CHAPTER XXV--UNDERSTANDING

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 flush of his emotion that he had allowed his own overpowering desire for the singer to confuse his mind. The barrier between them was down for a moment only; he raised it again himself, for he knew he was taking advantage unfairly of the terrified girl.

It was Hunt, however, who lifted Nell Blossom into her pony's saddle with one of the blankets wrapped well about her, and when Joe Hurley started away leading Betty's mount, the parson followed close behind. The two young men had freed themselves of each other; but the horses and their riders bulked so big against the driving curtain of the storm that they could scarcely lose each other.

They heard the other searchers shouting and Joe pulled his gun from its holster and fired two shots into the air. The signal was replied to immediately. In a minute or two Joe ran, head-on, into Jib Collins.

"Hey! did you find 'em both?" bawled the man.

"Youbetcha!" responded Hurley. "When the parson and I go out, we bring home the bacon, every time."

They took up the march to the ford. At the water's edge one of the other men came to the off side of each pony, and they forced the snorting animals into the stream. The foaming barrier did not look encouraging to the storm-beaten beasts.

They all got through safely and up into the town. The driving storm was changing to snow and sleet; but the foundation of ice that had first fallen made walking difficult. The girls were lifted off their horses and carried up into Betty's room, where Maria gave them every assistance in her power. Somebody put away the horses. Joe scurried off to his own bachelor shack, while Hunt stripped in his room and gave himself a savage rub-down with coarse towels. It had been a terrible experience; but his spirits and his blood were both in glow!

Surely Nell Blossom could not be unfriendly hereafter. It must be confessed that the parson's thought was more entangled with Nell and his recent association with her than in anything else.

Cholo Sam brought up a steaming pot of coffee, his dark face expanded with delight.

"Ah, Señor Hunt!" the Mexican said, "you an' de Señor Hurley--you are de pure queel, eh? De boys all cheer you--my goodness, yes!"

When Hunt was dressed again he went to Betty's door and knocked. His sister's response to his summons was brisk and cheerful, as usual. Yet, when he entered and looked keenly at her, he thought there was something feverish--or was it expectant?--in the look she gave him.

The girls were both in the big bed, heaped with blankets. Nell's petite face, ruffled about by one of Betty's boudoir caps, was pale. Indeed, the parson's sister looked in much the better condition of the two. The excitement and danger of the adventure which had befallen them seemed to have affected the girls in a paradoxical manner. Whereas the Eastern girl might be expected to be overcome by the affair and Nell have suffered the adventure as an ordinary experience, the result seemed really to be the other way around! Nell lay in the bed pale, almost hysterical it would seem. Betty could scarcely control her excitement.

"Ford!" she exclaimed, "I need you. Try to convince this foolish girl that there is no such thing as a ghost--a real ghost."

Hunt smiled, but he could not be unsympathetic. He realized that Nell Blossom, being brought up as she had been--even associating so long with Mother Tubbs--was probably hopelessly superstitious. He could not find it in his heart to oppose roughly any fear Nell might hold regarding supernatural things. He tried to put his admonition in a kindly way.

"If there is any truth at all in the matter of ghosts," he said, "it must be of a somewhat unreal nature, must it not? Ghosts are supposed to be too ethereal for sight or touch or sound. And the only smell, even, accompanying their visitations, is supposed to be of brimstone, isn't it?"

"That feller ought to smell of brimstone all right!" muttered Nell suddenly hectic in her language. "He ought to come plumb from the bad place."

"What does she mean?" Hunt asked Betty. Yet he half suspected what was in the singer's mind. "Did you girls see----"

"Nell declares," interrupted Betty, still with that strange excitement, "that she has seen the ghost of a man she calls Dick Beckworth."

"Dick Beckworth," Hunt repeated calmly. "You saw him, I presume," he watched the pale face on the pillow all the time, "on the side of the cliff over yonder? He rode down behind you----"

"Do you mean----" gasped Nell.

A flame of color flashed into both her cheeks. Her blue eyes grew round with surprise.

"He says he came into town by that path," the young man rejoined. "He put us on to the track of you girls. He said he saw you start down the path ahead of him."

"He is alive!" murmured Nell.

"His horse was in bad shape, I believe," Hunt told her. "But the last I knew--just before we left the Grub Stake to look for you--Dick Beckworth gave every promise of getting on quite well."

"Dick the Devil!" muttered Nell. "That sure is his name."

"From what I have heard about him," said Hunt, "I think his nickname quite fits him. But it was probably Tolley's meanness alone that made you--that is," he hastened to correct himself, "that made all of the trouble. That was thrashed out last evening, Miss Nell. Steve Siebert and Andy McCann proved Dick was not dead, although he did go over the cliff back there in the spring."

"I don't know what you are both talking about," Betty interposed. "Who is this--this--Dick Beckworth, do you call him?"

"A gambler, Betty," said her brother. "You would scarcely know such a person. But unfortunately both Miss Nell and I have been obliged to mix with all classes of society," he smiled again, "and so we know such people."

