Perhaps the emphatic statement was made by the parson’s sister without thought of how it sounded. Nell’s flower-like face warmed to a flush that spread from the collar of her blouse to the waving tendrils of hair under her hat brim. She hid her face quickly from Betty. The latter, perhaps somewhat wickedly, enjoyed the other girl’s confusion. Her heart had suddenly expanded to Nell and her brother Ford. If she saw no happiness ahead of her in life, Betty Hunt had begun to hope that the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and the Canyon Pass blossom would realize all the happiness that a loving pair could compass.

With a whisper and a head shake Betty informed the parson of what he might expect from Nell at this meeting. Her presence had already filled Hunt’s heart with singing. Now, before his talk to the congregation – it was not a sermon – he smiled at Nell and sat down while she sang the song she had prepared and that had so stirred the hearts of Mother Tubbs and Sam the day before.

Rosabell Pickett for once got the spirit of the composition. She played the accompaniment softly, and she slurred over the sour notes of the old piano. When Nell stood up a hush of expectancy fell upon the congregation. Even the boot-scrapings from the back benches were silenced.

Never had Canyon Pass heard Nell Blossom sing so sweetly. The girl’s tones fairly gripped the heart-strings of her hearers and wrung them. The tears rolled down good old Mother Tubbs’ face. Sam sat beside her, looking straight ahead more like a gargoyle than ever, afraid to wink for fear the salt drops would carom from his bony cheeks. Steve Siebert in his corner, and Andy McCann in his – as far apart as the width of the room would allow – looked like their burros, carved out of desert rock. Nothing seemed to move those old fellows. But the rest of the congregation – even the roughnecks on the back seats – were subdued when the song was done.

After the service Hunt apprehended a new note in the manner and speech of his flock. He scarcely realized that his own talk had been more spiritual than usual because of the emotion roused within him by Nell’s song. There was a hush over the room. The noisy fellows went out on tiptoe. Voices were subdued. For almost the first time the atmosphere of this rough room where they “held meetings” had become that of a real house of worship.

“Steve Siebert is right,” the parson told himself not without gravity. “It is time that I should show my own respect beyond peradventure for the religion I preach. Betty must shake the mothballs out of that coat.”

Lizard Dan tooled his six mules across the East Fork. The water was more than waist deep, and the beasts swam for part of the way, and the inside passengers sat on the small of their backs with their boots up on the cross-straps. The driver urged the team with voice and whip up the muddy rise to the Wild Rose. His desert-stained face was full of wrinkles of excitement. Joe Hurley, who chanced to be lingering at the door of the hotel, spied the emotion in the bus-driver’s countenance.

“What’s got you, old-timer?” asked the mining man, strolling down to the step below the driver. “Something on the road over from Crescent City bite you?”

“I got bit all right,” growled Lizard Dan. He stooped to put his tobacco stained lips close to Joe’s ear. “The sheriff of Cactus County rode over on the seat with me. Yeppy! And he dropped off back yonder to talk to Sheriff Blaney.”

“Something doing?”

“Youbetcha! The Cactus County sheriff was tellin’ me. He’s been after a guy that turned a trick last summer – fore part of the summer in fact – ’way out beyond Hoskins. He was some pretty shrewd short-card tin-horn, if you ask me.”

“A gambler? Anybody know him?” asked Joe quite idly.

“I didn’t get his name. The sheriff was pumpin’ me a lot about who was new – if any – in Canyon Pass. I told him,” and Dan grinned widely, “that ’bout the newest citizens we had yere was Parson Hunt and his sister.”

“You’re some little josher, aren’t you, Dan?” said Joe, grimly. “What had the feller done?”

“The one the sheriff’s after? Cleaned out a sheep camp with marked cards and then made his get-a-way under a gun. Cool as the devil! Shot one of those sheepticks – I mean to say, a shepherd. Never did have much use for sheep men – ”

“Me neither,” admitted Hurley.

“But they are ha’f human – leastways, that’s how I look at ’em,” pursued Lizard Dan. “They should have their chance. Marked cards and a gun is no way to win their spondulicks. No, sir.”

“What makes the Cactus County officer think the sharper came this way?”

“Says he and a posse follered him to the Canyon County line, up yonder, ’long back in the summer. They figgered he’d gone Lamberton way, so they swayed off and didn’t come yere. Now something new has come up about the feller, I take it, and the Cactus County sheriff has come yere to get Blaney to help comb this part of the territory. I told him we didn’t have no loose gamblers yere. They all got jobs and have held ’em some time.”

“Tolley is always picking up new hombres,” said Hurley thoughtfully. “I can’t keep run of all the scabby customers he brings in here.”

“But not card-sharps,” said Lizard Dan, shaking his head. “He ain’t got a new dealer in a dog’s age. You wouldn’t count Dick Beckworth one. It’s just like he’s always been yere.”

He waddled away with the mail sacks and his large-bore gun. Hurley found himself suddenly startled by an entirely uncalled-for thought. Surely nothing Lizard Dan had said should have inspired this:

Dick Beckworth had been away from Canyon Pass from the early springtime until recently. He had ridden in from the wilderness on the occasion of the first blizzard. Where had the gambler been during the months he was missed at the Grub Stake?