Bull Hunter - Max Brand
BULL HUNTER
BY
MAX BRAND
BULL HUNTER
CHAPTER 1
It was the big central taproot which baffled them. They had hewed
easily through the great side roots, large as branches, covered with
soft brown bark; they had dug down and cut through the forest of
tender small roots below; but when they had passed the main body of
the stump and worked under it, they found that their hole around the
trunk was not large enough in diameter to enable them to reach to the
taproot and cut through it. They could only reach it feebly with the
hatchet, fraying it, but there was no chance for a free swing to sever
the tough wood. Instead of widening the hole at once, they kept
laboring at the root, working the stump back and forth, as though they
hoped to crystallize that stubborn taproot and snap it like a wire.
Still it held and defied them. They laid hold of it together and
tugged with a grunt; something tore beneath that effort, but the stump
held, and upward progress ceased.
They stopped, too tired for profanity, and gazed down the mountainside
after the manner of baffled men, who look far off from the thing that
troubles them. They could tell by the trees that it was a high
altitude. There were no cottonwoods, though the cottonwoods will
follow a stream for more than a mile above sea level. Far below them a
pale mist obscured the beautiful silver spruce which had reached their
upward limit. Around the cabin marched a scattering of the balsam fir.
They were nine thousand feet above the sea, at least. Still higher up
the sallow forest of lodgepole pines began; and above these, beyond
the timberline, rose the bald summit itself.
They were big men, framed for such a country, defying the roughness
with a roughness of their own--these stalwart sons of old Bill
Campbell. Both Harry and Joe Campbell were fully six feet tall, with
mighty bones and sinews and work-toughened muscles to justify their
stature. Behind them stood their home, a shack better suited for the
housing of cattle than of men. But such leather-skinned men as these
were more tender to their horses than to themselves. They slept and
ate in the shack, but they lived in the wind and the sun.
Although they had looked down the stern slopes to the lower Rockies,
they did not see the girl who followed the loosely winding trail. She
was partly sheltered by the firs and came out just above them. They
began moiling at the stump again, sweating, cursing, and the girl
halted her horse near by. The profanity did not distress her. She was
so accustomed to it that the words had lost all edge and point for
her; but her freckled face stirred to a smile of pleasure at the sight
of their strength, as they alternately smote at the taproot and then
strove in creaking, grunting unison to work it loose.
They remained so long oblivious of her presence that at length she
called, "Why don't you dig a bigger hole, boys?"
She laughed in delight as they jerked up their heads in astonishment.
Her laughter was young and sweet to the ear, but there was not a great
deal outside her laughter that was attractive about her.
However, Joe and Harry gaped and grinned and blushed at her in the
time-old fashion, for she lived in a country where to be a woman is
sufficient, beauty is an unnecessary luxury, soon taxed out of
existence by the life. She possessed the main essentials of social
power; she could dance unflaggingly from dark to dawn at the nearest
schoolhouse dance, chattering every minute; and she could maintain a
rugged silence from dawn to dark again, as she rode her pony home.
Harry Campbell took off his hat, not in politeness, but to scratch his
head. "Say, Jessie, where'd you drop from? Didn't see you coming
no ways."
"Maybe I come down like rain," said Jessie.
All three laughed heartily at this jest.
Jessie swung sidewise in her saddle with the lithe grace of a boy,
dropped her elbow on the high pommel, and gave advice. "You got a
pretty bad taproot under yonder. Better chop out a bigger hole, boys.
But, say, what you clearing this here land for? Ain't no good for
nothing, is it?" She looked around her. Here and there the clearing
around the shanty ate raggedly into the forest, but still the plowed
land was chopped up with a jutting of boulders.
"Sure it ain't no good for nothing," said Joe. "It's just the old
man's idea."
He jerked a grimy thumb over his shoulder to indicate the controlling
and absent power of the old man, somewhere in the woods.
"Sure makes him glum when we ain't working. If they ain't nothing
worthwhile to do he always sets us to grubbing up roots; and if we
ain't diggin' up roots, we got to get out old 'Maggie' mare and try to
plow. Plow in rocks like them! Nobody but Bull can do it."
"I didn't know Bull could do nothing," said the girl with interest.
"Aw, he's a fool, right enough," said Harry, "but he just has a sort
of head for knowing where the rocks are under the ground, and somehow
he seems to make old Maggie hoss know where they lie, too. Outside of
that he sure ain't no good. Everybody knows that."
