The Heart of Canyon Pass

“No. But a friend’s help? I assure you I am your friend.”

She now looked at him rather curiously, but her expression did not soften in the least. Doubt, scorn, a real dislike of the man who sought to gain her confidence struggled to gain the mastery of her pretty features.

“I don’t know you, I’ve only seen you a few times. I don’t make friends so easy – ”

“We don’t make friends in this world, Miss Blossom. We win them whether we would or not. You have won my friendly feeling because I know that you are troubled. I know what your trouble is, and I believe I can help you.”

His downrightness startled Nell, and she stopped and stared at him.

“You can’t help me if I don’t want your help,” she cried in secret panic.

“I cannot help you so much if you deny me your confidence,” he admitted. “But I stand ready to help you.”

“You’d better sit down,” she shot at him. “You’ll have a long wait standing for me to get confidential with you, Mr. Parson.”

“Consider,” said Hunt seriously, unshaken. “We cannot any of us afford to refuse an honest offer of sympathy and assistance.”

“What are you trying to do?” she asked with suspicion. “Trying to squeeze something out of me? You parsons!”

She muttered the phrase disdainfully. He put her rudeness aside without change of countenance. His placidity, his assurance, began to shake Nell’s confidence in herself more than any other thing.

“I have heard something. I have seen something. I know that if you will listen to me – perhaps accept and follow some advice I may give you – you will be benefited,” he said.

“In what way, I should like to know?” she asked jeeringly.

“In your heart. In your mind and conscience.”

“Well!” She was silent again for a moment, but her face did not change in its expression, “Well, you can talk, I reckon,” and she moved on slowly again. “There ain’t any law against talking in Canyon Pass – yet.”

“From the few words I heard that man, Tolley, say to you on Sunday evening, I know that he threatened you,” Hunt said directly.

“That beast!”

“He thinks he has knowledge that will make you trouble if spread broadcast in the town.”

“Let him dare!”

Her face was suddenly that of a young and beautiful fury. Hunt shook his head, saying softly:

“Killing him would not remove the cause of your trouble, Nell Blossom.”

She turned on him again, her little fists clenched.

“How much do you know? Out with it!” she commanded.

“I will tell you what Tolley says.”

“So you’ve been snooping and prying, have you?” she queried, her rage almost suffocating her.

“I will tell you what Tolley says,” repeated Hunt. And he did so calmly, dispassionately, as though he were relating a series of common facts. “That man’s horse was under the fall from the cliff. The man’s body is not there – if he fell with the horse.” Nell did not even wince, still staring into his eyes, her own as hard as flint. “Those are all the facts in my possession, Miss Blossom.”

She remained silent. She had recovered both her regular breathing and her composed manner. He could only read in her features a determination that was adamant.

“Will you answer a few questions?” he ventured.

“Out with them!”

“What caused the horse to fall?”

“You gump! He fell because the bank gave way,” she replied rudely.

“What became of his rider?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you leave him at that spot?”

She waited a moment. Then, as harshly as before:

“Yes.”

“You have not seen him since? Or communicated with him?”

“Dick Beckworth? I should say not!”

“Do you know what became of him?”

A bitter, sneering smile marred her lips. “I know what Tolley says – that he’s in Denver.”

“Tolley proposes to deny that now,” Hunt said softly.

“Let him. One lie is as good as another, and Boss Tolley’s full of them.”

“Will you help me discover if Beckworth is alive?”

“I tell you once for all, I don’t want anything more to do with Dick the Devil. I don’t want to even hear about him.”

“Then you and he quarreled?”

The mistake was fatal, and the parson knew it the instant he had said the unwise words. But he could not recall them.

“See here, Parson Hunt! you’re making a nuisance of yourself. I want to tell you that no tenderfoot will get far in Canyon Pass if he begins as you have. I’ve got nothing to tell you. I won’t talk to you. I don’t want a thing to do with you. Now! Am I plain enough?”

She walked on stoutly, her head up, her cheeks aflame. For a few yards he walked quietly beside her. Then he lifted his hat and turned aside. When Nell had disappeared, Hunt sadly shook his head.

“I fear,” he told himself, “that I have made a bad beginning.”

Circumstances that followed proved that his suspicion was correct. In less than twenty-four hours he heard that without a doubt he had made another enemy.

