CHAPTER III--A SHADOW THROWN BEFORE
A rider had his choice in journeying to Canyon Pass from a southerlydirection--say from Lamberton, which lies between the railroad and thedesert--of following the river trail to be deafened by the boisterousvoice of the flood, or of climbing to the high lands and there joggingalong the wagon track which finally dipped down the steeps to the fordof the West Fork and so into the mining town.
Spring was drifting into the background of the year. The cottonwoodleaves were the size of squirrel ears. The new fronds of the pinon hadexpanded to full size and now their needles quivered in the heat of thealmost summer-like day. Joe Hurley, sitting his heavy-haunched bay,giving as easily to the animal's paces as a sack of meal, followed thewagon track rather than the river trail and so came to that fork wherewheel-ruts from a westerly direction joined the road along the brink ofthe canyon wall.
A cream-colored pony came cantering along the trail from Hoskins, itsrider as gaily dressed as a Mexican vaquero--a splotch of color againstthe background of the evergreens almost startling to his vision. But itwas the identity of this rider that invigorated the tone of the miningman's reflections.
"Nell Blossom! The only sure-enough cure for ophthalmia! Am I going tohave the pleasure of being your escort back to Canyon Pass? It will suredo me proud. The Passonians are honing for you, Nell."
"I'm going back to the Pass--yes, Mr. Hurley," she said, pulling down herpony to the more sedate pace of his big bay.
"Where you been since you left us all in the lurch? There was almost ariot at the Grub Stake when Tolley found out you had gone."
"Boss Tolley hasn't got anything on me," she said defensively. "I'dnever sing there again, anyway."
"Somebody said you'd lit out for the desert with Steve Siebert and AndyMcCann," and he chuckled. "They started the same day you vamoosed."
"I might just as well have gone with those old desert rats. Pockethunting couldn't be much worse than Hoskins."
"Great saltpeter! What took you to Hoskins?" exclaimed Hurley. "Where'syour local pride? If you weren't born at Canyon Pass, you've lived theremost of your life. You shouldn't encourage a dump like Hoskins tobelieve for a moment that it has greater attractions than the Pass."
"If I thought it might be more attractive, I learned better," she saidshortly.
"Mother Tubbs got a letter from you, but she wouldn't tell us where youwere."
"No," Nell said. "I didn't want the boys riding over there and startinga roughhouse at the Tin Can Saloon."
"Great saltpeter!" exclaimed Hurley again. "You don't mean to say youbeen caroling your roundelays in _that_ place?"
"A girl has to work somewhere, and I was sick to death of the GrubStake."
"Boss Tolley is no pleasant citizen and his joint is no sweet-scentedgarden spot, I admit," Hurley agreed. "Personally I'd like to see Tolleyrun out of town and the Grub Stake eliminated. But Colorado Brown hasopened a new place and is going to run it right--so he says."
"That's what is bringing me back," Nell confessed. "He got word to me byMother Tubbs, and he made me a better offer than Tolley ever would. ButI expect one cabaret is about like another in these roughneck towns."
"I don't know about that," the man said defensively. "We mean to try toclean up Canyon Pass. The boys have got to have amusement. ColoradoBrown is a white man, and, if he gets the backing of the better element,he can give a good show and sell better hootch and better grub than everBoss Tolley dared to."
"Hootch is hootch," Nell interrupted. "It's all bad. There's nothinggood about a rotten egg, Mr. Hurley. And the men's money is wasted inall those places--plumb wasted!"
He had been watching her closely as they talked. He had been watchingNell closely, off and on, for several years. Like many of the otheryoung and unattached men of Canyon Pass, Joe Hurley had at one timeattempted to storm the fortress of Nell Blossom's heart. Finally he hadbecome convinced that the girl was not for him.
Joe Hurley neither wore his heart on his sleeve nor was he unwise enoughto anger Nell by forcing his attentions beyond that barrier she hadraised between them. His were merely the objections of any clean-mindedman when he had seen her yielding to the machinations of Dick the Devil.Joe knew the gambler's kind.
He had felt no little anxiety when, with the usual spring exodus of thetwo old desert rats, Steve Siebert and Andy McCann, Nell and DickBeckworth had likewise disappeared from the Grub Stake. Dick, of course,had settled with Boss Tolley; he intimated that he was starting northfor the railroad at Crescent City. The hour had been so early thatnobody else had chanced to see the gambler and the girl ride away. Nellwas missed later, and all the right thinking men of the town, althoughthey said little, feared the worst for Nell Blossom.
