The Heart of Canyon Pass

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...

The bluebird was no harbinger of spring at Canyon Pass. Most of the inhabitants had never seen that feathered songster and many had never heard of it. Incidentally these same Pa...

Joe Hurley had lost none of his admiration for his college friend whom he had encouraged to come West. He still believed the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was the very man to find...

Had Betty Hunt not had Joe Hurley to steady her as she came down from the roof of the stagecoach to the ground in the midst of the crowd, she never could have stood upright thro...

No more snow or ice had followed that first sharp, furious blizzard; but with the higher temperature had come heavy rainstorms which the natives declared were quite unseasonable...

He laid the missive on his desk with a full-bosomed sigh. Nor was that sigh wholly because of the reprobate Joe. Joe's flowers of speech did not much ruffle the parson's spirit.

It was Joe Hurley who saw Betty appear on the porch of the hotel. Perhaps his gaze had been fixed in that direction for that very purpose. It was a vision to draw the eyes of an...

It was still a beautiful summer morning, but its charm was quite lost for Betty Hunt. Her appreciation of the beautiful in nature was submerged by what had so overwhelmed her he...

"Well," observed Bill Judson oracularly, "it's about time for something new to break in Canyon Pass. About once in so often even a dead-an'-alive camp like this yere has got to...

Hurley brought back with him two shovels instead of one, and the pick. The two young men took a roundabout way to the ford so that Boss Tolley might not spy them and suspect whe...

There was a strangely paradoxical feeling in the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt's mind. Nell Blossom was a subject of thought he could not escape. He could not wholly overlook her m...

Hunt lingered in his sister's room after Joe Hurley had left them. They were talking when Maria came up to take away the tea things. The Mexican woman was greatly excited.

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 o...

Hunt caught up with Nell Blossom when she had passed through the gap in the barrelstave picket-fence, and his length of stride easily kept him beside the girl. Unless Nell broke...

Tolley halted--it seemed in midflight. Even the gun hand of Tom Hicks relaxed. From the other side of the room old Steve Siebert commanded the situation--and the group of desper...

It was Betty Hunt, who, after all, seemed to possess the bolder spirit of the two girls. Nell clung to the parson like a frightened child. He realized, however, after the first...

All Sabbaths were not fine at Canyon Pass, as Hunt realized on opening his eyes on that important morning. From the same open window through which he had viewed the chaste glori...

Joe Hurley had taken a new lease on cheerfulness; yet he scarcely could have explained why his condition of mind had so suddenly improved. But it was not difficult for him to pu...

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,...

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...

"Hey, you fellers!" shouted Tolley to the several men in the barroom of the Grub Stake. "Come give me a hand. Here's a feller that's taken pretty near his last pill, I reckon."

The tense silence that followed Smithy's half-sobbing speech marked the poignancy of the moment and the utter stupefaction of his hearers. To all but Joe Hurley and Hunt such an...

Some men can escape their duty if they choose to--can ignore it, flout it, even deny its very existence--but not one who is called to be a leader of men toward a higher plane of...

"Betty, I want to tell you something," he said, unconsciously urging Bouncer nearer to the girl's mount. "These weeks you have been here at Canyon Pass have been the greatest in...

Nell Blossom had not gone back to sing at Colorado Brown's place. It was some time before Hunt found this out, and he wondered why she had broken her agreement with Colorado, fo...

A rider had his choice in journeying to Canyon Pass from a southerly direction--say from Lamberton, which lies between the railroad and the desert--of following the river trail...

"No, there ain't no news--no news a-tall," declared Mrs. Sam Tubbs, comfortably rocking. "Nothing ever happens in Canyon Pass. For a right busy town on its main street, there's...

Even Hunt could not express sympathy for the unhappy Tolley. But he did not join in Judson's laughter or the chatter of the others in the meeting room. Tolley staggered off towa...

That eastern mountain range was all etched with rose color now as Hunt went back to the hotel. But the town had scarcely quieted after its night's revelry. Inebriates were still...

Hunt had a feeling that he was present at one of those tense scenes of a Western cinema drama, where the heroic gunman holds the villain under the muzzle of his lethal weapon.