“I don’t know how it is, parson,” said Bill Judson shaking a mournful head, “but that little devil, Nell Blossom, is on the warpath. And she’s after your scalp.”

“It is stuck on pretty tightly, Mr. Judson,” Hunt replied with a smile.

“’Tain’t no laughing matter. Nell has a terrible drag with the boys. If she don’t have you run out of town, she may try to bust up your show. She says you’re a mischief-maker, and all that. She’s plumb down on parsons.”

“We will have to convince her that the tribe is harmless.”

“Not much chance,” said Judson, who evidently shared Hurley’s opinion of Nell’s obstinacy.

“Time will cure all that,” said the parson, with more apparent confidence than he really felt.

While preparations were going forward for the first meeting with satisfactory speed, Hunt heard on every hand of the gathering forces of opposition.

Nell Blossom had resurrected the old song, “This Is No Place for a Minister’s Son,” and in a ridiculous clerical make-up sang it each night in Colorado Brown’s place. Passing along the street to his hotel Hunt heard the chorus roared by the men who applauded the cabaret singer. He was met with more jeering laughter wherever he went than before; and he realized that ridicule would do the good cause more harm than any other form of opposition.

Joe Hurley was very busy at the mine that week, and he had not much to say to his friend from the East when they met. But he showed curiosity as to what had befallen Hunt when he talked with Nell Blossom.

“I fear I began wrong,” admitted the parson.

“I reckon however you began you wouldn’t get far with Nell,” observed Hurley. “I’ll keep my eye on Tolley. He’s just boiling inside. But unless he has a gang behind him he hasn’t any more spunk than a rabbit. Nell’s too popular – just now, especially – for him to dare spring anything against her. And she certainly is making herself well-beloved with the boys from the Eureka Washings and the other mines,” and he grinned ruefully.

“I can keep most of my own roughnecks in line. I reckon they kind of cotton to me, and they know I am set on this church business. But Nell certainly holds the camp in the hollow of her hand.”

“She is wrong; but she does not realize it, perhaps,” considered Hunt. “And yet, maybe she does know.”

The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt might have considered, as his sister believed at that moment, that the outlook for successful religious work in Canyon Pass was quite as foggy as it had been at any time at Ditson Corners. Yet the opposition that had developed here was nothing more than Hunt had expected. And it was open hostility. There was nothing hypocritical about it.

He had met Slickpenny Norris at the bank, Hunt had opened an account there, and had invited the old curmudgeon to take some interest in the church proposal. He had got one large grunt from the banker, and that was all. Norris could be as close-mouthed as a clam when it might be to his disadvantage to speak his mind. But he offered no encouragement to the parson by that grunt.

Saturday evening came and those who were most interested in the uplift of Canyon Pass gathered at the old Tolley place to view with satisfaction and no little pride the improvements and changes brought about.

“Jib,” remarked Judson to Collins, having deserted the Three Star Grocery and left it in the care of the gangling Smithy at a very busy hour to “take a squint” at the interior of the meeting room, “Jib, you and Cale Mack have certainly done yourselves proud on that pulpit.”

“Don’t praise me! Don’t praise me!” exclaimed Collins. “I never could stand flattery. It puffs me all up. But it’s a pretty nifty bit of work, I do agree.”

“Yeppy,” pursued the storekeeper. “It has a slant to one side that maybe is more the fault of the floor than your spirit-level, Jib. And it looks sort o’ wabbly. But barrin’ them defects, it’s what I’d call a sightly pulpit.”

“It’s strong enough,” grunted Collins gruffly, now not so much pleased. “I don’t reckon the parson is going to take a maul to it, is he?”

Mother Tubbs just then entered the door. Behind her staggered Sam, his reeling motion for once having no connection with an alcoholic cause. Sam Tubbs was dead sober – and quite as positively provoked.

“I snun to man!” he croaked. “Makin’ a pack-hoss of a man thisaway! If that danged parson wanted this yere Bible he ought’ve come and toted it himself.”

“It’s very good of you to bring it, Mr. Tubbs,” said Hunt, smiling and coming forward to relieve the old man of his burden.

Hunt placed the big Bible on the pulpit. One of the interested housewives had sent a rather handsome linen table-scarf for a pulpit cloth, and although it was somewhat yellowed from disuse, it made the unpainted desk seem less bare.

