The Heart of Canyon Pass

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 crazy gal 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.”

CHAPTER XII – TOLLEY’S TALE

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 – mixing Nell’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 go bam– 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 should I know?” 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 tell all the 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’s disregard 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 had overheard 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.

CHAPTER XIII – PLANS ARE MADE

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. He wouldn’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 matters man’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 which services 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,” Hurley said 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 the plainest; 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?”

“She’s upstairs a-dressin’. But I don’t reckon she’ll give you much but the rough side of her tongue. Lately, Nell seems to be bewitched. Think of her ridin’ her pony up and down the street the other day, shootin’ and cavortin’ like a drunken cow-puncher! She puts on these didoes jest for devilment. And she ain’t got a good word for you and your plans, Brother Hunt.”

“Well,” said the parson calmly, “perhaps things will change with her in time. We won’t worry.”

“I’m glad you can take it so calm,” said Mother Tubbs, sniffing. “Now, come in yere. This is what I got for you.”

She led the way into the inner room, half bedroom and half sitting room, the principal room in the shack. There was a small center table. On it was a huge tome with tarnished brass clasps – a bulky volume that had evidently seen much rough usage. Mother Tubbs put her hand upon it proudly.

“See that, Brother Hunt?” she said. “It’s the old Bible out of the Blue Lick Chapel down in Arkansas. The chapel burned down when I was a gal; but the Bible was saved. When my folks moved out thisaway we brung it with us, and it’s been in the bottom of an old trunk of mine for forty year. Now it comes to light.” She opened it with care. “I reckon you got all the Bibles you need to work with. But I do like to see a big one like this on the pulpit for show.”

“This is most thoughtful and kind of you, Sister Tubbs,” declared Hunt, understanding the spirit of pride and reverence in which the old woman had offered the book. “I shall see that it rests on our pulpit.”

At that moment Nell Blossom came into the room from the stairway. She nodded to him bruskly, but offered him no welcoming hand.

“I declare, Nell,” complained the old woman, “you ain’t going out without a word to the parson, are you?”

“I’ve no particular word for the parson,” returned the girl, a glint of ice in her blue eyes.

“If you will allow me to say so, Miss Blossom,” said Hunt quietly, “I have a particular word for you.”

She stared at him angrily. He picked up his hat from the chair.

“If you are going out,” he said, “I will walk along with you and say what I have to say.”

“Humph! I can’t stop you from walking up Mulligan Lane. It’s free,” returned the girl most ungraciously and walked ahead of him out of the house.

CHAPTER XIV – THE GREAT DAY ARRIVES

Hunt caught up with Nell Blossom when she had passed through the gap in the barrelstave picket-fence, and his length of stride easily kept him beside the girl. Unless Nell broke into a run she could scarcely leave the parson out of earshot.

“Miss Blossom,” he began, “my interference in your affairs calls for no excuse. I have no vulgar curiosity. You tell me to mind my own business. But when I see another in trouble it is my business to offer aid.”

“I am not in trouble,” she answered sharply. Then, with scorn: “And if I was, I wouldn’t want a parson’s help.”