CHAPTER XVIII--THE SHADOW ON BETTY'S PATH

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 heart and her thought.

The thing which had been so long hidden in her mind--that secret which had changed Betty so desperately at the end of her schooldays--had risen to the surface again.

But she had not gone far when something arose that made Betty wish she had not left Joe Hurley beside the singing river. Her staid old pony began to limp.

She was a good rider, but she had not the first idea what to do when a horse went lame, except to get down and relieve the poor creature of her weight. But she was much too far from Canyon Pass to walk and lead the hobbling pony.

The wise old cow pony made much of the affliction, and when Betty tried to urge it on the limping horse was a pitiful sight indeed. Betty had never been taught the proper way to pick up a horse's foot to examine it for a stone in the frog; but the pony lifted the crippled member in such a way that the girl managed to get at it. The stone was there, a sharp-edged flint wedged into the frog, but the girl had no instrument with which to get it out.

Fortuitous circumstances do happen elsewhere besides in bald romance. Unlooked-for help appeared in this moment of Betty's need. She looked up to see Nell Blossom on her cream-colored pony galloping along the wagon track, coming from the direction of Canyon Pass. The cabaret singer glanced at the dismounted girl, nodded, and would have gone right by, but she chanced to see the pony limp on a yard or two.

"What's the matter with that hoss?" demanded Nell, reining in her own pony with both skill and promptness.

"Oh, Miss Blossom," cried Betty, "there's a stone in his foot, and I can't get it out."

"Where's your side partner?" asked Nell, getting slowly down. "That Joe Hurley oughtn't to let you tenderfoots out of his sight. Not on the open trail."

Betty recognized the measure of scorn in this remark, but she was in no position to resent it. She said as casually as she could:

"Mr. Hurley stayed behind for something. He may not even come back this way. I really do not know what to do for the poor creature."

"Meanin' Joe, or the hoss?" and the blue eyes danced suddenly with mischief.

"The poor pony."

"Get the stone out," Nell said, picking up the pony's foot.

"It is wedged in tightly--that stone."

Nell drew from the pocket of her abbreviated skirt a jackknife that would have delighted the heart of any boy. With an implement in this she removed the stone in a twinkling.

"There!" Nell said. "Let him rest here a minute, and he'll be all right. The old four-flusher! He isn't hurt a mite, but he'd like to have you think so," and she slapped the pony resoundingly.

"I'm awfully much obliged to you, Miss Blossom."

"No need to be. And no need to call me 'Miss.'"

"Oh--well--Nell, if you like it better," Betty rejoined with a most disarming smile. "I thank you."

"That's all right," said Nell in her brusque, but not altogether unfriendly, way. "I say, Miss Hunt!"

Betty interrupted with: "Betty, if you please, Nell."

"Oh! All right," the singer said, the more friendly light sparkling in her eyes again. "What I wanted to ask you is, is that suit you got on really what they all wear in the East?"

"Yes. Since nearly every one rides astride now, the habit is made mannish."

"Well, I've straddled a hoss ever since I can remember, but I never seen anything but a skirt and bloomers or a divided skirt like this on women before. But I must say them things you wear are plumb fetching."

Betty was amused. But she had reason for feeling kindly toward Nell Blossom.

"You could easily cut over that corduroy skirt you wear into a pair of breeches like these," she suggested.

"You reckon so?" asked Nell with eagerness. "I'd like that a pile. But I don't know----"

"I could show you. We could cut a pattern. Has anybody in town a sewing machine?"

"Sure thing. Mother Tubbs has got one. And I can run up a seam as good as she can."

"I'll tell you," proposed Betty with real interest. "You ride back to the hotel with me, and we'll cut the pattern out of a newspaper."

Through such seemingly unimportant incidents as this the trend of great affairs are sometimes changed. Had Nell ridden on she might have seen the same fugitive Betty had noticed hiding in the chaparral. But Nell was easily persuaded to attend the parson's sister to the Wild Rose.

The two girls, who seemed to have so little in common, after all found much, besides the dressmaking plans, in each other to afford them interest.