They drifted in, one by one and in couples, during the evening, these people deprived so long of the inspiration of worship in a public sense, some bringing hymn-books of various sorts and a few Bibles. But Hunt had not come to Canyon Pass unprepared on that score for church work. He had brought with him from the East fifty hymn-books of the more popular kind and a dozen Bibles for the use of the congregation in general. When these had been distributed about the benches they made, Mother Tubbs declared, “a mighty tasty show.”

Betty was present to be introduced to the women of the camp. Whatever her private feelings were, the parson’s sister could be, and was on this occasion, a very helpful assistant to her brother. If the Passonians felt a little awkward, Betty put them quickly at their ease. She made a most fortunate impression on them all, and the general opinion was “that that Eastern gal was a perfect lady.”

Joe Hurley appeared with some of the younger men. They were all scrubbed till their faces shone, shaved to a nicety, and their hair “slicked” and anointed with everything Jose, the Mexican barber, had on his shelves.

“Umph!” murmured Mother Tubbs, wrinkling her nose appreciatively. “Certainly smells proper good since them fellers come in yere. I never did see why bay rum smells so much better than drinkin’ rum. And bay rum’s the only kind of liquor I approve of. The other I only get at second-hand – on Sam’s breath!”

It was late in the evening, and the town was getting lively, though it seemed not so noisy as on most pay-nights, when they scattered from the door of the meeting room.

Hunt and Betty were the last to go. He latched the door behind them, but there was no thought in his mind of locking it. That anybody would enter the place before morning did not cross his thought.

But later in the night, when this end of Main Street was deserted and the frolicking in the various amusement places was continued only by a few irrepressibles, a figure stole out of the alley beside the old Tolley building and slipped into the room prepared for the first Sunday service in Canyon Pass.

Without a light in the place the intruder had some difficulty in reaching the desk; once there, some few moments elapsed while the uninvited visitor climbed into the pulpit and opened carefully the big Bible. When the book was as carefully closed again, without the white book-marks the parson had placed in it having been disturbed, the obtrusive one departed.

Outside, there seemed an air of satisfaction about the very way this unknown individual walked away. In addition, a very determined – almost viciously resolved-voice observed:

“There! If that impudent pulpit-pounder don’t get his, I miss my guess!”

CHAPTER XV – PEP AND A LITTLE PEPPER

All Sabbaths were not fine at Canyon Pass, as Hunt realized on opening his eyes on that important morning. From the same open window through which he had viewed the chaste glories of the Topaz Range a week before, he now saw heavy, thunderous-looking clouds wrapping the peaks and surging down into the lower reaches of the landscape, blotting out, as they moved on, each monument that he had learned in this brief time of his sojourn to know. It promised no fair day for the parson’s first service.

This, however, was not the basis of the heaviness that oppressed him. Hunt admitted the cause of his heart-sick feeling without dodging the issue. It was Nell Blossom and her attitude toward him personally that so troubled the parson of Canyon Pass. That she opposed the good work he was trying to inaugurate was only a side issue in Hunt’s mind. Opposition in general merely spurred a spirit like his to greater effort. That is, a frank opposition.

But the minister’s personal interest in Nell Blossom had become something that controlled him. He could not control it.

It was not right, he told himself, to do any poaching on what he considered Joe’s preserves. Whether or not Nell cared for the mine owner, Hunt believed he would be disloyal to his friend if he showed anything but the interest of a minister and religious adviser in the young woman.

Hunt was honest enough to admit that such feeling was not what inspired him in the matter. Nell Blossom was not at all the kind of girl he would have deliberately chosen as the object of a serious affection. But who of us may choose when love enters the lists?

The winsomeness of Nell shone through the rough and prickly husk of her. He realized that no man could see in all its clarity the girl’s soul. He believed that the untaught mining-camp child, used as she was to the rude life about her and only that life, was really out of her natural element. Whatever Henry Blossom, Nell’s dissolute father, may have been, the girl’s mother had perhaps given her child as a legacy a natural refinement scarcely to be looked for in any person brought up in so unpolished a community.