"Kind of too bad he ain't got no brains," said the girl. "All his
strength is in his back, and none is in his head, my dad says. If he
had some part of sense he'd be a powerful good hand."
"Sure would be," agreed Harry. "But he ain't no good now. Give him an
ax maybe, and he hits one or two wallopin' licks with it and then
stands and rests on the handle and starts to dreaming like a fool.
Same way with everything. But, say, Joe, maybe he could start this
stump out of the hole."
"But I seen you both try to get the stump up," said the girl in
wonder.
"Get Bull mad and he can lift a pile," Joe assured her. "Go find him,
Harry."
Harry obediently shouted, "Bull! Oh, Bull!"
There was no answer.
"Most like he's reading," observed Joe. "He don't never hear nothing
then. Go look for him, Harry."
Big Harry strode to the door of the hut.
"How come he understands books?" said the girl. "I couldn't never make
nothing out of 'em."
"Me neither," agreed Joe in sympathy. "But maybe Bull don't
understand. He just likes to read because he can sit still and do it.
Never was a lazier gent than Bull."
Harry turned at the door of the shack. "Yep, reading," he announced
with disgust. He cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed through
the doorway, "Hey!"
There was a startled grunt within, a deep, heavy voice and a thick
articulation. Presently a huge man came into the doorway and leaned
there, his figure filling it. There was nothing freakish about his
build. He was simply over-normal in bulk, from the big head to the
heavy feet. He was no more than a youth in age, but the great size and
the bewildered puckering of his forehead made him seem older. The book
was still in his hand.
"Hey," returned Harry, "we didn't call you out here to read to us.
Leave the book behind!"
Bull looked down at the book in his hand, seemed to waken from a
trance, then, with a muffled sound of apology, dropped the book
behind him.
"Come here!"
He slumped out from the house. His gait was like his body, his stride
large and loose. The lack of nervous energy which kept his mind from a
high tension was shown again in the heavy fall of his feet and the
forward slump of his head. His hands dangled aimlessly at his sides,
as though in need of occupation. A ragged thatch of blond hair covered
his head and it was sunburned to straw color at the edges.
His costume was equally rough. He wore no belt, but one strap, from
his right hip, crossed behind his back, over the bulging muscles of
his shoulder to the front of his left hip. The trousers, which this
simple brace supported, were patched overalls, frayed to loose threads
halfway down the calf where they were met by the tops of immense
cowhide boots. As for the shirt, the sleeves were inches too short,
and the unbuttoned cuffs flapped around the burly forearms. If it had
been fastened together at the throat he would have choked. He seemed,
in a word, to be bulging out of his clothes. One expected a mighty
rending if he made a strong effort.
This bulk of a man slouched forward with steps both huge and hesitant,
pausing between them. When he saw the girl he stopped short, and his
brow puckered more than before. One felt that, coming from the shadow,
he was dazed and startled by the brilliant mountain sunshine; and the
eyes were dull and alarmed. It was a handsome face in a way, but a
little too heavy with flesh, too inert, like the rest of his body and
his muscular movements.
"She ain't going to bite you," said Harry Campbell. "Come on over here
to the stump." He whispered to the girl, "Laugh at him!"
She obeyed his command. It brought a flush to the face of Bull Hunter
and made his head bow. He shuffled to the stump and stood aimlessly
beside it.
"Get down into the hole, you fool!" ordered Joe.
He and Harry took a certain pride in ordering their cousin around. It
was like performing with a lion in the presence of a lady; it was
manipulating an elephant by power of the unaided voice. Slowly Bull
Hunter dropped his great feet into the hole and then raised his head a
little and looked wistfully to the brothers for further orders.
But only half his mind was with them. The other half was with the
story in the book. There Quentin Durward had been nodding at his guard
in the castle, and the evil-faced little king had just sprung out and
wrenched the weapon from the hands of the sleepy boy. Bull Hunter
could see the story clearly, very clearly. The scar on the face of Le
Balafré glistened for him; he had veritably tasted the little round
loaves of French bread that the adventurer had eaten with the
pseudo-merchant.
