“Hey, you fellers!” shouted Tolley to the several men in the barroom of the Grub Stake. “Come give me a hand. Here’s a feller that’s taken pretty near his last pill, I reckon.”
The parson, as well as Hurley and the others, responded to the dive keeper’s call. Tolley kicked shut the back door with savage insistence against the driving wind.
“I reckon his hoss is done for,” he panted. “But the feller himself—Hi, Nobbs! get him a jolt of something hot.”
Hunt and Joe Hurley helped raise the senseless man, and, with Tolley carrying the feet, they moved him close to one of the glowing stoves. His hat fell off. It was Joe who voiced a surprise that was not his alone.
“Why, Tolley! here’s your dead man now. As I’m a sinner—and the parson assures me that I am—this is Dick Beckworth.”
“Dick the Devil!” ejaculated two or three in chorus.
“This is a nice sort of a day for him to come back,” muttered Tolley, evidently quite as much amazed as the others.
Hunt peered into the face of the senseless man. There was a certain regularity of feature, in spite of the sharpness and blueness caused by the extreme cold he had suffered, which the parson saw might lead the casual observer to consider Dick Beckworth handsome. His complexion was as spotless as a girl’s; the skin scarcely tanned; ears and nose small and perfectly formed; the closed eyes, long-lashed; and the brows as delicately marked as though done with a stencil.
He was shaved, although he had come out of the wilderness, and his jet-black mustache was as silky as his long hair. Dick Beckworth, gambler and lady’s man, without doubt made a striking appearance wherever he went. Even lying there on the bench, colorless, and with his eyes closed, the parson realized that the man would be indeed a “heart-breaker”—among young and inexperienced women at least.
It could not be doubted that he had made a strong impression upon the almost childish mind and heart of Nell Blossom. She must have been attracted by this man just as she would have been by a gaudy flower or a bird of brilliant plumage.
Hunt felt a strange loathing for the gambler, much as his present state should excite pity. This was the man, he believed, who had brought about the change that Joe Hurley said had suddenly come over Nell Blossom’s character.
Beckworth had hidden the fact that he had escaped death through his fall into the canyon and so had laid a burden of terror and anguish upon Nell’s heart, which was reason enough for her apparent hatred of all mankind.
Nobbs, the barkeeper, brought the drink at Tolley’s command. They forced open Dick’s jaws and poured the potent stuff into him. The color almost instantly stained his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered. He choked.
“What was it Andy McCann said about him?” Hurley said thoughtfully. “He’s got the luck of a hanged man. He’s coming around all right. But there are others out in the storm that need help more than this fellow.”
“Who’s that?” asked one of the men who had been loitering at the Grub Stake bar.
Hurley explained briefly about the absent girls. Two men besides those already of their party volunteered to join Hurley and the parson. A rope—a hair lariat—was likewise found with which the searchers could bind themselves together. It would be the simplest thing imaginable to drift away from each other in such a blinding storm.
Dick Beckworth gave unmistakable signs of returning consciousness. He groaned, struggled, raised up on an elbow to stare about.
“Hold on!” the parson said to Joe. “See if the man can speak. He may know something.”
“Right you are, Willie,” Hurley agreed. He leaned over the dazed gambler. “Hi, Dick! Do you know me? Joe Hurley! See?”
“Where—where am I?” whispered Dick.
“You’re in the Grub Stake, all right, Dick,” broke in Tolley eagerly. “The old Grub Stake, I tell ye—that you never ought t’ve left.”
“Grub Stake? Tolley?” questioned Dick. Then he opened his eyes wide and recognized Hurley’s face so close to his own. “That you, Joe? I——”
“Which way did you come into town, Dick?” broke in the mining man.
“Eh? What?”
“Did you come through the East Fork or the West Fork?”
“Why—why, the East Fork.”
“You did! Did you see anybody on the way down? You came down the cliff, didn’t you? Anybody up on the plain?” were Hurley’s excited questions.
“Why—I—I——”
“Two women are out in the storm,” went on Hurley. “Did you see them anywhere up yonder?”
“Two women? I—I thought they were men. They rode down ahead of me. Then it grew so—so thick I couldn’t see ’em again.”
“Great saltpeter!” exclaimed Hurley. “You must have passed ’em. They are up there somewhere among the rocks.”
“Or they’ve gone over the rocks—hosses and all!” groaned Collins.
“Shut up!” muttered his chum, Cale Mack. “Ain’t you got no sense? Look at the parson!”
“This is Parson Hunt,” explained Hurley to the staring Dick. “His sister Betty is one of the missing girls you saw.”
“Who?” gasped Dick. “Betty Hunt? Here? Here? At Canyon Pass?”
“My sister,” Hunt said hoarsely. “Didn’t you see her and Nell Blossom again as you rode down?”
“Your sister?” repeated the startled gambler. “Betty Hunt—your sister?”
He fell back and closed his eyes. Hurley started for the front door.
“No time to lose, boys,” he cried. “Come on! Betty and Nell are somewhere up there along that path. No more delay.”
He had already knotted one end of the rope around his waist. Hunt followed his example, leaving six feet or more of slack between them. The other men who were going with them quickly fastened themselves in rotation. They knotted neckerchiefs or mufflers across their faces. Nobbs opened the door for them, and the file went out into the storm.
The roar of the storm as the men came out upon the open bank of the East Fork made the human voice quite inaudible. Nor could they communicate by signs, for only the dim outlines of the man before him could be seen by the man behind. A tug of the rope was the only signal understood between the searchers.
The driven hail churned the surface of the river to a livid foam. The reflection of this sheet of ruffled water lent them more light than the sun itself. The storm beat upon the string of men with a savageness that appalled Hunt, who had never experienced nature in so bitter a mood.
But what these men of Canyon Pass could do, the parson would not shrink from. And were not the two beings he loved most in this world—Nell Blossom and his sister Betty—in desperate peril somewhere on the other side of the wind-lashed stream?
The water was all of knee-depth over the bar, but Joe waded in without hesitation. They were none of them shod properly for the wading of the stream; but their personal discomfort—or, indeed, their personal peril in any way—did not enter into their consideration in this emergency. Two girls were somewhere up there among the rocks, harassed by the storm and in danger of their lives. The men’s job was to get them.
The ice—it was more than mere sleet that whipped them so unmercifully—cut such parts of their faces as were bare, needle sharp and stinging. From under the peak of his cap each man could now see scarcely a yard before him. They stumbled on as though they were in an unlighted cavern. Once Joe stepped off the track and plunged waist deep in a hole. Hunt hauled him back by the rope, and after a moment they went on again.