It was Nell's strangely sweet voice that pleased Betty most. Even when the Western girl said the rudest things, her voice caressed one's ear. And Betty began to realize that Nell's "rudeness" was born of frankness and a certain bashfulness. Most bashful people are abrupt, at times quite startling, in speech. In another place, among other people, Nell Blossom would have betrayed timidity and hesitation. But, as she would have said, she would not have "got far" in Canyon Pass by yielding to any secret shrinking from her associates.

"A girl's got to keep her own end up in a place like this. They all root for me and clap me on and off the stage. But I've got to fight my own battles," pursued the singer. "Men are like wolves, Betty. The pack will foller a leader so long as that leader keeps ahead. When the leader goes plumb lame and falls behind, they eat him."

"Oh!"

"I'm popular with the boys. They're strong for me just now. But 'twouldn't take much to make 'em turn on me. I know 'em!" she concluded grimly.

She knew a great many things, it was evident, of which Betty Hunt was ignorant. When the cabaret singer went away with her pattern she left Betty much to ponder about, which did not fundamentally deal with Nell Blossom's problems.

When Nell had gone a grimmer shadow overcame Betty's mind--a shadow that had lain athwart her path since that bitter season just preceding the death of her Aunt Prudence Mason and Betty's withdrawal from boarding school.

The events of those last weeks at Grandhampton Hall were etched so deeply upon Betty's memory that they could not be effaced. She believed that they never would be.

And on this day all had been rubbed raw again by Joe Hurley's outbreak. If he had only not spoken as he had! If things had only gone on between Betty and him as they had been going--calmly, quietly; yes, she confessed it now, really pleasantly.

She had come to think of the mining man's attention as an undoubted aid to her placid life. Her rides with him, and their association in other ways, their conversations on various subjects had been of greater moment in establishing her peace of mind than Betty had realized.

She faced that fact--alone in her own room now--with fuller appreciation of what Joe Hurley had come to mean to her.

She was an utterly honest girl. She had faced a terrible and soul-racking situation before and come to a decision which she had held to through all the months since she had left school.

Just what did Joe Hurley mean to Betty Hunt?

Her first half-fear of Joe, a real dislike of his presumed character, had melted before a broader understanding of the man and his aims. Joe was her brother's friend and the chief supporter of Hunt's earnest work among these people. First of all Betty had begun to like Joe because he so generously aided the parson.

Her appreciation of the underlying strata of Joe's character had grown from day to day of personal association with him. He was a man who would ultimately achieve big things. She felt this to be his dominant trait. Yet he had tenderness, generosity, wit, and a measure of "book learning" of which last she eagerly approved.

Under ordinary conditions--Betty Hunt admitted this frankly now--she would have been as strongly attracted by Joe Hurley, once she had got over her first doubt of his surface qualities, as by any young man she had ever associated with.

She did not question her own judgment in Joe's case, no matter how far wrong the unsophisticated school girl had been to give her heart into the keeping of another who had seemed a much more charming man!

Andy Wilkenson--sophisticated, smiling, tender, with all the graces of person and intellect that any young girl could wish--had set himself to win Betty Hunt. His intentions had been perfectly honorable, in the sense thus used.

Andy had urged marriage--an immediate, if secret, marriage--from the very first. And there was reason for secrecy. Betty wished to finish her course at Grandhampton Hall. Aunt Prudence must not know of this great, new thing that had come into Betty's life. Even Ford must not be told.

For, after all, the girl realized that she was very young--much younger, even, it seemed, than Andy Wilkenson. Andy was so much more sensible than she!

Betty feared she could not keep her mind sufficiently on her studies to stand well at the end of the semester if she was not utterly sure of Andy. Once married to him, of course, Andy would be hers entirely! No other woman could ever mean anything to him if the unsuspicious, broken-down old minister in a neighboring town joined them in holy bonds.

Aunt Prudence would forgive her when it was all over and she went home with her diploma and her marriage certificate in her trunk. It would be absolutely wicked to disturb poor Aunt Prudence by a letter either announcing the engagement, which was for a very brief term, or her marriage. For Betty's elderly relative was ill--worse than either Betty or her brother dreamed of at the time.

The opportunities Betty had to be with Andy were not many. The rules of the Hall were very strict. Even her introduction to the young man from the West had been clandestine. Unknown to Betty, Wilkenson, learning all he could about certain girls in her set at the school, had selected Betty Hunt deliberately as his mark.

