Kitabı oku: «The Heart of Canyon Pass», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXIII – A GREAT LIGHT DAWNS
Some men can escape their duty if they choose to – can ignore it, flout it, even deny its very existence – but not one who is called to be a leader of men toward a higher plane of daily existence. The greatest sophism with which the race has ever been cursed is that hoary one of the lazy preacher: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Religious precept is utterly worthless if the preceptor does not follow his own expounded faith with a living example. The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt had come to that pass where he could no longer ignore the fact that his friend, Joe Hurley, was on the down grade. When the parson cooled down after the exciting events of that evening, both in Colorado Brown’s place and at the Grub Stake, he saw more clearly that he had fallen into error.
If he was to be the spiritual guide and mentor of his congregation at Canyon Pass, he must be the same to one member of it as he was to another. He had not been slow to admonish others of his parishioners; but the man who had brought him here – the one whom he really looked upon as being his chief supporter in the work he was striving to do – was slipping away from him and into flagrantly evil ways.
If Hunt’s character has been revealed at all in this narrative, moral and physical courage have not seemed to be its lack. Then why had the young parson failed to go after Joe Hurley as he did after Judson, the storekeeper, Sam Tubbs, Hi Brownell, Smithy, and other men who were wont to “kick over the traces”?
There was just one clear and cogent reason why Hunt had not taken Joe to task for his failings, as he already had many another man in Canyon Pass. His old friendship for Joe had nothing to do with this neglect. And certainly he did not fear making the good cause in which he was so interested a powerful enemy. There was nothing in Joe Hurley’s generous character that would suggest that for a moment.
It was, in short, the fact that Hunt believed that he and Joe were in love with the same girl.
Although, as far as Hunt had observed, Nell Blossom displayed no particular fondness for Joe Hurley, the latter believed the mining man “understood” the cabaret singer. At least, Nell revealed no such disdain for Joe Hurley as she had publicly for Hunt.
When the latter reviewed the late incidents as they related to Joe, while he tossed on his mattress that night, he admitted he was taking the wrong course with his friend. He had seemed tacitly to overlook sins of commission on Joe’s part that he would have pilloried in another.
Had Hurley not been heated by drink and his passion for gambling, he would not have pursued that unwise course in going to the Grub Stake in a mood which had all but precipitated tragedy. Joe’s recklessness had been unleashed, and Hunt had been obliged to stand by after the unexpected conclusion of the scene and see his friend drink with the very men who, a few minutes before, had been ready to take Joe’s life.
He arose with a new determination. He saw his sister and Nell Blossom ride away from the Wild Rose Hotel. Then he made his way directly to the Great Hope Mine.
Hurley had an office – a small shack – off at one side. The parson found him alone in it, his boots cocked on his battered desk, his pipe drawing well. His grin was as infectious as ever.
“Well, Willie! some time that last night, eh?” was Joe’s greeting. “When I get in a tight corner again, I’ll never wish for a better side-partner than you, old sobersides!”
“Joe,” returned Hunt with a directness that seemed brutal, “if you had been your sober self last night – quite the same man you are wont to be – there would have been no tight corner.”
“Huh?” The other’s boots came to the floor with emphasis. His brown eyes sparked. The muscles of his jaws set grimly. “You’ve got a crust, Willie, to talk to me like that.”
“You need talking to, Joe; and I’m going to do the talking. No! Sit right where you are and listen. You’ve got it coming to you; and, if you are the man I have always thought you, you’ll stand the gaff.”
“Aw, shucks! A drink or two isn’t going to kill Joe Hurley.”
“A drink or two kills his moral sense, and kills his usefulness as a good citizen,” returned Hunt. “Then, you have been gambling steadily.”
“Great saltpeter! isn’t a feller to have any fun at all? I haven’t lost much to Miguel.”
“It is your example to the rest. And what you have lost would help the fund for our church building. And we must have a church, Joe.”
Joe uttered something under his breath.
“What makes you so reckless, Joe?”
“Shucks, Willie! Maybe I have slipped a few cogs. A lone bachelor like me can’t help it sometimes, can he?” asked Hurley, with a smile that tried to be whimsical rather than bitter. “Remember, Willie, I haven’t got a sister to keep me well balanced. It’s womenfolks and – and an interest in one that makes a man a sobersides.”
“Is it!” returned Hunt, with scorn. “If a man hasn’t the stamina to stay straight, no girl will ever keep him in the narrow path – believe me!”
