He spoke to Smithy, his single clerk at the Three Star Grocery. He had to speak to Smithy, or to the circumambient air, for nobody but the gangling clerk was within hearing. They lounged on the store porch in the middle of the afternoon, and the only other thing alive on the main street of Canyon Pass was a wandering burro browsing on the tufts of grass edging the shallow gutters.
“I don’t see as Canyon Pass has got to be bumped by a gospel sharp to wake it up,” complained Smithy, stretching his arms as though they were elastic. “Yahhoo! Well, he’ll have a sweet time here, Mr. Judson.”
“I dunno,” said the storekeeper reflectively. “For my part I feel like I favored it.”
“’Cause it’s something new?”
“’Cause it’s something needed. I ain’t one of those fellers that run after every new thing just because it is new. But I’m for progress. I want to see the Pass get ahead. Crescent City and Lamberton have both got churches and parsons.”
“And they’ve got railroads,” put in Smithy, making a good point. “Canyon Pass needs the railroad more’n it does a parson.”
“Son,” proclaimed Judson, “before Canyon Pass can get a railroad connection, mountains have got to be moved and the meanest stretch of desert that ever spawned lizards, sidewinders and cacti, and produce in their places about five hundred square mile of irrigated farmland to pay for spiking the rails to the sleepers. See?”
“Well, the farms might come,” declared Smithy defensively.
“Sure. So might Christmas come at Fourth o’ July. But we ain’t never celebrated the two holidays together yet. No, sir. To irrigate the edge of that desert even, a dam would have to be built across the southern outlet of the canyon, and that would back the water up yere in freshet season till the roof of my shack would be so deep under the surface that about all I could properly keep in stock would be perch and rainbow trout.
“They ain’t building branch railroads no more to mining camps like Canyon Pass. That’s why we all chipped in for the stamp mill and the cyanide plant. Nope. We’ll freight in our supplies with mules and communicate with the more effete centers of civilization by stagecoach for some time to come I reckon.
“That being the case we got to uplift ourselves without the help of the iron horse, as the feller said. And having a church and a parson is uplifting.”
“Nobody ain’t talked very brash about a church.”
“Parson comes first. Naturally. Of course this friend of Joe Hurley is only coming on a visit at first.”
“He’ll have a sweet visit here,” repeated Smithy.
“That’s according,” said Judson. “We got to be hospitable. If a judge, or a senator, or a school teacher, or even a drummer sellin’ fishin’ tackle, came yere we’d feel like we wanted to show him the town’s best side. Why not this parson?”
“Huh! A drummer don’t try to convert us and innovate psalm-singing and such,” grumbled Smithy.
“Son,” drawled Judson, his eyes twinkling under his bushy brows, “you’re convicted of sin right now. You’re scare’t of this parson – and that’s the trouble with most of you fellers who are raising a yawp against progress as represented by this Reverend Hunt.”
“’Taint only us fellers,” grumbled Smithy. “Some of the womenfolk ain’t pleased. Say! Nell says she don’t want no black-coated parson in this camp. Says it would give her the willies, so she couldn’t sing.”
It was an indisputable fact – Joe Hurley himself had discovered it – that the Passonians were divided upon the matter of the expected coming of the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. The sheep and the goats that had heretofore milled together in a general herd, were dividing upon strictly religious lines. Joe was somewhat surprised. Some of the very people he had presumed would welcome the innovation, were suspicious of it.
Mr. Robertson Norris, “Slickpenny” Norris was his undignified appellation, became quite red of face and beat rather a futile fist upon the banking counter as he gave his opinion to Joe Hurley. Norris was a puny-looking, string-bean sort of man. The height of rage could not have made his appearance impressive.
“Joe Hurley, you are a director of this bank, and your last statement of the Great Hope shows that you are a good mining man. I find on most subjects you display good sense. But on this question you’re all wrong – all wrong!”
“I don’t get you – I don’t get you at all,” drawled Hurley. “A moral man like you, Norris, I reckoned would welcome the idea of having a parson in the town.”
“I have no quarrel with parsons – none at all, Joe,” declared the banker. “But Canyon Pass is in no present shape – financially, I mean – to contemplate the building of a church edifice. A church is something you can’t tax, and it brings in absolutely no revenue to the town. It’s not an asset, but a liability, and the Pass can’t afford any such luxuries at this time.”
“Great saltpeter!”
“Listen to me, Joe Hurley! I’ve advocated proper town improvements, even when they take the skin off my own nose, and always will. I am strong for Main Street being paved and sidewalks laid, though ’twould cost me a pretty penny. We ought to set out trees. Them oil lamps on wooden posts are a disgrace. I’d make every merchant paint the front of his buildings on Main Street once a year, by law.”
“Well! What’s the matter with a church?” demanded Hurley. “That is, if we get that far.”
“It’s absolutely no use. If one is built it won’t be nothing but a shack. It won’t add anything to the importance of the town. No, I don’t approve. I’m disappointed in you, Joe.”
“All right – all right!” cried Joe in some heat. “But I’m not disappointed in you, old-timer. Great saltpeter! I wonder what you did before you drifted into Canyon Pass that a parson and religion are likely to bring fresh into your memory.”
With this backhand slap at the banker, the young man went out. It was rather odd that Joe Hurley, like Bill Judson, should suspect the Passonians of the same secret reason for not desiring a spiritual refreshment of the town. But then, both the storekeeper and the owner of the Great Hope were observant of human nature and knew Canyon Pass and its inhabitants very well.
Joe Hurley’s proposal was rattling the dry bones. If he saw two men conversing on the street, with both their arms and whiskers waving in the breeze, he might be sure the topic under discussion was the coming of “that gospel-sharp Joe Hurley’s sicked on to us.”
If two housewives met in midflight between store and store in the course of a forenoon’s shopping, the principal subject of gossip was bound to be the possibility of a parson settling in Canyon Pass. Nor did the feminine opinion always march with that of Mother Tubbs.
In spite of the emancipation of the sex and its introduction to the high office of the ballot, the women of the mining town were – like women everywhere – considerably influenced by the expressed opinions of their husbands, brothers, and sons. If Charlie Raidlaw, who dealt faro for Boss Tolley, or Phin Shattuck, one of Colorado Brown’s “gentlemanly mixers,” gave it as his opinion that a white-liveried, lily-handed parson was going to be a pest in the town and sure to hurt business, Mrs. Charlie and Sue Shattuck, Phin’s sister, were pretty sure to scout the idea that a parson in the Pass would be any improvement.
“It’s needed,” Rosabell Pickett announced with conviction. Rosabell played the piano in the Grub Stake, painted her face like a Piute Indian, dressed as gaudily as a circus poster, and was the only employee Boss Tolley had who really was not afraid of him. In fact, Rosabell was not afraid of any man and had small respect for most; she was frank in saying so. A girl can be a piano player in a honkytonk and be long on self-respect. Rosabell approved of herself – quite.
“It’s needed,” repeated