"No, there ain't no news--no news a-tall," declared Mrs. Sam Tubbs,
comfortably rocking. "Nothing ever happens in Canyon Pass. For a right
busy town on its main street, there's less happens in the back alleys
than in any camp I ever seen--and I seen a-plenty.
"It's in the back alleys o' life, Nell, that the interesting things
happen. Folks buy and sell, and argue and scheme, and otherwise play the
fool out on the main streets. But in the alleys babies is born, and
people die, and boys and gals make love and marry. Them's the re'lly
interesting things in life."
"Ugh! Love and marriage! They are the biggest fool things the world
knows anything about."
Mother Tubbs chuckled. It was an unctuous chuckle. It shook her great
body like a violent explosion in a jelly-bag and made the wide-armed
rocking-chair she sat in creak.
"Sho!" she said. "I've heard seventeen-year-old gals say as much 'fore
now, who dandled their second young-un on their knee 'fore they was
twenty. The things we're least sure of in this world is love and
marriage. Lightning ain't nothin' to 'em--nothin'!
"Now, there's Mr. Joe Hurley----"
Nell started, turned on the top step of the Tubbs' back porch, and
looked searchingly at the old woman with a frown on her brow.
"Now, there's Mr. Joe Hurley," pursued Mother Tubbs placidly. "There
ain't a thing the matter with that man but that he needs a wife."
"Why doesn't he take one, then?" demanded Nell wickedly. "There are
plenty of them around here whose husbands don't seem to care anything
about them."
"Like me and my Sam, heh?" put forth Mother Tubbs, still amused. "But I
reckon if Mr. Joe Hurley, or any other man, should attempt to run away
with me, Sam would go gunning for him. What they call the 'first law of
Nater'--which is the sense of possession, not self-preservation--would
probably get to working in Sam's mind.
"He'd get to thinking of my flapjacks and chicken-with-fixin's and his
bile would rise 'gainst the man--no matter who--who was enjoying them
victuals.
"Oh, yes. Not only is the way to a man's heart through his stomach; but
believe me, Nell, most men are like those people the Bible speaks of
'whose god is their stomach.'"
"Does the Bible say that, Mother Tubbs?" broke in the girl.
"Somethin' near to it."
"Then there is some sense in the Bible, isn't there?"
"Hush-er-you, Nell Blossom!" ejaculated the old woman sternly. "Does
seem awful that you're such a heathen. The Bible's plumb full of good
advice, and lovely stories, and sweet truths. I used to read it a lot
before I broke my specs. But I remember lots that I read, thanks be."
"I don't care for stories," said the girl crossly. "And I don't know
that I believe there is a heaven," she went on quickly. "Once you are
dead I reckon that's all there is to it. I won't learn any more songs
about heaven. I used to cry over them--and about folks dying. I remember
the first song Dad taught me to sing in the saloons. It used to make me
cry when I came to the verse:
Last night as I lay on my pillow--
Last night as I lay on my bed--
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamt that my Bonnie was dead.
Bring back! Oh, bring back!
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me----
It's all stuff and nonsense!" she broke off with confidence.
"That ain't a hymn," said Mother Tubbs placidly. "Hymns is different,
Nell. A good, uplifting hymn like 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross,' or
'Beulah Land,' takes you right out of yourself--bears your heart up on
wings o' hope and helps you forget you're only a poor, miserable worm----"
"I'm not a worm!" interrupted Nell with vigor. "I'm as good as
anybody--as good as anybody in Canyon Pass, anyway, even if some of these
women do look down on me."
"Of course you are, Nell. 'Worm' is just a manner o' speaking."
"Dad trained me to sing in these saloons, I know," went on the girl
quickly, angrily, "because he was too weakly to use a pick and shovel.
We had to eat, and he thought he had to have drink. So I had to earn it.
But I've been a good girl."
"I never doubted it, Nell," Mother Tubbs hastened to say. "Nobody could
doubt it that knowed you as well as I do." She let her gaze wander over
the squalid back yards of the row of shacks of which the Tubbs' domicile
was no better than its neighbors. "They don't know you like I do, Nell.
You've lived with me for three years--all the time you was growing into a
woman, as ye might say. You hafter do what you do, and I don't 'low when
we are forced into a job, no matter what it is, that it's counted
against us as a sin."
Nell flashed the placid old woman another glance. There was something
hidden behind that look--of late there was something secretive in all
Nell Blossom said or did. Did Mother Tubbs understand that this was so?
