The Heart of Canyon Pass

CHAPTER I – DISCONTENT AT CANYON PASS

The bluebird was no harbinger of spring at Canyon Pass. Most of the inhabitants had never seen that feathered songster and many had never heard of it. Incidentally these same Passonians would not have known a harbinger in any case, presuming possibly that it was one of those new-fangled nipples for the hydraulic pipes at the Eureka Washings, or something fancy that Bill Judson was selling in cans at the Three Star Grocery.

But spring had unmistakably arrived at Canyon Pass when those two irrepressible pocket-hunters, Steve Siebert and Andy McCann, got together their frayed and rusty outfits, exchanged the hard-earned money each had toiled for during the winter over the counter of the Three Star for supplies and loaded each his burro till the sad-eyed little brutes almost buckled under the weight of flour, beans, salt pork, coffee, and prospectors’ tools.

Each ancient then mounted his moth-eaten cayuse, jerked the towline of his objecting burro, and proceeded out of town, Steve making the ford through the East Fork, while Andy plodded through the shallows of the West Fork, both bound down the canyon for the desert country which they hated with an unbelievably bitter hatred, yet which dragged the old men back to its grim barrens as soon as the spring freshets cleared the canyon and gulches of winter’s accumulation of snow.

Canyon Pass was no beauty spot over which an artist might rave; nor was the landscape surrounding it even passably attractive to the eye. Man, in delving for nature’s treasures in the rocky headlands and along the benches of the East and West Forks, had marred past redemption what little beauty of form and color the rugged wedge of land at the head of the canyon once possessed.

But on this morning there was a soft blur of blue haze padding the sharp outlines of the canyon walls and brooding over the higher hills. The streams flowing on either side of the town crooned instead of foaming boisterously in their beds, and where they joined to make Runaway River, which followed the bed of the canyon southerly, the thunder of their waters seemed hushed.

It was not yet sunrise, but a pearl-gray radiance flooded the town and canyon as far south as one could see. Lights wavered drunkenly behind the window-panes of the all-night saloons and dance halls. This enticing spring morning followed the dregs of another riotous night in Canyon Pass.

The day before had been pay day at the Eureka Washings and the Oreode Company’s diggings and at most of the major mining prospects in the vicinity. At noon the miners and other workmen had knocked off work, drawn their pay, and, cleaned up and dressed in holiday attire, had sought the amusement places of the town. From dark till dawn they had as usual torn the town wide open like a paper sack, to quote Bill Judson, as he stood in the doorway of his store and watched the two old desert rats leaving the dulling merriment and drunkenness behind them as they weaved their several ways out of sight on either bank of Runaway River.

“They’ve been doing this for twenty years,” added Judson, pointing with his pipe stem to the disappearing prospectors. “An’ to my knowledge and belief ain’t neither of ’em struck a smell of paying color in all that time.”

“That so?” returned Smithy, his gangling clerk, coming outside to stretch and yawn. Smithy had the look of a young man who was still in growth and he needed, as Judson said, “all outdoors to stretch in.”

“Say! What’s the matter with them two old sour doughs? All the time they was buyin’ that stuff they never spoke a word to each other, and if one of ’em caught a look from t’other he snarled like a wild tagger! They’d have showed their teeth – both of ’em – if they’d had any left but stubs.”

“Ain’t spoke, to my knowledge,” said the storekeeper, “Steve and Andy ain’t, in all of these twenty years. ’Fore that they was as thick as hasty puddin’ an’ throwed in together ev’ry spring – even steven – when they went prospecting; comin’ back yere to Canyon Pass in the fall as happy as a bride and groom returning from the honeymoon.”

“What happened? What made ’em so sore on each other?” asked Smithy.

“Don’t know. Never did know. Never could find out. ’Twas right after the big slide. You’ve heard tell o’ that, even if you ain’t been here six months?”

“A thousand times,” returned Smithy in a bored tone.

“Well, Steve and Andy was perky as blackbirds in a strawyard that spring. ’Twas twenty years back. They hid out their camp somewhere near town that time. I always figgered they had a good prospect below there, in the canyon. ’Twas even reported that they took a sample of the right stuff to the assayer’s office. But they was as close mouthed as twin clams in the last stages of hydrophoby.

