CHAPTER VI – THE APPROACH
In fairylike traceries the tiny drops of a mist-like rain embroidered the broad pane of the Pullman. Betty Hunt gazed through this at the flying fields and woods, the panorama of the railroad fences, and the still nearer blur of telegraph poles with that hopeless feeling a sentenced prisoner must have as he journeys toward the prison pen.
Everything she cared for save her brother, everything she knew and that was familiar to her daily life, every object of her thought and interest, was being left behind by the onrush of the train. Time, with a big besom, was sweeping her quiet past into the discard – she felt it, she knew it! They would never go back to Ditson Corners again, or to Amberly where they had lived as children with Aunt Prudence or to any similar sanctuary.
That was what Betty had most longed for since her last term at boarding school, which had ended for her so abruptly with the death of her Aunt Prudence Mason. Her last previous journey by train had been that somber one to the funeral. When Betty and her brother had later moved to the Ditson Corners’ parsonage they had done so by motor.
The drumming of the wheels over the rail-joints kept time with the swiftly flying thoughts of the girl. She lay in the corner of the broad, tan plush seat like a crumpled flower that had been carelessly flung there. Thoughts of that last train journey seared her mind in hot flashes, as summer lightnings play about the horizon at dusk.
First one thing, then another, she glimpsed – mere jottings of the happenings that had gone before the hurried good-byes at school and the anxious trip homeward. These remembrances now were like the projection of a broken film upon the moving picture screen.
And those trying, anxious weeks which followed the funeral while Ford was completing his divinity course and received his ordination and which came to an end with his selection as pastor of the First Church at Ditson Corners! All through these weeks was the dull, miserable pain of disillusion and horror that Betty must keep to herself. She could not tell Ford. She could tell nobody. What had happened during the last few weeks at school was a secret that must be buried – buried in her mind and heart as deeply as Aunt Prudence was buried under the flowering New England sod.
Betty, with her secret, was like a hurt animal that hides away to die or recover of its wound as nature may provide. She could not die. She knew that, of course, from the first. Time, she felt, would never erase the scar upon her soul; but the wound itself must heal.
All that – that which was now such a horror in her thought – she had hoped to bury deeper as time passed. She had devoted herself to her brother’s needs. She had made his comfort her constant care. Busy mind and busy hands were her salvation from the gnawing regret for that secret happening that she believed must wither all her life.
Now this sudden and unlooked for change had come to shake up all her fragile plans like the shifting of a kaleidoscope. They were going West, toward the land she hated, toward people whom, she told herself, she had every reason to suspect and fear. Why had Ford kept up his correspondence with that Joe Hurley? Betty did not blame her brother for wishing to get away from Ditson Corners. But why need it have been that Westerner who offered the soul-sore minister the refuge that he so gladly accepted?
Betty, without a clear explanation, had no reason to oppose to Hunt’s desire for a change that would satisfy him. And such explanation she would have died rather than have given him! She was swept on toward the West, toward whatever fate had in store for her, like a chip upon a current that could not be stemmed.
Aunt Prudence had left her money – conservatively invested – to Betty; but she was not to touch the principal until she was thirty. “If the girl marries before that age, no shiftless man can get it away from her,” had been the spinster’s frank statement in her will. “If she is foolish enough to marry after that age, it is to be hoped she will then have sense at least regarding money matters.” The brother had a small nest egg left from his father’s estate after paying his college and divinity school expenses.
So they were not wholly dependent upon Hunt’s salary. He could afford to take a vacation, and it was on this ground – the need of rest – that he had resigned from the pulpit of Ditson Corners’ First Church. They had left some really good friends behind them in the little Berkshire town – some who truly appreciated the young minister. But the clique against him had shown its activity much too promptly to salve Hunt’s pride. His resignation had been accepted without question, and he had remained only to see Bardell established in his place.
Betty condemned herself that she could not enter whole-heartedly into Hunt’s high expectations of the new field that lay before him. It was adventure – high adventure – to his mind. And why should a parson not long for a bigger life and broader development as well as another healthy man?
He was going to Canyon Pass without a penny being guaranteed him. Joe Hurley urged him to come; but he told him frankly that there would be opposition. Certain Passonians would not welcome a parson or the establishment of religious worship.