But to step out of that world of words into this keen sunlight--ah,
there was the difference! The minds which one found in the pages of a
book were understandable. But the minds of living men--how terrible
they were! One could never tell what passed behind the bright eyes of
other human beings. They mocked one. When they seemed sad they might
be about to laugh. The minds of the two brothers eluded him, mocked
him, slipped from beneath the slow grasp of his comprehension. They
whipped him with their scorn. They dodged him with their wits. They
bewildered him with their mockery.
But they were nothing compared with the laughter of the girl. It went
through him like the flash and point of Le Balafré's long sword. He
was helpless before that sound of mirth. He wanted to hold up his
hands and cower away from her and from her dancing eyes. So he stood,
ponderous, tortured, and the three pairs of clear eyes watched him and
enjoyed his torture. Better, far better, that dark castle in ancient
France, and the wicked Oliver and the yet more wicked Louis.
"Lay hold on that stump," shouted Harry.
He heard the directions through a haze. It was twice repeated before
he bowed and set his great hands upon the ragged projections, where
the side roots had been cut away. He settled his grip and waited. He
was glad because this bowed position gave him a chance to look down to
the ground and avoid their cruel eyes. How bright those eyes were,
thought Bull, and how clearly they saw all things! He never doubted
the justice behind their judgments of him; all that Bull asked from
the world was a merciful silence--to let him grub in his books now and
then, or else to tell him how to go about some simple work, such as
digging with a pick. Here one's muscles worked, and there was no
problem to disturb wits which were still gathering wool in the pages
of some old tale.
But they were shrilling new directions at him; perhaps they had been
calling to him several times.
"You blamed idiot, are you goin' to stand there all day? We didn't
give you that stump to rest on. Pull it up!"
He started with a sense of guilt and tugged up. His fingers slipped
off their separate grips, and the stump, though it groaned against the
taproot under the strain, did not come out.
"It don't seem to budge, somehow," said Bull in his big, soft,
plaintive voice. Then he waited for the laughter. There was always
laughter, no matter what he did or said, but he never grew calloused
against it. It was the one pain which ever pierced the mist of his
brain and cut him to the quick. And he was right. There was laughter
again. He stood suffering mutely under it.
The girl's face became grave. She murmured to Harry, "Ever try
praisin' to big stupid?"
"Him? Are you joshin' me, Jessie? What's he ever done to be praised
about?"
"You watch!" said the girl. Growing excited with her idea, she called,
"Say, Bull!"
He lifted his head, but not his eyes. Those eyes studied the impatient
feet of the girl's mustang; he waited for another stroke of wit that
would bring forth a fresh shower of laughter at his expense.
"Bull, you're mighty big and strong. About the biggest and strongest
man I ever seen!"
Was this a new and subtle form of mockery? He waited dully.
"I seen Harry and Joe both try to pull up that root, and they couldn't
so much as budge it. But I bet you could do it all alone, Bull! You
just try! I bet you could!"
It amazed him. He lifted his eyes at length; his face suffused with a
flush; his big, cloudy eyes were glistening with moisture.
"D'you mean that?" he asked huskily.
For this terrible, clear-eyed creature, this mocking mind, this alert,
cruel wit was actually speaking words of confidence. A great, dim joy
welled up in the heart of Bull Hunter. He shook the forelock out
of his eyes.
"You just try, will you, Bull?"
"I'll try!"
He bowed. Again his thick fingers sought for a grip, found places,
worked down through the soft dirt and the pulpy bark to solid wood,
and then he began to lift. It was a gradual process. His knees gave,
sagging under the strain from the arms. Then the back began to grow
rigid, and the legs in turn grew stiff, as every muscle fell into
play. The shoulders pushed forward and down. The forearms, revealed by
the short sleeves, showed a bewildering tangle of corded muscle, and,
at the wrists, the tendons sprang out as distinct and white as the new
strings of a violin.
The three spectators were undergoing a change. The suppressed grins of
the two brothers faded. They glanced at the girl to see if she were
not laughing at the results of her words to big Bull, but the girl was
staring. She had set that mighty power to work, and she was amazed by
the thing she saw. And they, looking back at Bull, were amazed in
turn. They had seen him lift great logs, wrench boulders from the
earth. But always it had been a proverb within the Campbell family
that Bull would make only one attempt and, failing in the first
effort, would try no more. They had never seen the mysterious
resources of his strength called upon.