“Then come the slide. Most of us that was yere then didn’t think of much for a week or two but whether Canyon Pass was goin’ to be left on the map or not. Our stake was yere, and the slide acted like a stopper in Runaway River – like to plugged the old canyon for fair.

“Howsumever, when the channel was more or less clear again and we could come down off the roofs of our shacks, Steve and Andy showed up, but from different directions, as sore at each other as two carbuncles, and they ain’t never been knowed to speak to one another since. Won’t even drink at the same bar. The only time they come into the Three Star together is the morning they pull stakes for the desert.”

Smithy yawned again. Steve Siebert and Andy McCann had now disappeared beyond outcropping warts of rock at the foot of the canyon walls.

Down the street from the direction of the mining shafts sunk in the heights behind the town strode a well-proportioned young man whose bootsoles rang on the patches of earth out of which the frost had not yet thawed. He was cleanly shaved and clean-looking, and stood more than six feet tall, with an air of frank assertiveness even in his carriage. He owned a high color under the wind-tan of his countenance, sandy hair, and brown eyes with golden flecks in them when he was amused or when he was angry.

And Joe Hurley was usually swayed by one emotion or the other. Now he appeared to be amused as he came abreast of the Three Star Grocery.

“What’s got you and Smithy up so early, Bill?” he asked.

“Dad burn it, Joe! Don’t you know spring has came?”

“Pshaw! I thought I heard a tree-frog last night. So Steve Siebert and Andy McCann have lit out same as usual? We shall miss Steve at the Great Hope.”

“Surest thing you know, Joe. They’re on their way. And just as sociable as usual.” Joe Hurley’s eyes flashed with the gleam of fun that made him beloved of all who did not hate him. But before he could utter a comment the storekeeper added: “Wasn’t you in to the Grub Stake to-night?”

Hurley wheeled to frown suddenly at the flickering lamps of Boss Tolley’s gambling hall and cabaret almost directly across the street. The quick change of emotion reflected in his face betrayed the character of the man. Hurley was given to sudden impulses, usually spurred by the primal passions. Yet he was a strong man, too, and kept the lid on those passions if he desired.

“Nell’s got some new songs,” went on Judson slyly. “Right cute they are. She certainly is some songbird, Joe. Dad burn it! She’s too good for those roughnecks.”

Hurley nodded slowly but did not show Judson his face at once, still watching the pale lights of the honkytonk fighting the advancing glow of the dawn. The storekeeper had not lived sixty-five years – thirty years of them right here in Canyon Pass – without gaining a pretty keen insight into human nature. He did not have to see that scowl on Joe Hurley’s face. He knew what Joe was ruminating.

“And ’tain’t only roughnecks that our Nell’s too good for,” pursued Judson finally. “The pizenest snakes, they tell me, is the prettiest. An’ kids are tickled to look at pretties. Nell’s only a kid after all.”

“You’re right, Bill!” ejaculated the mine owner with a snap of his jaws and his eyes sparking from no good humor.

He glanced balefully at the Grub Stake, his face set grimly, almost threatening.

There were fitful strains of music from within and still some clatter of feet and voices. Boss Tolley made it his boast that his show continued until the last reveler left.

The Grub Stake was a sprawling, T-shaped structure with the long bar and gaming tables in the shank of the T, the dance hall and stage at the rear. Beside the main entrance was the sign: “Check Your Guns and Spurs Here,” and at the short counter presided a young woman in a sleeveless silk jersey and kneelength satin skirt, who dealt out brass checks and airy persiflage indiscriminately.

The rosewood bar, behind which Boss Tolley and his three barmen sweated at the height of the revelry, had cost a fortune to freight over the trail to Canyon Pass. The gaudy oil painting which hung back of the bar, to hear Boss Tolley tell it, had cost him a second fortune.

Dick Beckworth, who was Tolley’s chief dealer at the tables of chance, was a privileged character. He was supposed to be a “killer” with the ladies. He dressed his long curls and heavy black mustache as carefully as he did his sleek and slender person. Cream-colored flannel shirt, a flowing tie, velvet jacket and broadcloth trousers tucked into patent-leather boots, and a Mexican sombrero heavy with silver cord to top this ensemble, he made a picture to rival the squalid painting over the bar.

The night had been strenuous at the tables, but the gambling fever had now abated. Dick lolled gracefully in the armchair at his empty table with half-closed eyes, smoking a cigarette. Around a table near the archway between the barroom and the hall was a noisy group of miners, but they were no longer playing. Their glasses had just been refilled at the bar.