They reached the farther bank and stumbled up the sleet-covered strand, standing in a group together for a minute to get their breath and to ease the binding-rope about their bodies.
“I reckon I can smell out the path, boys,” said their leader, so they started off again.
As they pressed upward, now and then they shouted—sometimes in unison. But their voices could not penetrate the gale far. The sounds were blown back into their faces as though rebounding from a blank wall.
At a point some distance up the path Hurley halted again and allowed the others to approach. He bawled at them:
“There’s a place yonder somewhere under the cliff—I remember it—a half-shelter. They might have reached it.”
“Don’t get off the path, Joe!” warned Jib Collins.
“But if the girls got off the path?”
“We don’t want to lose our way,” objected Mack.
“I’m going to take a look!” ejaculated Hurley obstinately. But he could not untie the knot which held him. He fumbled at it. “Got a knife, Willie?”
The parson had already drawn out his pocket-knife. But he slashed the rope between Collins and himself.
“I’m going with you, Joe,” he declared.
“Keep shoutin’!” bawled Collins, as the two younger men started off at a tangent from the path.
The bowlders were glassed with ice. The two friends floundered and slipped about in an awkward way, straining themselves enormously and not seldom falling. The one aided the other. It was fortunate, Hunt realized, that they had come together, for one man alone could never have accomplished the journey to the sheer wall of the cliff.
Of a sudden there seemed to be a lull in the gale. Really, they had reached a more sheltered spot. The storm sang around them, but they were not so terribly buffeted.
Joe shouted again:
“Nell! Nell Blossom! Betty!”
Hunt joined his voice to that of his friend. They continued to bellow the girls’ names. Hurley grabbed the parson’s arm suddenly.
“Hush!”
There was a response. A wailing voice replied.
“It’s Betty! Your sister!” shouted Joe, and plunged forward, half-dragging the equally excited Hunt with him.
Something loomed up before the latter. He ran into the barrel of a standing horse!
“Here they are!” yelled Hurley.
Somehow, the two young men got around the horses. There was a sheltered place between the beasts and the wall of rock. Hunt heard his sister crying and laughing somewhere near. But it was not she whom he first found.
“Oh, Mr. Hunt! Oh, Mr. Hunt!” sobbed Nell Blossom’s voice. “Are you real? You ain’t another ghost, are you? Oh! Oh!”
Hunt’s arms were around the girl, and he held her fast. Near by, he knew, Joe and Betty were talking—perhaps were whispering. His own lips were close to Nell’s ear.
“My dear! My dear!” the parson said over and over again. “God is good to me! I’ve found you safe.”
Nell snuggled into his arms like a frightened child and clung to him.
It was Betty Hunt, who, after all, seemed to possess the bolder spirit of the two girls. Nell clung to the parson like a frightened child. He realized, however, after the first flush of his emotion that he had allowed his own overpowering desire for the singer to confuse his mind. The barrier between them was down for a moment only; he raised it again himself, for he knew he was taking advantage unfairly of the terrified girl.
It was Hunt, however, who lifted Nell Blossom into her pony’s saddle with one of the blankets wrapped well about her, and when Joe Hurley started away leading Betty’s mount, the parson followed close behind. The two young men had freed themselves of each other; but the horses and their riders bulked so big against the driving curtain of the storm that they could scarcely lose each other.
They heard the other searchers shouting and Joe pulled his gun from its holster and fired two shots into the air. The signal was replied to immediately. In a minute or two Joe ran, head-on, into Jib Collins.
“Hey! did you find ’em both?” bawled the man.
“Youbetcha!” responded Hurley. “When the parson and I go out, we bring home the bacon, every time.”
They took up the march to the ford. At the water’s edge one of the other men came to the off side of each pony, and they forced the snorting animals into the stream. The foaming barrier did not look encouraging to the storm-beaten beasts.
They all got through safely and up into the town. The driving storm was changing to snow and sleet; but the foundation of ice that had first fallen made walking difficult. The girls were lifted off their horses and carried up into Betty’s room, where Maria gave them every assistance in her power. Somebody put away the horses. Joe scurried off to his own bachelor shack, while Hunt stripped in his room and gave himself a savage rub-down with coarse towels. It had been a terrible experience; but his spirits and his blood were both in glow!
Surely Nell Blossom could not be unfriendly hereafter. It must be confessed that the parson’s thought was more entangled with Nell and his recent association with her than in anything else.
Cholo Sam brought up a steaming pot of coffee, his dark face expanded with delight.
“Ah, Señor Hunt!” the Mexican said, “you an’ de Señor Hurley—you are de pure queel, eh? De boys all cheer you—my goodness, yes!”
When Hunt was dressed again he went to Betty’s door and knocked. His sister’s response to his summons was brisk and cheerful, as usual. Yet, when he entered and looked keenly at her, he thought there was something feverish—or was it expectant?—in the look she gave him.
The girls were both in the big bed, heaped with blankets. Nell’s petite face, ruffled about by one of Betty’s boudoir caps, was pale. Indeed, the parson’s sister looked in much the better condition of the two. The excitement and danger of the adventure which had befallen them seemed to have affected the girls in a paradoxical manner. Whereas the Eastern girl might be expected to be overcome by the affair and Nell have suffered the adventure as an ordinary experience, the result seemed really to be the other way around! Nell lay in the bed pale, almost hysterical it would seem. Betty could scarcely control her excitement.
“Ford!” she exclaimed, “I need you. Try to convince this foolish girl that there is no such thing as a ghost—a real ghost.”
Hunt smiled, but he could not be unsympathetic. He realized that Nell Blossom, being brought up as she had been—even associating so long with Mother Tubbs—was probably hopelessly superstitious. He could not find it in his heart to oppose roughly any fear Nell might hold regarding supernatural things. He tried to put his admonition in a kindly way.
“If there is any truth at all in the matter of ghosts,” he said, “it must be of a somewhat unreal nature, must it not? Ghosts are supposed to be too ethereal for sight or touch or sound. And the only smell, even, accompanying their visitations, is supposed to be of brimstone, isn’t it?”
“That feller ought to smell of brimstone all right!” muttered Nell suddenly hectic in her language. “He ought to come plumb from the bad place.”
“What does she mean?” Hunt asked Betty. Yet he half suspected what was in the singer’s mind. “Did you girls see——”
“Nell declares,” interrupted Betty, still with that strange excitement, “that she has seen the ghost of a man she calls Dick Beckworth.”
