The Heart of Canyon Pass. Thomas K. Holmes

to stretch in.”

      “Say! What’s the matter with them two old sour doughs? All the time they was buyin’ that stuff they never spoke a word to each other, and if one of ’em caught a look from t’other he snarled like a wild tagger! They’d have showed their teeth—both of ’em—if they’d had any left but stubs.”

      “Ain’t spoke, to my knowledge,” said the storekeeper, “Steve and Andy ain’t, in all of these twenty years. ’Fore that they was as thick as hasty puddin’ an’ throwed in together ev’ry spring—even steven—when they went prospecting; comin’ back yere to Canyon Pass in the fall as happy as a bride and groom returning from the honeymoon.”

      “What happened? What made ’em so sore on each other?” asked Smithy.

      “Don’t know. Never did know. Never could find out. ’Twas right after the big slide. You’ve heard tell o’ that, even if you ain’t been here six months?”

      “A thousand times,” returned Smithy in a bored tone.

      “Well, Steve and Andy was perky as blackbirds in a strawyard that spring. ’Twas twenty years back. They hid out their camp somewhere near town that time. I always figgered they had a good prospect below there, in the canyon. ’Twas even reported that they took a sample of the right stuff to the assayer’s office. But they was as close mouthed as twin clams in the last stages of hydrophoby.

      “Then come the slide. Most of us that was yere then didn’t think of much for a week or two but whether Canyon Pass was goin’ to be left on the map or not. Our stake was yere, and the slide acted like a stopper in Runaway River—like to plugged the old canyon for fair.

      “Howsumever, when the channel was more or less clear again and we could come down off the roofs of our shacks, Steve and Andy showed up, but from different directions, as sore at each other as two carbuncles, and they ain’t never been knowed to speak to one another since. Won’t even drink at the same bar. The only time they come into the Three Star together is the morning they pull stakes for the desert.”

      Smithy yawned again. Steve Siebert and Andy McCann had now disappeared beyond outcropping warts of rock at the foot of the canyon walls.

      Down the street from the direction of the mining shafts sunk in the heights behind the town strode a well-proportioned young man whose bootsoles rang on the patches of earth out of which the frost had not yet thawed. He was cleanly shaved and clean-looking, and stood more than six feet tall, with an air of frank assertiveness even in his carriage. He owned a high color under the wind-tan of his countenance, sandy hair, and brown eyes with golden flecks in them when he was amused or when he was angry.

      And Joe Hurley was usually swayed by one emotion or the other. Now he appeared to be amused as he came abreast of the Three Star Grocery.

      “What’s got you and Smithy up so early, Bill?” he asked.

      “Dad burn it, Joe! Don’t you know spring has came?”

      “Pshaw! I thought I heard a tree-frog last night. So Steve Siebert and Andy McCann have lit out same as usual? We shall miss Steve at the Great Hope.”

      “Surest thing you know, Joe. They’re on their way. And just as sociable as usual.” Joe Hurley’s eyes flashed with the gleam of fun that made him beloved of all who did not hate him. But before he could utter a comment the storekeeper added: “Wasn’t you in to the Grub Stake to-night?”

      Hurley wheeled to frown suddenly at the flickering lamps of Boss Tolley’s gambling hall and cabaret almost directly across the street. The quick change of emotion reflected in his face betrayed the character of the man. Hurley was given to sudden impulses, usually spurred by the primal passions. Yet he was a strong man, too, and kept the lid on those passions if he desired.

      “Nell’s got some new songs,” went on Judson slyly. “Right cute they are. She certainly is some songbird, Joe. Dad burn it! She’s too good for those roughnecks.”

      Hurley nodded slowly but did not show Judson his face at once, still watching the pale lights of the honkytonk fighting the advancing glow of the dawn. The storekeeper had not lived sixty-five years—thirty years of them right here in Canyon Pass—without gaining a pretty keen insight into human nature. He did not have to see that scowl on Joe Hurley’s face. He knew what Joe was ruminating.

      “And ’tain’t only roughnecks that our Nell’s too good for,” pursued Judson finally. “The pizenest snakes, they tell me, is the prettiest. An’ kids are tickled to look at pretties. Nell’s only a kid after all.”

      “You’re right, Bill!” ejaculated the mine owner with a snap of his jaws and his eyes sparking from no good humor.

      He glanced balefully at the Grub Stake, his face set grimly, almost threatening.

      There were fitful strains of music from within and still some clatter of feet and voices. Boss Tolley made it his boast that his show continued until the last reveler left.

      The Grub Stake was a sprawling, T-shaped structure with the long bar and gaming tables in the shank of the T, the dance hall and stage at the rear. Beside the main entrance was the sign: “Check Your Guns and Spurs Here,” and at the short counter presided a young woman in a sleeveless silk jersey and kneelength satin skirt, who dealt out brass checks and airy persiflage indiscriminately.

      The rosewood bar, behind which Boss Tolley and his three barmen sweated at the height of the revelry, had cost a fortune to freight over the trail to Canyon Pass. The gaudy oil painting which hung back of the bar, to hear Boss Tolley tell it, had cost him a second fortune.

      Dick Beckworth, who was Tolley’s chief dealer at the tables of chance, was a privileged character. He was supposed to be a “killer” with the ladies. He dressed his long curls and heavy black mustache as carefully as he did his sleek and slender person. Cream-colored flannel shirt, a flowing tie, velvet jacket and broadcloth trousers tucked into patent-leather boots, and a Mexican sombrero heavy with silver cord to top this ensemble, he made a picture to rival the squalid painting over the bar.

      The night had been strenuous at the tables, but the gambling fever had now abated. Dick lolled gracefully in the armchair at his empty table with half-closed eyes, smoking a cigarette. Around a table near the archway between the barroom and the hall was a noisy group of miners, but they were no longer playing. Their glasses had just been refilled at the bar.

      The rasping chords of a hard-working male quartette beyond the archway repeated a syncopated rhythm for the entertainment of the patrons of the tables.

      From beneath the arch into the barroom stepped suddenly an astonishingly brilliant figure—a figure engraved as sharply as a cameo against the blue mist of tobacco smoke that now drifted in a thin haze throughout the barnlike place. The group of miners about the first table roared a greeting.

      “Nell! Nell Blossom! The blossom of Canyon Pass!”

      “Give us a song of your own, Nellie!” added one burly miner, swaying from his seat toward her, a maudlin smile on his face.

      The girl’s smiling expression changed swiftly to one of flaring fury. She swept past the miners and headed straight for Dick Beckworth, who had watched the incident with a little smile flickering about his lips. The girl’s face was still ablaze. She needed no rouge or lipstick in any case to lend it color.

      “Dick,” she said tensely, “I hate this place!”

      “I’ve already told you I hate to see you in it,” he rejoined with apparent frankness. “Singing and dancing for these roughnecks is far beneath you.”

      The flame of her anger gradually waned as she gazed down into his face. His usual calmness was somewhat ruffled by her near presence. Nell Blossom held a certain influence over him that “Dick the Devil”—his boasted cognomen among his admirers—was loath to acknowledge.

      But she was sweet enough and pretty enough as she stood there to stir the most placid heart. Even the tawdry costume she wore could not detract from her charm, the red