Bull Hunter - Max Brand
Indeed the cold and the snow were nothing compared with the wind. It
was now reaching the proportions of a westerly storm of the first
magnitude. Off the towering slopes above, it came with the chill of
the snow and with flying bits of sand, scooped up from around the base
of trees, or with a shower of twigs. Many a time he had to throw up
his arms across his face before he leaned and thrust on into the teeth
of the blast.
But he was growing accustomed to seeing through this veil of snow and
thick darkness. All things were dreamlike in dimness, of course, but
he could make out terrific cloud effects, as the clouds gushed over
the summit and down the slope a little way like the smoke of enormous
guns; and again a pyramid of mist was like a false mountain before
him, a mountain that took on movement and rushed to overwhelm him,
only to melt away and become simply a shadow among shadows above
his head.
Once or twice before the dawn, he rested, not from weariness perhaps,
but from lack of breath, turning his back to the west and bowing his
head. Walking into the wind it had become positively difficult to
draw breath!
Still it gained power incredibly. Up the side of Scalped Mountain it
was a steady weight pressing against him rather than a wind. And now
and then, when the weight relaxed, he stumbled forward on his knees.
For there was now hardly any shelter. He was approaching the
timberline where trees stand as high as a man and little higher.
Dawn found him at the edge of the tree line. He flung himself on his
face, his head on his arms, to rest and wait until the treacherous
time of dawn should have passed. While the day grew steadily his heart
sank. He needed the rest, but the cold bit into him while he lay
extended, and the peril of the summit would be before him for his
march of the day. The wind mourned over him as if it anticipated his
defeat. Never had there been such wind, he thought. It screamed above
him. It dropped away in sudden lulls of more appalling silence. Then,
far off, he would hear a wave of the storm begin, wash across a crest,
thunder in a canyon, and then break on the timberline with a prolonged
and mighty roaring. Those giant approaches made him hold his breath,
and when the wave of confusion passed, he found himself often
breathless.
Day came. He was on the very verge of the line with a dense fence of
stunted trees just before him and the wilderness of snow beyond,
sloping up to the crest, outlined in white against the solid gray sky.
The Spartans of the forest were around him--fir, pine, spruce, birch,
and trembling little aspens up there among the stoutest. All were of
one height, clean-shaven by the volleys of the wind-driven sand and
pebbles that clipped off any treetop that aspired above the mass. In
solid numbers was their salvation, and they grew dense as grass, two
feet high on the battlefront. They were carved by that wind, for all
storms came here out of the west, and the storm face of every tree was
denuded of branches. To the east the foliage streamed away. Even in
calm weather those trees spoke of storm.
Bull Hunter sat up to put on his snowshoes. It was a white world below
him and above. Winter, which a day before had vanished, now came back
with a rush off the summits, where its snows were still piled. Again
the heart of the big man quaked. Down in the hollow, over that ridge,
was the house of the Campbells. They would be getting up now. Joe
would be making the fire, and Harry slicing the bacon. It made a
cheerful picture to Bull. He could close his eyes and hear the fire
snap and see the stove steam with smoke through every fissure before
the draft caught in the chimney. From the shed came the neigh of
Maggie, calling softly to him.
He shook his head with a groan, stood up, and strode out of the timber
into the summit lands. It was a great desert. Never could it be
construed as a place for life. Even lichens were almost out of place
here, and what folly could lead a man across the shifting snows? But
to be called a man, to be admired in silence, to be asked for
opinions, to be deferred to--this was a treasure worth any price! He
bowed himself to the wind again and made for the summit with the
peculiar stride which a man must use with snowshoes.
He dared not slacken his efforts now. The cold had been increasing,
and to pause meant peril of freezing. It was a highly electrified air,
and the result was a series of maddening mirages. He stumbled over
solid rocks where nothing seemed to be in his way; and again what
seemed a rock of huge size was nothing at all. Bull discovered that
what seemed firm ground beneath him, as he started to round a
precipice, might after all be the effect of the mirage.
Added to this was another difficulty. As he wound slowly, about
midday, up the last reach, with the summit just above him, the wind
carried masses of cloud over the crest and into his face. He walked
alternately in a bewildering, driving fog and then in an air made
crazy with electricity. Again and again, from one side or the other,
he started when the storm boomed and cannonaded down a ravine and then
belched out into the open. All this time the babel of the winds
overhead never ceased, and the force of the storm cut up under him
with such violence that he was almost raised from the earth.
Then an unexpected barrier obtruded--a literal mountain of ice was
before him. The snow of the recent fall had been whipped away, and the
surface of the mountain, here perilously steep, was now sleek and
solid with ice. Bull looked gloomily toward the summit so close above
him, and the ice glimmered in the dull light. There was only one way
to make even the attempt. He sat down, took off his snowshoes,
strapped them to his back, and began to work his way up the slope,
battering out each foothold with the head of his ax. It was possible
to ascend in this manner, but it would be practically impossible
to descend.
