Betty Hunt had, after all, retained her self-possession in a
considerable degree throughout this trying interview. Dick Beckworth's
appearance had startled her; but already she had schooled her mind to
expecting an interview with him.
Really, the coming of Nell Blossom and what had followed her entrance
had disturbed Betty more than Dick's appearance. But now she had got a
clutch again upon her mental processes and at this moment, when Dick was
about to reveal to the cabaret singer the fact that Betty was his wife,
the Eastern girl apprehended and seized upon the plea she believed
would, more than any other, cause Nell to let the villain remain without
question.
For, with the hotel surrounded and the officers searching for Dick, it
was probable that the moment he stepped out of the room he would be
caught. So Betty cried:
"For Ford's sake let him stay!"
It was, after all, a shot in the dark. Betty had not been sure up to
this moment that Nell really felt toward the parson as his sister knew
Hunt felt toward Nell. But she was in a desperate plight. Betty could
not bear to have even her girl friend know of her relation to Dick
Beckworth, not as Dick would tell it! And if the villain spread the tale
as he promised, Betty knew that her brother's work might be greatly
injured even in such a community as Canyon Pass.
For after all, although the mining town was not like Ditson Corners,
human nature is about the same everywhere. Betty had done nothing
disgraceful in marrying Dick Beckworth and leaving him so abruptly. But
for hiding the unfortunate alliance and posing here as an unmarried
girl, the tongue of gossip would undoubtedly drag both her own name and
Ford's through the mire of half-truths and suppositions.
If Nell loved Ford and thought that Dick might reveal something that
would injure the parson, Betty hoped the singer would relent. Afterward
she could in her own way explain to Nell.
The latter stared now at Betty; but Dick was quite in the line of her
gun and her hand did not tremble.
"You--you mean he's got something on the parson?" she asked.
Dick grinned. Betty tried to speak. Before another word could be said,
however, there was a sudden outbreak of sound from below and loud voices
on the stair.
"Betty!" shouted Joe Hurley's voice.
"Is Nell Blossom there?" called Hunt.
Both young men were tramping up to this very room. They would be here in
thirty seconds.
Betty came to her feet as though galvanized by an electric shock. She
fumbled in her bosom and drew forth the key of the closet door. She
extended it to Dick.
"Let him--let him hide!" she gasped.
Nell lowered her gun. Dick grabbed the key, the grin on his face
demoniac, and leaped across the floor on the balls of his feet. In a
flash he had the door open, was inside, the door closed and the spring
lock snapped. Nell thrust the gun back into its holster. Came a
thunderous knock upon the door.
"Girls!" shouted Hunt, "may we come in?"
Betty and Nell looked at each other. The latter sat down on the bed.
Betty dropped back into her chair.
"Of course you may come in, Ford," she said in a voice that, if not
unshaken, seemed calm to the ears of the men.
Hunt and Hurley, both splashed with mud, appeared at the open door.
"Pack a bag, Betty," said her brother. "The water is backing up into the
town, and although we don't believe it will rise high, it may come in
over the lower floor. It won't be pleasant here to-night. Joe suggests
that we take you both up to his office at the Great Hope. That can be
made comfortable for you until we see just how bad a time Canyon Pass is
in for."
"If you say so," said Betty in a low voice. "Will you go, Nell?"
"Sure," declared the other girl.
She thought that probably anything was better for Betty than to remain
here. In ten minutes they set forth, hurrying down and out of the hotel.
Sheriff Blaney, and a red-faced man whom Betty remembered having seen
before on the Hoskins trail hunting a fugitive, was on the porch.
"Derned funny where that Dick Beckworth has holed up," Blaney was
saying. "But he can't get out of town to-night, that's sure."
That was a night scarcely to be forgotten in the annals of Canyon Pass.
The people streamed up the muddy roads on to the highlands all night
long while the waters rose higher and higher. They could hear toward
morning the crashing of undermined buildings, but not until dawn did the
fugitives learn all the damage of the flood.
Then, just before sunrise, there sounded several tremendous explosions
from below, in the canyon. Joe Hurley and a gang of engineers had been
down there all night, and the several charges of dynamite they put in at
the barrier across the river brought the relief that had been hoped. In
an hour a way was burst through the wall of fallen débris and the mad
waters tore a passage to freedom.