But this opposition was that of the enemy. The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was not afraid of the devil in an open fight. Opposition in the church itself was what had conquered him at Ditson Corners. Let the phalanxes of wickedness confront him at Canyon Pass, he would stand against them!
Betty saw him coming back down the aisle of the car, smiling broadly, a handsome, muscular figure of a man. He did not look the cleric. She had been so used to seeing him in the black frock-coat and immaculate white collar that she was at first rather shocked when he had donned another suit to travel in.
He was almost boyish looking. He was a big man, and she believed him capable of big things. She could almost wish he had selected some other road in life – although that thought was shocking to her, too. Ford might well have been a business man, an engineer, a banker, a promoter. Betty’s ideas were somewhat vague about business life; but she felt sure Ford would have shone in any line. She was a loyal sister.
She shook herself out of the fog of her own thoughts and smiled up at him.
“Met a man in the smoking room who knows that country about Canyon Pass like a book, Bet,” Hunt said, dropping down beside her. “It really is a part of the last frontier. We shall always be a pioneer people, we Americans. There is something in the raw places of the earth that intrigues us all – save the saps. And sap, even, hardens in such an environment as this we are bound for.”
“I hope you will not be disappointed, Ford.”
“Disappointed? Of course I shall be disappointed and heart-sick and soul-weary. But I believe my efforts will not be narrowed and circumscribed and bound down by formalism and caste. As Joe says, I won’t be ‘throwed and hog-tied.’ The old-time revivalists used to urge their converts to ‘get liberty.’ I’ll get liberty out there, I feel sure, in Canyon Pass.”
She could say nothing to dash his enthusiasm. It was too late for that now, in any case. Betty even tried to smile. But her face felt as stiff as though it were like to crack in the process.
“All that territory of which Canyon Pass is the heart,” pursued Hunt, “has been phenomenally rich in ore in past time. They have to comb the mines and sweep the hydraulic-washed benches very scientifically now to make the game pay. Yet Canyon Pass is distinctly a mining town and always must be.
“My new acquaintance says it is really ‘wild and woolly.’” He smiled more broadly. “I fancy it is all Joe said it is. Crude, rude, roughneck – but honest. If I can dig down to the honest heart of Canyon Pass, Bet, I shall succeed. We’ll not worry about first impressions, or the lack of super-civilized conveniences, or the fact that men don’t often shave, and the women wear their hair untidily. Of course, I’ll make you as comfortable as possible – ”
“I can stand whatever you can, Ford,” she interrupted with brisk conviction.
“Well,” with a sigh of relief, “that’s fine. Oh, Bet! This is the life we’re going to. I am sure you will be happier when you once get a taste of it.”
But she made no reply.
When the two mountain-hogs, drawing and pushing the trans-continental train up the grade, ground to a brief stop at Crescent City, Betty Hunt was surprised to see brick office buildings, street cars, several taxi-cabs at the station, paved streets, and the business bustle of a Western city which always impresses the stranger with the idea that the place is commercially much more important than it actually is.
“This – this cannot be Canyon Pass?” she stammered to Hunt.
“No.” He laughed. “But here’s Joe Hurley – bless him! Joe!”
He shouted it heartily before dropping off the car step and turning to help Betty. But Joe Hurley strode across the platform and playfully shouldered the minister aside.
“Your servant, Miss Betty!” the Westerner cried, sweeping off his broad-brimmed hat in a not ungraceful bow.
The girl from the East floated off the step into his arms. Joe set her as lightly as a thistle-down upon the platform and somehow found her free hand.
“When Willie, here, told me you would come with him, Miss Betty, I promised the boys at the Great Hope a holiday when you arrived. Great saltpeter!” he added, stepping off to admire her from her rippling, bistered hair to her silk stockinged ankles. “You sure will make the boys sit up and take notice!”
Here Hunt, having relieved himself of the hand-bags, got hold of Hurley’s hand and began pumping. The two young men looked into each other’s eyes over that handclasp. They had little to say, but much to feel. Betty sighed as she looked on. Her last hope of quick escape from the West went with that sigh. The handclasp and the look were like an oath between the two young men to stand by each other.
