The Heart of Canyon Pass

He closed that window quickly; but he opened others to ventilate the room. The damp air quickly relieved the place of the pungent pepper. The parson did all this quietly. He made no comment on the incident.

But the gathering company whispered and chattered – the women angrily, the men more than a little inclined to be amused.

“Parson,” said Bill Judson, his eyes twinkling, “I promised Jib Collins last night that I’d warn you to go easy on pounding the pulpit because it was sort o’ wabbly. I reckon ’twas Tolley I ought t’ve warned.”

Betty explained to the woman who furnished the pulpit cloth why it was not in evidence, and Mother Tubbs when she arrived had to be told why the pulpit Bible was in retirement. But there was time for little more than that, as the second whistle blew, and the room began to fill.

At least an audience was not lacking to hear Hunt preach his first sermon at Canyon Pass. The seats were comfortably filled. Most of the congregation were cleanly and neatly dressed; the women in such finery as they owned. But some of the men, the rougher sort and evidently present out of curiosity only, looked just as they did on week days. Smoking, however, was taboo.

Rosabell Pickett and her piano, a small upright instrument of a rather uncertain tone, was of great assistance. Without her help the strangely awkward congregation could scarcely have raised a hymn.

Hunt made no comment upon the inauguration of the new régime in the town. He conducted the service just as he might have conducted a mission meeting at Ditson Corners. And he preached as carefully thought-out a discourse as was his wont, although his theme was simple. He held their respectful attention and, he believed, won their undivided interest.

After the close of the service the Bible was rescued by two of the women and cleansed of the pepper which had been so plentifully shaken into it. Mother Tubbs took Hunt aside.

“I’m plumb ashamed, parson!” she said indignantly. “To think that Nell Blossom done such a trick on you!”

“Nell Blossom?”

“She done it,” said the old woman with conviction. “I missed my box o’ red pepper last evening; but I had no idee what that flighty gal took it for. And then she said when I tried to get her to come to meetin’ this mornin’ that she reckoned it would be too hot up yere for her, and said for me to keep out o’ the front seats.”

“Ah!”

“She reckoned you’d get to thumping the Book in the middle of the sermon, maybe. When Boss Tolley hears tell how it come, he won’t love Nell none the better, I reckon.”

The peppering of the pulpit Bible might have made the whole of Canyon Pass roar with laughter and have brought nothing but ridicule on the parson had Hunt been the actual victim of Nell Blossom’s impish trick. That Boss Tolley chanced to suffer yielded a number of the townspeople much amusement. But it afforded others an opportunity to show stronger approval of what Hunt and his coworkers were trying to do.

Then, there was a third party. It was chiefly made up of Boss Tolley’s friends. Tolley raved against both Hunt and Nell Blossom, and his satellites listened and agreed with him. There began to be whispered about Canyon Pass a story to the effect that the absent Dick Beckworth would never be seen by mortal eye again, that he had left town in Nell Blossom’s company, and that the cabaret singer, if anybody, could explain how Dick’s horse had come to be found under a heap of fallen gravel at the edge of Runaway River.

Joe Hurley did not chance to hear these whispers for some time. In truth, during the weeks immediately following that first service in Tolley’s old shack, the owner of the Great Hope had found his time fully occupied by two interests. The mine itself was one, for he believed he was close upon the unveiling of that rich vein which he had always believed was the “mother lode” of his claim. The second interest was in Betty Hunt.

Hurley sought the society of the Eastern girl whenever he could do so. Hunt, who was busy himself in several ways – especially in getting personally acquainted with the people in their homes or where they worked – was glad Joe could devote himself to Betty. Otherwise his sister might have found it very lonely here at Canyon Pass.

The girl from the East allowed Hurley’s better qualities to impress her mind more and more. In her company, too, the young man tried to eradicate from his speech the vernacular that he knew she despised. Yet when he grew interested in a subject of conversation, or was excited, it was the most natural thing in the world for Hurley to revert to the vivid expressions of the cattle trail and the camp.

Of course, no man could have prepared himself for college without obtaining a foundation of book education which Betty must fully approve. Occasionally Hurley revealed a flash of wit or a literary appreciation that delighted the girl.

