Nell, soon after the beginning of her acquaintance with Betty, stopped singing “This Is No Place for a Minister’s Son” and took up no other ditty aimed in any particular at the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt and his work.
As for Hunt himself, he went forward, accepting both praise and blame with equal equanimity. But he began to be worried secretly about Joe Hurley.
Hunt supplemented the morning preaching with a Sunday school in the afternoon and a general service in the evening, at which he usually gave a helpful talk on more secular lines than his morning sermon.
Hunt would have been glad to have had more and better singing; but although Rosabell Pickett did her best, the song service was far from satisfactory. The parson never passed Colorado Brown’s place in the evening and heard Nell’s sweet voice that he was not covetous. He would never be satisfied—but he whispered this not even to Betty—until he heard that voice leading his congregation in the meeting room.
The rougher element that had at first attended the meetings mainly out of curiosity soon drifted away.
Hunt was not, however, above carrying his work out into the highways and byways of the town. If the men would not come to his services, he carried a measure of his helpful efforts to them. He did more than visit the homes of Canyon Pass. He went, especially at the noon hour, to where the men were at work.
Hunt never made himself offensive. He did not join the workmen at the mines or washings as a parson, but as another man, interested in their labor and in themselves.
Once a mule-drawn ore wagon broke down on the road to the ore-crushers. It blocked the way of other teams. The parson took off his coat, helped raise the wagon-body so the axle could be blocked, and aided in getting on another wheel in place of the broken one.
A man working alone in a ditch some distance from the Oreode was so unfortunate as to bring a rock down and get caught by the leg. His shouts for help were first heard by Hunt, who was striding along the wagon track. Without other aid the parson pried up the rock and drew the man out from under it. Then he carried the fellow, with his lacerated leg, to his shack, where he lived with his partner; and between the partner and Hunt the injured man was nursed as long as he needed attention at all.
This incident was the spark that started the idea of the hospital for Canyon Pass in Hunt’s mind. He began to talk hospital to everybody, even to Slickpenny Norris. The banker threw up his hands and began to squeal at last.