CHAPTER XXVIII--CATASTROPHE

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. The rivers were bank full. The lower end of Main Street was washed by the water from both Forks. Several families had been obliged to move into the higher part of the town.

But the flood had not driven Mother Tubbs and her little family out of their home. The wise old woman did not know just why Nell Blossom sang no more at the dance hall; but in her mind she knew that "suthin' was workin' on that gal." Meanwhile she proceeded to "work on" Sam as usual.

Rocking on her back porch with the vista of dreary yards under her eye, but the rugged beauties of the Topaz Range in the distance, she philosophized as usual on all things both spiritual and mundane. Sam was pottering about a broken table that she had convinced him he must mend before he left the premises for a stroll into the town, it being Saturday afternoon.

"I must say, too, that it seems as peaceful as Sunday back in Missouri--or pretty near," Mother Tubbs observed. "Things is changed yere in Canyon Pass. Ye must admit it, Sam."

"Drat it!" snarled her husband, sucking a thumb he had just smashed with his hammer. "I admit it all right. The Pass is gettin' plumb wuthless to live in. Psalm singin', and preachin', and singin' meetings, and sech. Huh! Parson wants me to come to Bible class."

After all he said it with some pride. Sam had, as he expressed it, "a sneakin' likin'" for the parson. But he was determined not to show that this was so before Mother Tubbs.

"Ain't you glad to live less like a savage--more decent and civilized like--than you useter, Sam Tubbs?" demanded the old woman.

"I was satisfied as I was," grunted her husband. "I ain't one o' them that's always wantin' change and somethin' new. If I had been, I'd picked me a new woman before now."

"The pickin' ain't very good in Canyon Pass," rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently. "Them that's got husbands don't want to exchange. 'Twould be like jumpin' out of the skillet onto the coals. Them women that ain't got nary man are well content, I reckon, to get on without one if you, Sam Tubbs, are the only hope they got."

"Huh!"

Nell's sweet, clear voice floated down from the upper chamber. In accents that caressed, she sang an old song which she had found in Betty Hunt's music, arranged for solo use.

"Hear that child, Sam!" whispered the old woman, wiping her eyes when the pleading verse was finished. "Ain't that heaven-born?"

"Huh!" said Sam, but in truth a little doubtfully. "I never considered our Nell as bein' pertic'lar angelic. No ma'am! Not before."

"She's as good as any angel," declared Mother Tubbs with conviction. "Only she's flighty. Or useter be. And if she'd just go and sing them songs at meetin', Canyon Pass would learn for once just what good singin' is."

"I dunno but you're right, old woman," said Sam softly, as the voice from above took up the song again. "I've heard Nell Blossom sing many a time before; but it never so sort o' caught in muh cogs as that song does. But she can't sing them kind o' tunes in Colorado Brown's or the Grub Stake."

"Hush, Sam! Don't mention it!" whispered his wife. "I hope to the Lord she won't never hafter work in them places again."

"Huh! How's she going to live?" asked the startled Sam.

"You leave it to Parson Hunt," declared Mother Tubbs in the same secretive way, "and Nell Blossom won't never no more hafter sing for her livin'."

Sam stared. His bald head flushed as his eyes began to twinkle and the knowing grin wreathed his sunken lips. He suddenly burst into a cackle of delight.

"D'ye mean it? The parson? By mighty! So he's willin' to go the way of all flesh, is he? Nell needn't work no more for her livin' if she don't want?"

"You poor fool," scornfully said his wife, holding up one of his enormous blue yarn socks with a gaping hole in the heel, "if the parson is as hard on his socks as you are, Sam Tubbs, Nell will have her work cut out for her--sure as sure!"

It was the very next night that Nell Blossom sang for the first time at the Canyon Pass church service. She had been twice to morning service before this, coming in alone, refusing to sit near Mother Tubbs or Betty, and remaining silent even through the hymns. In truth, she had never learned those hymns that chanced to be given out on those occasions. Rosabell Pickett did yeoman's service at the badly tuned piano; but her own voice had the sweetness of a crow with the carrying power of that same non-soothing bird. Rosabell kept the hymns going; but sometimes Hunt could have wished for even Miss Pelter of the Ditson Corners' choir to carry the air!

As has been said, the Sunday evening service at Tolley's old shack was not so formal as the morning session. Hunt tried in the evening to lead the singing himself. He had managed through the summer to teach the young folks several of the newer and more sprightly songs out of the collection he had brought with him from the East. Some of the rougher young men who filled the rear benches in the evening were glad to make a noise with something besides their heavy boots, and they "went in" for the singing with gusto.