“Dick Beckworth,” Hunt repeated calmly. “You saw him, I presume,” he watched the pale face on the pillow all the time, “on the side of the cliff over yonder? He rode down behind you——”
“Do you mean——” gasped Nell.
A flame of color flashed into both her cheeks. Her blue eyes grew round with surprise.
“He says he came into town by that path,” the young man rejoined. “He put us on to the track of you girls. He said he saw you start down the path ahead of him.”
“He is alive!” murmured Nell.
“His horse was in bad shape, I believe,” Hunt told her. “But the last I knew—just before we left the Grub Stake to look for you—Dick Beckworth gave every promise of getting on quite well.”
“Dick the Devil!” muttered Nell. “That sure is his name.”
“From what I have heard about him,” said Hunt, “I think his nickname quite fits him. But it was probably Tolley’s meanness alone that made you—that is,” he hastened to correct himself, “that made all of the trouble. That was thrashed out last evening, Miss Nell. Steve Siebert and Andy McCann proved Dick was not dead, although he did go over the cliff back there in the spring.”
“I don’t know what you are both talking about,” Betty interposed. “Who is this—this—Dick Beckworth, do you call him?”
“A gambler, Betty,” said her brother. “You would scarcely know such a person. But unfortunately both Miss Nell and I have been obliged to mix with all classes of society,” he smiled again, “and so we know such people.”
“Nell should not sing in those places.” Betty said it with conviction. But in a moment she turned again to the identity of the man whose reappearance had startled Nell Blossom so greatly that she had fainted in the storm. “What—what does this man, Dick, look like?”
“Not an unhandsome fellow,” said the parson generously. “A somewhat cruel face—ruthless perhaps would be the better term. Good features; a beautiful complexion—if such a term should be applied to a man’s skin,” and he laughed.
“You do not like him, Ford!” exclaimed Betty quickly.
“Would I be likely to?” mildly asked her brother.
“Oh! But I do not want a psychoanalysis of the man,” said Betty, and she used a handkerchief to half hide her own face. “Just what does he look like?”
“Mildly dark. A beautiful, oiled mustache—like a crow’s wing as the Victorian lady novelists would say. Heavy black hair. Under different circumstances—you must remember I saw him only after he was dragged out of the storm and on the border of a collapse—I judge Dick Beckworth would be quite the gentleman in all appearance, and quite the devil at heart.”
“You said it!” agreed Nell.
“A mustache—and thick black hair,” murmured Betty. “Yes. I saw him go by when we were cowering there under that wall, too. Well, I am relieved.” Her laugh did not sound right in her brother’s ears. “I am glad that it did not turn out to be a real ghost.”
Hunt sat down upon a chair at Nell’s side of the bed. The singer looked at him, and there suddenly flashed into her eyes a warm light that enhanced her beauty. She put out a little brown hand and gripped his, which was only too ready to be seized.
“Parson—Mr. Hunt, you are a good man!” she said, chokingly. “I heard about what you did last night. But I didn’t hear all about it; so I didn’t know Dick was alive. I—I’m mighty wicked, I reckon. I ain’t glad he didn’t die——”
“No need to go into that,” urged Hunt quickly. “All such things are in the hands of Providence. But your mind, I hope, Nell, is relieved.”
Betty looked from the face of the girl on the pillow to her brother’s glowing countenance. It was another shock for Betty Hunt, but she understood.
The sudden, sharp blizzard that tore across the country blew itself out by nightfall. In the morning the sun shone brilliantly, a warm wind followed the gale, and the snow and ice melted like a September frost. It had been only a foretaste of winter.
The effect of the incidents of that day remained longer in the hearts of some of the participators in the events than it did upon the earth or the rivers, the rocks and gorges, the frosted herbage, or other physical and material matters about Canyon Pass. To be in mutual peril, to suffer alike the buffetings of the storm, had linked Betty Hunt and Nell Blossom with a chain that could not lightly be severed.
There was, too, a secret knowledge on the Eastern girl’s part that made this chain stronger than Nell imagined. The latter had no suspicion that Dick Beckworth—Dick the Devil—was a link in the chain that bound her to the parson’s sister. There was as well another thing that made the cabaret singer an object of Betty’s deeper interest. The latter had seen in her brother’s face something which had vastly surprised her and something which—had it been revealed to her before this time—would have horrified Betty as well as startled her.
The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was plainly and frankly more concerned in Nell Blossom than he had any right to be—unless he proposed to declare himself the singer’s suitor. It was a somewhat shocking thought for Betty—no two ways about it. She had scarcely ever considered her brother in the light of a marrying man, and never here at Canyon Pass! For it to have been suggested that Hunt would find an object of sentimental interest in this Western mining camp would have completely confounded Betty at an earlier date.
And Nell Blossom? A singer in a rough amusement place that Betty would consider herself smirched if she entered? Yet—and Betty was surprised to consider it—she was much less amazed by her brother’s seeming choice than she presumed she would be. Besides, there was a reason why Betty Hunt felt that she might not criticise her brother’s course in this affair.
When Nell Blossom had recovered from the exposure sufficiently to go home to Mother Tubbs, and that was not until late in the day following the storm, Betty had gained from her brother all he knew and much that he surmised regarding Nell’s association with the gambler who had returned to the Grub Stake at so dramatic a moment.
For his part, Hunt had not the first suspicion that Betty held any personal interest in the man, Dick Beckworth. But he knew that his sister suspected his love for Nell Blossom.
Hunt braced himself for an argument, and a serious one. Betty veered from Nell herself in a most surprising manner and seemed to feel interest only in Dick the Devil.
“He is scarcely a person in whom you would find any interest did you meet him, Betty,” declared the parson. “Believe me, as Joe says, the fellow is one of those fungi attached to society that would much better be lopped off than allowed to develop and spread their vile spawn about.”
“Oh!” gasped Betty. “You mean it would have been better had you and—and Mr. Hurley found the man’s remains where you found his horse? Oh, Ford!”
“Somehow,” said the parson gravely, “I feel that way.”
“Ford!” cried his sister vehemently. “This is an awful place! Let—let us go back East.”
The parson shook his head slowly. “No, Betty. You may go if you wish. I do not blame you for wanting to give it up. There is no reason why you should sacrifice yourself. But for me—Canyon Pass is mine. I will not own to failure. Indeed, my work is not without promise. I am going to reach the heart of Canyon Pass in some way, and I will keep on in the quest as long as I am given strength.”
