Printed in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
I.Discontent at Canyon Pass[1]
II.Discontent at Ditson Corners[18]
III.A Shadow Thrown Before[30]
IV.Philosophy Bound in Homespun[38]
V.How the Passonians Took It[46]
VI.The Approach[58]
VII.The First Trick[69]
VIII.A Flower in the Mire[78]
IX.A Beginning[91]
X.Mutterings of a Storm[99]
XI.The Storm About To Burst[111]
XII.Tolley’s Tale[122]
XIII.Plans Are Made[130]
XIV.The Great Day Arrives[141]
XV.Pep and a Little Pepper[152]
XVI.Love and Longing[161]
XVII.A Battle in a Girl’s Heart[169]
XVIII.The Shadow on Betty’s Path[177]
XIX.A Good Deal of a Man[189]
XX.Murder Will Out[197]
XXI.The Drama of a Lie[211]
XXII.A Face in the Storm[219]
XXIII.A Great Light Dawns[229]
XXIV.The Barrier Down—for a Moment[237]
XXV.Understanding[246]
XXVI.Threatening Weather[256]
XXVII.Several Conclusions[265]
XXVIII.Catastrophe[273]
XXIX.His Last Card[286]
XXX.Clearing Skies[297]

THE HEART OF CANYON PASS

CHAPTER I—DISCONTENT AT CANYON PASS

The bluebird was no harbinger of spring at Canyon Pass. Most of the inhabitants had never seen that feathered songster and many had never heard of it. Incidentally these same Passonians would not have known a harbinger in any case, presuming possibly that it was one of those new-fangled nipples for the hydraulic pipes at the Eureka Washings, or something fancy that Bill Judson was selling in cans at the Three Star Grocery.

But spring had unmistakably arrived at Canyon Pass when those two irrepressible pocket-hunters, Steve Siebert and Andy McCann, got together their frayed and rusty outfits, exchanged the hard-earned money each had toiled for during the winter over the counter of the Three Star for supplies and loaded each his burro till the sad-eyed little brutes almost buckled under the weight of flour, beans, salt pork, coffee, and prospectors’ tools.

Each ancient then mounted his moth-eaten cayuse, jerked the towline of his objecting burro, and proceeded out of town, Steve making the ford through the East Fork, while Andy plodded through the shallows of the West Fork, both bound down the canyon for the desert country which they hated with an unbelievably bitter hatred, yet which dragged the old men back to its grim barrens as soon as the spring freshets cleared the canyon and gulches of winter’s accumulation of snow.