The rasping chords of a hard-working male quartette beyond the archway repeated a syncopated rhythm for the entertainment of the patrons of the tables.

From beneath the arch into the barroom stepped suddenly an astonishingly brilliant figure – a figure engraved as sharply as a cameo against the blue mist of tobacco smoke that now drifted in a thin haze throughout the barnlike place. The group of miners about the first table roared a greeting.

“Nell! Nell Blossom! The blossom of Canyon Pass!”

“Give us a song of your own, Nellie!” added one burly miner, swaying from his seat toward her, a maudlin smile on his face.

The girl’s smiling expression changed swiftly to one of flaring fury. She swept past the miners and headed straight for Dick Beckworth, who had watched the incident with a little smile flickering about his lips. The girl’s face was still ablaze. She needed no rouge or lipstick in any case to lend it color.

“Dick,” she said tensely, “I hate this place!”

“I’ve already told you I hate to see you in it,” he rejoined with apparent frankness. “Singing and dancing for these roughnecks is far beneath you.”

The flame of her anger gradually waned as she gazed down into his face. His usual calmness was somewhat ruffled by her near presence. Nell Blossom held a certain influence over him that “Dick the Devil” – his boasted cognomen among his admirers – was loath to acknowledge.

But she was sweet enough and pretty enough as she stood there to stir the most placid heart. Even the tawdry costume she wore could not detract from her charm, the red silk blouse with the V-shaped cut at the neck, belted velvet skirt to the tops of tiny riding-boots on tiny feet, her clustering curls of a golden-brown color crowned by a “cowgirl” hat – all worn as a costume in which to sing “Pony Boy,” and “Cheyenne,” which popular hits had finally reached Canyon Pass.

“I hate this place, Dick,” she said again, now wearily dropping into a chair at his elbow.

Nell Blossom possessed one of those rare complexions that remind one of nothing so much as a ripe Alberta peach. The crimson of her cheeks was vivid, but tinted away into the creaminess of her satin skin. Her lips were not too red. Her nose was a nose to be proud of without being large. Her ears were visible and like the blossoms of the dogwood tree in texture and coloring.

“You know how I feel, Nell,” said Dick, with a calm that belied his heartbeats. “I’m sick of all this, too.” He gestured gracefully with the hand that held his cigarette. A jewel sparkled on that hand. “Canyon Pass is a dirty hole. If you say the word we’ll get out of it. I’ve made a good stake. My rake-off has given me a full poke at last. We’ll go away from here, and I’ll get into some paying business. I’ll never turn a card again – for Boss Tolley or any other man. I mean it!”

The girl was looking straight into his eyes. He met that searching gaze as inscrutably as he had learned to endure the scrutiny of his opponent at the poker table.

“Do you mean it, Dick?”

“Just that.” He nodded. “As I told you yesterday, say the word and we’ll light out – now – this morning. You don’t know much about the world outside of Canyon Pass, Nell, but I’ll show it to you. And I love you – love you like the devil!”

There was a force in his final phrase, although he did not stir in his chair, that made her tremble. A vivid flush slowly dyed her cheeks and throat. It passed, to leave her blue eyes humid and her lips smiling.

“If you don’t believe me – ”

“I do,” she interrupted. “I believed you yesterday. My saddlebags are all packed, Dick, and I’m ready just whenever you are.”

A sudden electric tremor passed through the man’s nerves. He veiled his eyes for a moment that she might not see what flared into them. He rose with her.

“Get into your riding clothes and we’ll start. I’ll meet you with my horse in half an hour,” he said almost sternly.

But his eyes now answered her look of gratefulness and adoration with what she thought was a reflection of her own chaste desire.

So it came about that two other riders left Canyon Pass on this spring morning while the sun still lingered abed, and, crossing the West Fork an hour behind Andy McCann, unlike him chose the wagon-track to the summit of the canyon wall on that side of Runaway River.

“Which way do we go, Dick? To Crescent City?”

“South,” he returned, without looking at her.

“We-ell. Lamberton is further but there’s a parson there, too. That’s another reason why I’ve come to hate Canyon Pass. It isn’t decent like other towns – or even up-to-date. It never had a church or a parson. It’s got everything else – saloons, gambling halls, honkytonks, stores, a bank, a hotel, a stamp mill, an express office, even a school, such as it is. But it’s heathen – plumb heathen, Dick.”

