CHAPTER XVI--LOVE AND LONGING

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 toward the Grub Stake, swearing between the huge sneezes which racked him like successive earthquake shocks. Hunt returned inside the building.

The others were grouped near the door, and there were weeping eyes among them. For the moment the atmosphere in the vicinity of the pulpit was unbearable.

Hunt drew forth a handkerchief, tied it across his nose and mouth, and advanced to the desk. The Bible had not been injured by Tolley's rough action. But the red pepper was scattered thickly upon the linen pulpit cloth. He wrapped the book in this cloth and carried it to a window which looked upon the narrow lane beside the building. Hunt opened this window; and, leaning over the low sill, dropped the book to the ground.

He closed that window quickly; but he opened others to ventilate the room. The damp air quickly relieved the place of the pungent pepper. The parson did all this quietly. He made no comment on the incident.

But the gathering company whispered and chattered--the women angrily, the men more than a little inclined to be amused.

"Parson," said Bill Judson, his eyes twinkling, "I promised Jib Collins last night that I'd warn you to go easy on pounding the pulpit because it was sort o' wabbly. I reckon 'twas Tolley I ought t've warned."

Betty explained to the woman who furnished the pulpit cloth why it was not in evidence, and Mother Tubbs when she arrived had to be told why the pulpit Bible was in retirement. But there was time for little more than that, as the second whistle blew, and the room began to fill.

At least an audience was not lacking to hear Hunt preach his first sermon at Canyon Pass. The seats were comfortably filled. Most of the congregation were cleanly and neatly dressed; the women in such finery as they owned. But some of the men, the rougher sort and evidently present out of curiosity only, looked just as they did on week days. Smoking, however, was taboo.

Rosabell Pickett and her piano, a small upright instrument of a rather uncertain tone, was of great assistance. Without her help the strangely awkward congregation could scarcely have raised a hymn.

Hunt made no comment upon the inauguration of the new régime in the town. He conducted the service just as he might have conducted a mission meeting at Ditson Corners. And he preached as carefully thought-out a discourse as was his wont, although his theme was simple. He held their respectful attention and, he believed, won their undivided interest.

After the close of the service the Bible was rescued by two of the women and cleansed of the pepper which had been so plentifully shaken into it. Mother Tubbs took Hunt aside.

"I'm plumb ashamed, parson!" she said indignantly. "To think that Nell Blossom done such a trick on you!"

"Nell Blossom?"

"She done it," said the old woman with conviction. "I missed my box o' red pepper last evening; but I had no idee what that flighty gal took it for. And then she said when I tried to get her to come to meetin' this mornin' that she reckoned it would be too hot up yere for her, and said for me to keep out o' the front seats."

"Ah!"

"She reckoned you'd get to thumping the Book in the middle of the sermon, maybe. When Boss Tolley hears tell how it come, he won't love Nell none the better, I reckon."

The peppering of the pulpit Bible might have made the whole of Canyon Pass roar with laughter and have brought nothing but ridicule on the parson had Hunt been the actual victim of Nell Blossom's impish trick. That Boss Tolley chanced to suffer yielded a number of the townspeople much amusement. But it afforded others an opportunity to show stronger approval of what Hunt and his coworkers were trying to do.

Then, there was a third party. It was chiefly made up of Boss Tolley's friends. Tolley raved against both Hunt and Nell Blossom, and his satellites listened and agreed with him. There began to be whispered about Canyon Pass a story to the effect that the absent Dick Beckworth would never be seen by mortal eye again, that he had left town in Nell Blossom's company, and that the cabaret singer, if anybody, could explain how Dick's horse had come to be found under a heap of fallen gravel at the edge of Runaway River.

Joe Hurley did not chance to hear these whispers for some time. In truth, during the weeks immediately following that first service in Tolley's old shack, the owner of the Great Hope had found his time fully occupied by two interests. The mine itself was one, for he believed he was close upon the unveiling of that rich vein which he had always believed was the "mother lode" of his claim. The second interest was in Betty Hunt.

