Thomas Holmes - The Heart of Canyon Pass

“Well! What’s the matter with a church?” demanded Hurley. “That is, if we get that far.”

“It’s absolutely no use. If one is built it won’t be nothing but a shack. It won’t add anything to the importance of the town. No, I don’t approve. I’m disappointed in you, Joe.”

“All right – all right!” cried Joe in some heat. “But I’m not disappointed in you, old-timer. Great saltpeter! I wonder what you did before you drifted into Canyon Pass that a parson and religion are likely to bring fresh into your memory.”

With this backhand slap at the banker, the young man went out. It was rather odd that Joe Hurley, like Bill Judson, should suspect the Passonians of the same secret reason for not desiring a spiritual refreshment of the town. But then, both the storekeeper and the owner of the Great Hope were observant of human nature and knew Canyon Pass and its inhabitants very well.

Joe Hurley’s proposal was rattling the dry bones. If he saw two men conversing on the street, with both their arms and whiskers waving in the breeze, he might be sure the topic under discussion was the coming of “that gospel-sharp Joe Hurley’s sicked on to us.”

If two housewives met in midflight between store and store in the course of a forenoon’s shopping, the principal subject of gossip was bound to be the possibility of a parson settling in Canyon Pass. Nor did the feminine opinion always march with that of Mother Tubbs.

In spite of the emancipation of the sex and its introduction to the high office of the ballot, the women of the mining town were – like women everywhere – considerably influenced by the expressed opinions of their husbands, brothers, and sons. If Charlie Raidlaw, who dealt faro for Boss Tolley, or Phin Shattuck, one of Colorado Brown’s “gentlemanly mixers,” gave it as his opinion that a white-liveried, lily-handed parson was going to be a pest in the town and sure to hurt business, Mrs. Charlie and Sue Shattuck, Phin’s sister, were pretty sure to scout the idea that a parson in the Pass would be any improvement.

“It’s needed,” Rosabell Pickett announced with conviction. Rosabell played the piano in the Grub Stake, painted her face like a Piute Indian, dressed as gaudily as a circus poster, and was the only employee Boss Tolley had who really was not afraid of him. In fact, Rosabell was not afraid of any man and had small respect for most; she was frank in saying so. A girl can be a piano player in a honkytonk and be long on self-respect. Rosabell approved of herself – quite.

“It’s needed,” repeated Rosabell. “I wish he’d preach in the street out there, just stir up the people till they was with him, every one, and then march in here with an ax and smash every hootch bottle behind your bar, Tolley – that’s what I wish.”

“You’re crazy, Rosie!” cried the proprietor of the Grub Stake. “I’d hafter go a-gunnin’ for any man that tried to smash up my business thataway, and that wouldn’t make the Grub Stake friends. You oughtn’t to bite the hand that feeds you, Rosie. If it wasn’t for the Grub Stake – and me – you wouldn’t be wearin’ rhinestone shoebuckles.”

“Is that so?” countered the young woman. “You needn’t worry none about my biting your hand ’nless you keep it washed oftener than is your present habit. And I want you to know that I don’t sell my opinions when I take the Grub Stake’s pay-envelope – not much!”

“Well, I wanter see that dratted parson come in yere!” said Tolley blusteringly.

“He won’t come alone,” put in Hurley, who had been listening at the bar to the argument.

“Huh?”

“I say he won’t come in here alone. I might as well serve notice here and now that this Parson Hunt is a friend of mine. I don’t never aim to throw a friend down or fail him when he gets into a jam. If he comes in here – for any purpose, Tolley – I’ll likely be with him.”

“You keep him out o’ yere! You keep him out!” blustered the other. “We don’t want no sky pilots here in the Pass. Anyway, I won’t have ’em in the Grub Stake.”

A burly fellow in overalls and riding boots broke in. He had already sampled Tolley’s red-eye more deeply than was wise.

“You say the word, boss,” he growled, “and we’ll run the preacher out o’ town.”

Joe Hurley looked at the ruffian coldly. “You won’t run anybody out of town, Hicks – not any,” the mine owner said. “But I’ll tell you something that may be worth your attention. If Canyon Pass ever gets up on its hind legs and reares and starts to run certain tramps and ne’er-do-wells out of town, I’m ready to lay a bet with any man that you’ll be right up in the forefront of them that are chased out. Get me?”

Hicks, scowling, dropped his hand to the gunbutt peeping above the waistband of his overalls. Joe Hurley did not flicker an eyelash nor move a finger. Finally Hicks lurched away with an oath and went out through the swinging doors.

“And that’s that,” said Rosabell briskly, cutting the tense chord of silence. “I always did say the more of a boozer a man is, the quicker he’ll take water. I hope your friend Mr. Hunt, Joe, has got backbone same as you have. Is he an old gentleman?”

“Not so you’d notice it,” replied Hurley with a sudden grin.

He remained awhile to bandy repartee with Rosabell and some of the other idlers. But Boss Tolley slipped out of the honkytonk, although he did not follow Hicks.

Mulligan Lane ran at the rear of the stores, saloons, and other amusement places facing this side of Main Street. Colorado Brown’s cabaret was not far from Tolley’s rear door. It was dusk of rather a sultry day – a day that had forecast the heat of the approaching summer.

Tolley lounged under the withered cottonwood behind Brown’s dance-pavilion. The sign of the flood’s highwater mark – that flood of twenty years before – had been cut by some idle knifeblade deep into the bole of the tree high over Tolley’s head, and he was a tall man. A sallow-faced, bony giant of a man was Tolley, hairy and brawny, without a redeeming feature in his cruel countenance. Had he not possessed, in the memorable words of Bill Judson, “a wishbone where his backbone should have been,” Boss Tolley would have been a very dangerous man. Lacking personal courage he depended upon the backing of men like Hicks and his bouncer, Macpherson.

He slouched now under the tree and waited – a sullen lump of a figure whose dark garments blended with the shadowy trunk as the night fell. The small figure coming up the slope of the lane approached the back door of Colorado Brown’s place without seeing the man until almost within arm’s length.

“Hey, Nell!” She started, looked up, stepped back a pace. “Don’t be scare’t of me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Tolley,” replied the girl curtly.

“I want to speak with you.”

“I don’t want to speak to you.”

“Say – listen! You ain’t treating me right. You walked out and left me flat. You didn’t even ask me for a raise. How’d you know I wouldn’t give you as much as Brown does?”

“I didn’t want to know. I got through. You didn’t have any hold on me, Tolley.”

“Mebbe not. Mebbe I have. You better listen,” for the girl was turning scornfully away. “You and Dick played it low down on me.”

Now she gave him her full attention. It was so dark under the tree that he could not see her face clearly, but he knew some sudden emotion shook her. To himself he grinned.

“I got to admit my losing you and Dick has put a crimp in the Grub Stake’s business. You was my best performer, and Dick Beckworth was the best card-sharp I had. Looker here! You come back to the Grub Stake and – and I won’t say nothing more.”