Once committed to this way, he had either to go on to the summit, or
else perish. Working slowly, with little possible muscular exercise to
warm him, he began to grow chilled and the wind-driven cold numbed his
ears. But, more than that, the wind was now a grim peril, for, from
time to time, it swerved and leaped on him heavily from the side.
Once, off balance, he looked back at the dazzling slope below him. He
would be a shapeless mass of flesh long before he tumbled to
the bottom.
Vaguely, as he hewed his footholds and worked his way up, he yearned
for the cleverness of Harry or the wit of Joe. What an ally either of
them would be! That he was undertaking a task from which either of
them would have shrunk in horror never occurred to him. Yonder, beyond
the summit, lay his destiny--Johnstown--and this was the way toward
it; it was a simple thing to Bull. He could no more vary from his
course than a magnetic needle can vary from its pole.
Suddenly he came on a break in the solid face of the ice. Above him
was a narrow rift through the ice to the gravel beneath; how it was
made, Bull could not guess. But he took advantage of it. Presently he
was striding on toward the summit, beating his hands to restore the
circulation and gingerly rubbing his ears.
There was a magical change as he reached the summit and sat down
behind some rocks to regain his breath and quiet his shaken nerves.
The clouds split apart in the zenith; the sun burst through; on both
sides the broad mountain billowed away to white lowlands; the air was
alive with little, brilliant spots of electricity.
It cheered Bull Hunter vastly. The gale, which was tumbling the clouds
down the arch of the sky and toward the east, was more mighty than
ever, but he put his head down to it confidently and began
the descent.
CHAPTER 5
There was more snow on this side, and to travel through it he soon
found that he must put on the snowshoes again; but after that the
descent was actually restful compared with the labors of the climb.
Yonder was the dark streak of the timberline again. Far down the
valley he watched it curving in and out along the mountainside like a
water level. Below was the darkness of the forest where other things
lived, and where Bull could live more easily, also. Never had trees
seemed such beautiful and friendly things to him.
Once a thought stopped him completely. He was in a new world. He was
seeing everything for the first time. On other days he had gone out
with others. Under their guidance, not trusted to undertake an
expedition by himself, he looked at nothing until it was pointed out
to him, heard nothing that was not first called to his attention. He
had always wondered at the acuteness of the senses of all other men.
But now, looking on the mountains for himself, he decided, with a
start of the heart, that they were beautiful--beautiful and terrible
at once, with the reality that he had never found in his books. What
leveled spear of a knight, in the pages of romance, could equal the
invisible thrust of this wind?
He reached the timberline. Looking back, he saw the summit, a
brilliant line of white against a blue sky. Again the heart of Bull
Hunter leaped. Here was a great treasure that he had taken in with one
grasp 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 had
struck down Uncle Bill Campbell should flee from any man or number
of men.
He had reached the bottom of the narrow valley. A dull noise came down
to him from the mountain in the lull of the wind. He looked up.
Far away, miles and miles, near the summit of Scalped Mountain, a
snaky form of mist was twisting swiftly down. He looked curiously. The
thing grew, traveling with great speed that increased with every
moment. It increased--it gained velocity--a snowslide!
He watched it in doubt. It was twisting like a snake down the farther
side of the mountain, but, in his experience, slides were as
treacherous as serpents. Bull started hastily for a low cliff that
stood 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 dull
roaring caught his ear. He looked back over his shoulder in alarm. A
great wall of white was shooting down the mountainside. The little
slide of surface snow, which had twisted across the surface of the old
snows of the winter, had been gaining in weight, in momentum, picking
up claws of shrubbery, teeth of stone, and eating through layer after
layer of the old snow, packed hard as ice. Now it was a roaring mass
with a front steadily increasing in height, and far away in the rear
it tossed up a tail of snow dust, a flying mist that gave Bull an
impression of speed greater than the main wall of the snow itself.
The noise grew amazingly, and coming in range of the opposite wall of
the valley, a low and steadily increasing thunder poured into the ears
of Bull. It was a fascinating thing to watch, and at this distance to
the side he was quite safe. But at the very moment that he reached
this decision, the front of the slide smashed with a noise like
volleyed canyon against the side of a hill, tossed immense arms of
white in the air, floundered, and then veered with the speed of an
express train rounding a curve and rocked away down the slope straight
for Bull. Turned cold with dread, he saw it hit the timberline with a
great crashing, and the dark forms of the trees were dashed up by the
running mass of stones and then swallowed in the boiling front of
the slide.