Hurley sought the society of the Eastern girl whenever he could do so. Hunt, who was busy himself in several ways--especially in getting personally acquainted with the people in their homes or where they worked--was glad Joe could devote himself to Betty. Otherwise his sister might have found it very lonely here at Canyon Pass.

The girl from the East allowed Hurley's better qualities to impress her mind more and more. In her company, too, the young man tried to eradicate from his speech the vernacular that he knew she despised. Yet when he grew interested in a subject of conversation, or was excited, it was the most natural thing in the world for Hurley to revert to the vivid expressions of the cattle trail and the camp.

Of course, no man could have prepared himself for college without obtaining a foundation of book education which Betty must fully approve. Occasionally Hurley revealed a flash of wit or a literary appreciation that delighted the girl.

These weeks of association bred in both young people a confidence and admiration for each other which under ordinary conditions might have foretold the growth of a much warmer regard. Hurley began to hope. Yet Betty gave him no such encouragement as young women are wont to offer a man in whom they begin to feel a tender interest.

Midsummer was approaching, and the dry, rarified air of Canyon Pass sometimes seemed a blast from an open furnace. But when they rode, as they often did, out upon the heights--above the canyon, for instance--there was always a cooler and more pleasantly odorous breeze.

In one of their earlier rides the two had jogged the entire length of the canyon on the east bank of Runaway River, and even a little way into the desert, far enough to mark the shallow basin where the last trickle of what was at Canyon Pass a boisterous torrent disappeared in the alkali.

But Betty did not admire even the look of the desert country. There was something horrible to her mind in the appearance of the dreary waste. She had never seen the Topaz at sunrise!

When they mounted to the highlands west of the camp, as they did on this present day, there were half a dozen trails they might strike into a country which would reveal beautiful as well as rugged prospects, and to these Betty could grant admiration. She had begun very soon to feel the splendors of nature which were so different here from those of her native Berkshires.

There was a forest that always intrigued her. The trail led them down cathedral aisles to the bank of a murmurous stream. To this they journeyed to-day; and, when within sound of the river, Betty drew her mount to a stand.

"It is beautiful, Mr. Hurley," she sighed. "I do not wonder that you so love this out-of-door life and this wilderness. And then you have always been used to it. It does make a difference where one is born."

"You said it!" returned Hurley emphatically. "I pretty near stifle when I get into a city and have to stay a spell. When I get back to this I feel like a boy again." He smiled reflectively. "The bard of 'Cactus Center' hits off my feelings to a fare-ye-well," and he proceeded to repeat from "The Forester's Return:"

"'I'm back on the job by the singing river, Far from the town with its money-mad, Back where the quaking aspens quiver-- And I'm glad.

There's work to do and there's work in plenty, And it's sleep in the open if fate so wills; But no man is more than one-and-twenty In the hills.'"

"That is fine!" Betty cried with enthusiasm, her eyes sparkling as they seldom did. "Why, I can almost feel that way myself, sometimes."

There was a drop in her tone at the end. She looked away and, had he been able to see into her eyes then, he would have beheld a much different expression in their dimmed depths.

"You'd feel like it always if you'd just let yourself, Miss Betty," Hurley said, with sudden warmth.

She smiled a little doubtfully, but turned toward him again, having recovered her composure. Joe's eyes glowed and a strange pallor rose under his tan.

"Just think of living out here all your days and enjoying every moment of them! It's rough, I know, and sort of untamed. But it's a good life, Miss Betty--a wonderful life!"

"You--you almost convince me," she stammered, laughing a little uncertainly, yet gazing at him with a dawning light in her eyes that Joe had not seen there before.

It emboldened him; it inspired him to speak the words that were boiling under the surface of his calm. He was a forthright fellow at best, was Joe Hurley, and he was very, very much in love with Betty Hunt.