These weeks of association bred in both young people a confidence and admiration for each other which under ordinary conditions might have foretold the growth of a much warmer regard. Hurley began to hope. Yet Betty gave him no such encouragement as young women are wont to offer a man in whom they begin to feel a tender interest.

Midsummer was approaching, and the dry, rarified air of Canyon Pass sometimes seemed a blast from an open furnace. But when they rode, as they often did, out upon the heights – above the canyon, for instance – there was always a cooler and more pleasantly odorous breeze.

In one of their earlier rides the two had jogged the entire length of the canyon on the east bank of Runaway River, and even a little way into the desert, far enough to mark the shallow basin where the last trickle of what was at Canyon Pass a boisterous torrent disappeared in the alkali.

But Betty did not admire even the look of the desert country. There was something horrible to her mind in the appearance of the dreary waste. She had never seen the Topaz at sunrise!

When they mounted to the highlands west of the camp, as they did on this present day, there were half a dozen trails they might strike into a country which would reveal beautiful as well as rugged prospects, and to these Betty could grant admiration. She had begun very soon to feel the splendors of nature which were so different here from those of her native Berkshires.

There was a forest that always intrigued her. The trail led them down cathedral aisles to the bank of a murmurous stream. To this they journeyed to-day; and, when within sound of the river, Betty drew her mount to a stand.

“It is beautiful, Mr. Hurley,” she sighed. “I do not wonder that you so love this out-of-door life and this wilderness. And then you have always been used to it. It does make a difference where one is born.”

“You said it!” returned Hurley emphatically. “I pretty near stifle when I get into a city and have to stay a spell. When I get back to this I feel like a boy again.” He smiled reflectively. “The bard of ‘Cactus Center’ hits off my feelings to a fare-ye-well,” and he proceeded to repeat from “The Forester’s Return:”

“‘I’m back on the job by the singing river,Far from the town with its money-mad,Back where the quaking aspens quiver —And I’m glad.There’s work to do and there’s work in plenty,And it’s sleep in the open if fate so wills;But no man is more than one-and-twentyIn the hills.’”

“That is fine!” Betty cried with enthusiasm, her eyes sparkling as they seldom did. “Why, I can almost feel that way myself, sometimes.”

There was a drop in her tone at the end. She looked away and, had he been able to see into her eyes then, he would have beheld a much different expression in their dimmed depths.

“You’d feel like it always if you’d just let yourself, Miss Betty,” Hurley said, with sudden warmth.

She smiled a little doubtfully, but turned toward him again, having recovered her composure. Joe’s eyes glowed and a strange pallor rose under his tan.

“Just think of living out here all your days and enjoying every moment of them! It’s rough, I know, and sort of untamed. But it’s a good life, Miss Betty – a wonderful life!”

“You – you almost convince me,” she stammered, laughing a little uncertainly, yet gazing at him with a dawning light in her eyes that Joe had not seen there before.

It emboldened him; it inspired him to speak the words that were boiling under the surface of his calm. He was a forthright fellow at best, was Joe Hurley, and he was very, very much in love with Betty Hunt.

CHAPTER XVII – A BATTLE IN A GIRL’S HEART

“Betty, I want to tell you something,” he said, unconsciously urging Bouncer nearer to the girl’s mount. “These weeks you have been here at Canyon Pass have been the greatest in my life.”

The girl looked at him in a startled way.

“This is a big country, it is true. Big things are done out here – great accomplishments achieved – fortunes won. And I have always meant to do my part in it – both as to making money and winning the better things of life for myself. I want to see things that are already started, developed, to watch Canyon Pass grow – in a spiritual as well as a material sense.

“But something else has got hold of me, Betty. I was living a pretty wild life before you and Willie came out here. I wrote him I was. I kind of gloried in being a roughneck, I reckon,” he added with a wry smile. “But all that’s changed with me now, Betty – since you came.”

“Mr. Hurley – Joe!” gasped the girl.

But he raised his hand gently in protest. The gesture asked her to wait – to hear him through.

“I’ve got another object in life – another reason for working and striving. I reckon a man never does know quite what he’s aimin’ to do until he sets a mark before him that isn’t altogether selfish. I want to get ahead just as much as ever – more so. But I want to accomplish what I’m aimin’ at for something higher than just the satisfaction of seeing the Great Hope pay big and know that folks say Joe Hurley has made a ten-strike!”