Betty's school fees were paid by an old aunt who was reputed very rich. The aunt was known to be devoted to her. All that she had was sure to be Betty's when Aunt Prudence died. Wilkenson had even gone so far as to learn much more particularly about the state of Aunt Prudence Mason's health than Betty herself knew.

One item only escaped Andy Wilkenson's cunning mind. It was not until they had been married and Wilkenson was driving Betty back to the Hall by unfrequented roads late in the afternoon that the small but appalling oversight on his part broke upon his understanding.

"You know, girlie, I haven't got much money. I came East yere"--how Betty had loved that drawl then--"to get me a stake. I did a fool thing and threw away--just threw away--my bank roll out in Crescent City."

"Oh, _money_!" replied Betty with fine scorn. "You can go to work at something, Andy, and earn more."

"Ye-as," he agreed in a tone that might have revealed a good deal to a more sophisticated person than the girl who had so recently been Betty Hunt, "so I can. But I may not make any good connection before you get out of that school. And then I'd like us to go back West. I'm known out there. A man can always do better in his own stamping-grounds."

"Oh, the West must be wonderful," murmured Betty, with clasped hands.

"Yep. But no place is wonderful unless you've got a good stake. Now, how about it, Betty? This old aunt of yours is pretty well fixed, eh?"

The girl was startled. "Wealthy? I think so. Aunt Prudence has been very kind to me."

"She'll keep on being kind to you, I reckon?"

"Of course! The dear soul. You'll just love her, Andy."

"Maybe. But I don't think I'll risk trying her out. Not just yet. She's pretty sick, anyway, isn't she?"

Betty told him that Aunt Prudence was feeble. The girl did not know at that time how serious the woman's malady was. Only on the day following did the telegram come recalling her to Amberly!

"Anyway," Wilkenson observed, after some thought, "you're her heir, Betty." For a second time the girl was startled by his speech. She began to peer at him now in the dusk in a puzzled fashion.

"What I'm aimin' at," said Wilkenson quite calmly, "is that we'd better keep all this quiet until Auntie goes over the divide. No use stirring up possible objections. She'll leave you her money, you say. We'll take that money and go back West. I know a place I can buy in Crescent City that will pay big returns. I will let the pasteboards alone, myself. I always get foolish if I deal 'em wild instead of for the house. We'll cut a swath out there, Betty, that'll make 'em sit up and take notice. Sure thing!"

"Andy! What are you talking about?" asked the incredulous girl. "Auntie's money---- It's all invested. I know it is. It's tied up."

"Shucks! we can untie it," and Wilkenson laughed. "No banker's knots mean much to me. And four or five per cent. interest ain't a patch on what I'll make for you when we get to going."

"But, Andy," she said weakly, "I know all about Auntie's will. I have even read it. She made it years ago when Ford and I were little. And she is a woman who never changes her mind. Ford has papa's little fortune. Aunt Prudence gives me her property; but I can spend only the income from it until I am thirty."

"What's that?" His tone made her jump. "Thirty?" Then he thought. "Well, shucks, honey," he drawled, "you're a married woman now. That makes you practically of age in this State, and the courts----"

"It makes no difference, Andy. The will is made that way for that very purpose," the girl said frankly.

"For what purpose?"

"So that--that my husband cannot touch the principal. Until I am thirty I cannot touch it myself."

An oath--a foul, blistering expression--parted the man's lips. In the deepening gloom of the evening she could see his face change to a mask of indignant disappointment. She did not shrink from him. She did not plead with him. In that dragging minute, Andy had stopped the car with a jerk, Betty understood everything about this Westerner. And from that instant had germinated and grown all the hatred and fear of the West and its people that Betty Hunt had betrayed when first her brother had suggested the journey to Canyon Pass.

She had stepped out of the car. She had torn in small pieces the paper the old minister had given her. She had drawn from her finger the plain band Wilkenson had placed upon it, which she must have hidden in any case, and thrown it from her into the bushes beside the way.

Then Betty Hunt had commanded Andrew Wilkenson never to speak to her again--never to try to see, write, or otherwise communicate with her. She walked away from him. She heard the roar of the engine after a moment and knew he turned the car and drove away.

And that had been the end of Betty's romance. She had not seen the Westerner again.