CHAPTER XXV--UNDERSTANDING
It was Betty Hunt, who, after all, seemed to possess the bolder spiritof the two girls. Nell clung to the parson like a frightened child. Herealized, however, after the first flush of his emotion that he hadallowed his own overpowering desire for the singer to confuse his mind.The barrier between them was down for a moment only; he raised it againhimself, for he knew he was taking advantage unfairly of the terrifiedgirl.
It was Hunt, however, who lifted Nell Blossom into her pony's saddlewith one of the blankets wrapped well about her, and when Joe Hurleystarted away leading Betty's mount, the parson followed close behind.The two young men had freed themselves of each other; but the horses andtheir riders bulked so big against the driving curtain of the storm thatthey could scarcely lose each other.
They heard the other searchers shouting and Joe pulled his gun from itsholster and fired two shots into the air. The signal was replied toimmediately. In a minute or two Joe ran, head-on, into Jib Collins.
"Hey! did you find 'em both?" bawled the man.
"Youbetcha!" responded Hurley. "When the parson and I go out, we bringhome the bacon, every time."
They took up the march to the ford. At the water's edge one of the othermen came to the off side of each pony, and they forced the snortinganimals into the stream. The foaming barrier did not look encouraging tothe storm-beaten beasts.
They all got through safely and up into the town. The driving storm waschanging to snow and sleet; but the foundation of ice that had firstfallen made walking difficult. The girls were lifted off their horsesand carried up into Betty's room, where Maria gave them every assistancein her power. Somebody put away the horses. Joe scurried off to his ownbachelor shack, while Hunt stripped in his room and gave himself asavage rub-down with coarse towels. It had been a terrible experience;but his spirits and his blood were both in glow!
Surely Nell Blossom could not be unfriendly hereafter. It must beconfessed that the parson's thought was more entangled with Nell and hisrecent association with her than in anything else.
Cholo Sam brought up a steaming pot of coffee, his dark face expandedwith delight.
"Ah, Senor Hunt!" the Mexican said, "you an' de Senor Hurley--you are depure queel, eh? De boys all cheer you--my goodness, yes!"
When Hunt was dressed again he went to Betty's door and knocked. Hissister's response to his summons was brisk and cheerful, as usual. Yet,when he entered and looked keenly at her, he thought there was somethingfeverish--or was it expectant?--in the look she gave him.
The girls were both in the big bed, heaped with blankets. Nell's petiteface, ruffled about by one of Betty's boudoir caps, was pale. Indeed,the parson's sister looked in much the better condition of the two. Theexcitement and danger of the adventure which had befallen them seemed tohave affected the girls in a paradoxical manner. Whereas the Easterngirl might be expected to be overcome by the affair and Nell havesuffered the adventure as an ordinary experience, the result seemedreally to be the other way around! Nell lay in the bed pale, almosthysterical it would seem. Betty could scarcely control her excitement.
"Ford!" she exclaimed, "I need you. Try to convince this foolish girlthat there is no such thing as a ghost--a real ghost."
Hunt smiled, but he could not be unsympathetic. He realized that NellBlossom, being brought up as she had been--even associating so long withMother Tubbs--was probably hopelessly superstitious. He could not find itin his heart to oppose roughly any fear Nell might hold regardingsupernatural things. He tried to put his admonition in a kindly way.
"If there is any truth at all in the matter of ghosts," he said, "itmust be of a somewhat unreal nature, must it not? Ghosts are supposed tobe too ethereal for sight or touch or sound. And the only smell, even,accompanying their visitations, is supposed to be of brimstone, isn'tit?"
"That feller ought to smell of brimstone all right!" muttered Nellsuddenly hectic in her language. "He ought to come plumb from the badplace."
"What does she mean?" Hunt asked Betty. Yet he half suspected what wasin the singer's mind. "Did you girls see----"
"Nell declares," interrupted Betty, still with that strange excitement,"that she has seen the ghost of a man she calls Dick Beckworth."
"Dick Beckworth," Hunt repeated calmly. "You saw him, I presume," hewatched the pale face on the pillow all the time, "on the side of thecliff over yonder? He rode down behind you----"
"Do you mean----" gasped Nell.
A flame of color flashed into both her cheeks. Her blue eyes grew roundwith surprise.
"He says he came into town by that path," the young man rejoined. "Heput us on to the track of you girls. He said he saw you start down thepath ahead of him."
"He is alive!" murmured Nell.
"His horse was in bad shape, I believe," Hunt told her. "But the last Iknew--just before we left the Grub Stake to look for you--Dick Beckworthgave every promise of getting on quite well."
"Dick the Devil!" muttered Nell. "That sure is his name."
"From what I have heard about him," said Hunt, "I think his nicknamequite fits him. But it was probably Tolley's meanness alone that madeyou--that is," he hastened to correct himself, "that made all of thetrouble. That was thrashed out last evening, Miss Nell. Steve Siebertand Andy McCann proved Dick was not dead, although he did go over thecliff back there in the spring."
"I don't know what you are both talking about," Betty interposed. "Whois this--this--Dick Beckworth, do you call him?"
"A gambler, Betty," said her brother. "You would scarcely know such aperson. But unfortunately both Miss Nell and I have been obliged to mixwith all classes of society," he smiled again, "and so we know suchpeople."