“Well, old sobersides!” said Joe.
“Same old Joe, aren’t you?” rejoined the minister.
“Come on. We’ll get your bags into a taxi and go up to the hotel,” Hurley said briskly. “I got rooms for you. We can’t go on to the Pass till eight o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“Is there but one train a day, Mr. Hurley?” Betty asked as he helped her into the cab.
“To Canyon Pass? Ain’t ever been one yet,” and he chuckled. “We go over with Lizard Dan and the mail. Some day, when the roads are fixed up, we may get motor service. Until then, a six-mule stagecoach has to serve.”
“Oh!”
Hunt’s eyes twinkled. “Break it to her gently, Joe,” he advised. “Bet is prepared to be very much shocked, I know. This frontier life is going to be an eye-opener for her.”
“‘Frontier life!’” snorted Hurley. “Why, we’re plumb civilized. Bill Judson has laid in a stock of near-silk hosiery and shirts with pleated bosoms. Wait till you see some of the boys in holiday rig. Knock your eye out, when it comes to style.”
Betty smiled. She did not mind being laughed at. Besides, the modern appearance of Crescent City had somewhat relieved her apprehension. Even the hotel was not bad. Their rooms were cheerful and clean, so she could excuse the brand-new, shiny oak furniture and the garish brass beds.
She did not dislike Joe Hurley – not really. It was only his influence over Ford that she observed with a somewhat jealous eye. Although the mining man seldom addressed her brother seriously, she realized that he was fond of Ford. The latter was much the stronger character of the two – she was sure of that. He would never be overborne in any essential thing by the lighter-minded Hurley. But Ford admired the latter so much that Betty felt her brother was likely to give heed to Hurley’s advice in most matters connected with this new and strange environment to which they had come.
“Bet is scared of the West and of you Westerners,” Hunt said lightly. “I don’t know but what she expected you to have sprouted horns since she saw you before, Joe.”
“Shucks!” chuckled the other. “We’re mostly born with ’em out here, Miss Betty. But they de-horn us before they let us run loose out o’ the branding pens. And remember, I spent two years in the effete East.”
“It never touched you,” and Hunt laughed. “You’re just as wild and woolly as ever.”
The girl noted that Hurley was thoughtful of their every comfort. He showed them the best of the town that day; but in the evening they rested at the hotel and talked. The two men conversed while they smoked in Hunt’s room, with the door opened into Betty’s. She heard the murmur of their voices as she sat by her darkened window and looked out into the electrically lighted main street of Crescent City.
She was not at all thrilled by the novelty of the situation. She was only troubled.
Those strangers passing by! She saw a face in the throng but seldom as the street lights flickered upon it. And always she was fearfully expectant of seeing – What? Whom? She shuddered.
CHAPTER VII – THE FIRST TRICK
The high-springed stagecoach lurched drunkenly over the trail that wound through a valley Betty thought gnomes might have hewn out when the world was young. Barren, riven rock, gaunt, stunted trees, painted cliffs hazed by distance, all added to a prospect that fell far short in the Eastern girl’s opinion of being picturesque.
Rather, it was just what her brother had termed this Western country – raw. Betty did not like any rude thing. She shrank instinctively from anything crude and unfinished.
The three – herself, her brother, and Joe Hurley – occupied the seat on the roof of the plunging coach just behind the driver. “Lizard Dan” was an uncouth individual both in speech and appearance. He was bewhiskered, overalled, wore broken boots and an enormous slouched hat, and his hands were so grimy that Betty shuddered at them, although they so skillfully handled the reins over the backs of six frisky driving-mules.
Lizard Dan, Hurley told the Easterners, had gained his nickname when he was a pocket-hunter in a now far-distant day. He had been lost in the desert at one time and swore when he came out that he had existed by eating Crotaphytus Wislizeni roasted over a fire of dry cacti – the succulence of which saurian is much doubted by the Western white man, although it is a small brother of the South American iguana, there considered a delicacy.
However, Dan acquired a nickname and such a fear of the desert thereby that he became the one known specimen of the completely cured desert rat. He never went prospecting again, but instead drove the stage between Crescent City and Canyon Pass.
