At least an audience was not lacking to hear Hunt preach his first sermon at Canyon Pass. The seats were comfortably filled. Most of the congregation were cleanly and neatly dressed; the women in such finery as they owned. But some of the men, the rougher sort and evidently present out of curiosity only, looked just as they did on week days. Smoking, however, was taboo.
Rosabell Pickett and her piano, a small upright instrument of a rather uncertain tone, was of great assistance. Without her help the strangely awkward congregation could scarcely have raised a hymn.
Hunt made no comment upon the inauguration of the new régime in the town. He conducted the service just as he might have conducted a mission meeting at Ditson Corners. And he preached as carefully thought-out a discourse as was his wont, although his theme was simple. He held their respectful attention and, he believed, won their undivided interest.
After the close of the service the Bible was rescued by two of the women and cleansed of the pepper which had been so plentifully shaken into it. Mother Tubbs took Hunt aside.
“I’m plumb ashamed, parson!” she said indignantly. “To think that Nell Blossom done such a trick on you!”
“Nell Blossom?”
“She done it,” said the old woman with conviction. “I missed my box o’ red pepper last evening; but I had no idee what that flighty gal took it for. And then she said when I tried to get her to come to meetin’ this mornin’ that she reckoned it would be too hot up yere for her, and said for me to keep out o’ the front seats.”
“Ah!”
“She reckoned you’d get to thumping the Book in the middle of the sermon, maybe. When Boss Tolley hears tell how it come, he won’t love Nell none the better, I reckon.”
The peppering of the pulpit Bible might have made the whole of Canyon Pass roar with laughter and have brought nothing but ridicule on the parson had Hunt been the actual victim of Nell Blossom’s impish trick. That Boss Tolley chanced to suffer yielded a number of the townspeople much amusement. But it afforded others an opportunity to show stronger approval of what Hunt and his coworkers were trying to do.