He smiled at her then, rather a superior smile. “It’s not the only mining town that answers your description.”

“I know it,” Nell rejoined. “But I want to see the other kind of towns. Mother Tubbs says Canyon Pass ain’t got no heart, and she’s right. She says she can’t even tell when Sunday comes, only that Sam always comes home drunk that day. This is Sunday, Dick. It’s a good day on which to begin a new life.”

“Oh, life’s all right,” the gambler said easily. “Take it as you find it, Nell.”

They came up into the sunlight on the rim of the canyon wall. Once on the level trail their horses broke into a canter. They could look down at certain points into the sink of the canyon where Runaway River foamed in its narrow channel. They spied Steve Siebert with his outfit traveling on the river trail. McCann, of course, they could not see, for the canyon wall on this side was almost sheer.

Ahead, as they rode on, was the Overhang – that monstrous projection capping the scarp of the cliff, left ages ago when the canyon was roughed out by the glacial floods to threaten the pass below with utter extinction if its bulk ever fell. Parts of it had fallen some twenty years previous. This was the “big slide” which had for a time choked the river channel with soil and rubble and threatened to flood out Canyon Pass.

The scar on the steep slope of the west wall down which that slide had fallen was now masked by a hardy growth of scrubby trees and brush. But the two old prospectors never passed the place, either going out of or returning to Canyon Pass, without keenly studying the scar.

Halfway up the height had been a shelf with a hollow behind it – an ideal spot for a secret camp, for it could be observed neither from the trail on the opposite side of the river nor from the rim of the west wall of the canyon. Buried as this shelf had been by the slide, Steve Siebert and Andy McCann now marked the spot – and what it hid – and then glanced sardonically at each other across the foaming river. They snarled at each other like a pair of toothless old wolves. The fruit of their joint toil that lay behind that slide, one could not reach, and the other could not compass. The secret had festered in their hearts and poisoned the very souls of the two ancients for these twenty years.

Above, the two in the plane of sunshine and freer air rode along the brink of the Overhang.

“Say!” Dick said jerkily. “Let’s not go to Lamberton – not direct.”

“What?”

There was a sharp note in her voice. She turned in her saddle to face him. Her gaze narrowed. Was there after all a doubt in the very depths of Nell’s soul about the man?

“I know a fine place – better hotel than at Lamberton – really a nice place to stop. We can reach it before night. Hoskins. You know?”

He still spoke nervously. Nell’s gaze no more left his face. She said evenly, as though her mind was quite placid again:

“There’s no parson at Hoskins, either.”

He darted her another side-glance. How was she taking it? Was she, after all, going to be “sensible?” Nell was seventeen, but a woman grown.

“Shucks, honey,” Dick said, putting out a hand to touch her for the first time. “We’ll ride on and find a parson later. We’re in no rush. We’re out for a grand, good time – ”

She pulled her horse across the path with a fierce jerk of the bridle-rein, and so escaped the defilement of his touch. Her right hand clutched the handle of her quirt, the knuckles bone-white.

“Do you mean – you won’t marry me?”

Dick smiled his most disarming smile, his brown eyes even twinkled. That frank and humorous look was what had first won his advantage with Nell Blossom.

“Shucks, honey,” he drawled again. “Why so serious? Don’t worry about that. I’m free to confess I’m not a marrying man. Seen too much trouble for both parties when they are tied to one another with any silly string of the law. It’s love that will hold us together.”

“That’s heathen, Dick!” she exclaimed hotly. “Just as heathen as Canyon Pass.”

“Nonsense!” He laughed. “You’re just as safe with me, whether we’re married or not.”

Which might have been quite true, but Nell stared at him, her expression as inscrutable as his own when he worked behind the green table. Dick the Devil was a shrewd gambler, but Nell Blossom had played poker herself ever since she could read the pips on the cards. And she had been fighting her own battles in harsh environment and against men almost from the same tender age. Her cold rage now sprang from the fact that he should so mistake her character.

“Come on, honey!” he said coaxingly.

The quirt came up slowly; then it sang through the air.

“You dog, you! Dick the Devil is your true name! And I thought – ”

The man, shouting an oath, dragged his mount backward. The lash descended, missed his handsome face, but seared the horse across its neck.