It was Betty’s last outbreak against conditions. Nor did her brother suspect for a moment the reason for the sudden renewal of her hatred of the mining town.
Joe Hurley had taken a new lease on cheerfulness; yet he scarcely could have explained why his condition of mind had so suddenly improved. But it was not difficult for him to put a digit upon that very moment of time when this new feeling had dawned in his mind.
It was when, with Hunt, he had plowed his way through the driving storm to the nook under the sheltering cliff and had, seemingly, by instinct, found Betty Hunt rather than Nell Blossom.
Joe told himself that this very fact—that he had stumbled upon Betty rather than Nell—was a miracle of love.
All the time they were beating through the blizzard, crossing the icy river and climbing the steep path, it seemed to Joe that Betty had been calling to him. It had been the most natural thing in the world that at the end of the fearful struggle he should find in his arms the girl whom he loved and whose peril had caused him such anguish.
And Betty did, quite of her own volition, enter that shelter. It was no mistake, no chance happening. Betty did not think he was her brother. “Oh, Joe! I was sure you would find us,” she had said.
Joe did not overlook the confession Betty had made that there was a man back East who must, in some way, hold her promise if not her affections. But Joe hoped that by now Betty had taken time to compare that unknown with himself; and that he, Joe, had a chance. He decided to await Betty’s good pleasure.
At least, Joe Hurley’s recklessness was submerged once more in those better qualities that the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt warmly liked. Joe was bound to be the parson’s chief assistant and backer in all his efforts for the betterment of Canyon Pass. And Hunt faced now—he had seen it coming of course—a situation that must practically make effective or mar seriously all that he had striven for since he had come West.
This emergency came up for discussion that Saturday night in Bill Judson’s Three Star Grocery. The interest of the more decent element of the town’s population was centering in the church and in Parson Hunt’s work. This was a rallying point for all progressive effort and determination in Canyon Pass.
In addition, the happenings of the past week seemed to have focused on Hunt and the good work the eyes of all those Passonians who possessed vision at all. The almost tragic brawl in Tolley’s Grub Stake had aroused a great deal of warm discussion. What did Canyon Pass and Canyon County have a sheriff for, if roughnecks were to go armed—and use those arms—just as they had been wont to do in the old days?
“Why, we’re plumb civilized now. We ain’t supposed to go around wearin’ shootin’-irons and pluggin’ holes in store-fronts and citizens’ hats. If a bunch of cow-punchers came riotin’ in yere and started to shoot up the camp, Sheriff Blaney would show ’em what-for, blame sudden.”
“Youbetcha!” agreed one of the storekeeper’s listeners. “That’s a true word, Bill. If a man means to be peaceable, why go ironed at all?”
“That’s just it,” complained the gangling Smithy. “There’s them that ain’t for peace. That’s why the rest of us hafter go heeled.”
Smithy had been waiting on customers with a gun belted to his waist ever since the night he had lost two teeth and gained a black eye. Perhaps the evidence of this gun so prominently displayed had saved the gangling clerk from much hectoring comment that he might otherwise have suffered from some of the patrons of the Three Star.
However, Smithy basked in a certain heroic light. He had been the first to resent Tolley’s scurrilous tale about Nell Blossom, and no matter what Joe Hurley and the parson had done later, Smithy’s small share of glory could not be ignored. On this very afternoon Nell herself had come into the Three Star Grocery and thanked Smithy very sweetly for his courageously expressed opinion on her behalf, the result of which had rather marred what good looks Smithy had ever been able to lay claim to.
“Layin’ off whatever that boy’s mother said about him when he was an infant,” drawled Judson, “nobody ever could honestly say that Smithy should take a medal for good looks. Now he looks plumb woeful! I come pretty near bustin’ out crying when I look at him.”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that, Bill Judson, and you know it,” Nell declared. “Don’t you believe him, Smithy. I don’t think it hurts your looks any.”
“It couldn’t,” was Judson’s grim comment.
But this missed Smithy. He fairly gasped with pleasure at Nell’s statement.
“Don’t you mind about it, Miss Nell,” he said. “I was goin’ to have them teeth drawed, anyway. I’ll get gold ones. And I’d have ’em all knocked out if ’twould do you a mite of good.”
Now that the conclave between the serious-minded citizens had begun, even Smithy was listened to with some respect. Besides, the gangling one put forward an unmistakably pregnant fact.
“If it wasn’t for Tolley and his gang, wouldn’t none of us hafter tote guns,” Smithy observed.
“Surest thing you know!” exclaimed Collins. “Run them out o’ town and the decent men here wouldn’t hafter develop saddle-galls from wearing ten pound or more of iron and lead belted around their waists. Yes, sir! I’m in favor of reviving the old vigilance committee and running these yere undesirable citizens out into the Topaz.”
“What would become of them?” put in Hunt mildly.
“Let ’em ‘root, hog, or die’!” muttered Judson. “Tolley, of course, has got a stake yere. We can’t take a man’s property away from him. But those hangers-on of his——”
“It is a part of Tolley’s stake that is the immediate cause of this discussion, gentlemen,” put in the parson again. “Tolley still owns the place in which we hold our meetings, and Judson’s lease will soon run out.”
“Run Tolley out,” said Smithy, who had now enthusiastically taken sides with the church people, “and you needn’t worry about that shack.”
“Maybe he would sell,” Hurley suggested.
“You try to buy it,” and Judson grinned. “His eye teeth has done been cut a far time back. Tolley ain’t that kind of a fool. He is wise to the idea that we’d like to buy that place. If you paved the shack floor with gold eagles Tolley wouldn’t bite.”
“He’d like to bust up the church and run the parson out, if you ask me,” was the comment of another bystander. “And he’s got a sharp side-pardner now, boys. I hear tell Dick the Devil is a-hintin’ that things will go different in Canyon Pass, now that he’s come back.”
“How’s that?” asked Hurley quickly, his eyes sparkling as they always did when his temper was ruffled. “What’s Dick got to say about it?”
“He don’t favor no parson. He says so.”
“Looks to me,” drawled Judson, “that it’s comin’ close to a show-down. Either we folks that want a church and decency has got to cave in, or we got to fight.”
“The right kind of fighting, I hope,” said Hunt quickly. “We must hold our own without open quarreling.”
“Well, it won’t be peaceful when we try to hold onto Tolley’s shack,” growled Jib Collins.