"Nell should not sing in those places." Betty said it with conviction. But in a moment she turned again to the identity of the man whose reappearance had startled Nell Blossom so greatly that she had fainted in the storm. "What--what does this man, Dick, look like?"

"Not an unhandsome fellow," said the parson generously. "A somewhat cruel face--ruthless perhaps would be the better term. Good features; a beautiful complexion--if such a term should be applied to a man's skin," and he laughed.

"You do not like him, Ford!" exclaimed Betty quickly.

"Would I be likely to?" mildly asked her brother.

"Oh! But I do not want a psychoanalysis of the man," said Betty, and she used a handkerchief to half hide her own face. "Just what does he look like?"

"Mildly dark. A beautiful, oiled mustache--like a crow's wing as the Victorian lady novelists would say. Heavy black hair. Under different circumstances--you must remember I saw him only after he was dragged out of the storm and on the border of a collapse--I judge Dick Beckworth would be quite the gentleman in all appearance, and quite the devil at heart."

"You said it!" agreed Nell.

"A mustache--and thick black hair," murmured Betty. "Yes. I saw him go by when we were cowering there under that wall, too. Well, I am relieved." Her laugh did not sound right in her brother's ears. "I am glad that it did not turn out to be a real ghost."

Hunt sat down upon a chair at Nell's side of the bed. The singer looked at him, and there suddenly flashed into her eyes a warm light that enhanced her beauty. She put out a little brown hand and gripped his, which was only too ready to be seized.

"Parson--Mr. Hunt, you are a good man!" she said, chokingly. "I heard about what you did last night. But I didn't hear all about it; so I didn't know Dick was alive. I--I'm mighty wicked, I reckon. I ain't glad he didn't die----"

"No need to go into that," urged Hunt quickly. "All such things are in the hands of Providence. But your mind, I hope, Nell, is relieved."

Betty looked from the face of the girl on the pillow to her brother's glowing countenance. It was another shock for Betty Hunt, but she understood.

* * * * *

The sudden, sharp blizzard that tore across the country blew itself out by nightfall. In the morning the sun shone brilliantly, a warm wind followed the gale, and the snow and ice melted like a September frost. It had been only a foretaste of winter.

The effect of the incidents of that day remained longer in the hearts of some of the participators in the events than it did upon the earth or the rivers, the rocks and gorges, the frosted herbage, or other physical and material matters about Canyon Pass. To be in mutual peril, to suffer alike the buffetings of the storm, had linked Betty Hunt and Nell Blossom with a chain that could not lightly be severed.

There was, too, a secret knowledge on the Eastern girl's part that made this chain stronger than Nell imagined. The latter had no suspicion that Dick Beckworth--Dick the Devil--was a link in the chain that bound her to the parson's sister. There was as well another thing that made the cabaret singer an object of Betty's deeper interest. The latter had seen in her brother's face something which had vastly surprised her and something which--had it been revealed to her before this time--would have horrified Betty as well as startled her.

The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was plainly and frankly more concerned in Nell Blossom than he had any right to be--unless he proposed to declare himself the singer's suitor. It was a somewhat shocking thought for Betty--no two ways about it. She had scarcely ever considered her brother in the light of a marrying man, and never here at Canyon Pass! For it to have been suggested that Hunt would find an object of sentimental interest in this Western mining camp would have completely confounded Betty at an earlier date.

And Nell Blossom? A singer in a rough amusement place that Betty would consider herself smirched if she entered? Yet--and Betty was surprised to consider it--she was much less amazed by her brother's seeming choice than she presumed she would be. Besides, there was a reason why Betty Hunt felt that she might not criticise her brother's course in this affair.

When Nell Blossom had recovered from the exposure sufficiently to go home to Mother Tubbs, and that was not until late in the day following the storm, Betty had gained from her brother all he knew and much that he surmised regarding Nell's association with the gambler who had returned to the Grub Stake at so dramatic a moment.

For his part, Hunt had not the first suspicion that Betty held any personal interest in the man, Dick Beckworth. But he knew that his sister suspected his love for Nell Blossom.

Hunt braced himself for an argument, and a serious one. Betty veered from Nell herself in a most surprising manner and seemed to feel interest only in Dick the Devil.

"He is scarcely a person in whom you would find any interest did you meet him, Betty," declared the parson. "Believe me, as Joe says, the fellow is one of those fungi attached to society that would much better be lopped off than allowed to develop and spread their vile spawn about."

"Oh!" gasped Betty. "You mean it would have been better had you and--and Mr. Hurley found the man's remains where you found his horse? Oh, Ford!"

"Somehow," said the parson gravely, "I feel that way."

"Ford!" cried his sister vehemently. "This is an awful place! Let--let us go back East."

The parson shook his head slowly. "No, Betty. You may go if you wish. I do not blame you for wanting to give it up. There is no reason why you should sacrifice yourself. But for me--Canyon Pass is mine. I will not own to failure. Indeed, my work is not without promise. I am going to reach the heart of Canyon Pass in some way, and I will keep on in the quest as long as I am given strength."

It was Betty's last outbreak against conditions. Nor did her brother suspect for a moment the reason for the sudden renewal of her hatred of the mining town.