CHAPTER 6
The bed on which Bull Hunter reposed his bulk that night was not thecot to which he was shown by his host. One glance at the spindlingwooden legs of the canvas-bottomed cot was enough for Bull, and havingwrapped himself in the covers he lay down on the floor and wasinstantly asleep.
While it was still dark, he wakened out of a dream in which Pete Reeveseemed to be riding far--far away on the rim of the world. Ten minuteslater Bull was on the trail out of Johnstown. There was only one trailfor a horseman south of Johnstown, and that trail followed thewindings of the valley. Bull planned to push across the ragged peaksof the Little Cloudy Mountains and head off the fugitive atGlenn Crossing.
Two days of stern labor went into the next burst. He followed the coldstars by night and the easy landmarks by day, and for food he had thestock of raisins he had bought at Johnstown. He came out of theheights and dropped down into Glenn Crossing in the gloom of thesecond evening. But raisins are meager support for such a bulk as thatof Bull Hunter. It was a gaunt-faced giant who looked in at the doorof the shop where the blacksmith was working late. The mechanic lookedup with a start at the deep voice of the stranger, but he managed tostammer forth his tidings. Such a man as Pete Reeve had indeed been inGlenn Crossing, but he had gone on at the very verge of day and night.
Bull Hunter set his teeth, for there was no longer a possibility ofcutting off Pete Reeve by crossing country. The immense labors of thelast three days had merely served to put him on the heels of thehorseman, and now he must follow straight down country and attempt tomatch his long legs against the speed of a fine horse. He drew a deepbreath and plunged into the night out of Glenn Crossing, on the southtrail. At least he would make one short, stiff march before theweariness overtook him.
That weariness clouded his brain ten miles out. He built a fire in acover of pines and slept beside it. Before dawn he was up and outagain. In the first gray of the daylight he reached a little store ata crossroad, and here he paused for breakfast. A tousled girl, rubbingthe sleep out of her eyes, served him in the kitchen. The firstglimpse of the hollow cheeks and the unshaven face of Bull Hunterquite awakened her. Bull could feel her watching him, as she glidedabout the room. He sunk his head between his shoulders and glared downat the table. No doubt she would begin to gibe at him before long.Most women did. He prepared himself to meet with patience thatincredible sting and penetrating hurt of a woman's mockery.
But there was no mockery forthcoming. The sun was still not up when hepaid his bill and hastened to the door of the old building. Quickfootsteps followed him, a hand touched his shoulders, and he turnedand looked suspiciously down into the face of the girl. It was afrightened face, he thought, and very pretty. At some interval betweenthe time when he first saw her and the present, she had found time torearrange her hair and make it smooth. Color was pulsing inher cheeks.
"Stranger," she said softly, "what are you running away from?"
The question slowly penetrated the mind of Bull; he was stillbewildered by the change in her--something electric, to be felt ratherthan noted with the eye.
"They ain't any reason for hurrying on," she urged. "I--I can hideyou, easy. Nobody could find where I'll put you, and there you canrest up. You must be tolerable tired."
There was no doubt about it. There was kindness as well as anxiety inher voice. For the second time in his entire life, Bull decided that awoman could be something more than an annoyance. She was placing avalue on him, just as Jessie, three days before, had placed a value onhim; and it disturbed Bull. For so many years, he had been mocked andscorned by his uncle and cousins that deep in his mind was engravedthe certainty that he was useless. He decided to hurry on before thegirl found out the truth.
"I can still walk," he said, "and, while I can walk, I got to gosouth. But--you gimme heart, lady. You gimme a pile of heart to keepgoing. Maybe"--he paused, uncertain what to say next, and yetobviously she expected something more--"I'll get a chance to come backthis way, and if I do, I'll see you! You can lay to that--I'llsee you!"
He was gone before she could answer, and he was wondering why she hadlooked down with that sudden color and that queer, pleased smile. Itwould be long before Bull understood, but, even without understanding,he found that his heart was lighter and an odd warmth suffused him.