“Look yere,” queried a voice from the dark end of the store, “what have you shorthorns been doin’ all this time you’ve had a parson? Why ain’t ye built him a church?”
“Another county heard from!” snapped Judson, as old Steve Siebert came forward. “Easy enough to ask that.”
“Why don’t ye answer it?” asked the old prospector. “I see you have got yere in Canyon Pass a blame good parson. I never seen one I liked better. I ain’t heard him preach, and I ain’t been to your meetin’s. But any parson that can walk barehanded up to a gang like that Boss Tolley and his whelps gets my vote, and he can have everything I’ve got when he wants it for his church.”
“Them that ain’t got nawthin’ can easy give it away,” muttered Judson.
But it was another voice that ruffled the serenity of Steve Siebert. On a box by the door the hooped figure of Andy McCann straightened up.
“I reckon,” he sneered, “that that old gray-backed lizard has got him a poke full o’ nuggets out in the Topaz, and he’s goin’ to hand it over for to pay for a church edifice,” and his senile giggle was more maddening than the laughter of the crowd.
“I likely brought in full as much as yonder ground-owl ever scooped out o’ the ground. But ye don’t answer my question, neither. Why ain’t you fellers made some preparation for buildin’?”
“Mr. Siebert,” said the parson soothingly, “the men and women interested in our work have subscribed several hundred dollars toward a building fund. But we are none of us prepared to finance such a work as yet. We wish to put up a fairly good structure when we get at it. We cannot freight in the frame and heavier timbers. They must be cut and sawn on the spot. The expense of getting in a mill, aside from the labor, is enormous.”
“I reckon these hard-shells have tol’ you that because their pockets squeal ev’ry time they put their hands in ’em,” growled Siebert. “I know ’em.”
“Look here, old-timer,” said Joe Hurley, sharply, “we figure it will cost close to ten thousand dollars to put up a church. What do you say to that?”
“Put your hand in your poke and hand over ten thousand in dust, you miser’ble desert rat!” cackled Andy McCann.
“And how much of it can you rake up, after prospectin’ this country for nigh on to thutty years?” was Steve’s answer, glowering at his enemy.
“Wal, dern your hide! there was a time when I might ha’ done my share of it without weepin’ none,” muttered Andy. “And if it hadn’t been for you——”
“Is that so?” cried the other old man, his face ablaze with wrath. “And how about me bein’ right in sight once’t of the most promisin’ lead that ever was uncovered in Canyon County?”
“If it hadn’t been for you,” rejoined Andy, “I would ha’ been rollin’ in wealth. And you know it—dad burn your hide!”
“Look here,” interjected Joe Hurley, interested rather than amused. “If you both tell the truth, you must have together struck a rich streak. Why didn’t you develop it? You were partners, weren’t you?”
“Me, pardners with that yere!” croaked Steve.
“D’ye think for one moment,” demanded Andy, “that I’d help make that feller’s fortune? Not on your tintype!”
Here Judson, with enormous disgust, broke into the discussion. “Dad burn it!” he exclaimed, “this ain’t helpin’ none to build the parson a church.”
The others were laughing uproariously. Steve and Andy glared at each other like two angry dogs with a strong fence between them. But slowly their fierce expressions changed. Hunt, who was watching them with something more than idle curiosity, saw that both old men began to look slyly at each other as they calmed down. The others paid no further attention to Steve and Andy, the flurry of their verbal battle being over. But in the rheumy eyes of Andy there grew a light which seemed to register some secret amusement, while Steve’s toothless grin displayed a humorous appreciation of a phase of the argument that the bystanders in general quite failed to catch.
“Now,” thought the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt, “I wonder, to use one of Joe’s favorite expressions, what those two old fellows have up their sleeves. Perhaps the joke is on Canyon Pass, rather than on these two queer old prospectors. I wonder!”
Nell Blossom had not gone back to sing at Colorado Brown’s place. It was some time before Hunt found this out, and he wondered why she had broken her agreement with Colorado, for he knew she had entirely recovered from the effects of her adventure in the storm.
Had the parson asked his sister, Betty might have illuminated his mind not a little regarding this and other mysteries about Nell; but he was chary of ever speaking of the singer in other than a general way before Betty.
To tell the truth, he shrank from any argument regarding the Blossom of Canyon Pass. He had learned just how sweet and innocent Nell Blossom was. But he did not know how far Betty might approve of the younger girl, especially if he showed any personal interest in the latter.
He was firm in his conviction that Nell Blossom was a being set apart as his mate from the beginning! Strange as it might seem at first view, Hunt was positive that he and the half-tamed mining-camp girl held much in common. He had found opportunity to talk with her of late—both at Mother Tubbs’ and elsewhere—and he knew her tastes and aspirations far better than before. She had confided to him, although with much timidity, some of her girlish desires and her conclusions upon topics which she had thought seriously about.
She was, too, of the very stuff these Canyon Pass people were made—one of themselves. If he got Nell Blossom for a wife she would be of greater aid to him in his work here than any other one person possibly could be. With Nell Blossom for his very own, the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt would indeed have won the Heart of Canyon Pass.
Hunt kept all this a secret and said little to Betty about the cabaret singer. Nothing indeed that gave her a chance to tell him that her eyes had seen already most of what he thought was hidden from her, and seen it in a single glance.
As her brother sat beside the bed the day of the ice-storm and held Nell Blossom’s hand, Betty saw how it was with the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. The only matter that puzzled her at all was Nell’s possible attitude. Unsophisticated as the mining-camp girl was, Betty could not know for sure what Nell’s feeling for the parson was.
But Betty might have given Hunt a pretty correct explanation of why Nell did not go back to sing at Colorado Brown’s place. The girls were together almost every day after their adventure in the storm.
Betty did not go to Mother Tubbs’. She scarcely left the hotel at all in the day time, though going out on the first Sunday following their perilous adventure to attend church service.
But Nell came to the Wild Rose, and the two girls grew to know each other better than before. This because they both wished a closer understanding. Nell had begun to admire something about Betty Hunt besides her frocks and the way she manicured her nails. The parson’s sister now desired to know Nell better for the parson’s sake.
“I’m sick to death, Betty, singing for those roughnecks,” Nell had burst forth on one occasion. “I used to think it was great to have ’em cheer me and clap me off and have ’em throw money at me. But I’m plumb sick of it.”
“It’s a great gift to be able to move people with one’s voice so.”
