“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

“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

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

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-twenty
        In  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

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

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.

And on this day all had been rubbed raw again by Joe Hurley’s outbreak. If he had only not spoken as he had! If things had only gone on between Betty and him as they had been going—calmly, quietly; yes, she confessed it now, really pleasantly.

She had come to think of the mining man’s attention as an undoubted aid to her placid life. Her rides with him, and their association in other ways, their conversations on various subjects had been of greater moment in establishing her peace of mind than Betty had realized.

She faced that fact—alone in her own room now—with fuller appreciation of what Joe Hurley had come to mean to her.

She was an utterly honest girl. She had faced a terrible and soul-racking situation before and come to a decision which she had held to through all the months since she had left school.

Just what did Joe Hurley mean to Betty Hunt?

Her first half-fear of Joe, a real dislike of his presumed character, had melted before a broader understanding of the man and his aims. Joe was her brother’s friend and the chief supporter of Hunt’s earnest work among these people. First of all Betty had begun to like Joe because he so generously aided the parson.

Her appreciation of the underlying strata of Joe’s character had grown from day to day of personal association with him. He was a man who would ultimately achieve big things. She felt this to be his dominant trait. Yet he had tenderness, generosity, wit, and a measure of “book learning” of which last she eagerly approved.

Under ordinary conditions—Betty Hunt admitted this frankly now—she would have been as strongly attracted by Joe Hurley, once she had got over her first doubt of his surface qualities, as by any young man she had ever associated with.

She did not question her own judgment in Joe’s case, no matter how far wrong the unsophisticated school girl had been to give her heart into the keeping of another who had seemed a much more charming man!

Andy Wilkenson—sophisticated, smiling, tender, with all the graces of person and intellect that any young girl could wish—had set himself to win Betty Hunt. His intentions had been perfectly honorable, in the sense thus used.

Andy had urged marriage—an immediate, if secret, marriage—from the very first. And there was reason for secrecy. Betty wished to finish her course at Grandhampton Hall. Aunt Prudence must not know of this great, new thing that had come into Betty’s life. Even Ford must not be told.

For, after all, the girl realized that she was very young—much younger, even, it seemed, than Andy Wilkenson. Andy was so much more sensible than she!

Betty feared she could not keep her mind sufficiently on her studies to stand well at the end of the semester if she was not utterly sure of Andy. Once married to him, of course, Andy would be hers entirely! No other woman could ever mean anything to him if the unsuspicious, broken-down old minister in a neighboring town joined them in holy bonds.

Aunt Prudence would forgive her when it was all over and she went home with her diploma and her marriage certificate in her trunk. It would be absolutely wicked to disturb poor Aunt Prudence by a letter either announcing the engagement, which was for a very brief term, or her marriage. For Betty’s elderly relative was ill—worse than either Betty or her brother dreamed of at the time.

The opportunities Betty had to be with Andy were not many. The rules of the Hall were very strict. Even her introduction to the young man from the West had been clandestine. Unknown to Betty, Wilkenson, learning all he could about certain girls in her set at the school, had selected Betty Hunt deliberately as his mark.

Betty’s school fees were paid by an old aunt who was reputed very rich. The aunt was known to be devoted to her. All that she had was sure to be Betty’s when Aunt Prudence died. Wilkenson had even gone so far as to learn much more particularly about the state of Aunt Prudence Mason’s health than Betty herself knew.

One item only escaped Andy Wilkenson’s cunning mind. It was not until they had been married and Wilkenson was driving Betty back to the Hall by unfrequented roads late in the afternoon that the small but appalling oversight on his part broke upon his understanding.

“You know, girlie, I haven’t got much money. I came East yere”—how Betty had loved that drawl then—“to get me a stake. I did a fool thing and threw away—just threw away—my bank roll out in Crescent City.”

“Oh, money!” replied Betty with fine scorn. “You can go to work at something, Andy, and earn more.”

“Ye-as,” he agreed in a tone that might have revealed a good deal to a more sophisticated person than the girl who had so recently been Betty Hunt, “so I can. But I may not make any good connection before you get out of that school. And then I’d like us to go back West. I’m known out there. A man can always do better in his own stamping-grounds.”

“Oh, the West must be wonderful,” murmured Betty, with clasped hands.

“Yep. But no place is wonderful unless you’ve got a good stake. Now, how about it, Betty? This old aunt of yours is pretty well fixed, eh?”

The girl was startled. “Wealthy? I think so. Aunt Prudence has been very kind to me.”

“She’ll keep on being kind to you, I reckon?”

“Of course! The dear soul. You’ll just love her, Andy.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think I’ll risk trying her out. Not just yet. She’s pretty sick, anyway, isn’t she?”

Betty told him that Aunt Prudence was feeble. The girl did not know at that time how serious the woman’s malady was. Only on the day following did the telegram come recalling her to Amberly!

“Anyway,” Wilkenson observed, after some thought, “you’re her heir, Betty.” For a second time the girl was startled by his speech. She began to peer at him now in the dusk in a puzzled fashion.

“What I’m aimin’ at,” said Wilkenson quite calmly, “is that we’d better keep all this quiet until Auntie goes over the divide. No use stirring up possible objections. She’ll leave you her money, you say. We’ll take that money and go back West. I know a place I can buy in Crescent City that will pay big returns. I will let the pasteboards alone, myself. I always get foolish if I deal ’em wild instead of for the house. We’ll cut a swath out there, Betty, that’ll make ’em sit up and take notice. Sure thing!”

“Andy! What are you talking about?” asked the incredulous girl. “Auntie’s money—— It’s all invested. I know it is. It’s tied up.”

“Shucks! we can untie it,” and Wilkenson laughed. “No banker’s knots mean much to me. And four or five per cent. interest ain’t a patch on what I’ll make for you when we get to going.”

“But, Andy,” she said weakly, “I know all about Auntie’s will. I have even read it. She made it years ago when Ford and I were little. And she is a woman who never changes her mind. Ford has papa’s little fortune. Aunt Prudence gives me her property; but I can spend only the income from it until I am thirty.”

“What’s that?” His tone made her jump. “Thirty?” Then he thought. “Well, shucks, honey,” he drawled, “you’re a married woman now. That makes you practically of age in this State, and the courts——”

“It makes no difference, Andy. The will is made that way for that very purpose,” the girl said frankly.

“For what purpose?”

“So that—that my husband cannot touch the principal. Until I am thirty I cannot touch it myself.”

An oath—a foul, blistering expression—parted the man’s lips. In the deepening gloom of the evening she could see his face change to a mask of indignant disappointment. She did not shrink from him. She did not plead with him. In that dragging minute, Andy had stopped the car with a jerk, Betty understood everything about this Westerner. And from that instant had germinated and grown all the hatred and fear of the West and its people that Betty Hunt had betrayed when first her brother had suggested the journey to Canyon Pass.

She had stepped out of the car. She had torn in small pieces the paper the old minister had given her. She had drawn from her finger the plain band Wilkenson had placed upon it, which she must have hidden in any case, and thrown it from her into the bushes beside the way.

Then Betty Hunt had commanded Andrew Wilkenson never to speak to her again—never to try to see, write, or otherwise communicate with her. She walked away from him. She heard the roar of the engine after a moment and knew he turned the car and drove away.

And that had been the end of Betty’s romance. She had not seen the Westerner again.