CHAPTER XXVII--SEVERAL CONCLUSIONS

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, for he knew she had entirely recovered from the effects of her adventure in the storm.

Had the parson asked his sister, Betty might have illuminated his mind not a little regarding this and other mysteries about Nell; but he was chary of ever speaking of the singer in other than a general way before Betty.

To tell the truth, he shrank from any argument regarding the Blossom of Canyon Pass. He had learned just how sweet and innocent Nell Blossom was. But he did not know how far Betty might approve of the younger girl, especially if he showed any personal interest in the latter.

He was firm in his conviction that Nell Blossom was a being set apart as his mate from the beginning! Strange as it might seem at first view, Hunt was positive that he and the half-tamed mining-camp girl held much in common. He had found opportunity to talk with her of late--both at Mother Tubbs' and elsewhere--and he knew her tastes and aspirations far better than before. She had confided to him, although with much timidity, some of her girlish desires and her conclusions upon topics which she had thought seriously about.

She was, too, of the very stuff these Canyon Pass people were made--one of themselves. If he got Nell Blossom for a wife she would be of greater aid to him in his work here than any other one person possibly could be. With Nell Blossom for his very own, the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt would indeed have won the Heart of Canyon Pass.

Hunt kept all this a secret and said little to Betty about the cabaret singer. Nothing indeed that gave her a chance to tell him that her eyes had seen already most of what he thought was hidden from her, and seen it in a single glance.

As her brother sat beside the bed the day of the ice-storm and held Nell Blossom's hand, Betty saw how it was with the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. The only matter that puzzled her at all was Nell's possible attitude. Unsophisticated as the mining-camp girl was, Betty could not know for sure what Nell's feeling for the parson was.

But Betty might have given Hunt a pretty correct explanation of why Nell did not go back to sing at Colorado Brown's place. The girls were together almost every day after their adventure in the storm.

Betty did not go to Mother Tubbs'. She scarcely left the hotel at all in the day time, though going out on the first Sunday following their perilous adventure to attend church service.

But Nell came to the Wild Rose, and the two girls grew to know each other better than before. This because they both wished a closer understanding. Nell had begun to admire something about Betty Hunt besides her frocks and the way she manicured her nails. The parson's sister now desired to know Nell better for the parson's sake.

"I'm sick to death, Betty, singing for those roughnecks," Nell had burst forth on one occasion. "I used to think it was great to have 'em cheer me and clap me off and have 'em throw money at me. But I'm plumb sick of it."

"It's a great gift to be able to move people with one's voice so."

"It ain't nothing of the kind!" Nell declared vehemently. "It's because they ain't got no brains--at least, what they've got are addled with hootch. I've only got just a nice, sweet, singing voice. Them fellers are so plumb ignorant that they hoot and holler for me because I please 'em. I'd love to be really able to sing!"

"I am not so sure that you cannot sing, as you mean it," was Betty's sympathetic rejoinder. "Merely, you do not sing worth-while songs--altogether."

"I'm mighty ashamed about singing that 'This Is No Place for a Minister's Son,'" burst out Nell suddenly.

"Why, I think it's funny," and Betty laughed. "I've often heard Ford humming it."

"Oh! I--I sang it at him, Betty. I did!"

"I am quite sure it never disturbed Ford in the least."

"Well, no, I reckon not. Nothing a girl like me done----"

"Did!"

"_Did_--could bother a man like Parson Hunt."

"I am not so sure of that," Betty rejoined, eyeing the other girl keenly.

But Nell Blossom, if she had a secret, hid it successfully. Betty did not miss the opportunity, however, of trying to help her friend.

"Suppose you learn some better songs--some really worth-while pieces? I brought my music with me, although I do not know if I shall ever touch a piano again." She sighed. "But I sometimes sit and hum over my favorites. You read music of course, Nell?"

"I don't know a note--to speak the name of it, I mean," confessed the singer. "But I never saw the piece yet that I couldn't pick up pretty easy. Rosabell Pickett says I'm a natural sight-reader with a great ear for harmony."