Squealing, the animal leaped to one side – to the verge of the out-thrust lip of the Overhang. The gambler wheeled him again, seeking to save himself.

“Do you want to murder me – you wildcat!” he cried angrily.

There was a sudden crack, like the slapping of one board upon another. Between the plunging horse and the girl a gap yawned in the earth. Frost, the early rains, or perhaps time itself, had weakened this bit of the Overhang. A patch no larger than a good-sized dining table broke away and slid outward.

The scrambling, wild-eyed horse and the shrieking, white-faced man disappeared with it. The girl held in her own mount with a firm hand. The flare of insane anger faded from her blue eyes. But her countenance settled into a harsh and unlovely expression.

Yet she slipped down from her saddle, quieted her horse with a word, and stepped recklessly to the crumbling edge, trying to see down the face of the cliff.

She could mark no trace of horse or rider. She could no longer hear the rumble of the falling débris. An icy horror gripped her. He was gone!

Finally she drew back from the brink. She looked about at the landscape, but there was not a human being to be seen. She slowly mounted her horse again.

Something besides a terrible disaster had happened here at the brink of the Overhang. Something had happened to Nell Blossom so great, so soul-racking, that she would never be altogether the same girl again. It is a dreadful thing for one so young to find its love-idol shattered.

After a little Nell started her mount, but she did not ride back toward Canyon Pass.

CHAPTER II – DISCONTENT AT DITSON CORNERS

The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt read twice these closing words of the long letter.

… and so, my dear Willie, to use your own way of expressing it, I am steering straight for the devil – and enjoying the trip immensely.

Wishing you were with me, Willie, I am, even after your rather bitter castigation,

He laid the missive on his desk with a full-bosomed sigh. Nor was that sigh wholly because of the reprobate Joe. Joe’s flowers of speech did not much ruffle the parson’s spirit.

Joe Hurley might be gay, irresponsible, reckless, even downright wicked; but he never could fail to be kind. Two years of close contact with the blithe Westerner – those final two years at college before Hunt went to the divinity school – had assured the latter that Joe Hurley owned a heart of gold. The gold might be tarnished, but it was true metal nevertheless.

Hunt’s mental picture of his college friend, and never had scholastic friendship been more astounding, could not include any great blemish of later-developed character. It was five years since they had seen each other. Those five years could not have made of Joe Hurley the “roughneck” that he intimated he had become. That was Joe’s penchant for painting with a wide brush.

The reputation the Westerner had left behind him at college when he was requested by a horrified governing board to depart for the sake of the general welfare of the undergraduate body, revealed Joe’s character unequivocally.

When Joe had been “bounced” by the faculty he had celebrated the occasion by giving a farewell banquet at one of the shadiest hotels in the college town, to the wildest crowd of students he could get together. On his own part Joe had dressed in full cowboy regalia, and as the apex of the evening’s entertainment he had “shot up” the banquet room, paying the bill for damages the next morning with a cheerful smile.

The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt remembered the occasion now with a little shiver of apprehension. Suppose the people of Ditson Corners should ever learn that he, their pastor, had been one of that company who had helped Joe Hurley celebrate his dismissal from scholastic halls!

Joe’s father, a cattleman, had left him a considerable fortune. Joe had invested much of it in a certain mining claim called the Great Hope, for the young fellow had been keen enough to see that the day of the small cattleman was gone. The mine was paying a comfortable income with the promise of doing more than that in the future, so Joe wrote. But he wrote more – much more that was exceedingly interesting to Hunt in his present discontented state of mind.

He picked up the letter again to re-read a part of the third page, this broken sentence first meeting his envious eye:

… and if ever there was a peach, she surely is one, Willie. Golden-brown hair, big blue eyes, and a voice – Say! No songbird ever had anything on Nell. If you once saw her and heard her sing, you’d go crazy about her, old sobersides. All Canyon Pass – I mean the men-folks – are at her feet again, now she has returned to town and is singing in Colorado Brown’s cabaret. Sounds sort of devilish and horrid, doesn’t it, Willie? Believe me, Nell Blossom is some girl. But wild – say! You can’t get near her. She’s got a laugh that plays the deuce with a man’s heart strings – accelerates the pit-a-pat of the cardiac nerve to top-notch and then some! She’s got us all on her string, from gray-bearded sour doughs to the half-grown grocery clerk at the Three Star, who would commit suicide to-morrow at her behest – believe me!