“You – you will be successful, Joe,” she murmured.

“That’s up to you, I reckon,” the man said abruptly. “I’m aimin’ to accomplish all this – winning a fortune, helping to put Canyon Pass on the map, and all – for you, Betty. Just for you.”

“Mr. Hurley! Joe! Don’t!” the girl suddenly exclaimed.

Her face had grown rosy when she began to understand fully what he was coming to, and then it paled. As she listened to his final outburst the grieved expression that contracted her lips and dimmed her eyes shocked him. Before she could speak he knew what answer he was to receive.

“Don’t say anything more – please!” she begged. “It’s all wrong. I never thought this – this would happen. Why, I thought we were just friends.”

“Betty!” ejaculated the man in a tone that wrung the girl’s heart. “Betty, haven’t I got a chance with you? I know I’m not worthy – ”

“Oh! Oh! Don’t put it that way, Joe,” she pleaded. “It really isn’t that!”

“What’s the matter with me then?” he demanded. “Do you want time to think it over? Or – wait! Betty, is – is it because you left some one back East?”

The girl was silent. She turned her head so that he might not see her face. But Hurley waited. She had to answer – and the halting word was uttered as though it were wrenched from her.

“Yes.”

Hurley drew in his breath sharply, and then he was likewise silent. A minute dragged by. She stole a glance at him at last. He was staring steadily at her left hand. She had removed her glove, and the hand rested bare upon her pony’s neck. Suddenly her face flamed again.

“Oh! I do not wear his – his ring,” she said hoarsely. “There – there is a reason. I – ”

“I am not prying into your private affairs, Miss Betty,” Hurley said quickly. “Only – I am sorry I did not know before. Willie never said a word to warn me.”

“He does not know!” ejaculated the girl. “I – I do not want him to know.”

“He won’t learn it from me. Don’t fear,” said Hurley rather roughly.

“Oh, Mr. Hurley! I am so – so sorry,” whispered the girl.

The man, with drooping shoulders and hanging head, sat his horse, a statue of disappointment. He did not move or look at her, as she wheeled her own mount.

“I – I think I would like to ride back alone, Mr. Hurley. You – you won’t mind? Afterward I hope we may be quite as good friends as heretofore. I do appreciate your friendship – Joe.”

Betty could not easily miss the way back. The trail was perfectly plain. She rode fast at first, for with all her sorrow for Joe Hurley’s disappointment, she could not bear him near her now.

Because she had no thought of ever considering him other than a friend, the girl, who was after all quite inexperienced, had not dreamed Hurley would come to regard her warmly. She could not understand how it had happened. It seemed unbelievable!

Love – romance; a lover – happiness; these things were not for Betty Hunt. She had long ago told herself this. She was devoted to one man only, her brother. And when he would no longer need her, if that time ever came, she expected to follow a lonely trail.

It was not merely Joe Hurley that she could not marry. She could not marry any man.

She came out of the majestic forest and reached the open stretch of the trail from Hoskins. This she followed toward the wagon track which edged the brink of the Overhang. She had brought her pony to a quieter pace and jogged along, deep in her unhappy thoughts. Suddenly, turning a clump of brush, she quite involuntarily drew in her pony and halted. There was a rider on the trail ahead of her, a stranger.

It was for only a moment that Betty saw him. Horse and rider were plunging down a steep declivity beside the trail into a thick copse. Had he heard her pony and was he seeking to escape observation? The girl was impressed with this possibility.

She rode on again, but very cautiously. She held a firm grip upon her pony’s rein. Suppose the stranger should suddenly spur his horse into the trail again and halt her? From the moment her brother had decided to come West, and she knew she must attend him, Betty had been fearful of just such a meeting as she visualized now.

She half turned her mount, tempted to fly back toward the river and Joe. There was something very comforting in the thought of Joe’s nearness. Perhaps, if she waited here, he would overtake her. At least, he might come into sight.

Then the thought entered her disturbed mind that possibly Hurley had gone home another way. He knew the country well. He might not follow the only trail she knew by which to reach Canyon Pass.

With this to spur her, the girl urged her mount forward. No use in waiting. The place must be passed. She could see no movement of the brush where the stranger and his horse had disappeared. But she felt that he was there!

Again she gathered up the pony’s reins and held them firmly. She gripped her whip, too, and prepared for a dash. But she continued to walk her horse.