The rising of the sun found him in the pale desert with the magic ofthe hills growing distant behind him, and he settled to a differentstep through the thin sand--a short, choppy step. His weight wasagainst him here, but it would be even a greater disadvantage to ahorseman, and with this in mind, he pressed steadily south.
Every day on that south trail was like a year in the life of Bull.Heat and thirst wasted him, the constant labor of the march hardenedhis muscles, and he got that forward look about his eyes, which comeswith shadows under the lids and a constant frown on the forehead. Itwas long afterward that men checked up his march from date to date anddiscovered that the distance between the shack of Bill Campbell andHalstead in the South was one hundred and fifty miles over bittermountains and burning desert, and that Bull Hunter had made thedistance in five days.
All this was learned and verified later when Bull was a legend. Whenhe strode into Halstead on that late afternoon no one had ever heardof the man out of the mountains. He was simply an oddity in a countrywhere oddities draw small attention.
Yet a rumor advanced before Bull. A child, playing in the incredibleheat of the sun, saw the dusty giant heaving in the distance and ranto its mother, frightened, and the worn-faced mother came to the porchand shaded her eyes to look. She passed on the word with a call thattraveled from house to house. So that, when Bull entered the long,irregular street of Halstead, he found it lined on either side bychildren, old men, women. It was almost as though they had heard ofthe thing he had come to do and were there to watch.
Bull shrank from their eyes. He would far rather have slipped aroundthe back of the village and gone toward its center unobserved. A pairof staring eyes to Bull was like the pointing of a loaded gun. He putunspoken sentences upon every tongue, and the sentences were those hehad heard so often from his uncle and his uncle's sons.
"Too big to be any good."
"Bull's got the size of a hoss, and as a hoss he'd do pretty well, buthe ain't no account as a man."
His life had been paved with such burning remarks as these. Many anevening had been long agony to him as the three sat about and baitedhim. He hurried down the street, the pulverized sand squirting upabout his heavy boots and drifting in a mist behind him. When he wasgone an old man came out and measured those great strides with his eyeand then stretched his legs vainly to cover the same marks. But this,of course, Bull did not see, and he would not have understood it, hadhe seen, except as a mockery.
He paused in front of the hotel veranda, an awful figure to behold.His canvas coat was rolled and tied behind his sweating shoulders; histoo-short sleeves had bothered him and they were now cut off at theelbow and exposed the sun-blackened forearms; his overalls streamed inrags over his scarred boots. He pushed the battered hat far back onhis head and looked at the silent, attentive line of idlers who sat onthe veranda.
"Excuse me, gents," he said mildly. "But maybe one of you might knowof a little gent with iron-gray hair and a thin face and quick ways ofacting and little, thin hands." He illustrated his meaning byextending his own huge paws. "His name is Pete Reeve."
That name caused a sharp shifting of glances, not at Bull, but fromman to man. A tall fellow rose. He advanced with his thumbs hookedimportantly in the arm holes of his vest and braced his legs apart ashe faced Bull. The elevation of the veranda floor raised him so thathe was actually some inches above the head of his interlocutor, andthe tall man was deeply grateful for that advantage. He was, in truth,a little vain of his own height, and to have to look up to anyoneirritated him beyond words. Having established his own superiorposition, he looked the giant over from head to foot. He kept one eyesteadily on Bull, as though afraid that the big man mi
ght dodge out ofsight and elude him.
"And what might you have to do with Pete Reeve?" he asked. "Mightn'tyou be a partner of Pete's? Kind of looks like you was following himsort of eager, friend."
While this question was being asked, Bull saw that the line of idlerssettled forward in their chairs to hear the answer. It puzzled him.For some mysterious reason these men disapproved of any one who wasintimately acquainted with Pete Reeve, it seemed. He looked blandlyupon the tall man.
"I never seen Pete Reeve," said Bull apologetically.
"Ah? Yet you're follerin' him hotfoot?"
"I was aiming to see him, you know," answered Bull.
