Kitabı oku: «The Heart of Canyon Pass», sayfa 10

“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.

CHAPTER XIX – A GOOD DEAL OF A MAN

During the ensuing weeks the cabaret singer went often to see Betty at the hotel. They even rode together, for Joe Hurley suddenly became so busy at the Great Hope Mine that he was forced to excuse himself, so he said, from accompanying the Eastern girl on those pleasant jaunts which both had so enjoyed.

The two girls actually enjoyed each other’s society and found more than a riding habit in which to feel a mutual interest. The friendship grew out of a hunger in the hearts of both Nell and Betty.

The parson did not make a third in their rambles, nor was he often in sight when Nell called on Betty. The latter would not have encouraged any intimacy between the mining-camp girl and Hunt under any circumstances. She did not dream that her brother felt more than passing interest in the half-wild Nell.

The latter never attended the services held in Tolley’s old dance hall. But the Passonians in general came to accept the religious exercises as an institution and supported them fairly in point of contributions and attendance. There was yet, however, strong opposition to the parson and his work. Nor did it all center around Boss Tolley.

Nell, soon after the beginning of her acquaintance with Betty, stopped singing “This Is No Place for a Minister’s Son” and took up no other ditty aimed in any particular at the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and his work.

As for Hunt himself, he went forward, accepting both praise and blame with equal equanimity. But he began to be worried secretly about Joe Hurley.

Hunt supplemented the morning preaching with a Sunday school in the afternoon and a general service in the evening, at which he usually gave a helpful talk on more secular lines than his morning sermon.

Hunt would have been glad to have had more and better singing; but although Rosabell Pickett did her best, the song service was far from satisfactory. The parson never passed Colorado Brown’s place in the evening and heard Nell’s sweet voice that he was not covetous. He would never be satisfied – but he whispered this not even to Betty – until he heard that voice leading his congregation in the meeting room.

The rougher element that had at first attended the meetings mainly out of curiosity soon drifted away.

Hunt was not, however, above carrying his work out into the highways and byways of the town. If the men would not come to his services, he carried a measure of his helpful efforts to them. He did more than visit the homes of Canyon Pass. He went, especially at the noon hour, to where the men were at work.

Hunt never made himself offensive. He did not join the workmen at the mines or washings as a parson, but as another man, interested in their labor and in themselves.

Once a mule-drawn ore wagon broke down on the road to the ore-crushers. It blocked the way of other teams. The parson took off his coat, helped raise the wagon-body so the axle could be blocked, and aided in getting on another wheel in place of the broken one.

A man working alone in a ditch some distance from the Oreode was so unfortunate as to bring a rock down and get caught by the leg. His shouts for help were first heard by Hunt, who was striding along the wagon track. Without other aid the parson pried up the rock and drew the man out from under it. Then he carried the fellow, with his lacerated leg, to his shack, where he lived with his partner; and between the partner and Hunt the injured man was nursed as long as he needed attention at all.

This incident was the spark that started the idea of the hospital for Canyon Pass in Hunt’s mind. He began to talk hospital to everybody, even to Slickpenny Norris. The banker threw up his hands and began to squeal at last.

“That’s just it! That’s just it!” he cried. “I knew one thing would lead to another if a parson come into this town. I told that crazy Joe Hurley so. He had no business ever to have brought you here.”

“What has my coming to Canyon Pass got to do with it?” Hunt asked mildly. “The need of a hospital – there are always accidents happening at the mines – was here long before I came. If a man is hurt badly he dies before help can get here. Doctor Peterby is no surgeon – and you know, Mr. Norris, he is not always to be trusted. This towns needs a place where an injured man can get surgical treatment and proper nursing.”

“I don’t see why,” muttered Norris. “We were getting along quite well enough before you butted in.”

Hurley, however, agreed with his friend. In spite of the fact that he seemed to have “fallen from grace” a good bit, the owner of the Great Hope was strong for all secular improvement of the town, whatever may have been his private emotions regarding the religion that Hunt represented. The movement for a hospital took form and grew.

It was not these things, however, that endeared Hunt to the hearts of the rougher element of Canyon Pass. And in time – and that before fall – some of the toughest hard-rock men and muckers working in the mines and at the Eureka Washings openly praised the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt.

Hunt one noon had given the men who gathered in a quiet place to eat their lunches a little talk on first aid to the injured. He had sent to Denver for several first-aid kits and was now going about from mine to mine explaining the more important uses of the articles in the box.

The men understood the helpfulness of this. Neglected wounds meant blood-poisoning, one of the most painful scourges a prospector or miner working far beyond the reach of surgeon and hospital, can have. It was well to know, too, how to make a proper tourniquet, and how to lay a bandage so that it would hold well.