“The boys expecting us at the Pass to-day, Dan?” Joe Hurley had asked early in the journey.
“Youbetcha!”
“Got your gun loaded?”
Dan kicked the heavy double-barreled shotgun at his feet and replied again:
“Youbetcha!”
“Do – do wild animals infest the road?” Betty had asked stammeringly.
“Not much,” said Hurley. “But Dan carries a heap of registered mail in which wild men, rather than wild animals, might be interested.”
“Youbetcha!” agreed Dan.
Hurley glanced sideways at Betty’s face, caught its expression, and exploded into laughter.
“You’ve come to ‘Youbetcha Land,’ Miss Betty,” he said, when he could speak again.
“He is a character,” chuckled Hunt on her other side.
The suggestion of highwaymen stuck in the girl’s mind. She looked from Lizard Dan’s weapon to the ivory butt of the heavy revolver pouched at Joe Hurley’s waist. These weapons could not be worn exactly for show – an exhibition of the vanity of rather uncouth minds. It fretted her though without frightening her, this phase of Western life. It was not the possibility of gun-fights and brawls and the offices of Judge Lynch that made Betty Hunt shrink from contact with this country and its people.
The stagecoach mounted out of the valley – which might, Hunt said, have been fittingly described by Ezekiel – and followed a winding trail through the minor range of hills that divided Crescent City and its purlieus from the Canyon Pass country. The coach pitched and rocked as though it was a sea-going hack.
In time they crossed the small divide and came down the watershed into the valley of the East Fork.
Borne to their ears on the breeze at last, through the sound of the rumbling coach-wheels and the rattling trace-chains, was another noise. A throbbing rhythm of sound with the dull swish of intermittent streams of water.
“The hydraulic pumps at the Eureka Washings,” explained Hurley. “We’ll be in sight of them – and of Canyon Pass – before very long.”
The stagecoach lurched around a corner, and the raw, red bench of the riverbank came into view. Steam pumps were noisily at work and men were busy at the sluices into which the gold-bearing earth and gravel were washed down from the high bank.
Three great, brass-nozzled hydraulic “guns” were at work – each machine straddled by a man in oil-skins and hip boots, who manipulated the heavy stream of water that ate into the bank and crumbled it in sections.
At the moment of their sighting the hydraulic washings across the river, there was raised a wild, concerted shout from a point ahead. Out of a hidden cove galloped a cavalcade of a dozen or more mounted men, who swept up the road to meet the coach.
For an instant Betty thought of the shotgun at Dan’s feet and of highwaymen. These coming riders waved guns and yelled like wild Indians. But she saw a broad grin on Joe Hurley’s face.
“Here come some of the Great Hope boys,” he explained. “Their idea of ‘welcome to our city’ may be a little noisy, but they mean you well, Hunt.”
They came “a-shootin’,” and Lizard Dan threw the long lash of his whip over the backs of his six mules to force them through the cavalcade on the gallop.
Firing their guns and yelling, the riders on their wiry ponies surrounding the coach as its escort, pounded down to the ford. Their hullabaloo announced far in advance the approach of the coach to Canyon Pass.
In all its ugliness the mining camp was revealed. The gaze of the Easterners was focused on its unpainted shacks and rutted streets. They saw men, women, children, and a multitude of dogs running from all points toward the main thoroughfare of the town.
It was like a picture – not like anything real. Betty’s dazed mind could not accept this nightmare of a place as actually being the town to which fate – and her brother’s obstinacy – had brought them. Given an opportunity right then, the girl would have failed her brother! She was in a mood to desert him and return East as fast as she could travel.
Joe Hurley grinned at her. She had begun almost to hate those twinkling brown eyes of his with the golden sparks in them. He seemed to know just what her feelings were and to enjoy her horror of the crudity which assailed her on every hand. To her mind, Hurley was worse than his associates, for he had enjoyed the advantages of some culture.
The mules dashed into the shallows. Spray flew as high as the roof of the coach. The mules settled into a heavier pace as they dragged the vehicle up the farther bank and into the foot of Main Street.
