Hunt caught up with Nell Blossom when she had passed through the gap in
the barrelstave picket-fence, and his length of stride easily kept him
beside the girl. Unless Nell broke into a run she could scarcely leave
the parson out of earshot.
"Miss Blossom," he began, "my interference in your affairs calls for no
excuse. I have no vulgar curiosity. You tell me to mind my own business.
But when I see another in trouble it is my business to offer aid."
"I am not in trouble," she answered sharply. Then, with scorn: "And if I
was, I wouldn't want a parson's help."
"No. But a friend's help? I assure you I am your friend."
She now looked at him rather curiously, but her expression did not
soften in the least. Doubt, scorn, a real dislike of the man who sought
to gain her confidence struggled to gain the mastery of her pretty
features.
"I don't know you, I've only seen you a few times. I don't make friends
so easy----"
"We don't make friends in this world, Miss Blossom. We win them whether
we would or not. You have won my friendly feeling because I know that
you are troubled. I know what your trouble is, and I believe I can help
you."
His downrightness startled Nell, and she stopped and stared at him.
"You can't help me if I don't want your help," she cried in secret
panic.
"I cannot help you so much if you deny me your confidence," he admitted.
"But I stand ready to help you."
"You'd better sit down," she shot at him. "You'll have a long wait
standing for me to get confidential with you, Mr. Parson."
"Consider," said Hunt seriously, unshaken. "We cannot any of us afford
to refuse an honest offer of sympathy and assistance."
"What are you trying to do?" she asked with suspicion. "Trying to
squeeze something out of me? You parsons!"
She muttered the phrase disdainfully. He put her rudeness aside without
change of countenance. His placidity, his assurance, began to shake
Nell's confidence in herself more than any other thing.
"I have heard something. I have seen something. I know that if you will
listen to me--perhaps accept and follow some advice I may give you--you
will be benefited," he said.
"In what way, I should like to know?" she asked jeeringly.
"In your heart. In your mind and conscience."
"Well!" She was silent again for a moment, but her face did not change
in its expression, "Well, you can talk, I reckon," and she moved on
slowly again. "There ain't any law against talking in Canyon Pass--yet."
"From the few words I heard that man, Tolley, say to you on Sunday
evening, I know that he threatened you," Hunt said directly.
"That beast!"
"He thinks he has knowledge that will make you trouble if spread
broadcast in the town."
"Let him dare!"
Her face was suddenly that of a young and beautiful fury. Hunt shook his
head, saying softly:
"Killing him would not remove the cause of your trouble, Nell Blossom."
She turned on him again, her little fists clenched.
"How much do you know? Out with it!" she commanded.
"I will tell you what Tolley says."
"So you've been snooping and prying, have you?" she queried, her rage
almost suffocating her.
"I will tell you what Tolley says," repeated Hunt. And he did so calmly,
dispassionately, as though he were relating a series of common facts.
"That man's horse was under the fall from the cliff. The man's body is
not there--if he fell with the horse." Nell did not even wince, still
staring into his eyes, her own as hard as flint. "Those are all the
facts in my possession, Miss Blossom."
She remained silent. She had recovered both her regular breathing and
her composed manner. He could only read in her features a determination
that was adamant.
"Will you answer a few questions?" he ventured.
"Out with them!"
"What caused the horse to fall?"
"You gump! He fell because the bank gave way," she replied rudely.
"What became of his rider?"
"I don't know."
"Did you leave him at that spot?"
She waited a moment. Then, as harshly as before:
"Yes."
"You have not seen him since? Or communicated with him?"
"Dick Beckworth? I should say not!"
"Do you know what became of him?"
A bitter, sneering smile marred her lips. "I know what Tolley says--that
he's in Denver."
"Tolley proposes to deny that now," Hunt said softly.
"Let him. One lie is as good as another, and Boss Tolley's full of
them."
"Will you help me discover if Beckworth is alive?"
"I tell you once for all, I don't want anything more to do with Dick the
Devil. I don't want to even hear about him."
"Then you and he quarreled?"
The mistake was fatal, and the parson knew it the instant he had said
the unwise words. But he could not recall them.
"See here, Parson Hunt! you're making a nuisance of yourself. I want to
tell you that no tenderfoot will get far in Canyon Pass if he begins as
you have. I've got nothing to tell you. I won't talk to you. I don't
want a thing to do with you. Now! Am I plain enough?"
She walked on stoutly, her head up, her cheeks aflame. For a few yards
he walked quietly beside her. Then he lifted his hat and turned aside.
When Nell had disappeared, Hunt sadly shook his head.
"I fear," he told himself, "that I have made a bad beginning."
Circumstances that followed proved that his suspicion was correct. In
less than twenty-four hours he heard that without a doubt he had made
another enemy.
"I don't know how it is, parson," said Bill Judson shaking a mournful
head, "but that little devil, Nell Blossom, is on the warpath. And she's
after your scalp."
"It is stuck on pretty tightly, Mr. Judson," Hunt replied with a smile.
"'Tain't no laughing matter. Nell has a terrible drag with the boys. If
she don't have you run out of town, she may try to bust up your show.
She says you're a mischief-maker, and all that. She's plumb down on
parsons."
"We will have to convince her that the tribe is harmless."
"Not much chance," said Judson, who evidently shared Hurley's opinion of
Nell's obstinacy.
"Time will cure all that," said the parson, with more apparent
confidence than he really felt.
While preparations were going forward for the first meeting with
satisfactory speed, Hunt heard on every hand of the gathering forces of
opposition.