The whistle blew and the great engine was started. The men drifted away to their several jobs. There were three pipes at work tearing down the bank on the upper bench at the Eureka Washings, and others below. The force of the water thrown from the nozzles of these pipes rocked the mighty hydraulic “guns” and caused the men astride of them to hold on with both hands. It took a husky fellow to guide that stream spouting from between his knees.

Hunt had returned the kit to the superintendent’s office and climbed to the upper bench, intending to go over the highland to the Great Hope Mine, which was nearer the West Fork River. Hi Brownell, who straddled the middle gun up here, risked waving a cordial hand at the parson when he saw the latter departing. The noise of the hurtling streams drowned Hi’s voice, of course.

Just as Hunt returned a smiling salute to the young fellow – one in whom the parson was deeply interested, for Hi was really a worth-while boy – the accident happened that was fated to mark this day as one long to be remembered at Canyon Pass. Incidentally the occasion, more than any other one thing, brought about the establishment of the new hospital.

The whine and splash of the streams of water drowned most other sounds. But of a sudden, as Hunt was turning his back on the scene, he heard a sharp crack – a sound that would have penetrated the thunderous rumble of a railroad train.

Hunt wheeled. He saw Hi Brownell thrown high into the air as though from a viciously bucking broncho, come down sprawling, and the savage stream from his pipe strike the man and carry him, as though he were a leaf on a torrent, into the cavity in the bank, against which the nozzle of the pipe was aimed.

The flapping limbs and struggling torso of Brownell were visible for a moment only; then down upon the spot roared soil, gravel, and larger stones, of which the bank’s strata were built.

Unguided, the shooting stream from the gun swept first one way along the bench, then the other. It corrugated the face of the bank deeply for yards in either direction. For a moment Hunt saw again the struggling body of the injured man at the edge of the fallen rubble. Then came another slide to cover it completely!

The broken hydraulic gun fell over on its side. The parting of some section of it was what had thrown Brownell into the air and into the path of its stream.

But before the other gunners on the bench who saw Brownell’s accident could shut off their streams, Hunt had acted. Some muckers tried to run in to seize Brownell or dig him out from under the gravel that had fallen, but the stream from the writhing pipe swept them aside like chips. Half a dozen were rolling in the mud of the bench.

Hunt sprang directly for the seat of the trouble. That hose-pipe had to be controlled before a thing could be done to help the buried Brownell. Precious moments were lost signaling to the engineer below to shut off power.

Hunt had not played football on his college team for nothing. He made an extremely low “tackle,” for he went down on his knees and then slid along through the mud to grapple with the writhing pipe that had broken away from its fastenings. He got hold of it and wrestled with it for a few seconds as two men might wrestle on the mat. When the other men came running from below Hunt had conquered the formidable thing, and the stream was shooting into the air, where all the harm it did was to shower some of the men as it fell back to earth.

For thirty seconds or more he held it so, until the stream was shut off below. The others ran for the pile that had overwhelmed Brownell. They dug into it with their bare hands, got hold of one leg, and dragged him forth like a wet rag out of a pan of dishwater!

He was alive; nor were there many bones broken. But he was a terrible sight, and they had to work over him for some minutes before he breathed again. Hunt went at this task, too, as coolly as did the superintendent. That first-aid kit came in very handily at this juncture.

The men stood around for a little while and watched and talked. The accident had come near being a tragedy.

“Believe me,” said one rough fellow, “that parson is a good deal of a man. I’m for him, strong!”

“You’d even go to church for him, would you, Jack?” chuckled his mate.

“Church? I’d go to a hotter place than that for him!” was the prompt and emphatic reply.

CHAPTER XX – MURDER WILL OUT

Joe Hurley had lost none of his admiration for his college friend whom he had encouraged to come West. He still believed the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was the very man to find the heart of Canyon Pass. Nor did events as they developed disprove his pre-judgment of the result of Hunt’s coming.

But it must be confessed a sour note had come into the life of the owner of the Great Hope. He was a worker; he was energetic; he never under any circumstances neglected business – not even when he had been most attentive to Betty Hunt. But he now had little joy in his work and looked for recreation to a means he had eschewed for the most part since the Easterners had arrived.

Like most men of his class and upbringing, the ex-cow-puncher found satisfaction for a certain daring trait in his character at the gambling table. The coarser forms of pleasure in the honkytonks did not attract Joe Hurley. He danced occasionally with the better class of girls; he never drank more than he thought was good for him – and he carried his drink well; but when he “sat in” at a game of stud poker or went up against the wheel – roulette was popular with the Passonians – he admitted in his saner moments that he “didn’t know when he had enough.” The wild streak in the fellow showed through the veneer of repression as it had when he was in college.