Nell had displayed at the last some little interest in Dick the Devil.The other girls at the Grub Stake gossiped about it.
Then came Mother Tubbs with a bona-fide letter from the girl to dam theflood of gossip. Nell was working as usual in a cabaret. She had leftBoss Tolley because she could not stand him any longer. She was bitterabout the Grub Stake and its proprietor. And not a word in the letterabout Dick Beckworth. It was plain, even to the most suspicious, thatDick had not gone with her after all.
These few facts colored Joe Hurley's thoughts as they rode along thetrack. What colored Nell's?
When the sprightly talk lapsed between them, the girl's face fell intounhappy lines. She who had been as blithe as a field lark all her lifewas showing to Joe Hurley for the first time a most unnatural sobernessof spirit. Her eyes, their gaze fixed straight ahead, were filmed withremoteness that his friendly glance could not penetrate.
Something had changed Nell Blossom. She was no longer the happy-go-luckygirl she had been heretofore. He wondered if, after all, her affair withDick Beckworth was serious.
They skirted the Overhang, their horses now at a canter. Nell suddenlypulled in her mount at a place where a patch along the brink of thetreacherous cap had recently crumbled.
"Looks as if there might have been a small slide," observed Hurleycheerfully.
"Was--was anybody hurt?"
"Reckon not. Just about where the big slide was years ago. There arealways bits dropping down this cliff. I tell 'em there's bound to beanother landslip some time that will play hob with Runaway River andmaybe flood out the town again. It's like living over a volcano."
Nell still looked back at the broken edge of the cliff. "Nobody missing,then? Nobody--er--left town?"
He laughed. "Nobody but you and old Steve and Andy McCann. Those olddesert rats lit out the same morning you left town. Hold on! I don'tknow as you know it; but Dick Beckworth went about that time. He's goneto Denver, so Tolley says, to deal faro at a big place there."
He could not see the girl's face. As far as he knew the statement madeno impression upon her. They jogged on practically in silence until theycame to the point where the wagon-track plunged steeply to the ford ofthe West Fork, and from which spot the squalid town was first visible.
"Ugh!" Nell shuddered and glanced at Joe again. "It is such an uglyplace."
"Where's your civic pride, Nell?" and the other chuckled.
"What is there to be proud of?" was her sharp demand.
"It's a money-making town."
"Money!"
"Quite a necessary evil, that same money," he rejoined. "Gold is a goodfoundation to build a town upon. Canyon Pass has 'got a future in frontof it,' as the feller said. Business is booming. Bank deposits areincreasing. Three families have bought piano-players, and there are atleast a dozen talking machines in town--besides the female citizens," andhe laughed again.
"All that?" in a sneering tone. "Still, the bulk of the wages from themines and washings are spent for drink and in gambling. The increase inbank deposits I bet are made by the merchants and honkytonk keepers, Mr.Hurley. Canyon Pass is prosperous--yes. But at the expense of everythingdecent and everybody's decency. Mother Tubbs has got it right. CanyonPass hasn't got a heart."
"Oh--heart!"
"Yes, heart. There's neither law nor gospel, she says. Only such law asis enforced at the muzzle of the sheriff's gun. And as far as religiongoes--when was there ever a parson in Canyon Pass?"
"They're rare birds, I admit. But you needn't blame me, Nell."
"I do blame you!" she exclaimed fiercely. "You're at fault--you, andSlickpenny Norris who runs the bank, and Bill Judson of the Three Star,and the manager of the Oreode Company, and the other more influentialmen. It is your fault that there isn't a church and other civilizedthings in Canyon Pass."
"Great saltpeter, Nell! You're not wailing for a Sunday School and a skypilot?"
"Me? I reckon not!" She almost spat out the scornful denial. "I'm justtelling you what your old Canyon Pass is. It's a back number. But I'mfree to confess if a parson and a crew of psalm-singing tenderfoots camehere, I'd like enough pull my freight again--and that time for keeps!Even Hoskins would be more endurable."
At this outburst Joe Hurley broke into laughter. Nell Blossom wasparadoxical--had always been.
And yet, what Nell had said about the shortcomings of Canyon Pass stuckin Joe Hurley's mind. Within a few days the thought, fermenting withinhim, resulted in that letter which had so interested--not to sayexcited--the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt in far-away Ditson Corners.