“It ain’t nothing of the kind!” Nell declared vehemently. “It’s because they ain’t got no brains—at least, what they’ve got are addled with hootch. I’ve only got just a nice, sweet, singing voice. Them fellers are so plumb ignorant that they hoot and holler for me because I please ’em. I’d love to be really able to sing!”
“I am not so sure that you cannot sing, as you mean it,” was Betty’s sympathetic rejoinder. “Merely, you do not sing worth-while songs—altogether.”
“I’m mighty ashamed about singing that ‘This Is No Place for a Minister’s Son,’” burst out Nell suddenly.
“Why, I think it’s funny,” and Betty laughed. “I’ve often heard Ford humming it.”
“Oh! I—I sang it at him, Betty. I did!”
“I am quite sure it never disturbed Ford in the least.”
“Well, no, I reckon not. Nothing a girl like me done——”
“Did!”
“Did—could bother a man like Parson Hunt.”
“I am not so sure of that,” Betty rejoined, eyeing the other girl keenly.
But Nell Blossom, if she had a secret, hid it successfully. Betty did not miss the opportunity, however, of trying to help her friend.
“Suppose you learn some better songs—some really worth-while pieces? I brought my music with me, although I do not know if I shall ever touch a piano again.” She sighed. “But I sometimes sit and hum over my favorites. You read music of course, Nell?”
“I don’t know a note—to speak the name of it, I mean,” confessed the singer. “But I never saw the piece yet that I couldn’t pick up pretty easy. Rosabell Pickett says I’m a natural sight-reader with a great ear for harmony.”
She accepted with gratitude the selections Betty made from her library. Betty had chosen the songs with some little guile. That fact was proved by what occurred later.
“Anyway,” Nell concluded, “I ain’t going back to Colorado’s place for a while. I got some money, and Sam’s bringing his pay home to Mother Tubbs pretty reg’lar now. I can live for a while without singing for those roughnecks, that’s a sure thing!”
But Betty had her own grave thoughts—thoughts that kept her awake at night. Hollow eyes and certain twitching lines about her sensitive mouth were the result of these secret cogitations. Hunt noticed his sister’s changed appearance but he misunderstood its source. He feared that Betty found the life at Canyon Pass, with winter coming on, too hard to bear. Yet he saw that she always cheered up when Joe Hurley ran in to see them.
The Eastern girl’s trouble did not arise from the locality in which she was forced to live; it was the presence of one person in the town that caused her such serious thoughts. The man who had passed Nell Blossom and her in the storm, whose unexpected appearance had made Nell faint, had shocked Betty much more deeply than he did the singer!
Without that heavy mustache, with his waving hair cut more to conform to Eastern ideas of propriety, the girl visualized the fellow as she had once known Andy Wilkenson. He was the man, thought of whom had so worried Betty’s mind for these long months since she had left Grandhampton Hall. Andy Wilkenson! The man she had hoped never to see or hear from again. Her worst fears on coming West were now realized. And his reappearance here at Canyon Pass warned Betty that she could never allow Joe Hurley to see just how much she had learned to care for him.
She went to church on that next Sunday morning in fear and trembling. She sat well forward as usual. But she knew when “Dick Beckworth” came in and sat down in one of the rear seats.
His coming here surprised them all. Heads were turned, and there was whispering. Dick was dressed in the same flashy way, for he had left a trunk at the Grub Stake when he went away in the spring. He sat during the sermon with a sneer on his handsome face and the dancing light of the demon flickering in his hard eyes. Hunt usually met strangers after the meeting with a cordial handclasp. He did not approach Dick Beckworth.
Betty drew a veil across her face before she arose for the benediction. She waited to return to the hotel with her brother.
She was the only person in the assembly who was not amused by the appearance of the two old prospectors, Siebert and McCann, at the service. They did not come in together; and when Andy McCann entered to see Steve seated at one side, he chose a seat just as far from the other old-timer as he could and on the other side of the house. Their scowls turned on each other were more significant than words.
Hunt did not let Steve and Andy get away without a personal word with them.
“I am very glad to welcome you among us, Mr. McCann,” he said to that individual when he shook the pocket-hunter’s wrinkled claw.
“Wal, it’s all right, I reckon,” muttered Andy. “In a meetin’ you’ve got to stand for most anybody droppin’ in. But that old rip,” nodding toward the distant Steve, “would look a heap better ’cordin’ to my idee in jail than at church.”
“We must be charitable, Mr. McCann,” said the parson, moving toward the other prospector.
Old Steve was quite as bitter in his comment. But he added something, too, that gave Hunt pause.
“It seems a good deal like old times. I used to go to church reg’lar, onc’t,” said Siebert. “But I miss something, parson—I sure do.”
“What’s that?” asked Hunt smiling.
“Let alone I never expected to see that old has-been at meetin’—an’ I don’t reckon he’s come for any good—I see you don’t look jest like a preacher ought to look. Say, don’t ministers dress different no more from other folks? You might be a banker or a gambler as far as your coat goes to show.”
The blunt criticism shocked Hunt not a little. Up to this time he had carefully eschewed clerical dress. He began to wonder if, after all, he was not making a mistake.
Dick Beckworth was not on the street when the parson and his sister went back to the hotel. In fact Dick had slipped out very soon after the meeting ceased and was then in conference with Boss Tolley in the little office at the end of the long bar in the Grub Stake.
“Well,” said Tolley, eagerly, “did you see her?”
“Sure as sure.”
“Is it her?” demanded the dive keeper, grinning like a wolf.
“It sure is. It’s her that was Betty Hunt.”
“Dad burn it! And she paradin’ ’round here like an unmarried woman. Dick, we got that parson on the hip.”
No more snow or ice had followed that first sharp, furious blizzard; but with the higher temperature had come heavy rainstorms which the natives declared were quite unseasonable. The rivers were bank full. The lower end of Main Street was washed by the water from both Forks. Several families had been obliged to move into the higher part of the town.
But the flood had not driven Mother Tubbs and her little family out of their home. The wise old woman did not know just why Nell Blossom sang no more at the dance hall; but in her mind she knew that “suthin’ was workin’ on that gal.” Meanwhile she proceeded to “work on” Sam as usual.
Rocking on her back porch with the vista of dreary yards under her eye, but the rugged beauties of the Topaz Range in the distance, she philosophized as usual on all things both spiritual and mundane. Sam was pottering about a broken table that she had convinced him he must mend before he left the premises for a stroll into the town, it being Saturday afternoon.
“I must say, too, that it seems as peaceful as Sunday back in Missouri—or pretty near,” Mother Tubbs observed. “Things is changed yere in Canyon Pass. Ye must admit it, Sam.”
