During the ensuing weeks the cabaret singer went often to see Betty at
the hotel. They even rode together, for Joe Hurley suddenly became so
busy at the Great Hope Mine that he was forced to excuse himself, so he
said, from accompanying the Eastern girl on those pleasant jaunts which
both had so enjoyed.
The two girls actually enjoyed each other's society and found more than
a riding habit in which to feel a mutual interest. The friendship grew
out of a hunger in the hearts of both Nell and Betty.
The parson did not make a third in their rambles, nor was he often in
sight when Nell called on Betty. The latter would not have encouraged
any intimacy between the mining-camp girl and Hunt under any
circumstances. She did not dream that her brother felt more than passing
interest in the half-wild Nell.
The latter never attended the services held in Tolley's old dance hall.
But the Passonians in general came to accept the religious exercises as
an institution and supported them fairly in point of contributions and
attendance. There was yet, however, strong opposition to the parson and
his work. Nor did it all center around Boss Tolley.
Nell, soon after the beginning of her acquaintance with Betty, stopped
singing "This Is No Place for a Minister's Son" and took up no other
ditty aimed in any particular at the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and his
work.
As for Hunt himself, he went forward, accepting both praise and blame
with equal equanimity. But he began to be worried secretly about Joe
Hurley.
Hunt supplemented the morning preaching with a Sunday school in the
afternoon and a general service in the evening, at which he usually gave
a helpful talk on more secular lines than his morning sermon.
Hunt would have been glad to have had more and better singing; but
although Rosabell Pickett did her best, the song service was far from
satisfactory. The parson never passed Colorado Brown's place in the
evening and heard Nell's sweet voice that he was not covetous. He would
never be satisfied--but he whispered this not even to Betty--until he
heard that voice leading his congregation in the meeting room.
The rougher element that had at first attended the meetings mainly out
of curiosity soon drifted away.
Hunt was not, however, above carrying his work out into the highways and
byways of the town. If the men would not come to his services, he
carried a measure of his helpful efforts to them. He did more than visit
the homes of Canyon Pass. He went, especially at the noon hour, to where
the men were at work.
Hunt never made himself offensive. He did not join the workmen at the
mines or washings as a parson, but as another man, interested in their
labor and in themselves.
Once a mule-drawn ore wagon broke down on the road to the ore-crushers.
It blocked the way of other teams. The parson took off his coat, helped
raise the wagon-body so the axle could be blocked, and aided in getting
on another wheel in place of the broken one.
A man working alone in a ditch some distance from the Oreode was so
unfortunate as to bring a rock down and get caught by the leg. His
shouts for help were first heard by Hunt, who was striding along the
wagon track. Without other aid the parson pried up the rock and drew the
man out from under it. Then he carried the fellow, with his lacerated
leg, to his shack, where he lived with his partner; and between the
partner and Hunt the injured man was nursed as long as he needed
attention at all.
This incident was the spark that started the idea of the hospital for
Canyon Pass in Hunt's mind. He began to talk hospital to everybody, even
to Slickpenny Norris. The banker threw up his hands and began to squeal
at last.
"That's just it! That's just it!" he cried. "I knew one thing would lead
to another if a parson come into this town. I told that crazy Joe Hurley
so. He had no business ever to have brought you here."
"What has my coming to Canyon Pass got to do with it?" Hunt asked
mildly. "The need of a hospital--there are always accidents happening at
the mines--was here long before I came. If a man is hurt badly he dies
before help can get here. Doctor Peterby is no surgeon--and you know, Mr.
Norris, he is not always to be trusted. This towns needs a place where
an injured man can get surgical treatment and proper nursing."
"I don't see why," muttered Norris. "We were getting along quite well
enough before you butted in."
Hurley, however, agreed with his friend. In spite of the fact that he
seemed to have "fallen from grace" a good bit, the owner of the Great
Hope was strong for all secular improvement of the town, whatever may
have been his private emotions regarding the religion that Hunt
represented. The movement for a hospital took form and grew.
It was not these things, however, that endeared Hunt to the hearts of
the rougher element of Canyon Pass. And in time--and that before
fall--some of the toughest hard-rock men and muckers working in the mines
and at the Eureka Washings openly praised the Reverend Willett Ford
Hunt.
