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[Illustration: Hunt's arms were around the girl and he held her fast.]
THE HEART OF
CANYON PASS
By THOMAS K. HOLMES
Author of
_"The Man From Tall Timber" etc._
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with George Sully & Company
Printed in U. S. A.
Copyrighted, 1921 (as a serial).
Copyright, 1921, by
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
_Printed in U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Discontent at Canyon Pass 1
II. Discontent at Ditson Corners 18
III. A Shadow Thrown Before 30
IV. Philosophy Bound in Homespun 38
V. How the Passonians Took It 46
VI. The Approach 58
VII. The First Trick 69
VIII. A Flower in the Mire 78
IX. A Beginning 91
X. Mutterings of a Storm 99
XI. The Storm About To Burst 111
XII. Tolley's Tale 122
XIII. Plans Are Made 130
XIV. The Great Day Arrives 141
XV. Pep and a Little Pepper 152
XVI. Love and Longing 161
XVII. A Battle in a Girl's Heart 169
XVIII. The Shadow on Betty's Path 177
XIX. A Good Deal of a Man 189
XX. Murder Will Out 197
XXI. The Drama of a Lie 211
XXII. A Face in the Storm 219
XXIII. A Great Light Dawns 229
XXIV. The Barrier Down--for a Moment 237
XXV. Understanding 246
XXVI. Threatening Weather 256
XXVII. Several Conclusions 265
XXVIII. Catastrophe 273
XXIX. His Last Card 286
XXX. Clearing Skies 297
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.