CHAPTER 5
There was more snow on this side, and to travel through it he soonfound that he must put on the snowshoes again; but after that thedescent was actually restful compared with the labors of the climb.Yonder was the dark streak of the timberline again. Far down thevalley he watched it curving in and out along the mountainside like awater level. Below was the darkness of the forest where other thingslived, and where Bull could live more easily, also. Never had treesseemed such beautiful and friendly things to him.
Once a thought stopped him completely. He was in a new world. He wasseeing everything for the first time. On other days he had gone outwith others. Under their guidance, not trusted to undertake anexpedition by himself, he looked at nothing until it was pointed outto him, heard nothing that was not first called to his attention. Hehad always wondered at the acuteness of the senses of all other men.But now, looking on the mountains for himself, he decided, with astart of the heart, that they were beautiful--beautiful and terribleat once, with the reality that he had never found in his books. Whatleveled spear of a knight, in the pages of romance, could equal theinvisible thrust of this wind?
He reached the timberline. Looking back, he saw the summit, abrilliant line of white against a blue sky. Again the heart of BullHunter leaped. Here was a great treasure that he had taken in with onegrasp of the eyes and which he could never lose!
He turned down the valley. Where it swerved out into the lower plain,stood Johnstown, and there he was to cross the flight of Pete Reeve,if Pete were indeed flying. But it was incredible that the man who hadstruck down Uncle Bill Campbell should flee from any man or numberof men.
He had reached the bottom of the narrow valley. A dull noise came downto him from the mountain in the lull of the wind. He looked up.
Far away, miles and miles, near the summit of Scalped Mountain, asnaky form of mist was twisting swiftly down. He looked curiously. Thething grew, traveling with great speed that increased with everymoment. It increased--it gained velocity--a snowslide!
He watched it in doubt. It was twisting like a snake down the fartherside of the mountain, but, in his experience, slides were astreacherous as serpents. Bull started hastily for a low cliff thatstood up from the floor of the valley, clear of the trees.
He had not gone far when the wind fell away to a whisper, and a dullroaring caught his ear. He looked back over his shoulder in alarm. Agreat wall of white was shooting down the mountainside. The littleslide of surface snow, which had twisted across the surface of the oldsnows of the winter, had been gaining in weight, in momentum, pickingup claws of shrubbery, teeth of stone, and eating through layer afterlayer of the old snow, packed hard as ice. Now it was a roaring masswith a front steadily increasing in height, and far away in the rearit tossed up a tail of snow dust, a flying mist that gave Bull animpression of speed greater than the main wall of the snow itself.
The noise grew amazingly, and coming in range of the opposite wall ofthe valley, a low and steadily increasing thunder poured into the earsof Bull. It was a fascinating thing to watch, and at this distance tothe side he was quite safe. But at the very moment that he reachedthis decision, the front of the slide smashed with a noise likevolleyed canyon against the side of a hill, tossed immense arms ofwhite in the air, floundered, and then veered with the speed of anexpress train rounding a curve and rocked away down the slope straightfor Bull. Turned cold with dread, he saw it hit the timberline with agreat crashing, and the dark forms of the trees were dashed up by therunning mass of stones and then swallowed in the boiling front ofthe slide.
He waited to see no more, but dashed on for the saving cliff. Once hisback was turned it seemed that the slide gained speed. The immenseroaring literally leaped on him from behind, and in the roar, hissenses were drowned. He could feel his knees weaken and buckle, butthe cliff, now just before him, gave him fresh strength. But was thecliff high enough? He hurried up to higher ground and flung himselfprostrate. The front of the slide was cutting down the heavilyforested slope as though the trees were blades of grass before a keenscythe. The noise passed all description.
Once he thought the mass was changing direction. It put out a massivearm to the left, licked down five hundred trees at a gulp, and then,smashing its fist into a hillside, flung back into the valley floor,tossing the great trees in its top and poured straight at him. Hewatched it in one of those dazes during which one sees everything. Thewhole body came like water down a chute, but one part of the frontwall spilled out ahead and then another, and then the top, overtakingthe rest, toppled crashing to the bottom. And so it rushed out ofsight beneath the cliff. But would it wash over the top?
The first answer was an impact that shook the ground under him, andthen he heard a noise like a huge ripping explosion. A dozen loftygeysers of snow streamed up into the air, dazzling against the sun,misty at the edges of each column, whose center was solid tons andtons of snow. Old pines and spruces, their branches shaved away in thetumult of the slide, were picked up and hurled like javelins over thecliff; a shower of fragments beat on the body of Bull; and then themain mass of snow washed up over the edge of the cliff in a greatmound, and the slide was ended.
He crawled slowly back to his feet. Far up the mountainside, beginningin a point, the track of the slide swept down in a broadening scar,black and raw, across forest and snow. Far down the valley the lastechoes of thunder were passing away to a murmur, and the valley floor,beneath the cliff, was a mass of snow and tree trunks.
Bull took off the snowshoes and climbed along the valley wall until hecould descend to the clear floor beneath him. Then he headed downtoward Johnstown.
It was well past midday when he escaped the slide; it was thebeginning of night when, at the conclusion of that first heroic march,he reached Johnstown. With hunger his stomach cleaved to his back, andhis knees were weak with the labor.
Stamping through the snow to the hotel he asked the idlers around thestove, "Has any of you gents seen a man named Pete Reeve pass throughthis town?"