Hunt could not feel as lenient now toward these escapades as he once had. Not alone had the Easterner’s outlook on life become more serious; but after five years Joe Hurley, he thought, should have “grown up.” He was, however, too wise to utter a single word in opposition to Joe’s renewed course in moral retrogression. He took Sam Tubbs to task when he met that old reprobate staggering home from the saloons and gave him a tongue-lashing that Sam admitted afterward made his wife’s nagging seem like a cradle lullaby. Hunt faced down Slickpenny Norris on the open street, to the delight of the bystanders, over the banker’s niggardliness in opposing the building and equipment of the hospital. The parson had been known to seize upon two well-grown young fellows fighting in a vacant lot to the delight of their fellows, knock their heads together resoundingly and send each home “with a flea in his ear.” But he had not a word of admonition it seemed for Joe Hurley.

Yet Hunt was troubled about his friend. He feared Betty knew something about the reason for the change in the mine owner. But here again he was silent. He knew his sister well – too well to try to gain her confidence on any matter which she would not give gratuitously.

Hunt had been much too busy at the time when Hurley began to withdraw from Betty’s companionship to notice the gradual drifting apart of the two. When the brother awoke to the fact that his friend and his sister seemed to be mere acquaintances again, Betty had found a close companion in Nell Blossom.

Under certain circumstances this latter fact might have encouraged Hunt to consider his own influence with Nell as increasing; but by this time he had gained more than a casual acquaintance with the cabaret singer’s character. Joe Hurley had not written too strongly about Nell’s stubbornness. Hunt had undertaken in several ways to break down the wall the girl had raised between them. She fought him off with all the vigor of a wildcat and without much more politeness than one of those felines would have shown.

He met her at Mother Tubbs’ – not by intention; but he was rather frequently there to confer with the uncultured but very sensible old woman. Nell snubbed him, or scorned him, or was downright impudent to him, just as her mood chanced to be. He had to warn the old woman to pay no attention to the girl’s attitude or there would have been a flare-up between the two. And Hunt very well knew that while Nell lived with Mother Tubbs she was pretty safe.

He heartily approved, too, of her intimacy with Betty. He could not gauge the influence Betty was having on the self-willed girl; but he had confidence in his sister, and he knew Nell would only be helped by the association and that Betty would not be injured.

The opposition of Boss Tolley and his gang was the last thing to trouble the placidity of Parson Hunt’s soul. They snapped and barked, but had as yet come to no close-quarters since Tolley’s adventure with the pepper-besprinkled Bible. That tale had convulsed the Passonians with mirth, and even when weeks later it was retold, it brought ready laughs from the citizens.

It was now fall, a golden-and-red autumn that enthralled the visitors from the East when they looked abroad to the hills of a morning. Even Betty confessed that the glories of the Berkshires at the same season were surpassed by this sight. She had come now to appreciate the rude and bold lines of the mountains and the gaudy color schemes of frost-bitten shrubbery intermixed with the emerald of the Coniferæ.

The early brightening of the face of nature by these autumnal tints foretold for the natives of Canyon Pass an early winter. To make this assurance doubly sure, old Steve Siebert and Andy McCann came wandering back to the Pass weeks ahead of their scheduled time.

It was a fair enough day when the two old prospectors came in – McCann in the morning and Siebert along toward night. In all the time they had been absent, after getting out of the canyon itself, they had not been in sight of each other. One had prospected east of the Runaway, and the other west. Their activities in fact had been at least a hundred miles apart. But both had seen signs – unmistakable signs – of approaching winter.

They met as usual the amused inquiries of the Passonians regarding the “ten-strike” they had been expected to make. Was there due to be a stampede for the scene of the claims they had staked out? Had they brought in samples of the “real stuff” that would start a regular Cripple Creek boom somewhere out in the Topaz?

The two old men grinned, their watery eyes blinking, and “stood the gaff” as patiently as they always did. Why did they spend half the year in the ungodly loneliness of the desert places, and in the end bring nothing back with them? Not even an additional coating of tan, for their leathery faces and hands were already so darkened that the sun and wind had no effect upon them.

“You old duffers ain’t right in your minds,” said Judson to Andy McCann. “Just as loco as you can be. Ye never did make a strike and ye never will – ”

“Lots you know about it, Bill,” grumbled McCann, his jaws moving stiffly.