The flood began to recede, and by the time the expedition got back from
the canyon in the batteau, the mud hole of Main Street could be seen
again from the site of the Great Hope. Joe Hurley looked grave, however,
when he rejoined his friends in the little shack of an office.
"It's done a sight of damage," the mining man said. "A lot of folks will
have to double up till new shacks can be built. The church--Tolley's old
place--is standing, Willie."
"I see it is," returned the parson. "But I miss some buildings----"
"You miss one in particular," said his friend quickly. "I don't know but
you and Betty are chief among the flood sufferers."
"What do you mean, Joe?" Betty asked quickly.
"The hotel. It was undermined and is in ruins; looks like it had been
rammed. Oh!" as he saw Betty pale, "nobody was hurt. Cholo Sam and Maria
are safe. Fact is, not a life lost as far as we know. It might have been
a whole lot worse. We had great luck."
"Great luck!" murmured Betty, looking at Nell, whose face likewise
showed a strange anxiety.
"Talking about luck," added Hurley suddenly. "What do you know about old
Steve and Andy? They've been out all night."
"What do you mean?" asked Hunt. "They haven't gone back to the desert?"
"Not on your life. They've been prospecting where they prospected twenty
years ago. Or that's what I figger. Just at dawn, after we let off those
shots that started the dam-busting, I spied 'em prowling around up there
on the side of the canyon. Reckless as kids, those old tykes are. Might
another slip come 'most any time."
"Oh!" said Betty, "I hope you did not leave them in danger, Joe."
"If they were, I couldn't help 'em," Hurley replied. "You can't
influence those old desert rats any more than you could lead an iron
horse to drink. No, sir! Steve and Andy were up there on a shelf that
was uncovered by the last slip, a-holding hands and ghost-dancing like a
couple of Piute Injuns. Acted plumb crazy.
"They must have swum the West Fork to get there. And I bet they didn't
go together. But when they got up there and saw the way open----"
"To what?" interrupted Nell. "You haven't told us what they found."
"That's so," chuckled Joe. "They've found something all right. I reckon
Steve and Andy can't be fooled when it comes to 'color.' They certainly
have made a ten-strike. Steve shouted down to me that the slip had
uncovered the mother lode. Of course, they are claiming everything in
sight. Got their claims staked out, and if it's really a sure-enough
find I expect there will be a small stampede to that side of the canyon.
There's gold all through those cliffs. This is a gold country. Some day
they'll find out how to work the Topaz Desert as a paying proposition.
The wash from these headlands and the canyon sides has been carried out
into the desert by the Runaway for a couple of million years--more or
less."
"Anyway," said Nell, her eyes sparkling, "the old-timers are going to be
rich at last? How fine!"
"It may only be a pocket--or a broken lead. But I wish 'em both
millionaires. Me, I'll stick to the Great Hope a while longer." He
looked at Betty. "I am a great feller for sticking to a thing."
Betty blushed and looked away. Hunt said thoughtfully:
"If the slide has only caused Siebert and McCann to be friends again, it
has brought about something good--something very good indeed."
"Well, you talk to Judson about that. His stock is pretty near ruined.
And see Tolley. He's almost weeping. And Colorado Brown. To say nothing
of Cholo Sam, who has lost his hotel."
The girls again looked at each other. There was the same thought in
their minds. What had become of Dick Beckworth if the hotel had
collapsed? Of course there had been plenty of time for him to have
escaped from the building before it went down. None of the structures
had fallen much before daybreak. Yet thought of him continued to trouble
the girls.
Joe Hurley got Betty off to one side. There was no work being done at
any of the mines, so the owner of the Great Hope had nothing to do at
this hour. Having been at work all night it might be supposed that he
would need sleep; but when he looked on Betty Hunt his gaze was anything
but somnolent.
"There's a whole lot been happening in a few short hours, Betty," he
said to the parson's sister. "It come on us so quick and it happened so
fast that it put out of my head for the time being something I had to
say to you."
"Something--Nothing you shouldn't say, Joe?" she stammered, looking at
him with pleading eyes.
"I get you, Betty," said the mining man. "I get you--sure. You are
warning me off the grass. I don't blame you. You think I am kind of
dense, I expect----"
"Oh, never that, Joe," she murmured. "You are kind and thoughtful only."
"I hope you will believe so," said Joe bluntly, "when I tell you I know
what your trouble is--and I know there ain't no chance for me now. But I
am going to be your friend just as you said I could."