Now they watched first the settling and then the expansion of the body
of their big cousin. His shoulders began to tremble; they heard deep,
harsh panting like the breathing of a horse as it tugs a ponderous
load up a hill, and still he had not reached the limit of his power.
He seemed to grow into the soil, and his feet ground deeper into the
soft dirt, and ever there was something in him remaining to be tapped.
It seemed to the brothers to be merely vast, unexplored recesses of
muscle, but even then it was a prodigious thing to watch the strain on
the stump increase moment by moment. That something of the spirit was
being called upon to aid in the work was quite beyond their
comprehension.
There was something like a groan from Bull--a queer, animal sound that
made all three spectators shiver where they stood. For it showed that
the limit of that apparently inexhaustible strength had been reached
and that now the anguish of last effort was going into the work. They
saw the head bowed lower; the shoulders were now bunching and swelling
up on either side.
Then came a faint rending sound, like cloth slowly torn. It was
answered by something strangely like a snarl from the laborer.
Something jerked through his body as though a whip had been flicked
across his back. With a great rending and a loud snap the big stump
came up. A little shower of dirt spouted up with the parting of the
taproot. The trunk was flung high, but not out of the hands of Bull
Hunter. He whirled it around his head, laughing. There was a ring and
clearness in that laughter that they had never heard before. He dashed
the stump on the ground.
"It's out!" exclaimed Bull. "Look there!"
He strode upon them. As he straightened up he became huger than ever.
They shrank from him--from the veins which still bulged on his
forehead and from the sweat and pallor of that vast effort. The very
mustang winced from this mountain of a man who came with a long,
sweeping, springing stride. On his face was a strange joy as of the
explorer who tops the mountains and sees the beauty of the promised
land beneath him. He held out his hand.
"Lady, I got to thank you. You--taught me how!"
But she shrank from his outstretched hand--as though she had labored
to a larger end than she dreamed and was terrified by the thing
she had made.
"You--you got a red stain on your hands. Oh!"
He came to a stop sharply. The sharp edges, where the roots had been
cut away had worked through the skin and his hands were literally
caked with mud and stained red. Bull looked down at his hands vaguely.
It came to Harry that Bull was taking up a trifle too much of Jessie's
attention. The next thing they knew she would be inviting him to come
to the next dance down her way, and they would have the big hulk of a
man shaming himself and his uncle's family.
"Go on back to the house," he ordered sharply. "We don't have no more
need of you."
Bull obeyed, stumbling along and still looking down at his wounded
hands.
CHAPTER 2
He left the three behind him, bewildered and frightened. Had lightning
split a thick tree beside them, or an unexpected landslide thundered
past and swept the ground away at their feet, they could have been
hardly more disturbed.
"Who'd of thought he could act like that!" remarked Joe. "My gosh,
Jessie!"
They went and looked at the hole where the stump had stood. At the
bottom was the white remnant of the taproot where it had burst under
the strain.
"It wasn't so much how he pulled up the stump," said the girl faintly.
"But--but did you see his face, boys, after he heaved the stump up?
I--just pick that stump up, will you?"
They went to the misshapen, ragged monster and lifted it, puffing
under the weight.
"All right."
They dropped it obediently.
"And he--he just swung it around his head like it was nothing!"
declared the girl. "Look how it smashed into the gravel where he threw
it down! Why--why--I didn't know men was made like that. And his
face--the way he laughed--why he didn't look like no fool at all,
boys. But just as if he'd waked up!"
"You act so interested," said Harry Campbell dryly, "that maybe you'd
like to have us call him out again so's you can talk to him?"
Apparently she did not hear, but stared down into the mist of the late
afternoon, warning her that she must start home. She seemed puzzled
and a little frightened. When she left them it was with a wave of the
hand and with no words of farewell. They watched her go down the trail
that jerked back and forth across the pitch of the slope; twice her
pony stumbled, a sure sign that the rider was absent-minded.
"Jessie didn't seem to know what to make of it," said Harry.
"Neither do I," returned his brother.
Both of them spoke in subdued voices as if they were afraid of being
overheard.
"And think if he'd ever lay a hold on one of us like that!" said
Harry. He went to the stump and examined the side of one of the roots.
It was stained with crimson.
"Look where his finger tips worked through the dirt and the bark,
right down to the solid wood," murmured Joe.