“Drat it!” snarled her husband, sucking a thumb he had just smashed with his hammer. “I admit it all right. The Pass is gettin’ plumb wuthless to live in. Psalm singin’, and preachin’, and singin’ meetings, and sech. Huh! Parson wants me to come to Bible class.”
After all he said it with some pride. Sam had, as he expressed it, “a sneakin’ likin’” for the parson. But he was determined not to show that this was so before Mother Tubbs.
“Ain’t you glad to live less like a savage—more decent and civilized like—than you useter, Sam Tubbs?” demanded the old woman.
“I was satisfied as I was,” grunted her husband. “I ain’t one o’ them that’s always wantin’ change and somethin’ new. If I had been, I’d picked me a new woman before now.”
“The pickin’ ain’t very good in Canyon Pass,” rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently. “Them that’s got husbands don’t want to exchange. ’Twould be like jumpin’ out of the skillet onto the coals. Them women that ain’t got nary man are well content, I reckon, to get on without one if you, Sam Tubbs, are the only hope they got.”
Nell’s sweet, clear voice floated down from the upper chamber. In accents that caressed, she sang an old song which she had found in Betty Hunt’s music, arranged for solo use.
“Hear that child, Sam!” whispered the old woman, wiping her eyes when the pleading verse was finished. “Ain’t that heaven-born?”
“Huh!” said Sam, but in truth a little doubtfully. “I never considered our Nell as bein’ pertic’lar angelic. No ma’am! Not before.”
“She’s as good as any angel,” declared Mother Tubbs with conviction. “Only she’s flighty. Or useter be. And if she’d just go and sing them songs at meetin’, Canyon Pass would learn for once just what good singin’ is.”
“I dunno but you’re right, old woman,” said Sam softly, as the voice from above took up the song again. “I’ve heard Nell Blossom sing many a time before; but it never so sort o’ caught in muh cogs as that song does. But she can’t sing them kind o’ tunes in Colorado Brown’s or the Grub Stake.”
“Hush, Sam! Don’t mention it!” whispered his wife. “I hope to the Lord she won’t never hafter work in them places again.”
“Huh! How’s she going to live?” asked the startled Sam.
“You leave it to Parson Hunt,” declared Mother Tubbs in the same secretive way, “and Nell Blossom won’t never no more hafter sing for her livin’.”
Sam stared. His bald head flushed as his eyes began to twinkle and the knowing grin wreathed his sunken lips. He suddenly burst into a cackle of delight.
“D’ye mean it? The parson? By mighty! So he’s willin’ to go the way of all flesh, is he? Nell needn’t work no more for her livin’ if she don’t want?”
“You poor fool,” scornfully said his wife, holding up one of his enormous blue yarn socks with a gaping hole in the heel, “if the parson is as hard on his socks as you are, Sam Tubbs, Nell will have her work cut out for her—sure as sure!”
It was the very next night that Nell Blossom sang for the first time at the Canyon Pass church service. She had been twice to morning service before this, coming in alone, refusing to sit near Mother Tubbs or Betty, and remaining silent even through the hymns. In truth, she had never learned those hymns that chanced to be given out on those occasions. Rosabell Pickett did yeoman’s service at the badly tuned piano; but her own voice had the sweetness of a crow with the carrying power of that same non-soothing bird. Rosabell kept the hymns going; but sometimes Hunt could have wished for even Miss Pelter of the Ditson Corners’ choir to carry the air!
As has been said, the Sunday evening service at Tolley’s old shack was not so formal as the morning session. Hunt tried in the evening to lead the singing himself. He had managed through the summer to teach the young folks several of the newer and more sprightly songs out of the collection he had brought with him from the East. Some of the rougher young men who filled the rear benches in the evening were glad to make a noise with something besides their heavy boots, and they “went in” for the singing with gusto.
On this evening Nell came in with Mother Tubbs and Sam, but she sat down on the front bench between Betty and Rosabell Pickett. She handed some sheets of music to Rosabell, and Betty recognized them with a flush of pleasure. It was plain that the accompanist had been prepared for Nell’s new move.
“Do you think Mr. Hunt would let me sing a song?” whispered Nell to Betty.
“Let you!” returned Betty eagerly. “He’ll love you for it.”
Perhaps the emphatic statement was made by the parson’s sister without thought of how it sounded. Nell’s flower-like face warmed to a flush that spread from the collar of her blouse to the waving tendrils of hair under her hat brim. She hid her face quickly from Betty. The latter, perhaps somewhat wickedly, enjoyed the other girl’s confusion. Her heart had suddenly expanded to Nell and her brother Ford. If she saw no happiness ahead of her in life, Betty Hunt had begun to hope that the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and the Canyon Pass blossom would realize all the happiness that a loving pair could compass.
With a whisper and a head shake Betty informed the parson of what he might expect from Nell at this meeting. Her presence had already filled Hunt’s heart with singing. Now, before his talk to the congregation—it was not a sermon—he smiled at Nell and sat down while she sang the song she had prepared and that had so stirred the hearts of Mother Tubbs and Sam the day before.
Rosabell Pickett for once got the spirit of the composition. She played the accompaniment softly, and she slurred over the sour notes of the old piano. When Nell stood up a hush of expectancy fell upon the congregation. Even the boot-scrapings from the back benches were silenced.
Never had Canyon Pass heard Nell Blossom sing so sweetly. The girl’s tones fairly gripped the heart-strings of her hearers and wrung them. The tears rolled down good old Mother Tubbs’ face. Sam sat beside her, looking straight ahead more like a gargoyle than ever, afraid to wink for fear the salt drops would carom from his bony cheeks. Steve Siebert in his corner, and Andy McCann in his—as far apart as the width of the room would allow—looked like their burros, carved out of desert rock. Nothing seemed to move those old fellows. But the rest of the congregation—even the roughnecks on the back seats—were subdued when the song was done.
After the service Hunt apprehended a new note in the manner and speech of his flock. He scarcely realized that his own talk had been more spiritual than usual because of the emotion roused within him by Nell’s song. There was a hush over the room. The noisy fellows went out on tiptoe. Voices were subdued. For almost the first time the atmosphere of this rough room where they “held meetings” had become that of a real house of worship.
“Steve Siebert is right,” the parson told himself not without gravity. “It is time that I should show my own respect beyond peradventure for the religion I preach. Betty must shake the mothballs out of that coat.”