On this evening Nell came in with Mother Tubbs and Sam, but she sat down on the front bench between Betty and Rosabell Pickett. She handed some sheets of music to Rosabell, and Betty recognized them with a flush of pleasure. It was plain that the accompanist had been prepared for Nell's new move.

"Do you think Mr. Hunt would let me sing a song?" whispered Nell to Betty.

"Let you!" returned Betty eagerly. "He'll love you for it."

Perhaps the emphatic statement was made by the parson's sister without thought of how it sounded. Nell's flower-like face warmed to a flush that spread from the collar of her blouse to the waving tendrils of hair under her hat brim. She hid her face quickly from Betty. The latter, perhaps somewhat wickedly, enjoyed the other girl's confusion. Her heart had suddenly expanded to Nell and her brother Ford. If she saw no happiness ahead of her in life, Betty Hunt had begun to hope that the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and the Canyon Pass blossom would realize all the happiness that a loving pair could compass.

With a whisper and a head shake Betty informed the parson of what he might expect from Nell at this meeting. Her presence had already filled Hunt's heart with singing. Now, before his talk to the congregation--it was not a sermon--he smiled at Nell and sat down while she sang the song she had prepared and that had so stirred the hearts of Mother Tubbs and Sam the day before.

Rosabell Pickett for once got the spirit of the composition. She played the accompaniment softly, and she slurred over the sour notes of the old piano. When Nell stood up a hush of expectancy fell upon the congregation. Even the boot-scrapings from the back benches were silenced.

Never had Canyon Pass heard Nell Blossom sing so sweetly. The girl's tones fairly gripped the heart-strings of her hearers and wrung them. The tears rolled down good old Mother Tubbs' face. Sam sat beside her, looking straight ahead more like a gargoyle than ever, afraid to wink for fear the salt drops would carom from his bony cheeks. Steve Siebert in his corner, and Andy McCann in his--as far apart as the width of the room would allow--looked like their burros, carved out of desert rock. Nothing seemed to move those old fellows. But the rest of the congregation--even the roughnecks on the back seats--were subdued when the song was done.

After the service Hunt apprehended a new note in the manner and speech of his flock. He scarcely realized that his own talk had been more spiritual than usual because of the emotion roused within him by Nell's song. There was a hush over the room. The noisy fellows went out on tiptoe. Voices were subdued. For almost the first time the atmosphere of this rough room where they "held meetings" had become that of a real house of worship.

"Steve Siebert is right," the parson told himself not without gravity. "It is time that I should show my own respect beyond peradventure for the religion I preach. Betty must shake the mothballs out of that coat."

* * * * *

Lizard Dan tooled his six mules across the East Fork. The water was more than waist deep, and the beasts swam for part of the way, and the inside passengers sat on the small of their backs with their boots up on the cross-straps. The driver urged the team with voice and whip up the muddy rise to the Wild Rose. His desert-stained face was full of wrinkles of excitement. Joe Hurley, who chanced to be lingering at the door of the hotel, spied the emotion in the bus-driver's countenance.

"What's got you, old-timer?" asked the mining man, strolling down to the step below the driver. "Something on the road over from Crescent City bite you?"

"I got bit all right," growled Lizard Dan. He stooped to put his tobacco stained lips close to Joe's ear. "The sheriff of Cactus County rode over on the seat with me. Yeppy! And he dropped off back yonder to talk to Sheriff Blaney."

"Something doing?"

"Youbetcha! The Cactus County sheriff was tellin' me. He's been after a guy that turned a trick last summer--fore part of the summer in fact--'way out beyond Hoskins. He was some pretty shrewd short-card tin-horn, if you ask me."

"A gambler? Anybody know him?" asked Joe quite idly.

"I didn't get his name. The sheriff was pumpin' me a lot about who was new--if any--in Canyon Pass. I told him," and Dan grinned widely, "that 'bout the newest citizens we had yere was Parson Hunt and his sister."

"You're some little josher, aren't you, Dan?" said Joe, grimly. "What had the feller done?"

"The one the sheriff's after? Cleaned out a sheep camp with marked cards and then made his get-a-way under a gun. Cool as the devil! Shot one of those sheepticks--I mean to say, a shepherd. Never did have much use for sheep men----"

"Me neither," admitted Hurley.

"But they are ha'f human--leastways, that's how I look at 'em," pursued Lizard Dan. "They should have their chance. Marked cards and a gun is no way to win their spondulicks. No, sir."

"What makes the Cactus County officer think the sharper came this way?"