Nell Blossom had resurrected the old song, "This Is No Place for a
Minister's Son," and in a ridiculous clerical make-up sang it each night
in Colorado Brown's place. Passing along the street to his hotel Hunt
heard the chorus roared by the men who applauded the cabaret singer. He
was met with more jeering laughter wherever he went than before; and he
realized that ridicule would do the good cause more harm than any other
form of opposition.
Joe Hurley was very busy at the mine that week, and he had not much to
say to his friend from the East when they met. But he showed curiosity
as to what had befallen Hunt when he talked with Nell Blossom.
"I fear I began wrong," admitted the parson.
"I reckon however you began you wouldn't get far with Nell," observed
Hurley. "I'll keep my eye on Tolley. He's just boiling inside. But
unless he has a gang behind him he hasn't any more spunk than a rabbit.
Nell's too popular--just now, especially--for him to dare spring anything
against her. And she certainly is making herself well-beloved with the
boys from the Eureka Washings and the other mines," and he grinned
ruefully.
"I can keep most of my own roughnecks in line. I reckon they kind of
cotton to me, and they know I am set on this church business. But Nell
certainly holds the camp in the hollow of her hand."
"She is wrong; but she does not realize it, perhaps," considered Hunt.
"And yet, maybe she does know."
The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt might have considered, as his sister
believed at that moment, that the outlook for successful religious work
in Canyon Pass was quite as foggy as it had been at any time at Ditson
Corners. Yet the opposition that had developed here was nothing more
than Hunt had expected. And it was open hostility. There was nothing
hypocritical about it.
He had met Slickpenny Norris at the bank, Hunt had opened an account
there, and had invited the old curmudgeon to take some interest in the
church proposal. He had got one large grunt from the banker, and that
was all. Norris could be as close-mouthed as a clam when it might be to
his disadvantage to speak his mind. But he offered no encouragement to
the parson by that grunt.
Saturday evening came and those who were most interested in the uplift
of Canyon Pass gathered at the old Tolley place to view with
satisfaction and no little pride the improvements and changes brought
about.
"Jib," remarked Judson to Collins, having deserted the Three Star
Grocery and left it in the care of the gangling Smithy at a very busy
hour to "take a squint" at the interior of the meeting room, "Jib, you
and Cale Mack have certainly done yourselves proud on that pulpit."
"Don't praise me! Don't praise me!" exclaimed Collins. "I never could
stand flattery. It puffs me all up. But it's a pretty nifty bit of work,
I do agree."
"Yeppy," pursued the storekeeper. "It has a slant to one side that maybe
is more the fault of the floor than your spirit-level, Jib. And it looks
sort o' wabbly. But barrin' them defects, it's what I'd call a sightly
pulpit."
"It's strong enough," grunted Collins gruffly, now not so much pleased.
"I don't reckon the parson is going to take a maul to it, is he?"
Mother Tubbs just then entered the door. Behind her staggered Sam, his
reeling motion for once having no connection with an alcoholic cause.
Sam Tubbs was dead sober--and quite as positively provoked.
"I snun to man!" he croaked. "Makin' a pack-hoss of a man thisaway! If
that danged parson wanted this yere Bible he ought've come and toted it
himself."
"It's very good of you to bring it, Mr. Tubbs," said Hunt, smiling and
coming forward to relieve the old man of his burden.
Hunt placed the big Bible on the pulpit. One of the interested
housewives had sent a rather handsome linen table-scarf for a pulpit
cloth, and although it was somewhat yellowed from disuse, it made the
unpainted desk seem less bare.
They drifted in, one by one and in couples, during the evening, these
people deprived so long of the inspiration of worship in a public sense,
some bringing hymn-books of various sorts and a few Bibles. But Hunt had
not come to Canyon Pass unprepared on that score for church work. He had
brought with him from the East fifty hymn-books of the more popular kind
and a dozen Bibles for the use of the congregation in general. When
these had been distributed about the benches they made, Mother Tubbs
declared, "a mighty tasty show."
Betty was present to be introduced to the women of the camp. Whatever
her private feelings were, the parson's sister could be, and was on this
occasion, a very helpful assistant to her brother. If the Passonians
felt a little awkward, Betty put them quickly at their ease. She made a
most fortunate impression on them all, and the general opinion was "that
that Eastern gal was a perfect lady."
Joe Hurley appeared with some of the younger men. They were all scrubbed
till their faces shone, shaved to a nicety, and their hair "slicked" and
anointed with everything Jose, the Mexican barber, had on his shelves.
"Umph!" murmured Mother Tubbs, wrinkling her nose appreciatively.
"Certainly smells proper good since them fellers come in yere. I never
did see why bay rum smells so much better than drinkin' rum. And bay
rum's the only kind of liquor I approve of. The other I only get at
second-hand--on Sam's breath!"
It was late in the evening, and the town was getting lively, though it
seemed not so noisy as on most pay-nights, when they scattered from the
door of the meeting room.
Hunt and Betty were the last to go. He latched the door behind them, but
there was no thought in his mind of locking it. That anybody would enter
the place before morning did not cross his thought.
But later in the night, when this end of Main Street was deserted and
the frolicking in the various amusement places was continued only by a
few irrepressibles, a figure stole out of the alley beside the old
Tolley building and slipped into the room prepared for the first Sunday
service in Canyon Pass.
Without a light in the place the intruder had some difficulty in
reaching the desk; once there, some few moments elapsed while the
uninvited visitor climbed into the pulpit and opened carefully the big
Bible. When the book was as carefully closed again, without the white
book-marks the parson had placed in it having been disturbed, the
obtrusive one departed.
Outside, there seemed an air of satisfaction about the very way this
unknown individual walked away. In addition, a very determined--almost
viciously resolved-voice observed:
"There! If that impudent pulpit-pounder don't get his, I miss my guess!"