Lizard Dan tooled his six mules across the East Fork. The water was more than waist deep, and the beasts swam for part of the way, and the inside passengers sat on the small of their backs with their boots up on the cross-straps. The driver urged the team with voice and whip up the muddy rise to the Wild Rose. His desert-stained face was full of wrinkles of excitement. Joe Hurley, who chanced to be lingering at the door of the hotel, spied the emotion in the bus-driver’s countenance.
“What’s got you, old-timer?” asked the mining man, strolling down to the step below the driver. “Something on the road over from Crescent City bite you?”
“I got bit all right,” growled Lizard Dan. He stooped to put his tobacco stained lips close to Joe’s ear. “The sheriff of Cactus County rode over on the seat with me. Yeppy! And he dropped off back yonder to talk to Sheriff Blaney.”
“Something doing?”
“Youbetcha! The Cactus County sheriff was tellin’ me. He’s been after a guy that turned a trick last summer—fore part of the summer in fact—’way out beyond Hoskins. He was some pretty shrewd short-card tin-horn, if you ask me.”
“A gambler? Anybody know him?” asked Joe quite idly.
“I didn’t get his name. The sheriff was pumpin’ me a lot about who was new—if any—in Canyon Pass. I told him,” and Dan grinned widely, “that ’bout the newest citizens we had yere was Parson Hunt and his sister.”
“You’re some little josher, aren’t you, Dan?” said Joe, grimly. “What had the feller done?”
“The one the sheriff’s after? Cleaned out a sheep camp with marked cards and then made his get-a-way under a gun. Cool as the devil! Shot one of those sheepticks—I mean to say, a shepherd. Never did have much use for sheep men——”
“Me neither,” admitted Hurley.
“But they are ha’f human—leastways, that’s how I look at ’em,” pursued Lizard Dan. “They should have their chance. Marked cards and a gun is no way to win their spondulicks. No, sir.”
“What makes the Cactus County officer think the sharper came this way?”
“Says he and a posse follered him to the Canyon County line, up yonder, ’long back in the summer. They figgered he’d gone Lamberton way, so they swayed off and didn’t come yere. Now something new has come up about the feller, I take it, and the Cactus County sheriff has come yere to get Blaney to help comb this part of the territory. I told him we didn’t have no loose gamblers yere. They all got jobs and have held ’em some time.”
“Tolley is always picking up new hombres,” said Hurley thoughtfully. “I can’t keep run of all the scabby customers he brings in here.”
“But not card-sharps,” said Lizard Dan, shaking his head. “He ain’t got a new dealer in a dog’s age. You wouldn’t count Dick Beckworth one. It’s just like he’s always been yere.”
He waddled away with the mail sacks and his large-bore gun. Hurley found himself suddenly startled by an entirely uncalled-for thought. Surely nothing Lizard Dan had said should have inspired this:
Dick Beckworth had been away from Canyon Pass from the early springtime until recently. He had ridden in from the wilderness on the occasion of the first blizzard. Where had the gambler been during the months he was missed at the Grub Stake?
Hurley was half tempted to go to the Grub Stake and make an inquiry or two, but since that notable night when Steve Siebert had held up Tolley and his gang, Joe had seldom been inside the place. He did, however, wander along the now quiet street toward the honkytonk.
It was drawing toward evening, and a drizzle of rain, which had threatened all day, swept across the West Fork and muffled the town almost instantly as in a gray blanket. The roar of Runaway River in the canyon blew back into Joe’s ears and made him deaf to most other sounds.
But as he crossed the mouth of the alley beside Tolley’s place he heard a sharp “Hist!” He turned to look. A girl, wrapped in a fluttering cloak, stood there, dimly revealed in the thicker darkness of the alley.
“Well, what do you want?” demanded the mining man.
“Mr. Hurley!”
“Great saltpeter! what’s the matter, Rosy?”
“Hush! Shet your yawp!” warned the piano player. “Want to get me into trouble?”
“I don’t know. But it’s something—something bad.”
“Bad? About whom?”
“Parson Hunt and his sister Betty.”
“Betty Hunt?” muttered the mining man with an emphasis that would have told a woman of much less discernment than Rosabell Pickett all that was necessary.
“Yeppy. You like her, Joe Hurley. You want to look out for her. Somebody has got to. That Dick Beckworth——”
“Dick the Devil?”
“You said it! He’s got something on her.”
“He’s got something on Betty Hunt? Never!”
“No use layin’ your hand on your gun butt. It needs something besides that. When fire’s touched to the end of the fuse, no use tryin’ to stamp on the ashes. It is burning toward the powder barrel. The thing’s started. Dick’s told it about her——”
“Told what?” asked Hurley, almost shaking the girl.
“That she was married back East, long before she come out here, and is posing here as an unmarried woman. He says he knows the man that was married to her.”
Hurley was stricken dumb for the moment. Yet recovery was swift. He stammered:
“She—she might. It’s no crime. She—she might have got a divorce and taken her maiden name again, if it’s true. But I wouldn’t take Dick the Devil’s word as to the color of the blue sky.”
“He’s got a paper to prove it. I seen him show it to Boss Tolley. I run to get you. I saw you at the Wild Rose. I figger you are the one to tell the parson.”
“And who’s to tell Betty?” Joe inquired. “I—I——”
“Oh! What’s that?” exclaimed Rosabell, shrinking away. “I—I thought it was thunder.”
A muttering sound grew in Hurley’s hearing, but he paid little attention to it at first. Was it this Betty had meant all the time, when she had kept him at arm’s length? When she had told him that there was somebody back East who, at least, had her promise?
Then the air quaked as though there had been a volcanic upheaval within the immediate district of Canyon Pass. Rosabell shrieked and ran back into the gloom, disappearing toward the rear door of the Grub Stake. Joe ran out into the street, seeing other men coming from the shops and saloons.
His gaze by chance was turned upon the wagon track down the slope beyond the West Fork. He saw a flaming patch of white there. It came down the wagon track with terrific speed. In a moment he realized that it was a white pony and rider.
Lashing the steed the rider forced it into the West Fork. The animal had to swim for it. It seemed as though the stream had filled terrifically within the last few minutes.
Out of the flood scrambled the pony. It was not until then that anybody recognized Nell Blossom and her cream-colored mount. She urged the horse up into the town and they heard her clear voice rising above the sullen thunder of the three rivers:
“The Overhang! The Overhang! It’s down—it’s filled the canyon! Runaway River is stoppered like with a cork in the neck of a bottle. The flood is coming!”