"Says he and a posse follered him to the Canyon County line, up yonder, 'long back in the summer. They figgered he'd gone Lamberton way, so they swayed off and didn't come yere. Now something new has come up about the feller, I take it, and the Cactus County sheriff has come yere to get Blaney to help comb this part of the territory. I told him we didn't have no loose gamblers yere. They all got jobs and have held 'em some time."

"Tolley is always picking up new hombres," said Hurley thoughtfully. "I can't keep run of all the scabby customers he brings in here."

"But not card-sharps," said Lizard Dan, shaking his head. "He ain't got a new dealer in a dog's age. You wouldn't count Dick Beckworth one. It's just like he's always been yere."

He waddled away with the mail sacks and his large-bore gun. Hurley found himself suddenly startled by an entirely uncalled-for thought. Surely nothing Lizard Dan had said should have inspired this:

Dick Beckworth had been away from Canyon Pass from the early springtime until recently. He had ridden in from the wilderness on the occasion of the first blizzard. Where had the gambler been during the months he was missed at the Grub Stake?

Hurley was half tempted to go to the Grub Stake and make an inquiry or two, but since that notable night when Steve Siebert had held up Tolley and his gang, Joe had seldom been inside the place. He did, however, wander along the now quiet street toward the honkytonk.

It was drawing toward evening, and a drizzle of rain, which had threatened all day, swept across the West Fork and muffled the town almost instantly as in a gray blanket. The roar of Runaway River in the canyon blew back into Joe's ears and made him deaf to most other sounds.

But as he crossed the mouth of the alley beside Tolley's place he heard a sharp "Hist!" He turned to look. A girl, wrapped in a fluttering cloak, stood there, dimly revealed in the thicker darkness of the alley.

"Well, what do you want?" demanded the mining man.

"Mr. Hurley!"

"Great saltpeter! what's the matter, Rosy?"

"Hush! Shet your yawp!" warned the piano player. "Want to get me into trouble?"

"Not a bit. What's up?"

"I don't know. But it's something--something bad."

"Bad? About whom?"

"Parson Hunt and his sister Betty."

"Betty Hunt?" muttered the mining man with an emphasis that would have told a woman of much less discernment than Rosabell Pickett all that was necessary.

"Yeppy. You like her, Joe Hurley. You want to look out for her. Somebody has got to. That Dick Beckworth----"

"Dick the Devil?"

"You said it! He's got something on her."

"He's got something on Betty Hunt? Never!"

"No use layin' your hand on your gun butt. It needs something besides that. When fire's touched to the end of the fuse, no use tryin' to stamp on the ashes. It is burning toward the powder barrel. The thing's started. Dick's told it about her----"

"Told what?" asked Hurley, almost shaking the girl.

"That she was married back East, long before she come out here, and is posing here as an unmarried woman. He says he knows the man that was married to her."

Hurley was stricken dumb for the moment. Yet recovery was swift. He stammered:

"She--she might. It's no crime. She--she might have got a divorce and taken her maiden name again, if it's true. But I wouldn't take Dick the Devil's word as to the color of the blue sky."

"He's got a paper to prove it. I seen him show it to Boss Tolley. I run to get you. I saw you at the Wild Rose. I figger you are the one to tell the parson."

"And who's to tell Betty?" Joe inquired. "I--I----"

"Oh! What's that?" exclaimed Rosabell, shrinking away. "I--I thought it was thunder."

A muttering sound grew in Hurley's hearing, but he paid little attention to it at first. Was it this Betty had meant all the time, when she had kept him at arm's length? When she had told him that there was somebody back East who, at least, had her promise?

Then the air quaked as though there had been a volcanic upheaval within the immediate district of Canyon Pass. Rosabell shrieked and ran back into the gloom, disappearing toward the rear door of the Grub Stake. Joe ran out into the street, seeing other men coming from the shops and saloons.

His gaze by chance was turned upon the wagon track down the slope beyond the West Fork. He saw a flaming patch of white there. It came down the wagon track with terrific speed. In a moment he realized that it was a white pony and rider.

Lashing the steed the rider forced it into the West Fork. The animal had to swim for it. It seemed as though the stream had filled terrifically within the last few minutes.

Out of the flood scrambled the pony. It was not until then that anybody recognized Nell Blossom and her cream-colored mount. She urged the horse up into the town and they heard her clear voice rising above the sullen thunder of the three rivers:

"The Overhang! The Overhang! It's down--it's filled the canyon! Runaway River is stoppered like with a cork in the neck of a bottle. The flood is coming!"