In short, Nell Blossom’s intrinsic worth was no more hidden from the parson than her physical beauty. Her hatred of and disdain for all men had its root in no fault she had committed. Some man, had it been that gambler Hunt had heard called “Dick the Devil?” had disillusioned the child-heart of Nell Blossom and, perhaps, the sweets of love had turned to ashes in her mouth.

What had become of that gambler? What was the truth about that tragedy at the brink of the canyon wall? Did Tolley know the facts and misstate them? Or was Dick Beckworth really dead and his body swept away by the torrent of Runaway River?

It was plain, Hunt decided, that Dick’s disappearance weighed heavily for some cause on Nell Blossom’s mind. Something had happened on that spring morning weeks before which had changed Nell from the happy-go-lucky girl the parson knew she must have been to this bitter, disdainful, and apparently wicked woman who scoffed at religion in any form, and especially had “no use for a pulpit-pounder.”

In a week he had become imbued with such an interest in Nell that she was the subject most in his thoughts at all hours. He could not eradicate her from his mind, though he tried hard to do so.

In his heart he scarcely supposed that the time would ever come when he might be a suitor for Nell’s hand. Joe Hurley stood between them. But the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was old enough and wise enough to know that whatever came to him in the future, as long as he retained his faculties, Nell Blossom would occupy a niche in his secret heart that no other interest could fill.

Twice at night, when Betty was in bed, Hunt had descended into the lane and, standing at the back of Colorado Brown’s place near an open window, listened to Nell sing her songs, even to the caustic one with which she closed her act and in response to which the crowd wildly roared its applause. The verses about the minister’s son “went big.” But there was a sweetness and power in her singing voice that seemed to reveal the better qualities of the girl in the more tender ballads she sang; for all her numbers were not of a humorous nature. She could bring tears as well as smiles to the faces of her audience with that voice.

Betty came tapping at his door while Hunt was still in his robe. When she saw the dark business suit laid out on the bed she frowned.

“Ford! I did hope you would dress properly on this day,” she said.

“I am dressing properly – for Canyon Pass,” he returned, smiling. “I am not inclined to attract the hearty laughter and scorn of such members of the community as Boss Tolley, Tom Hicks, and their ilk. Clerical garb might be considered by them as a gratuitous insult. And the last thing I wish to do here is to antagonize the rougher element.”

Although Betty failed to see much distinction in the roughness of the community, she did not open that avenue of discussion. She did say decisively:

“Why bother about those awful men, Ford? Tolley and his crowd will never, never be members of your congregation. Maria, Sam’s wife, has been giving me the history of those wicked men. She is afraid of her life because of the gang that hangs about the Grub Stake. That is a terrible institution, and everybody in Tolley’s employ is bad.”

“And yet, Miss Rosabell Pickett, who plays the piano for Tolley, is going to have her own piano trucked over to the meeting room this morning and will play the hymns herself for us. So some good must be found at the Grub Stake,” Hunt rejoined, still smiling. “Besides, if they are bad men, I hope to help them.”

Cholo Sam was closing the door of his bar and locking it when, later, Hunt and his sister came down from their rooms. Maria, with a jetted jacket, yellow petticoat and reboza, was waiting for her husband.

“Señor Hunt,” said the innkeeper, flashing his white teeth as usual, “we honor ourselfs to attend your service, if we may? Si?”

“I’ll be glad to see you and Maria there, Sam.”

Hunt then followed Betty out of the hotel. It had rained since sunrise, but had stopped now. They were early for the service. The street was almost deserted. It had been arranged by Hurley that the whistle of the hoisting engine at the Great Hope should be blown at a quarter to eleven and again at five minutes of the hour. There was no other means of summoning the Passonians to worship.

There was a roar of voices from the barroom of the Grub Stake as the parson and his sister passed. They crossed the street to avoid a quagmire, but the sound of revelry followed them. It seemed that all the other saloons and stores in sight, including the Three Star Grocery, were somnolent.

Bill Judson joined them as they passed the grocery store. The old man was as solemn as a bishop and as uncomfortable as new shoes, tight light trousers of an ancient fashion, and a stiff-brimmed straw hat could make him.

“Hello! What’s the matter with Tolley now?” the storekeeper exclaimed in surprise.

The owner of the Grub Stake had come tearing out of the place, seemingly blinded by rage, and dashed along the street. The group that boiled out of the Grub Stake after him did not follow, but urged him on with jeering laughter.