Hunt one noon had given the men who gathered in a quiet place to eat
their lunches a little talk on first aid to the injured. He had sent to
Denver for several first-aid kits and was now going about from mine to
mine explaining the more important uses of the articles in the box.
The men understood the helpfulness of this. Neglected wounds meant
blood-poisoning, one of the most painful scourges a prospector or miner
working far beyond the reach of surgeon and hospital, can have. It was
well to know, too, how to make a proper tourniquet, and how to lay a
bandage so that it would hold well.
The whistle blew and the great engine was started. The men drifted away
to their several jobs. There were three pipes at work tearing down the
bank on the upper bench at the Eureka Washings, and others below. The
force of the water thrown from the nozzles of these pipes rocked the
mighty hydraulic "guns" and caused the men astride of them to hold on
with both hands. It took a husky fellow to guide that stream spouting
from between his knees.
Hunt had returned the kit to the superintendent's office and climbed to
the upper bench, intending to go over the highland to the Great Hope
Mine, which was nearer the West Fork River. Hi Brownell, who straddled
the middle gun up here, risked waving a cordial hand at the parson when
he saw the latter departing. The noise of the hurtling streams drowned
Hi's voice, of course.
Just as Hunt returned a smiling salute to the young fellow--one in whom
the parson was deeply interested, for Hi was really a worth-while
boy--the accident happened that was fated to mark this day as one long to
be remembered at Canyon Pass. Incidentally the occasion, more than any
other one thing, brought about the establishment of the new hospital.
The whine and splash of the streams of water drowned most other sounds.
But of a sudden, as Hunt was turning his back on the scene, he heard a
sharp crack--a sound that would have penetrated the thunderous rumble of
a railroad train.
Hunt wheeled. He saw Hi Brownell thrown high into the air as though from
a viciously bucking broncho, come down sprawling, and the savage stream
from his pipe strike the man and carry him, as though he were a leaf on
a torrent, into the cavity in the bank, against which the nozzle of the
pipe was aimed.
The flapping limbs and struggling torso of Brownell were visible for a
moment only; then down upon the spot roared soil, gravel, and larger
stones, of which the bank's strata were built.
Unguided, the shooting stream from the gun swept first one way along the
bench, then the other. It corrugated the face of the bank deeply for
yards in either direction. For a moment Hunt saw again the struggling
body of the injured man at the edge of the fallen rubble. Then came
another slide to cover it completely!
The broken hydraulic gun fell over on its side. The parting of some
section of it was what had thrown Brownell into the air and into the
path of its stream.
But before the other gunners on the bench who saw Brownell's accident
could shut off their streams, Hunt had acted. Some muckers tried to run
in to seize Brownell or dig him out from under the gravel that had
fallen, but the stream from the writhing pipe swept them aside like
chips. Half a dozen were rolling in the mud of the bench.
Hunt sprang directly for the seat of the trouble. That hose-pipe had to
be controlled before a thing could be done to help the buried Brownell.
Precious moments were lost signaling to the engineer below to shut off
power.
Hunt had not played football on his college team for nothing. He made an
extremely low "tackle," for he went down on his knees and then slid
along through the mud to grapple with the writhing pipe that had broken
away from its fastenings. He got hold of it and wrestled with it for a
few seconds as two men might wrestle on the mat. When the other men came
running from below Hunt had conquered the formidable thing, and the
stream was shooting into the air, where all the harm it did was to
shower some of the men as it fell back to earth.
For thirty seconds or more he held it so, until the stream was shut off
below. The others ran for the pile that had overwhelmed Brownell. They
dug into it with their bare hands, got hold of one leg, and dragged him
forth like a wet rag out of a pan of dishwater!
He was alive; nor were there many bones broken. But he was a terrible
sight, and they had to work over him for some minutes before he breathed
again. Hunt went at this task, too, as coolly as did the superintendent.
That first-aid kit came in very handily at this juncture.
The men stood around for a little while and watched and talked. The
accident had come near being a tragedy.
"Believe me," said one rough fellow, "that parson is a good deal of a
man. I'm for him, strong!"
"You'd even go to church for him, would you, Jack?" chuckled his mate.
"Church? I'd go to a hotter place than that for him!" was the prompt and
emphatic reply.