“Well, you never did, did you?” demanded the storekeeper, with twinkling eyes.

“If you were yere twenty years ago – ”

“You know derned well I was, Andy,” put in Judson. “Reckon I was. And before.”

“You recommember the flood then?”

“I ain’t lost my mem’ry,” muttered Judson.

“All right. Keep that in yer mind,” said Andy, shaking his head in senile fashion. “There was a discovery made that year that you – nor nobody else in Canyon Pass – knowed anything about. Talk about the mother lode! Well!”

“Is that so?” cried the storekeeper eagerly. “Then why wasn’t it worked? I knowed you and Steve brought in samples of the right stuff; but – ”

“Steve,” snarled McCann, his whole manner changing. “That derned rat? Him? He didn’t have no more to do with findin’ that vein – Huh! Huh!” He coughed, fell silent, went out of the store, deaf to any further questions.

It was Joe Hurley, standing with Hunt on Main Street, who was first to welcome Steve Siebert as he came along, riding his lean mare and towing the burro that looked as though it might have been carved rudely out of desert rock.

“Well, old-timer, I certainly am glad to see you,” the mining man said. “What luck?”

“Oh, so-so,” croaked the prospector.

“Ain’t going to tell us you worked all summer just to get free air?” and Joe chuckled.

“Sumpin’ like it,” replied Siebert, and grinned toothlessly.

“You do beat my time! Goin’ to come over to the Great Hope? There’s a job for you.”

“Mighty nice of you, Joe. I’ll come,” said the old man, nodding.

“And not a darn thing to show for all your pickin’ and smellin’ about the Topaz since spring?”

“Not what you’d call a bonanza.”

“Youbetcha!” ejaculated Hurley. He turned with a grin to Hunt. “Meet Parson Hunt, Steve. We’ve done more in the Pass this summer than you have on the desert. We’ve got us a real parson, and we’re aimin’ to have a sure-enough church.”

“That’s a good word,” agreed Steve solemnly, leaning to shake Hunt’s hand. The old man’s palm was as dry and scaly as a lizard’s back. “There’s a heap o’ folks yere that need religion. I understand that derned Andy McCann’s got back.”

The gibe was obvious. Joe grinned with appreciation.

“Yep,” he said. “And he hasn’t got any more to show for his summer’s work than you have.”

“Him!” snarled Steve. “Of course he ain’t. That dumb-head wouldn’t find gold in the mint. No, sir! Never did find any – ”

“I thought he did make a ten-strike once, but that the slide twenty years ago knocked his claim into a cocked-hat?”

“What? Him? Does he say so?” ejaculated Siebert, his wrinkled, tanned countenance flaming angrily.

“I heard tell,” and Joe chuckled.

“He’s a plumb liar. He didn’t find any such thing. If there was any such discovery made in them days, it was me that done it. Youbetcha! But him! Huh! Anyway, it’s all buried deeper ’n the Pit – take it from me,” and, grumbling, Steve Siebert rode on.

“Believe me, Willie,” said Hurley, “there’s a case for you. Try to get those two together.”

“These two old men are enemies?” asked Hunt quietly.

“That’s no name for it. They hate each other as only two fellers can who once were the closest friends. Old Steve and Andy were once as close as twins. But they tell me for twenty years they have been snarling at and back-biting each other something scandalous. If you want to introduce love and kindness into the hearts of Canyon Pass folks, Willie, just give those two old ruffians a whirl.”

He laughed – not the kind of laugh he would have uttered some weeks before. There was a sneering note in Joe Hurley’s voice now when he spoke of Hunt’s work and the better things of life. The parson noted it now as he had often noticed it of late, but he said nothing in comment at this time. He merely observed, before separating from Joe to return to the hotel for supper:

“Drop into the meeting room to-night, Joe. You haven’t shown much interest in the Men’s Club lately, and the work should have your approval. Besides, there are certain business matters that must be discussed at once.”

“Well,” said Joe gruffly.

He did not promise to attend. He did not attend.

“I wonder what kept Joe away?” Hunt ventured to Judson, as they, the last of the company, left the meeting room and the parson locked the door. That was never left unlocked since Nell Blossom’s trick with Mother Tubbs’ Bible. “I expected him to-night to give us his views on that matter.”

The old storekeeper turned to him and grinned. “Joe’s mighty busy, I reckon,” he said.

“In the evening?”

“This evening, youbetcha!”

“In just what way, Judson? What’s up your sleeve?”

“My funnybone,” chuckled the storekeeper. “And I have to laugh. Just about once in so often Joe seems to lose ev’ry mite of sense he was born with. He thinks he can beat the man that got the first patent out on stud poker.”