"Oh! Joe, do you know?"
"I got wind of a story Dick Beckworth's been telling--about your being
already married. It's so, isn't it?"
Betty, her face working pitifully, nodded.
"All right. We won't say no more about it. He's a low dog for telling
about it. I don't want to know no more--not even who the feller is who
married you. But you can bank on me, Betty, every time! I'm your
friend."
"I know you are, Joe," she whispered, and the look she gave him paid Joe
Hurley for a good deal.
But he was by no means satisfied to consider that Betty Hunt's marriage
closed the door of paradise in his face. He was just as determined to
get her as ever he had been. He had learned the great thing that he had
desired to know. Betty loved him. He had seen it in her look! He could
wait, and be patient, and let things take their course. She could be
wedded to another man as hard and fast as all the laws could make it.
But Joe Hurley felt a glory in his soul that expanded from the
heaven-born belief that time would change all that!
They started down into the town, the girls shod with rubber boots that
Joe supplied. The people of Canyon Pass were running about like muddy
ants seeking their flooded hills. Mother Tubbs and Sam were high and dry
in the loft of the stamp mill. The old woman had made Sam lug up there
her one good feather-bed--and it was dry. But as she said, she expected
to find all her other possessions "as wet as a frog's hind leg."
Bill Judson lounged in the doorway of the Three Star and hailed them
with some cheerfulness.
"There's one sure thing, Parson Hunt," he said. "What I got in cans
ain't water-soaked--much. And the cat and six kittens ain't drowned. I
expect I can keep shop with what I got left for a while. But Smithy's
lost all his clo'es that's fit to wear, dad burn it! I can't have him
waitin' on lady customers in a gunny-sack and a pair of ridin' boots."
A little group surrounded Sheriff Blaney on the street as the quartette
strolled along. Joe was interested.
"Find him, Blaney?" he asked the officer.
"Not any. And it beats my time. I don't see where that Dick Beckworth
could have holed up. He sure didn't get out of town, for the Forks are
both plumb impassable for man or beast."
The two girls exchanged glances again. What had happened to Dick
Beckworth? Surely he must have got out of the closet--out of the hotel----
Suddenly Betty seized Nell's arm with an hysterical grip.
"Nell! Nell!" she whispered.
"Don't give way. Of course he's all right--though he ought not to be!"
"That closet door! It shut with a spring lock. It could not be opened
from inside!"
"Oh, he could smash down the door."
The two young men did not notice the girls' perturbation. They were
striding ahead. A crowd was running toward the fallen hotel. Something
of moment was happening there. But before they reached the place Cholo
Sam saw them, and started toward the parson and Joe.
"Señor Hunt! Señor Joe! Keep the señoritas back. It is not for them to
see."
"What's the matter, Sam?" asked Hurley.
"That Dick the Deevil! He ees found--my goodness, yes! They haf just
pulled him out of the ruins of my Wild Rose--drowned like one rat!"
* * * * *
Fortunately for Canyon Pass and its flood-harassed inhabitants, frost
and snow held off that winter until remarkably late. The mild season
gave ample opportunity for new homes to be built and for the necessary
repairs to be made upon the structures that had withstood the rising
waters.
The supply wagons brought in quantities of necessary goods from Crescent
City and the railroads. The mines and washings shut down while all
turned to the work of rebuilding. Tolley's Grub Stake and Colorado
Brown's place, both swept by the water, were the last buildings to be
remodeled. The gamblers and dance-hall girls and other employees of
those places left town, for it promised to be a lean winter for their
ilk at Canyon Pass.
In fact, Boss Tolley sold out and got out himself among the very first
to desert the town. His departure and the sale of all his property
opened the way for Parson Hunt's supporters to buy from the purchaser of
Tolley's property the building which had been used for church services
and the lot on which it stood.
They could not begin the building of a proper church until spring, of
course; but the money was pledged for an edifice that would cost all Joe
Hurley had planned.
Hurley himself was able to subscribe a much larger sum than at first,
for the Great Hope had proved to be as valuable a mine as he had told
Betty and the parson he believed it would. But it was from another
source that the church building fund gained its largest contribution.
Old Steve Siebert and Andy McCann had "struck it rich." The romance of
the uncovering of a rich vein of gold in the west wall of the canyon is
told to-day to every tourist who comes to Canyon Pass.