They looked at him in amazement. He had closed the door behind him,and now, with his battered hat pushed high on his head, he seemedtaller than the entrance--taller and as wide, a mountain of a man. Theefforts of the march had collected a continual frown on his forehead,and as he peered about from face to face, no one for a moment was ableto answer, but each looked to his companion.
It was the proprietor who answered finally. Talk was his commercialmedium and staff of life. "What sort of a looking man, captain?"
Bull blinked at him. He was not used to honorary epithets such asthis, and he searched the face of the proprietor carefully to detectmockery. To his surprise the other showed signs of what Bull dimlyrecognized as fear. Fear of him--of Bull Hunter!
"The way you look at me," said the other and laughed uneasily, "Ifigure it's pretty lucky that I ain't this here Pete Reeve. Thatso, boys?"
The boys joined in the laughter, but they kept it subdued, their eyesupon the giant at the door. He was leaning against the wall, and thesight of his outspread hand was far from reassuring.
But Bull went on to describe his man. "Not very big; hands like theclaws of a bird's; iron-gray hair; quick ways." That was Uncle Bill'sdescription.
"Sure he's been here," said the owner. "I recognized him right off. Hewas through about dusk. He came over the mountains and just got pastthe summit, he said, before the storm hit. Lucky, eh?" He looked atthe battered coat of Bull. "Kind of appears like you mightn't of beenso lucky?"
"Me?" asked Bull gently. "Nope. I was at the timberline on the otherside about daybreak today."
There was a sudden and chilly silence; men looked at one another.Obviously no man could have traveled that distance between dawn anddark, but it was as well not to express disbelief to a man who couldtell a lie as big as his body.
"I got to eat," said Bull.
The proprietor jumped out of his chair. "I can fix you up, son."
He led the way, Bull following with his enormous strides, and
, as thefloor creaked under him, the eyes of the others jerked after him,stride by stride. It was beginning to seem possible that this man haddone what he said he had done. When the door slammed behind him andhis steps went creaking through the room beyond, a mutter of a humarose around the stove.
As a matter of fact it was the beginning of the great legend that wasfinally to bulk around the name of the big man. And it was fittingthat the huge figure of Bull Hunter should have come upon theattention of men in this way, descending out of the storm and themountains.
That he had done something historic was far from the mind of Bull ashe stalked into the dining room.
"You sit right down here," his host was saying, placing a chair at thetable.
Bull tried the chair with his hand. It groaned and squeaked under theweight. "Chairs don't seem to be made for me," he said simply."Besides I'm more used to sitting on the floor." He dropped to thefloor accordingly, with the effect of a small earthquake. Theproprietor stared, but he swallowed his astonishment. "What you'd liketo eat is something hearty, I figure."
"What you got?" said Bull.
"Well, Mrs. Jarney come in this morning with a dozen fresh eggs. Gotsome prime bacon, too, and some jerky and--"
"That dozen eggs," said Bull thoughtfully, "will start me, and then aplatter of bacon, and you might mix up a bowl of flapjacks. You ain'tgot a quart or so of canned milk, partner?"
The proprietor could only nod, for he dared not trust his voice.Fleeing to the kitchen he repeated the prodigious order to his wife.Then he circled by a back way and communicated the tidings to the"boys" around the stove.
"A couple of dozen eggs, he says to me, and a few pounds of beef andthree or four quarts of milk and a bowl of flapjacks and a platter ofbacon," was the way the second version of the historic order for foodcame to the idlers.
Half a dozen of the men risked the cold and the wind to steal aroundto the side of the house and peer through the window at the huge,bunched figure that sat on the floor. They found him with his chindropped upon the burly fist and a frown on his forehead, for Bullwas thinking.
He would have been glad to have found Pete Reeve in Johnstown and havethe matter over with. But, after all, it was beginning to occur to himthat it might not be wise to kill the man in the presence of otherpeople. They might attempt to correct him with the assistance of arope and a limb of a tree. Somewhere he must cut in ahead of thisReeve and start out at him if possible. As for his ability to keeppace with a horse he had no doubt that he could do it fairly well.More than once he had gone out on foot, while Harry and Joe rode, andhe had pressed the little ponies, bearing their riders slowly up anddown the slopes, to keep pace with him. On the level, of course, itwas a different matter, but in broken country he more than kept up.
"Have you got a grudge agin' Reeve?" asked the host, as he brought inthe fried eggs.
"Maybe," admitted Bull, and instantly he began to attack the food.
The proprietor watched with a growing awe. No chinook ever ate snow asthis hungry giant melted food to nothingness. He came back with thefirst stack of flapjacks and bacon and more questions. "But I'd thinkthat a gent like you'd be pretty careful about tangling with PeteReeve--him being so handy with a gun and you such a tolerablebig target."
"I've figured that all out," said Bull calmly. "But they's so much ofme to kill that I don't figure one bullet could do the work. Do you?"
The eyes of the proprietor grew large. He swallowed, and before hecould answer Bull continued in the exposition of his theory. "Beforehe shoots the next shot, maybe I can get my hands on him."
"You going to fight him bare hands agin' a gun?"
"You see," said Bull apologetically, "I ain't much good with a gun,but I feel sort of curious about what would happen if I got my gripon a man."
And that was the foundation on which another section of the BullHunter legend was built.