She accepted with gratitude the selections Betty made from her library. Betty had chosen the songs with some little guile. That fact was proved by what occurred later.

"Anyway," Nell concluded, "I ain't going back to Colorado's place for a while. I got some money, and Sam's bringing his pay home to Mother Tubbs pretty reg'lar now. I can live for a while without singing for those roughnecks, that's a sure thing!"

But Betty had her own grave thoughts--thoughts that kept her awake at night. Hollow eyes and certain twitching lines about her sensitive mouth were the result of these secret cogitations. Hunt noticed his sister's changed appearance but he misunderstood its source. He feared that Betty found the life at Canyon Pass, with winter coming on, too hard to bear. Yet he saw that she always cheered up when Joe Hurley ran in to see them.

The Eastern girl's trouble did not arise from the locality in which she was forced to live; it was the presence of one person in the town that caused her such serious thoughts. The man who had passed Nell Blossom and her in the storm, whose unexpected appearance had made Nell faint, had shocked Betty much more deeply than he did the singer!

Without that heavy mustache, with his waving hair cut more to conform to Eastern ideas of propriety, the girl visualized the fellow as she had once known Andy Wilkenson. He was the man, thought of whom had so worried Betty's mind for these long months since she had left Grandhampton Hall. Andy Wilkenson! The man she had hoped never to see or hear from again. Her worst fears on coming West were now realized. And his reappearance here at Canyon Pass warned Betty that she could never allow Joe Hurley to see just how much she had learned to care for him.

She went to church on that next Sunday morning in fear and trembling. She sat well forward as usual. But she knew when "Dick Beckworth" came in and sat down in one of the rear seats.

His coming here surprised them all. Heads were turned, and there was whispering. Dick was dressed in the same flashy way, for he had left a trunk at the Grub Stake when he went away in the spring. He sat during the sermon with a sneer on his handsome face and the dancing light of the demon flickering in his hard eyes. Hunt usually met strangers after the meeting with a cordial handclasp. He did not approach Dick Beckworth.

Betty drew a veil across her face before she arose for the benediction. She waited to return to the hotel with her brother.

She was the only person in the assembly who was not amused by the appearance of the two old prospectors, Siebert and McCann, at the service. They did not come in together; and when Andy McCann entered to see Steve seated at one side, he chose a seat just as far from the other old-timer as he could and on the other side of the house. Their scowls turned on each other were more significant than words.

Hunt did not let Steve and Andy get away without a personal word with them.

"I am very glad to welcome you among us, Mr. McCann," he said to that individual when he shook the pocket-hunter's wrinkled claw.

"Wal, it's all right, I reckon," muttered Andy. "In a meetin' you've got to stand for most anybody droppin' in. But that old rip," nodding toward the distant Steve, "would look a heap better 'cordin' to my idee in jail than at church."

"We must be charitable, Mr. McCann," said the parson, moving toward the other prospector.

Old Steve was quite as bitter in his comment. But he added something, too, that gave Hunt pause.

"It seems a good deal like old times. I used to go to church reg'lar, onc't," said Siebert. "But I miss something, parson--I sure do."

"What's that?" asked Hunt smiling.

"Let alone I never expected to see that old has-been at meetin'--an' I don't reckon he's come for any good--I see you don't look jest like a preacher ought to look. Say, don't ministers dress different no more from other folks? You might be a banker or a gambler as far as your coat goes to show."

The blunt criticism shocked Hunt not a little. Up to this time he had carefully eschewed clerical dress. He began to wonder if, after all, he was not making a mistake.

Dick Beckworth was not on the street when the parson and his sister went back to the hotel. In fact Dick had slipped out very soon after the meeting ceased and was then in conference with Boss Tolley in the little office at the end of the long bar in the Grub Stake.

"Well," said Tolley, eagerly, "did you see her?"

"Sure as sure."

"Is it her?" demanded the dive keeper, grinning like a wolf.

"It sure is. It's her that was Betty Hunt."

"Dad burn it! And she paradin' 'round here like an unmarried woman. Dick, we got that parson on the hip."