How, at a time in the camp's early history, two partners who had
prospected the Topaz Range and the desert adjoining fruitlessly for
years had found traces of gold high up on the canyon wall behind a
sheltering ledge and had "locked horns" in their first quarrel over how
the lode was to be got at.
At the height of their argument a landslip had buried the hollow where
the rich find was located and, rather than that either should profit by
the joint find, the two old fellows had never tried to open the claim
until nature, by another freak, uncovered it for them.
"I says to Andy, and Andy says to me," Steve Siebert was wont to recall,
"when we seen how rich that lode was, a part of our profits oughter go
to the parson and his church."
"You're mighty right we did," agreed Andy. Agreeing was now Andy's
strongest trait. "We-all got to pull together in this world. And if
we-all pull together yere in Canyon Pass we can have as good a church as
any camp needs. We sure got the best parson."
"You're right, Andy," Steve said. "I certainly do despise folks that are
always fighting each other and pullin' contrary. No sense in it--no sense
a-tall."
In fact the two old fellows became joint treasurers of the church
building fund. They took it upon themselves, too, to pass the
contribution plates at service. The only friction Andy McCann and Steve
Siebert were ever known to display thereafter was a mild rivalry as to
the amount of money collected from the congregation seated on their
particular sides of the house. It was suspected that each swelled his
collection considerably on Sunday mornings so that his half of the house
would make the best showing when the offering was counted!
"Dad burn it!" muttered Bill Judson, "let 'em alone. That's a mild
matter for disagreement. They ain't likely to pull no guns on each other
over that."
Indeed Canyon Pass was on its good behavior that winter. The exigencies
of the flood which had driven out a good deal of the worst element of
the town gave the better people a chance to take hold of its government
with a firmer hand--and a hand that Hunt and his associates were
determined should not again lose its grip. Even Slickpenny Norris in
time came to see that religious progress was not actually synonymous
with bankruptcy.
To the parson's standard flocked many of those who had before been but
lukewarm. Not least of his new helpers was the erstwhile cabaret singer.
Nell Blossom proved her value in the work to be quite all that Hunt had
hoped.
This busy time, when Joe Hurley and Betty really were so wrapped up in
each other that they could scarcely be expected to be of value to
anybody but themselves, the parson found in Nell Blossom a willing and
efficient aid. They were both earnest in the cause, and so earnest that
it seemed they had little thought for extraneous matters. Yet on one
occasion when they were looking over the blueprints of the proposed
church edifice, Nell slipped an extra sheet of plans into sight from
beneath those of the church.
"Why, what is this, Ford?" she asked.
"Oh, yes! I wanted to show you that, Nell. And get your approval."
"My approval?"
"Er--yes. You see, I've bought the lot right next to the church site.
Now, this cottage--er---- Here! Let me show you. We can have the mill work
for it shipped in with the church stuff. The same gang that builds the
church can run the house up. There's the front elevation. Say, Nell, how
do you like it?"
"Why, it's lovely!" she cried.
"Do you think it's nice enough for a parson's wife to live in?"
"Ford! Mr. Hunt! I----"
"Better let the 'Mr. Hunt' stuff slide, Nell Blossom," he said, getting
hold of her hand. "Even a minister's wife is supposed to call her
husband by his first name--at least, in private."
"Oh, Ford!"
"That's better."
"But--but I am not fit to be a parson's wife, Ford," she cried,
trembling.
"Do you know, sometimes I've half believed I wasn't fit to be a parson?
But it's my job and I'm going to do the best I can with it. And--I need
your help, Nell Blossom."
"I came out here to try to win the heart of Canyon Pass. I found
it--almost as soon as I arrived. But I thought for a long time that it
never would be mine. I am bold enough now, Nell, to believe that I may
win it."
He smiled at her with such affection in his gaze, such a warmth of
comprehension as well as desire, that Nell Blossom, tearful, trembling,
half fearful, swayed toward him and felt again his strong arms about
her.
"If--if I can only be worthy of you, Ford. If I don't disgrace you," she
sobbed. "Just think! A singer all my life in those ugly cabarets----"
"Ah, yes," said the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt quietly. "And only for a
difference in environment I might have been a part of the most reckless
audience you ever had to sing to. We will let the past bury the past,
Nell. We have only to deal with the future."
And he held her to him close.
THE END
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