He waited to see no more, but dashed on for the saving cliff. Once his
back was turned it seemed that the slide gained speed. The immense
roaring literally leaped on him from behind, and in the roar, his
senses were drowned. He could feel his knees weaken and buckle, but
the cliff, now just before him, gave him fresh strength. But was the
cliff high enough? He hurried up to higher ground and flung himself
prostrate. The front of the slide was cutting down the heavily
forested slope as though the trees were blades of grass before a keen
scythe. The noise passed all description.
Once he thought the mass was changing direction. It put out a massive
arm 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. He
watched it in one of those dazes during which one sees everything. The
whole body came like water down a chute, but one part of the front
wall spilled out ahead and then another, and then the top, overtaking
the rest, toppled crashing to the bottom. And so it rushed out of
sight beneath the cliff. But would it wash over the top?
The first answer was an impact that shook the ground under him, and
then he heard a noise like a huge ripping explosion. A dozen lofty
geysers of snow streamed up into the air, dazzling against the sun,
misty at the edges of each column, whose center was solid tons and
tons of snow. Old pines and spruces, their branches shaved away in the
tumult of the slide, were picked up and hurled like javelins over the
cliff; a shower of fragments beat on the body of Bull; and then the
main mass of snow washed up over the edge of the cliff in a great
mound, and the slide was ended.
He crawled slowly back to his feet. Far up the mountainside, beginning
in 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 last
echoes 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 he
could descend to the clear floor beneath him. Then he headed down
toward Johnstown.
It was well past midday when he escaped the slide; it was the
beginning of night when, at the conclusion of that first heroic march,
he reached Johnstown. With hunger his stomach cleaved to his back, and
his knees were weak with the labor.
Stamping through the snow to the hotel he asked the idlers around the
stove, "Has any of you gents seen a man named Pete Reeve pass through
this 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 seemed
taller than the entrance--taller and as wide, a mountain of a man. The
efforts 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 able
to answer, but each looked to his companion.
It was the proprietor who answered finally. Talk was his commercial
medium and staff of life. "What sort of a looking man, captain?"
Bull blinked at him. He was not used to honorary epithets such as
this, and he searched the face of the proprietor carefully to detect
mockery. To his surprise the other showed signs of what Bull dimly
recognized as fear. Fear of him--of Bull Hunter!
"The way you look at me," said the other and laughed uneasily, "I
figure it's pretty lucky that I ain't this here Pete Reeve. That
so, boys?"
The boys joined in the laughter, but they kept it subdued, their eyes
upon the giant at the door. He was leaning against the wall, and the
sight of his outspread hand was far from reassuring.
But Bull went on to describe his man. "Not very big; hands like the
claws of a bird's; iron-gray hair; quick ways." That was Uncle Bill's
description.
"Sure he's been here," said the owner. "I recognized him right off. He
was through about dusk. He came over the mountains and just got past
the summit, he said, before the storm hit. Lucky, eh?" He looked at
the battered coat of Bull. "Kind of appears like you mightn't of been
so lucky?"
"Me?" asked Bull gently. "Nope. I was at the timberline on the other
side 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 and
dark, but it was as well not to express disbelief to a man who could
tell 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 the
floor creaked under him, the eyes of the others jerked after him,
stride by stride. It was beginning to seem possible that this man had
done what he said he had done. When the door slammed behind him and
his steps went creaking through the room beyond, a mutter of a hum
arose around the stove.
As a matter of fact it was the beginning of the great legend that was
finally to bulk around the name of the big man. And it was fitting
that the huge figure of Bull Hunter should have come upon the
attention of men in this way, descending out of the storm and the
mountains.
That he had done something historic was far from the mind of Bull as
he stalked into the dining room.
"You sit right down here," his host was saying, placing a chair at the
table.
Bull tried the chair with his hand. It groaned and squeaked under the
weight. "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 the
floor accordingly, with the effect of a small earthquake. The
proprietor stared, but he swallowed his astonishment. "What you'd like
to eat is something hearty, I figure."
"What you got?" said Bull.
"Well, Mrs. Jarney come in this morning with a dozen fresh eggs. Got
some prime bacon, too, and some jerky and--"
"That dozen eggs," said Bull thoughtfully, "will start me, and then a
platter of bacon, and you might mix up a bowl of flapjacks. You ain't
got 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 and
three or four quarts of milk and a bowl of flapjacks and a platter of
bacon," was the way the second version of the historic order for food
came to the idlers.
Half a dozen of the men risked the cold and the wind to steal around
to 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 chin
dropped upon the burly fist and a frown on his forehead, for Bull
was thinking.