She was on the qui vive for a quick start. Her eyes searched the brush in the little ravine. Suddenly she saw something that was not vegetation.

She rode on, but she was more and more disturbed by this object at the edge of the brush. Then, of a sudden, she realized what it was. It was the upper part of a man’s face. The hatbrim covered all his hair and cut off much of his forehead; a branch hid all below the point of his nose.

And yet this patch of face shocked Betty. It seemed that she recognized it! Was it – could it be —

The blood pounded in her temples; her eyes were suffused. At that moment she could not have spurred her pony had the lurker in the brush sprung forth into her path!

Then he moved. She gained a clear glimpse of his entire face before he dodged again out of sight. His hair rolled upon the collar of his shirt and he wore a mustache, but no beard. Betty felt sudden relief.

“It is never Wilkenson – never!” she murmured. “Never him!”

She knew that her terror had been born in her own mind rather than of any external danger. The man was nothing to her – no one she had ever seen. She rode on finally with a sudden access of courage – a feeling that often comes to one when a peril has been successfully surmounted.

Indeed when, a little later and in sight of the broader wagon-track, she heard the pattering hoofs behind her she was not startled. At first she thought it was Joe Hurley. Then she recognized the fact that there was more than one horse coming. Even at that she felt confidence.

She turned to look, and saw three roughly dressed fellows pounding along the trail on tired and sweating steeds. One of the men had an authoritative air. It was he who addressed her, sweeping off his hat in the same way that Joe Hurley was wont to offer greeting.

“I say, miss,” said the man, “have you seen a feller riding this yere way – couldn’t be long ago? Mebbe an hour?”

“What – what man?” she hesitated. “I rode along here some time ago with Mr. Joe Hurley – ”

“Shucks, ma’am! I ain’t after him,” replied the man. “I know Joe mighty well. And if you are a friend of his, you pass. I’m the sheriff of Cactus County, and me and my deputies are after a yaller hound that bamfoozled some honest men out of their hard earnings. He’s got the gold, and we want both him and it! We been trailing him two days.”

Betty trembled so inwardly that she could say nothing; but luckily the sheriff did not consider there was anything she could say.

“If you and Joe Hurley come along from Canyon Pass, you’d have seen this feller, if he’d gone that way. And I’m mighty sure he wouldn’t aim for the Pass. I reckon, boys, Lamberton is our best bet. Good-day to ye, ma’am.”

He removed his hat again, and the other two did the same. But they did not ride south at the fork of the trail without casting back more than one admiring glance at the trim figure and quietly beautiful face of Betty Hunt.

She cantered away on the Canyon Pass trail. She had something else to think of now. By keeping silent had she aided a thief to escape the hands of justice? But, then, perhaps she had saved a man’s life as well!

CHAPTER XVIII – THE SHADOW ON BETTY’S PATH

It was still a beautiful summer morning, but its charm was quite lost for Betty Hunt. Her appreciation of the beautiful in nature was submerged by what had so overwhelmed her heart and her thought.

The thing which had been so long hidden in her mind – that secret which had changed Betty so desperately at the end of her schooldays – had risen to the surface again.

But she had not gone far when something arose that made Betty wish she had not left Joe Hurley beside the singing river. Her staid old pony began to limp.

She was a good rider, but she had not the first idea what to do when a horse went lame, except to get down and relieve the poor creature of her weight. But she was much too far from Canyon Pass to walk and lead the hobbling pony.

The wise old cow pony made much of the affliction, and when Betty tried to urge it on the limping horse was a pitiful sight indeed. Betty had never been taught the proper way to pick up a horse’s foot to examine it for a stone in the frog; but the pony lifted the crippled member in such a way that the girl managed to get at it. The stone was there, a sharp-edged flint wedged into the frog, but the girl had no instrument with which to get it out.

Fortuitous circumstances do happen elsewhere besides in bald romance. Unlooked-for help appeared in this moment of Betty’s need. She looked up to see Nell Blossom on her cream-colored pony galloping along the wagon track, coming from the direction of Canyon Pass. The cabaret singer glanced at the dismounted girl, nodded, and would have gone right by, but she chanced to see the pony limp on a yard or two.

“What’s the matter with that hoss?” demanded Nell, reining in her own pony with both skill and promptness.

