Canyon Pass was no beauty spot over which an artist might rave; nor was the landscape surrounding it even passably attractive to the eye. Man, in delving for nature’s treasures in the rocky headlands and along the benches of the East and West Forks, had marred past redemption what little beauty of form and color the rugged wedge of land at the head of the canyon once possessed.
But on this morning there was a soft blur of blue haze padding the sharp outlines of the canyon walls and brooding over the higher hills. The streams flowing on either side of the town crooned instead of foaming boisterously in their beds, and where they joined to make Runaway River, which followed the bed of the canyon southerly, the thunder of their waters seemed hushed.
It was not yet sunrise, but a pearl-gray radiance flooded the town and canyon as far south as one could see. Lights wavered drunkenly behind the window-panes of the all-night saloons and dance halls. This enticing spring morning followed the dregs of another riotous night in Canyon Pass.
The day before had been pay day at the Eureka Washings and the Oreode Company’s diggings and at most of the major mining prospects in the vicinity. At noon the miners and other workmen had knocked off work, drawn their pay, and, cleaned up and dressed in holiday attire, had sought the amusement places of the town. From dark till dawn they had as usual torn the town wide open like a paper sack, to quote Bill Judson, as he stood in the doorway of his store and watched the two old desert rats leaving the dulling merriment and drunkenness behind them as they weaved their several ways out of sight on either bank of Runaway River.
“They’ve been doing this for twenty years,” added Judson, pointing with his pipe stem to the disappearing prospectors. “An’ to my knowledge and belief ain’t neither of ’em struck a smell of paying color in all that time.”
“That so?” returned Smithy, his gangling clerk, coming outside to stretch and yawn. Smithy had the look of a young man who was still in growth and he needed, as Judson said, “all outdoors to stretch in.”
“Say! What’s the matter with them two old sour doughs? All the time they was buyin’ that stuff they never spoke a word to each other, and if one of ’em caught a look from t’other he snarled like a wild tagger! They’d have showed their teeth—both of ’em—if they’d had any left but stubs.”
“Ain’t spoke, to my knowledge,” said the storekeeper, “Steve and Andy ain’t, in all of these twenty years. ’Fore that they was as thick as hasty puddin’ an’ throwed in together ev’ry spring—even steven—when they went prospecting; comin’ back yere to Canyon Pass in the fall as happy as a bride and groom returning from the honeymoon.”
“What happened? What made ’em so sore on each other?” asked Smithy.
“Don’t know. Never did know. Never could find out. ’Twas right after the big slide. You’ve heard tell o’ that, even if you ain’t been here six months?”