– heart!”
“Yes, heart. There’s neither law nor gospel, she says. Only such law as is enforced at the muzzle of the sheriff’s gun. And as far as religion goes – when was there ever a parson in Canyon Pass?”
“They’re rare birds, I admit. But you needn’t blame me, Nell.”
“I do blame you!” she exclaimed fiercely. “You’re at fault – you, and Slickpenny Norris who runs the bank, and Bill Judson of the Three Star, and the manager of the Oreode Company, and the other more influential men. It is your fault that there isn’t a church and other civilized things in Canyon Pass.”
“Great saltpeter, Nell! You’re not wailing for a Sunday School and a sky pilot?”
“Me? I reckon not!” She almost spat out the scornful denial. “I’m just telling you what your old Canyon Pass is. It’s a back number. But I’m free to confess if a parson and a crew of psalm-singing tenderfoots came here, I’d like enough pull my freight again – and that time for keeps! Even Hoskins would be more endurable.”
At this outburst Joe Hurley broke into laughter. Nell Blossom was paradoxical – had always been.
And yet, what Nell had said about the shortcomings of Canyon Pass stuck in Joe Hurley’s mind. Within a few days the thought, fermenting within him, resulted in that letter which had so interested – not to say excited – the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt in far-away Ditson Corners.
CHAPTER IV – PHILOSOPHY BOUND IN HOMESPUN
“No, there ain’t no news – no news a-tall,” declared Mrs. Sam Tubbs, comfortably rocking. “Nothing ever happens in Canyon Pass. For a right busy town on its main street, there’s less happens in the back alleys than in any camp I ever seen – and I seen a-plenty.
“It’s in the back alleys o’ life, Nell, that the interesting things happen. Folks buy and sell, and argue and scheme, and otherwise play the fool out on the main streets. But in the alleys babies is born, and people die, and boys and gals make love and marry. Them’s the re’lly interesting things in life.”
“Ugh! Love and marriage! They are the biggest fool things the world knows anything about.”
Mother Tubbs chuckled. It was an unctuous chuckle. It shook her great body like a violent explosion in a jelly-bag and made the wide-armed rocking-chair she sat in creak.
“Sho!” she said. “I’ve heard seventeen-year-old gals say as much ’fore now, who dandled their second young-un on their knee ’fore they was twenty. The things we’re least sure of in this world is love and marriage. Lightning ain’t nothin’ to ’em – nothin’!
“Now, there’s Mr. Joe Hurley – ”
Nell started, turned on the top step of the Tubbs’ back porch, and looked searchingly at the old woman with a frown on her brow.
“Now, there’s Mr. Joe Hurley,” pursued Mother Tubbs placidly. “There ain’t a thing the matter with that man but that he needs a wife.”
“Why doesn’t he take one, then?” demanded Nell wickedly. “There are plenty of them around here whose husbands don’t seem to care anything about them.”
“Like me and my Sam, heh?” put forth Mother Tubbs, still amused. “But I reckon if Mr. Joe Hurley, or any other man, should attempt to run away with me, Sam would go gunning for him. What they call the ‘first law of Nater’ – which is the sense of possession, not self-preservation – would probably get to working in Sam’s mind.
“He’d get to thinking of my flapjacks and chicken-with-fixin’s and his bile would rise ’gainst the man – no matter who – who was enjoying them victuals.
“Oh, yes. Not only is the way to a man’s heart through his stomach; but believe me, Nell, most men are like those people the Bible speaks of ‘whose god is their stomach.’”
“Does the Bible say that, Mother Tubbs?” broke in the girl.
“Somethin’ near to it.”
“Then there is some sense in the Bible, isn’t there?”
“Hush-er-you, Nell Blossom!” ejaculated the old woman sternly. “Does seem awful that you’re such a heathen. The Bible’s plumb full of good advice, and lovely stories, and sweet truths. I used to read it a lot before I broke my specs. But I remember lots that I read, thanks be.”
“I don’t care for stories,” said the girl crossly. “And I don’t know that I believe there is a heaven,” she went on quickly. “Once you are dead I reckon that’s all there is to it. I won’t learn any more songs about heaven. I used to cry over them – and about folks dying. I remember the first song Dad taught me to sing in the saloons. It used to make me cry when I came to the verse:
Last night as I lay on my pillow —
Last night as I lay on my bed —
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamt that my Bonnie was dead.
Bring back! Oh, bring back!
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me —
It’s all stuff and nonsense!” she broke off with confidence.
“That ain’t a hymn,” said Mother Tubbs placidly. “Hymns is different, Nell. A good, uplifting hymn like ‘Am I a Soldier of the Cross,’ or ‘Beulah Land,’ takes you right out of yourself – bears your heart up on wings o’ hope and helps you forget you’re only a poor, miserable worm – ”
“I’m not a worm!” interrupted Nell with vigor. “I’m as good as anybody – as good as anybody in Canyon Pass, anyway, even if some of these women do look down on me.”
“Of course you are, Nell. ‘Worm’ is just a manner o’ speaking.”
“Dad trained me to sing in these saloons, I know,” went on the girl quickly, angrily, “because he was too weakly to use a pick and shovel. We had to eat, and he thought he had to have drink. So I had to earn it. But I’ve been a good girl.”
“I never doubted it, Nell,” Mother Tubbs hastened to say. “Nobody could doubt it that knowed you as well as I do.” She let her gaze wander over the squalid back yards of the row of shacks of which the Tubbs’ domicile was no better than its neighbors. “They don’t know you like I do, Nell. You’ve lived with me for three years – all the time you was growing into a woman, as ye might say. You hafter do what you do, and I don’t ’low when we are forced into a job, no matter what it is, that it’s counted against us as a sin.”
Nell flashed the placid old woman another glance. There was something hidden behind that look – of late there was something secretive in all Nell Blossom said or did. Did Mother Tubbs understand that this was so? Was she, in her rude but kindly way, offering a sympathy that she feared to put into audible speech for fear of offending the proud girl?
The latter suddenly laughed, but it was not the songbird’s note her voice expressed. There was something harsh – something scornful – in it.
“I reckon I could get away with murder, and you’d say I was all right, Mother Tubbs,” she declared.
“Well, mebbe,” the old woman admitted, her eyes twinkling.