“Oh, Miss Blossom,” cried Betty, “there’s a stone in his foot, and I can’t get it out.”

“Where’s your side partner?” asked Nell, getting slowly down. “That Joe Hurley oughtn’t to let you tenderfoots out of his sight. Not on the open trail.”

Betty recognized the measure of scorn in this remark, but she was in no position to resent it. She said as casually as she could:

“Mr. Hurley stayed behind for something. He may not even come back this way. I really do not know what to do for the poor creature.”

“Meanin’ Joe, or the hoss?” and the blue eyes danced suddenly with mischief.

“The poor pony.”

“Get the stone out,” Nell said, picking up the pony’s foot.

“It is wedged in tightly – that stone.”

Nell drew from the pocket of her abbreviated skirt a jackknife that would have delighted the heart of any boy. With an implement in this she removed the stone in a twinkling.

“There!” Nell said. “Let him rest here a minute, and he’ll be all right. The old four-flusher! He isn’t hurt a mite, but he’d like to have you think so,” and she slapped the pony resoundingly.

“I’m awfully much obliged to you, Miss Blossom.”

“No need to be. And no need to call me ‘Miss.’”

“Oh – well – Nell, if you like it better,” Betty rejoined with a most disarming smile. “I thank you.”

“That’s all right,” said Nell in her brusque, but not altogether unfriendly, way. “I say, Miss Hunt!”

Betty interrupted with: “Betty, if you please, Nell.”

“Oh! All right,” the singer said, the more friendly light sparkling in her eyes again. “What I wanted to ask you is, is that suit you got on really what they all wear in the East?”

“Yes. Since nearly every one rides astride now, the habit is made mannish.”

“Well, I’ve straddled a hoss ever since I can remember, but I never seen anything but a skirt and bloomers or a divided skirt like this on women before. But I must say them things you wear are plumb fetching.”

Betty was amused. But she had reason for feeling kindly toward Nell Blossom.

“You could easily cut over that corduroy skirt you wear into a pair of breeches like these,” she suggested.

“You reckon so?” asked Nell with eagerness. “I’d like that a pile. But I don’t know – ”

“I could show you. We could cut a pattern. Has anybody in town a sewing machine?”

“Sure thing. Mother Tubbs has got one. And I can run up a seam as good as she can.”

“I’ll tell you,” proposed Betty with real interest. “You ride back to the hotel with me, and we’ll cut the pattern out of a newspaper.”

Through such seemingly unimportant incidents as this the trend of great affairs are sometimes changed. Had Nell ridden on she might have seen the same fugitive Betty had noticed hiding in the chaparral. But Nell was easily persuaded to attend the parson’s sister to the Wild Rose.

The two girls, who seemed to have so little in common, after all found much, besides the dressmaking plans, in each other to afford them interest.

It was Nell’s strangely sweet voice that pleased Betty most. Even when the Western girl said the rudest things, her voice caressed one’s ear. And Betty began to realize that Nell’s “rudeness” was born of frankness and a certain bashfulness. Most bashful people are abrupt, at times quite startling, in speech. In another place, among other people, Nell Blossom would have betrayed timidity and hesitation. But, as she would have said, she would not have “got far” in Canyon Pass by yielding to any secret shrinking from her associates.

“A girl’s got to keep her own end up in a place like this. They all root for me and clap me on and off the stage. But I’ve got to fight my own battles,” pursued the singer. “Men are like wolves, Betty. The pack will foller a leader so long as that leader keeps ahead. When the leader goes plumb lame and falls behind, they eat him.”

“Oh!”

“I’m popular with the boys. They’re strong for me just now. But ’twouldn’t take much to make ’em turn on me. I know ’em!” she concluded grimly.

She knew a great many things, it was evident, of which Betty Hunt was ignorant. When the cabaret singer went away with her pattern she left Betty much to ponder about, which did not fundamentally deal with Nell Blossom’s problems.

When Nell had gone a grimmer shadow overcame Betty’s mind – a shadow that had lain athwart her path since that bitter season just preceding the death of her Aunt Prudence Mason and Betty’s withdrawal from boarding school.

The events of those last weeks at Grandhampton Hall were etched so deeply upon Betty’s memory that they could not be effaced. She believed that they never would be.