“You belittle Miss Betty’s powers of persuasion,” returned Joe, with a sly glance.
“If that is your belief,” Hunt said, with sharpness and a rising color, “I should think you would keep straight for Nell’s sake.”
“Nell Blossom?”
“Yes. You are interested in her, aren’t you?”
“Surest thing you know, Willie.”
“Then, for her sake – ”
“Hold on!” ejaculated Hurley, sudden suspicion in his gaze. “Do you think I’m soft on Nell?”
“Well – er – aren’t you?” demanded his friend rather faintly.
“I’m free to confess I was,” said Joe slowly, watching Hunt now with growing understanding in his eyes. “But that little skeesicks showed me where I got off long ago. And I tell you fair, Willie, she is not the girl who is bothering me.”
“Then, there is a girl? Joe! You and Betty – ”
Hurley put up his hand, turning his face away. “No use, Willie. Betty’s given me my congé, too. I reckon I am an ‘also-ran’ with the ladies.”
“My dear Joe!” Hunt grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand Betty.”
Hurley went to the door suddenly, opened it, and looked out. A cold blast from the hills ruffled the papers on the desk. The sun was suddenly dimmed. In the distance the coming wind whined like a sick dog.
“Say! we’re going to get it,” he muttered.
“A storm coming?” asked Hunt absently. His own heart sang. A foolish happiness swept over him. He went to look out over Hurley’s shoulder. “Does it look bad to you?”
“Youbetcha! It’s coming faster than you ever saw a storm move, I reckon, Willie. Those old has-beens, Steve and Andy, can’t be fooled. They got in from the desert just ahead of it.”
“A blizzard, Joe?” cried the parson with sudden anxiety. “The girls!”
“What about them? What girls?”
“Betty and Nell. They’ve gone out on horseback.”
“You don’t mean it? Er – Well, Nell must have seen it coming and turned back. She knows this country as well as a man. But, come on! Let’s go down to Tim’s corral and see if the ponies are in again. It wouldn’t do – ”
He slammed the office door, shouted to his manager, and strode away. Hunt had to put his best foot forward to keep up with him. Women and children were already scuttling to shelter when they went down through the town. Bill Judson waved a hand at them from his door, shouting:
“Them old desert rats knowed their biz, didn’t they? I’d set my clock by them, I would.”
At the corral the two young men saw at a glance that the girls’ ponies had not been returned by Cholo Sam. They went on toward the hotel in silence. Now the first needles of the ice-storm cut their faces. It was nothing like any storm Hunt had ever seen. And how fast it grew in volume and strength!
Cholo Sam and Maria were at the door of the hotel, looking down the street eagerly and anxiously.
“Which way did they go?” shouted Hurley, without any preamble.
“Oh, Señor Hurley!” cried Sam. “To the East. T’roo the East Fork.”
Already sight of the rugged path up the heights on that side of the canyon was blotted out by the driving ice particles.
“Shall we get horses and go after them?” panted Hunt.
“Horses won’t live in this. Maybe we can stir up some of the boys to go with us. Wish I had my roughnecks here.”
But there was not time to go back to the mine. The storm had come on so suddenly that the workers above the town might hole in until the first force of the blizzard was over.
Hunt ran up to his room to get his heavier coat and a couple of blankets. As he descended the stairs, Cholo Sam came from the barroom with a filled flask in his hand.
“Some of the best brandy, Señor Hunt,” he said. “It is for the seekness only that comes with the cold. Ah thees ice in the lungs is death, señor – death!”
The parson took it without hesitation and slipped it into his pocket. He ran out to see Joe Hurley coming out of Colorado Brown’s place with Jib Collins and Cale Mack behind him. In another few seconds, so rapidly did the driving ice thicken the air, Hunt lost sight of the trio and they fairly bumped into him when they reached the spot where he stood.
“That you, Willie?” shouted Hurley. “We’ll get a rope and tie ourselves together. Tie mufflers over our faces. Say, there may be some more fellers in the Grub Stake who will help.”
He turned that way, finding his direction more by sense than by sight. They stumbled up the steps and in at the door of the Grub Stake.
At that very moment a half-frozen man, leading a storm-battered horse, had fallen at Tolley’s rear door. The dive keeper was dragging him into the place like a log as Hurley, Hunt, and their companions strode into the barroom.
CHAPTER XXIV – THE BARRIER DOWN – FOR A MOMENT
“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.
CHAPTER XXV – UNDERSTANDING
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.