Was she, in her rude but kindly way, offering a sympathy that she feared
to put into audible speech for fear of offending the proud girl?
The latter suddenly laughed, but it was not the songbird's note her
voice expressed. There was something harsh--something scornful--in it.
"I reckon I could get away with murder, and you'd say I was all right,
Mother Tubbs," she declared.
"Well, mebbe," the old woman admitted, her eyes twinkling.
"Suppose--" said Nell slowly, her face turned away again, "suppose a
party was the cause of another's death--even if he deserved it--but didn't
mean just that--suppose, anyway, what you did caused a man's death, for
whatever reason, although unintended? Would it be a sin, Mother Tubbs?"
She might have been reflecting upon a quite casual supposition for all
her tone and manner betrayed. Just how wise Mother Tubbs was--just how
far-seeing--no human soul could know. The old woman had seen much and
learned much during her long journey through a very rough and wicked
world.
"I tell you, Nell," Mother Tubbs observed, "it's all according to what's
in our hearts, I reckon. If what we done caused a party to die, and we
had death in our heart when we done the thing that killed him, I reckon
it would be a sin. No getting around that. For we can't take God's
duties into our hands and punish even the wickedest man with death--like
we'd crunch a black beetle under our bootsole. 'Vengeance is Mine; I
will repay, saith the Lord.'" She repeated the phrase with reverence.
"No, sin is sin. And because a party deserves to be killed, in our
opinion, don't excuse our killing him."
Nell was quite still for a minute. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"Humph!" she said briskly. "I don't think much of your religion, Mother
Tubbs. No, I don't."
Mother Tubbs began to croon:
It's the old-style religion,
The old-style religion,
The old-style religion,
That gets you on your way.
'Twas good enough for Moses,
Good enough for Moses--
The old-style religion,
That gets you on your way.
"It ain't no new-fangled religion, Nell. But it's comforting----"
"It wouldn't comfort me none," answered the girl. "I reckon it ain't
religion--and a sky pilot--that Canyon Pass needs after all. If we'd just
run about fifty of these tramps out of town--and Boss Tolley and his
gang--we could get along without psalm-singing and such flubdubbery."
"You ain't talking like you used to, Nell," said the old woman,
observing her curiously.
"I hadn't thought so much about it. Religion is too soft. These
roughnecks would ride right over a parson and--and that kind. Now,
wouldn't they?"
"Not altogether. I expect they'd try--at first. But if a man had enough
grace in him, he'd stand up against 'em."
"He'd better have backbone."
"Same thing," chuckled Mother Tubbs. "Same thing. It takes the grace of
God to stiffen a man's backbone--I tell you true. I hope this parson Mr.
Joe Hurley talks about has got plenty of grace."
"Who--what?" gasped the girl. "What parson?"
"Well, now! That is a gob o' news. But I thought you must o' heard
it--over to Colorado Brown's, or somewhere--the way you was talkin'. This
parson is a friend of Mr. Joe Hurley, and he wants to get him out yere."
"From the East?"
"Yeppy. Mr. Joe says he went to school with him. And he's some
preacher."
"What do you think o' that!" ejaculated Nell. "Mr. Hurley didn't say
anything to me about it the day we rode into the Pass together."
"I reckon not. This has all been hatched up since then."
"But, Mother Tubbs!" cried the girl. "You don't expect any tenderfoot
parson can come in here and make over Canyon Pass?"
"I reckon not. We folks have got to make ourselves over. But we need a
leader--we need a Shower of the Way. We've lost our eyesight--the best of
us--when it comes to seeing God's ways. My soul! I couldn't even raise a
prayer in conference meeting no more. But I used to go reg'lar when I
was a gal--played the melodeon--led the singin'--and often got down on my
knees in public and raised a prayer."
"Humph!" scoffed the girl. "If God answered prayer, I bet you prayed
over Sam enough to have cured him of getting drunk forty times over!"
"I don't know--I don't know," returned Mother Tubbs thoughtfully. "I been
thinking lately that, mebbe when I was praying to God to save Sam from
his sins, I was cursing Sam for his meanness! I ain't got as sweet a
disposition as I might have, Nell."
"Oh, yes you have, Mother Tubbs!" exclaimed Nell, and suddenly jumped up
to kiss the old woman warmly. "You're a dear, sweet old thing!"
"Well, now," rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently, "I ought to purr like
any old tabby-cat for that."