They looked at each other uneasily. "My gosh," said Joe, "think of the
way I handled him the other night! He--he let me trip him up and throw
him!" He shuddered. "Why, if he'd laid hold of me just once, he'd of
squashed my muscles like they was rotten fruit!"
Of one accord they turned back to the house. At the door they paused
and peered in, as into the den of a bear. There sat Bull on the
floor--he risked his weight to none of the crazy chairs--still looking
at his stained hands. Then they drew back and again looked at each
other with scared eyes and spoke in undertones.
"After this maybe he won't want to follow orders. Maybe he'll get sort
of free and easy and independent."
"If he does, you watch Dad give him his marching orders. Dad won't
have no one lifting heads agin' him."
"Neither will I," snapped Joe. "I guess we own this house. I guess we
support that big hulk. I'm going to try him right quick."
He went back to the door of the shack. "Bull, they ain't any wood for
the stove tonight. Go chop some quick."
The floor squeaked and groaned under Bull's weight as he rose, and
again the brothers looked to each other.
"All right," came cheerily from Bull Hunter.
He came through the door with his ax and went to the log pile. The
brothers watched him throw aside the top logs and get at the heavier
trunks underneath. He tore one of these out, laid it in place, and the
sun flashed on the swift circle of the ax. Joe and Harry stepped back
as though the light had blinded them.
"He didn't never work like that before," declared Joe.
The ax was buried almost to the haft in the tough wood, and the steel
was wrenching out with a squeak of the metal against the resisting
wood. Again the blinding circle and the indescribable sound of the
ax's impact, slicing through the wood. A great chip snapped up high
over the shoulder of the chopper and dropped solidly to the ground at
the feet of the brothers. Again they exchanged glances and drew a
little closer together. The log divided under the shower of eating
blows, and Bull attacked the next section.
Presently he came to a pause, leaning on the handle of the ax and
staring into the distance. At this the brothers sighed with relief.
"I guess he ain't changed so much," said Harry. "But it was queer, eh?
Kind of like a bear waking up after he'd been sleeping all winter!"
They jarred Bull out of his dream with a shout and set him to work
again; then they started the preparations for the evening meal. The
simple preparations were soon completed, but after the potatoes were
boiled, they delayed frying the bacon, for their father, old Bill
Campbell, had not yet returned from his hunting trip and he disliked
long-cooked food. Things had to be freshly served to suit Bill, and
his sons dared the wrath of heaven rather than the biting reproaches
of the old man.
It was strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he was
always back before the coming of evening. An old and practiced
mountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction or
sense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went down
and the soft, beautiful mountain twilight began.
There were other reasons which would ordinarily have disturbed Bill
and brought him home even ahead of time. Snow had fallen heavily above
the timberline a few days before, and now the keen whistling of the
wind and the swift curtaining of clouds, which was drawing across the
sky, threatened a new storm that might even reach down to the shack.
And yet no Bill appeared.
The brothers waited in the shack, and the darkness was increasing. Any
one of a number of things might have happened to their father, but
they were not worried. For one thing, they wasted no love on the stern
old man. They knew well enough that he had plenty of money, but he
kept them here to a dog's life in the shack, and they hated him for
it. Besides, they had a keen grievance which obscured any worry about
Bill--they were hungry, wildly hungry. The darkness set in, and the
feeble light wandered from the smoked chimney of the lantern and made
the window black.
Outside, the wind began to scream, sighing in the distance among the
firs, and then pouncing upon the cabin and shaking it as though in
rage. The fire would smoke in the stove at every one of these blasts,
and the flame leaped in the lantern.
Bull Hunter had to lean closer to the light and frown to make out the
print of his book. The sight of his stolid immobility merely sharpened
their hunger, for there was never any passion in this hulk of a man.
When he relaxed over a book the world went out like a snuffed candle
for him. He read slowly, lingering over every page, for now and again
his eyes drifted away from the print, and he dreamed over what he had
read. In reality he was not reading for the plot, but for the pictures
he found, and he dreaded coming to the end of a book also, for books
were rare in his life. A scrap of a magazine was a treasure. A full
volume was a nameless delight.
And so he worked slowly through every paragraph and made it his and
dreamed over it until he knew every thought and every picture by
heart. Once slowly devoured in this way, it was useless to reread a
book. It was far better to simply sit and let the slow memory of it
trail through his mind link by link, just as he had first read it and
with all the embroiderings which his own fancy had conjured up.