“Ah! I know Joe used to like cards. When he was East. But now – Is it as bad as you intimate, Judson?”

“Some worse, I’m free to say,” declared the old man. “Joe’s gone up against Colorado Brown’s dealer, Miguel, several times lately. They get up a round game of a few fellers – all friends. But Miguel is always playin’ for the house. He’s a wonder. ‘Last Card Mike’ they sometimes call him. He seems to be able to read clean through the backs of any pack o’ cards you put up to him. He’s a wizard – no mistake.”

“You mean that Joe is losing money in this game?” asked Hunt, with some apprehension.

“Me, I’d just as soon bet on flies with their shoes stuck in molasses as to play stud. Youbetcha!” returned Judson, with a chuckle.

Hunt separated from the storekeeper and walked slowly toward the Wild Rose. He passed Colorado’s place; then he turned back. It is a matter of much moment for one man to interfere in another’s private affairs, and no one realized this fact better than the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. His office could not excuse any unasked advice or intervention in Hurley’s chosen course, no matter how much Hunt desired to restrain his friend.

He hesitated again when he faced the swinging doors. There was not much noise inside. This was not a Saturday night and the amusement places along Main Street were not crowded. Most of the Passonians who wasted their money in the several places of this character spent it all and spent it quick. The mid-week nights were lean for the dive keepers.

It was not lack of courage that restrained Mr. Hunt from preaching a general revival and a bitter war against the cohorts of the devil in this town. Merely, the time was not yet ripe. Sometimes he feared that it never would be ripe. Certainly he had not yet reached the heart of Canyon Pass. Since the first shack had been built here at the junction of the two forks, the enemy had been in power; and it was now well entrenched.

But to-night Hunt was impressed by the feeling that his friend needed him. Joe was slipping away from him. For some unexplained reason the very man who had brought him here to the Pass and coaxed the idea of a spiritual uplift of the place into germination, was backsliding.

The parson began to feel that he could not stand by and see this thing go on. He pushed through the flaps of the door. He had seldom entered this, or any of the other saloons, in the evening.

His entrance now, however, did not serve to startle any of the habitués. Brown himself came forward to shake hands with the parson. Some of the players at the green-covered tables nodded to Hunt. The three-piece orchestra in the dance hall at the back was droning out a fox-trot. Nell was not singing. The principal interest seemed to be about a corner table at which the parson saw Joe Hurley sitting.

After a word to Brown in greeting, the parson walked over to this corner table and joined the group standing about it. Hurley looked up, grinned, and said:

“Hullo, Willie! Want me?”

“I’ve something to ask you – by and by, when you are done.”

“Looks like an all-night session,” returned Hurley, immediately giving his attention to the cards again. “Mike, here, is trying to skin me alive and the sheep is bleatin’. Deal ’em, Mike.”

Hunt said nothing more; but he remained. By the grim set of Joe’s lips and the silence of the company about the table, he knew that the moment was unpropitious for any insistence on his part that his friend give him his attention. Yet he had the feeling that something was going to happen, that his place was here at this gambling table rather than at the hotel with Betty.

The event that he subconsciously expected, however, came from outside. There was a sudden clamor at the door, the flaps swung in sharply, and several men entered. Smithy, Judson’s gangling young clerk, was the most noticeable member of the new group. He had a cut over his right eye, a puff on his cheek-bone that could have been made by nothing but a heavy fist, and when he spoke a crimson gap in his upper jaw betrayed the absence of two teeth.

“What’s happened to you, Smithy?” demanded Colorado Brown, coming forward quickly. It would not be to the benefit of the house to have the gamblers disturbed at this moment. “Somebody punch you?”

“I’ll thay they did!” lisped Smithy. He was half sobbing, but he was mad clear through.

“They didn’t improve your looks none,” said Colorado.

“Never mind muh lookth,” said Smithy. “I want to know what you fellers think of this?”

“I just told you. Whoever done it didn’t make you any handsomer,” interposed the proprietor of the hall. “Now, if you’ve had a fight outside, don’t bring it in here. We’re plumb peaceable here to-night, we are.”

“Wait till you hear what the kid’s got to say, Colorado,” put in one of those that had entered with Smithy.

“Spit it out!” advised the proprietor.

“I want to know what Mr. Joe Hurley thinks of this?” Smithy managed to make plain. “What do you think they are saying about Nell Blossom?”

“Nell Blossom?”

Hurley’s voice did not join the general chorus which repeated the cabaret singer’s name. But he looked up, his gaze met that of the parson, and a lightning glance of understanding passed between them.