The tall man regarded him with eyes that began to twinkle beneath hisfrown. Then he jerked his head aside and cast at his audience aprodigious wink. The cloudy eyes of Bull had assured him that he hadto do with a simpleton, and he was inviting the others in on the game.
"You never seen him?" he asked gruffly, turning back to Bull. "Youexpect me to believe talk like that? Young man, d'you know who I am?"
"I dunno," murmured Bull, overawed and drawing back a pace.
The action drew a chuckle from the crowd. Some of the idlers even roseand sauntered to the edge of the veranda, the better to see thebaiting of the giant. His prodigious size made his timidity themore amusing.
"You dunno, eh?" asked the other. "Well, son, I'm Sheriff BillAnderson!" He waited to see the effect of this portentousannouncement.
"I never heard tell of any Sheriff Bill Anderson," said Bull in thesame mild voice.
The sheriff gasped. The idlers hastily veiled their mouths with muchcoughing and clearing of the throat. It seemed that the tables hadbeen subtly turned upon the sheriff.
"You!" exclaimed the sheriff, extending a bony arm. "I got to tellyou, partner, that I'm a pile suspicious. I'm suspicious of anybodythat's a friend of Pete Reeve. How long have you knowed him?"
Bull was very anxious to pacify the tall man. He shifted his weight tothe other foot. "Something less'n nothing," he hastened to explain. "Iain't never seen him."
"And why d'you want to see him? What d'you know about him?"
It flashed through the mind of Bull that it would be useless to tellwhat he knew of Pete. Obviously nobody would believe what he couldtell of how Reeve had met and shot down Uncle Bill Campbell. For BillCampbell was a historic figure as a fighter in the mountain regions,and surely his face must be bright even at this distance from hishome. That he could have walked beyond the sphere of Campbell's famein five days never occurred to Bull Hunter.
"I dunno nothing good," he confessed.
There was a change in the sheriff. He descended from the floor of theveranda with a stiff-legged hop and took Bull by the arm, leading himdown the street.
"Son," he said earnestly, walking down the street with Bull, "d'youknow anything agin' this Pete Reeve? I want to know because I got Petebehind the bars for murder!"
"Murder?" asked Bull.
"Murder--regular murder--something he'll hang for. And if you got anyinside information that I can use agin' him, why I'll use it and I'llbe mighty grateful for it! You see everybody knows Pete Reeve.Everybody knows that, for all these years, he's been going aroundkilling and maiming men, and nobody has been able to bring him up foranything worse'n self-defense. But now I think I got him to rights,and I want to hang him for it, stranger, partly because it'd be afeather in my cap, and partly because it'd be doing a favor for everygood, law-abiding citizen in these parts. So do what you can to helpme, stranger, and I'll see that your time ain't wasted."
There was something very wheedling and insinuating about all thistalk. It troubled Bull. His strangely obscure life had left him achild in many important respects, and he had a child's instinctiveknowledge of the mental processes of others. In this case he felt aprofound distrust. There was something wrong about this sheriff, hisinstincts told him--something gravely wrong. He disliked the man whohad started to ridicule him before many men and was now soconfidential, asking his help.
"Sheriff Anderson," he said, "may I see this Reeve?"
"Come right along with me, son. I ain't pressing you for what youknow. But it may be a thing that'll help me to hang Reeve. And if itis, I'll need to know it. Understand? Public benefit--that's what I'mafter. Come along with me and you can see if Reeve's the manyou're after."
They crossed the street through a little maelstrom of fine dust whicha wind circle had picked up, and the sheriff led Bull into the jail.They crossed the tawdry little outer room with its warped floorcreaking under the tread of Bull Hunter. Next they came face to facewith a cage of steel bars, and behind it was a little gray man on abunk. He sat up and peered at them from beneath bushy brows, athin-faced man, extremely agile. Even in sitting up, one caught manypossibilities of catlike speed of action.
Bull knew at once that this was the man he sought. He stood close tothe bars, grasping one in each great hand, and with his face pressedagainst the steel, he peered at Pete Reeve. The other was very calm.
"Howdy, sheriff," he said. "Bringing on another one to look over yourbear?"