The crowd – a couple of hundred people of all ages – had gathered before the Wild Rose Hotel. This stood opposite the bank and farther along the street than the Three Star Grocery and Boss Tolley’s Grub Stake. The mules picked up their heels again under the cracking of Lizard Dan’s whiplash, and cantered up to the chief hostelry of Canyon Pass. The yelling crew of horsemen – a bizarre committee of welcome indeed – rode ahead, punctuating their vociferous clamor by an occasional pistol-shot.
Betty caught sight of her brother’s face. It was as broadly smiling as was that of Joe Hurley! Actually Ford was enjoying this awful experience.
The moment Dan drew the mules to a halt, Hurley was half way to the ground and turned on the step to help Betty down. She glanced timidly at Hunt again. He was preparing to descend on the other side of the coach, leaving her entirely to Hurley’s care.
Then occurred that incident which would ever be engraved upon Betty’s memory, and which marked indeed the coming of the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt to Canyon Pass on the archives of the town’s history in letters that never would be effaced.
As Hunt started to descend from the roof of the coach there sounded a single pistol-shot and the hat he wore – a low-crowned affair, the single mark of the cleric in his dress – sailed into the air with a ragged hole through brim and crown.
As the hat flew upward a fusillade of five more shots followed the first, and the hat was torn to rags as it sailed over the roof of the coach. The crowd roared – some in anger, but most in derision. The man standing by the door of the Grub Stake reloaded his gun before putting it away, grinning broadly.
Hunt was startled; but his own smile did not fade. What was it Joe had impressed so emphatically upon his mind?
“It’s the first impression that counts with Canyon Pass folks. Give ’em the chance, and they’ll laugh you out of town. And remember, they are bound to judge you, Hunt, by their own standards.”
The young minister felt that the occasion was momentous. His usefulness here in Canyon Pass might depend upon his action or comment in this emergency.
His nerves were perfectly steady. How was his nerve? He knew the man who had shot the hat from his head was such a good shot that he had been in no danger at all.
But Hunt felt that something more was expected of him than the mere ignoring of a rude and offensive act. He started across the road toward the gunman. Those who stood in the way opened a lane for him with some alacrity. The smiles upon the faces of those who moved stiffened. Something extraordinary, something they had not at all expected, was about to happen.
Hicks, slouching against the front of the Grub Stake, came to sudden attention. His fingers crooked, creeping toward the butt of his gun again. Every atom of the ruffian’s courage – such as it was – lay in that weapon. Without it – and its leaden death – he was a sheep for bravery!
Smiling still Hunt reached him. The parson’s steady gaze held that of Hicks as the human eye is said to hypnotize the gaze of all wild beasts. Hicks, however, was not wild. Not now. Not so you could notice it!
“Brother,” Hunt said cheerfully, “you’ve spoiled my hat. It’s the only hat I’ve got with me until my trunks come in by freight. You’ve had your fun, and it’s only fair you should pay for it.”
The expression of Hicks’ face sunk into a sneer. He thought the white-livered parson was trying to get money from him for the hat. He must indeed be a “softie.”
Then Hunt’s hands moved suddenly, swiftly. In a flash he had snatched the broad-brimmed hat from Hicks’ head and placed it on his own,
“Turn about is fair play, don’t you think?” said the parson, and without waiting for a reply he turned on his heel and went back across the street!
The silence that had fallen on the crowd had been of that tense, strained quality that portended tragedy. Had Hunt showed offense at the trick played upon him and struck Hicks, the latter would have used his gun without mercy. And scarcely could a jury have been impaneled in Canyon Pass that would have convicted the ruffian.
But of a sudden, a roar of laughter rose from the crowd. They rocked with it, beating their knees, holding their sides, laughing with wide-open mouths and streaming eyes. Nor was the comical appearance of Hicks’ dilapidated hat crowning the parson’s otherwise impeccable outfit all that spurred Canyon Pass to such wild cachinnation.
The strident laughter was aimed at the chagrined gunman. Hicks knew it. The broad back of the parson offered a sure target; but he knew better than to draw his gun a second time. Instead he turned away, hatless, and sought sanctuary in the Grub Stake.
Hunt had taken the first trick in this game he had “set into.” And Canyon Pass to a man admired a shrewd gambler.