He would have been glad to have found Pete Reeve in Johnstown and have
the matter over with. But, after all, it was beginning to occur to him
that it might not be wise to kill the man in the presence of other
people. They might attempt to correct him with the assistance of a
rope and a limb of a tree. Somewhere he must cut in ahead of this
Reeve and start out at him if possible. As for his ability to keep
pace 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, and
he had pressed the little ponies, bearing their riders slowly up and
down the slopes, to keep pace with him. On the level, of course, it
was 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 in
the 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 as
this hungry giant melted food to nothingness. He came back with the
first stack of flapjacks and bacon and more questions. "But I'd think
that a gent like you'd be pretty careful about tangling with Pete
Reeve--him being so handy with a gun and you such a tolerable
big target."
"I've figured that all out," said Bull calmly. "But they's so much of
me 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 he
could answer Bull continued in the exposition of his theory. "Before
he 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 grip
on a man."
And that was the foundation on which another section of the Bull
Hunter legend was built.
CHAPTER 6
The bed on which Bull Hunter reposed his bulk that night was not the
cot to which he was shown by his host. One glance at the spindling
wooden legs of the canvas-bottomed cot was enough for Bull, and having
wrapped himself in the covers he lay down on the floor and was
instantly asleep.
While it was still dark, he wakened out of a dream in which Pete Reeve
seemed to be riding far--far away on the rim of the world. Ten minutes
later Bull was on the trail out of Johnstown. There was only one trail
for a horseman south of Johnstown, and that trail followed the
windings of the valley. Bull planned to push across the ragged peaks
of the Little Cloudy Mountains and head off the fugitive at
Glenn Crossing.
Two days of stern labor went into the next burst. He followed the cold
stars by night and the easy landmarks by day, and for food he had the
stock of raisins he had bought at Johnstown. He came out of the
heights and dropped down into Glenn Crossing in the gloom of the
second evening. But raisins are meager support for such a bulk as that
of Bull Hunter. It was a gaunt-faced giant who looked in at the door
of the shop where the blacksmith was working late. The mechanic looked
up with a start at the deep voice of the stranger, but he managed to
stammer forth his tidings. Such a man as Pete Reeve had indeed been in
Glenn 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 of
cutting off Pete Reeve by crossing country. The immense labors of the
last three days had merely served to put him on the heels of the
horseman, and now he must follow straight down country and attempt to
match his long legs against the speed of a fine horse. He drew a deep
breath and plunged into the night out of Glenn Crossing, on the south
trail. At least he would make one short, stiff march before the
weariness overtook him.
That weariness clouded his brain ten miles out. He built a fire in a
cover of pines and slept beside it. Before dawn he was up and out
again. In the first gray of the daylight he reached a little store at
a crossroad, and here he paused for breakfast. A tousled girl, rubbing
the sleep out of her eyes, served him in the kitchen. The first
glimpse of the hollow cheeks and the unshaven face of Bull Hunter
quite awakened her. Bull could feel her watching him, as she glided
about the room. He sunk his head between his shoulders and glared down
at the table. No doubt she would begin to gibe at him before long.
Most women did. He prepared himself to meet with patience that
incredible sting and penetrating hurt of a woman's mockery.
But there was no mockery forthcoming. The sun was still not up when he
paid his bill and hastened to the door of the old building. Quick
footsteps followed him, a hand touched his shoulders, and he turned
and looked suspiciously down into the face of the girl. It was a
frightened face, he thought, and very pretty. At some interval between
the time when he first saw her and the present, she had found time to
rearrange her hair and make it smooth. Color was pulsing in
her cheeks.
"Stranger," she said softly, "what are you running away from?"
The question slowly penetrated the mind of Bull; he was still
bewildered by the change in her--something electric, to be felt rather
than noted with the eye.
"They ain't any reason for hurrying on," she urged. "I--I can hide
you, easy. Nobody could find where I'll put you, and there you can
rest up. You must be tolerable tired."
There was no doubt about it. There was kindness as well as anxiety in
her voice. For the second time in his entire life, Bull decided that a
woman could be something more than an annoyance. She was placing a
value on him, just as Jessie, three days before, had placed a value on
him; and it disturbed Bull. For so many years, he had been mocked and
scorned by his uncle and cousins that deep in his mind was engraved
the certainty that he was useless. He decided to hurry on before the
girl found out the truth.
"I can still walk," he said, "and, while I can walk, I got to go
south. But--you gimme heart, lady. You gimme a pile of heart to keep
going. Maybe"--he paused, uncertain what to say next, and yet
obviously she expected something more--"I'll get a chance to come back
this way, and if I do, I'll see you! You can lay to that--I'll
see you!"
He was gone before she could answer, and he was wondering why she had
looked down with that sudden color and that queer, pleased smile. It
would be long before Bull understood, but, even without understanding,
he found that his heart was lighter and an odd warmth suffused him.