“What is it?” asked Betty, startled.

“Dunno,” said Judson, quickening his stride. “But the feller’s up to something.”

They were in sight of the meeting room now. The door stood open. When Tolley reached it he plunged in.

Hunt would not leave Betty, but he hurried her on, while Judson almost ran and was over the threshold before them. There was a sudden explosion of voices inside, Tolley’s tones high over all.

“Here’s that derned cheater now!” the owner of the place was heard to shout as the storekeeper entered. “Bill Judson! you think you’re mighty smart, but you can’t put nothing like this over on me.”

“What’s eatin’ on you, Tolley?” was Judson’s cool response.

“The boys just told me what you folks was aimin’ to use this dump for. I didn’t hire it to you for no church. I won’t have it, I tell you! This is my shack.”

“And I’ve paid rent for it for six months. What you goin’ to do about it?” drawled Judson.

“I’ll show you! I won’t let no ham-faced old-timer like you make a fool of me.”

Hunt reached the door. Betty was almost afraid to enter. There were several men inside and two or three women. Tolley was striding toward the pulpit, swinging his arms and shouting himself hoarse.

“I’ll show you!” he shouted. “I own this dump. I’ll throw this litter into the street. A church in my shack? Well, I reckon not!”

The distant whistle at the Great Hope pealed its first signal for the service. Several groups of Passonians were visible now, converging toward the place of worship.

“Better cool down, Tolley,” advised Judson again. “We don’t aim to have any riot yere. This used to be your honkytonk, and a dirty place it was. But we reckon on running another sort of business in it, and you can’t stop us. You’re trying to throw sand in the gears o’ progress, as the feller said.”

“I’ll show you what I can do!” shouted Tolley, mounting upon the pulpit platform. He whirled about, and saw Hunt entering the room. “Here’s that danged preacher now.”

“Mr. Tolley,” said the parson clearly, “the wicked have been known to come to the house of God to scoff and have remained to pray. We are going to hold a service here in a quarter of an hour. You are invited to join us. But if you remain, I must ask you to be quiet.”

“Why, you derned, white-livered tenderfoot! I’ll show you – ”

He seized upon Mother Tubbs’ big Bible and raised it as though he would fling it upon the ground. Betty gasped. Judson started forward. But Hunt’s voice rang loudest through the room.

“Tolley! Put that Book down!”

The compelling tone made the divekeeper pause. He still glared, his face distorted by wrath; but, as Joe Hurley had once said, the fellow after all had not the courage of a rabbit. He really expected Hunt to follow the command with the only show of authority that went in Canyon Pass – the display of a gun!

But the parson had made no threatening gesture. He did not even advance down the room.

“Dang you!” yelled Tolley, and brought the Bible down upon the pulpit with such emphasis that the desk rocked.

The following instant his head was surrounded by a halo of fine particles, the pungency of which was apparent to the surprised spectators almost at once. Tolley received the blast of powdered cayenne full in the face and eyes!

He gasped – choked – sneezed. He sneezed again, a most vociferous roar of sound, quite involuntary and spasmodic. The pepper that had been sprinkled between the leaves of the big book had in one burst pelted Tolley with its fine grains, filling eyes, nose, and his mouth, for that had been open to emit another angry shout.

But now he only shouted for help between sneezes. Tears poured down his face. He staggered blindly down from the pulpit and begged for the open air.

Hunt was first to reach the tortured man and led him forth.

CHAPTER XVI – LOVE AND LONGING

Even Hunt could not express sympathy for the unhappy Tolley. But he did not join in Judson’s laughter or the chatter of the others in the meeting room. Tolley staggered off toward the Grub Stake, swearing between the huge sneezes which racked him like successive earthquake shocks. Hunt returned inside the building.

The others were grouped near the door, and there were weeping eyes among them. For the moment the atmosphere in the vicinity of the pulpit was unbearable.

Hunt drew forth a handkerchief, tied it across his nose and mouth, and advanced to the desk. The Bible had not been injured by Tolley’s rough action. But the red pepper was scattered thickly upon the linen pulpit cloth. He wrapped the book in this cloth and carried it to a window which looked upon the narrow lane beside the building. Hunt opened this window; and, leaning over the low sill, dropped the book to the ground.