"Nell should not sing in those places." Betty said it with conviction.But in a moment she turned again to the identity of the man whosereappearance had startled Nell Blossom so greatly that she had faintedin the storm. "What--what does this man, Dick, look like?"
"Not an unhandsome fellow," said the parson generously. "A somewhatcruel face--ruthless perhaps would be the better term. Good features; abeautiful complexion--if such a term should be applied to a man's skin,"and he laughed.
"You do not like him, Ford!" exclaimed Betty quickly.
"Would I be likely to?" mildly asked her brother.
"Oh! But I do not want a psychoanalysis of the man," said Betty, and sheused a handkerchief to half hide her own face. "Just what does he looklike?"
"Mildly dark. A beautiful, oiled mustache--like a crow's wing as theVictorian lady novelists would say. Heavy black hair. Under differentcircumstances--you must remember I saw him only after he was dragged outof the storm and on the border of a collapse--I judge Dick Beckworthwould be quite the gentleman in all appearance, and quite the devil atheart."
"You said it!" agreed Nell.
"A mustache--and thick black hair," murmured Betty. "Yes. I saw him go bywhen we were cowering there under that wall, too. Well, I am relieved."Her laugh did not sound right in her brother's ears. "I am glad that itdid not turn out to be a real ghost."
Hunt sat down upon a chair at Nell's side of the bed. The singer lookedat him, and there suddenly flashed into her eyes a warm light thatenhanced her beauty. She put out a little brown hand and gripped his,which was only too ready to be seized.
"Parson--Mr. Hunt, you are a good man!" she said, chokingly. "I heardabout what you did last night. But I didn't hear all about it; so Ididn't know Dick was alive. I--I'm mighty wicked, I reckon. I ain't gladhe didn't die----"
"No need to go into that," urged Hunt quickly. "All such things are inthe hands of Providence. But your mind, I hope, Nell, is relieved."
Betty looked from the face of the girl on the pillow to her brother'sglowing countenance. It was another shock for Betty Hunt, but sheunderstood.
* * * * *
The sudden, sharp blizzard that tore across the country blew itself outby nightfall. In the morning the sun shone brilliantly, a warm windfoll
owed the gale, and the snow and ice melted like a September frost.It had been only a foretaste of winter.
The effect of the incidents of that day remained longer in the hearts ofsome of the participators in the events than it did upon the earth orthe rivers, the rocks and gorges, the frosted herbage, or other physicaland material matters about Canyon Pass. To be in mutual peril, to sufferalike the buffetings of the storm, had linked Betty Hunt and NellBlossom with a chain that could not lightly be severed.
There was, too, a secret knowledge on the Eastern girl's part that madethis chain stronger than Nell imagined. The latter had no suspicion thatDick Beckworth--Dick the Devil--was a link in the chain that bound her tothe parson's sister. There was as well another thing that made thecabaret singer an object of Betty's deeper interest. The latter had seenin her brother's face something which had vastly surprised her andsomething which--had it been revealed to her before this time--would havehorrified Betty as well as startled her.
The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was plainly and frankly more concerned inNell Blossom than he had any right to be--unless he proposed to declarehimself the singer's suitor. It was a somewhat shocking thought forBetty--no two ways about it. She had scarcely ever considered her brotherin the light of a marrying man, and never here at Canyon Pass! For it tohave been suggested that Hunt would find an object of sentimentalinterest in this Western mining camp would have completely confoundedBetty at an earlier date.
And Nell Blossom? A singer in a rough amusement place that Betty wouldconsider herself smirched if she entered? Yet--and Betty was surprised toconsider it--she was much less amazed by her brother's seeming choicethan she presumed she would be. Besides, there was a reason why BettyHunt felt that she might not criticise her brother's course in thisaffair.
When Nell Blossom had recovered from the exposure sufficiently to gohome to Mother Tubbs, and that was not until late in the day followingthe storm, Betty had gained from her brother all he knew and much thathe surmised regarding Nell's association with the gambler who hadreturned to the Grub Stake at so dramatic a moment.
For his part, Hunt had not the first suspicion that Betty held anypersonal interest in the man, Dick Beckworth. But he knew that hissister suspected his love for Nell Blossom.
Hunt braced himself for an argument, and a serious one. Betty veeredfrom Nell herself in a most surprising manner and seemed to feelinterest only in Dick the Devil.
"He is scarcely a person in whom you would find any interest did youmeet him, Betty," declared the parson. "Believe me, as Joe says, thefellow is one of those fungi attached to society that would much betterbe lopped off than allowed to develop and spread their vile spawnabout."
"Oh!" gasped Betty. "You mean it would have been better had you and--andMr. Hurley found the man's remains where you found his horse? Oh, Ford!"
"Somehow," said the parson gravely, "I feel that way."
"Ford!" cried his sister vehemently. "This is an awful place! Let--let usgo back East."
The parson shook his head slowly. "No, Betty. You may go if you wish. Ido not blame you for wanting to give it up. There is no reason why youshould sacrifice yourself. But for me--Canyon Pass is mine. I will notown to failure. Indeed, my work is not without promise. I am going toreach the heart of Canyon Pass in some way, and I will keep on in thequest as long as I am given strength."
It was Betty's last outbreak against conditions. Nor did her brothersuspect for a moment the reason for the sudden renewal of her hatred ofthe mining town.