“Then you and he quarreled?”
The mistake was fatal, and the parson knew it the instant he had said the unwise words. But he could not recall them.
“See here, Parson Hunt! you’re making a nuisance of yourself. I want to tell you that no tenderfoot will get far in Canyon Pass if he begins as you have. I’ve got nothing to tell you. I won’t talk to you. I don’t want a thing to do with you. Now! Am I plain enough?”
She walked on stoutly, her head up, her cheeks aflame. For a few yards he walked quietly beside her. Then he lifted his hat and turned aside. When Nell had disappeared, Hunt sadly shook his head.
“I fear,” he told himself, “that I have made a bad beginning.”
Circumstances that followed proved that his suspicion was correct. In less than twenty-four hours he heard that without a doubt he had made another enemy.
“I don’t know how it is, parson,” said Bill Judson shaking a mournful head, “but that little devil, Nell Blossom, is on the warpath. And she’s after your scalp.”
“It is stuck on pretty tightly, Mr. Judson,” Hunt replied with a smile.
“’Tain’t no laughing matter. Nell has a terrible drag with the boys. If she don’t have you run out of town, she may try to bust up your show. She says you’re a mischief-maker, and all that. She’s plumb down on parsons.”
“We will have to convince her that the tribe is harmless.”