* * * * * Fortunately for Canyon Pass and its flood-harassed inhabitants, frost and snow held off that winter until remarkably late. The mild season gave ample opportunity for new homes to be built and for the necessary repairs to be made upon the structures that had withstood the rising waters. The supply wagons brought in quantities of necessary goods from Crescent City and the railroads. The mines and washings shut down while all turned to the work of rebuilding. Tolley’s Grub Stake and Colorado Brown’s place, both swept by the water, were the last buildings to be remodeled. The gamblers and dance-hall girls and other employees of those places left town, for it promised to be a lean winter for their ilk at Canyon Pass. In fact, Boss Tolley sold out and got out himself among the very first to desert the town. His departure and the sale of all his property opened the way for Parson Hunt’s supporters to buy from the purchaser of Tolley’s property the building which had been used for church services and the lot on which it stood. They could not begin the building of a proper church until spring, of course; but the money was pledged for an edifice that would cost all Joe Hurley had planned. Hurley himself was able to subscribe a much larger sum than at first, for the Great Hope had proved to be as valuable a mine as he had told Betty and the parson he believed it would. But it was from another source that the church building fund gained its largest contribution. Old Steve Siebert and Andy McCann had “struck it rich.” The romance of the uncovering of a rich vein of gold in the west wall of the canyon is told to-day to every tourist who comes to Canyon Pass. How, at a time in the camp’s early history, two partners who had prospected the Topaz Range and the desert adjoining fruitlessly for years had found traces of gold high up on the canyon wall behind a sheltering ledge and had “locked horns” in their first quarrel over how the lode was to be got at. At the height of their argument a landslip had buried the hollow where the rich find was located and, rather than that either should profit by the joint find, the two old fellows had never tried to open the claim until nature, by another freak, uncovered it for them. “I says to Andy, and Andy says to me,” Steve Siebert was wont to recall, “when we seen how rich that lode was, a part of our profits oughter go to the parson and his church.” “You’re mighty right we did,” agreed Andy. Agreeing was now Andy’s strongest trait. “We-all got to pull together in this world. And if we-all pull together yere in Canyon Pass we can have as good a church as any camp needs. We sure got the best parson.” “You’re right, Andy,” Steve said. “I certainly do despise folks that are always fighting each other and pullin’ contrary. No sense in it—no sense a-tall.”