It emboldened him; it inspired him to speak the words that were boiling under the surface of his calm. He was a forthright fellow at best, was Joe Hurley, and he was very, very much in love with Betty Hunt.
CHAPTER XVII—A BATTLE IN A GIRL’S HEART
“Betty, I want to tell you something,” he said, unconsciously urging Bouncer nearer to the girl’s mount. “These weeks you have been here at Canyon Pass have been the greatest in my life.”
The girl looked at him in a startled way.
“This is a big country, it is true. Big things are done out here—great accomplishments achieved—fortunes won. And I have always meant to do my part in it—both as to making money and winning the better things of life for myself. I want to see things that are already started, developed, to watch Canyon Pass grow—in a spiritual as well as a material sense.
“But something else has got hold of me, Betty. I was living a pretty wild life before you and Willie came out here. I wrote him I was. I kind of gloried in being a roughneck, I reckon,” he added with a wry smile. “But all that’s changed with me now, Betty—since you came.”
“Mr. Hurley—Joe!” gasped the girl.
But he raised his hand gently in protest. The gesture asked her to wait—to hear him through.
“I’ve got another object in life—another reason for working and striving. I reckon a man never does know quite what he’s aimin’ to do until he sets a mark before him that isn’t altogether selfish. I want to get ahead just as much as ever—more so. But I want to accomplish what I’m aimin’ at for something higher than just the satisfaction of seeing the Great Hope pay big and know that folks say Joe Hurley has made a ten-strike!”
“You—you will be successful, Joe,” she murmured.