Bull Hunter - Max Brand
The rising of the sun found him in the pale desert with the magic of
the hills growing distant behind him, and he settled to a different
step through the thin sand--a short, choppy step. His weight was
against him here, but it would be even a greater disadvantage to a
horseman, 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 hardened
his muscles, and he got that forward look about his eyes, which comes
with shadows under the lids and a constant frown on the forehead. It
was long afterward that men checked up his march from date to date and
discovered that the distance between the shack of Bill Campbell and
Halstead in the South was one hundred and fifty miles over bitter
mountains and burning desert, and that Bull Hunter had made the
distance in five days.
All this was learned and verified later when Bull was a legend. When
he strode into Halstead on that late afternoon no one had ever heard
of the man out of the mountains. He was simply an oddity in a country
where oddities draw small attention.
Yet a rumor advanced before Bull. A child, playing in the incredible
heat of the sun, saw the dusty giant heaving in the distance and ran
to its mother, frightened, and the worn-faced mother came to the porch
and shaded her eyes to look. She passed on the word with a call that
traveled from house to house. So that, when Bull entered the long,
irregular street of Halstead, he found it lined on either side by
children, old men, women. It was almost as though they had heard of
the thing he had come to do and were there to watch.
Bull shrank from their eyes. He would far rather have slipped around
the back of the village and gone toward its center unobserved. A pair
of staring eyes to Bull was like the pointing of a loaded gun. He put
unspoken sentences upon every tongue, and the sentences were those he
had 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, but
he ain't no account as a man."
His life had been paved with such burning remarks as these. Many an
evening had been long agony to him as the three sat about and baited
him. He hurried down the street, the pulverized sand squirting up
about his heavy boots and drifting in a mist behind him. When he was
gone an old man came out and measured those great strides with his eye
and 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, had
he 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; his
too-short sleeves had bothered him and they were now cut off at the
elbow and exposed the sun-blackened forearms; his overalls streamed in
rags over his scarred boots. He pushed the battered hat far back on
his head and looked at the silent, attentive line of idlers who sat on
the veranda.
"Excuse me, gents," he said mildly. "But maybe one of you might know
of a little gent with iron-gray hair and a thin face and quick ways of
acting and little, thin hands." He illustrated his meaning by
extending his own huge paws. "His name is Pete Reeve."
That name caused a sharp shifting of glances, not at Bull, but from
man to man. A tall fellow rose. He advanced with his thumbs hooked
importantly in the arm holes of his vest and braced his legs apart as
he faced Bull. The elevation of the veranda floor raised him so that
he was actually some inches above the head of his interlocutor, and
the 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 anyone
irritated him beyond words. Having established his own superior
position, he looked the giant over from head to foot. He kept one eye
steadily on Bull, as though afraid that the big man might dodge out of
sight and elude him.
"And what might you have to do with Pete Reeve?" he asked. "Mightn't
you be a partner of Pete's? Kind of looks like you was following him
sort of eager, friend."
While this question was being asked, Bull saw that the line of idlers
settled forward in their chairs to hear the answer. It puzzled him.
For some mysterious reason these men disapproved of any one who was
intimately acquainted with Pete Reeve, it seemed. He looked blandly
upon 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 his
frown. Then he jerked his head aside and cast at his audience a
prodigious wink. The cloudy eyes of Bull had assured him that he had
to 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. "You
expect 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 rose
and sauntered to the edge of the veranda, the better to see the
baiting of the giant. His prodigious size made his timidity the
more amusing.
"You dunno, eh?" asked the other. "Well, son, I'm Sheriff Bill
Anderson!" He waited to see the effect of this portentous
announcement.
"I never heard tell of any Sheriff Bill Anderson," said Bull in the
same mild voice.
The sheriff gasped. The idlers hastily veiled their mouths with much
coughing and clearing of the throat. It seemed that the tables had
been subtly turned upon the sheriff.
"You!" exclaimed the sheriff, extending a bony arm. "I got to tell
you, partner, that I'm a pile suspicious. I'm suspicious of anybody
that'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 to
the other foot. "Something less'n nothing," he hastened to explain. "I
ain'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 tell
what he knew of Pete. Obviously nobody would believe what he could
tell of how Reeve had met and shot down Uncle Bill Campbell. For Bill
Campbell was a historic figure as a fighter in the mountain regions,
and surely his face must be bright even at this distance from his
home. That he could have walked beyond the sphere of Campbell's fame
in 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 the
veranda with a stiff-legged hop and took Bull by the arm, leading him
down the street.
"Son," he said earnestly, walking down the street with Bull, "d'you
know anything agin' this Pete Reeve? I want to know because I got Pete
behind the bars for murder!"
"Murder?" asked Bull.
"Murder--regular murder--something he'll hang for. And if you got any
inside information that I can use agin' him, why I'll use it and I'll
be mighty grateful for it! You see everybody knows Pete Reeve.
Everybody knows that, for all these years, he's been going around
killing and maiming men, and nobody has been able to bring him up for
anything 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 a
feather in my cap, and partly because it'd be doing a favor for every
good, law-abiding citizen in these parts. So do what you can to help
me, stranger, and I'll see that your time ain't wasted."
There was something very wheedling and insinuating about all this
talk. It troubled Bull. His strangely obscure life had left him a
child in many important respects, and he had a child's instinctive
knowledge of the mental processes of others. In this case he felt a
profound distrust. There was something wrong about this sheriff, his
instincts told him--something gravely wrong. He disliked the man who
had started to ridicule him before many men and was now so
confidential, 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 you
know. But it may be a thing that'll help me to hang Reeve. And if it
is, I'll need to know it. Understand? Public benefit--that's what I'm
after. Come along with me and you can see if Reeve's the man
you're after."
They crossed the street through a little maelstrom of fine dust which
a wind circle had picked up, and the sheriff led Bull into the jail.
They crossed the tawdry little outer room with its warped floor
creaking under the tread of Bull Hunter. Next they came face to face
with a cage of steel bars, and behind it was a little gray man on a
bunk. He sat up and peered at them from beneath bushy brows, a
thin-faced man, extremely agile. Even in sitting up, one caught many
possibilities of catlike speed of action.
Bull knew at once that this was the man he sought. He stood close to
the bars, grasping one in each great hand, and with his face pressed
against the steel, he peered at Pete Reeve. The other was very calm.
"Howdy, sheriff," he said. "Bringing on another one to look over your
bear?"
CHAPTER 7
The prisoner's good humor impressed Bull immensely. Here was a man
talking commonplaces in the face of death. A greater man than Uncle
Bill, he felt at once--a far greater man. It was impossible to
conceive of that keen, sharp eye and that clawlike hand sending a
bullet far from the center of the target.
He gave his eyes long sight of that face, and then turned from the
bars and went out with the sheriff.
"Is that your man?" asked the sheriff.
"I dunno," said Bull, fencing for time as they stood in front of the
jail. "What'd he do?"
"You mean why he's in jail? I'll tell you that, son, but first I want
to know what you got agin' him--and your proofs--mostly your proofs!"
The distaste which Bull had felt for the sheriff from the first now
became overpowering. That he should be the means of bringing that
terrible and active little man to an end seemed, as a matter of fact,
absurd. Guile must have played a part in that capture.
Suppose he were to tell the sheriff about the shooting of Uncle Bill?
That would be enough to convince men that Pete Reeve was capable of
murder, for the shooting of Uncle Bill had been worse than murder. It
spared the life and ruined it at the same time. But suppose he added
his evidence and allowed the law to take its course with Pete Reeve?
Where would be his own reward for his long march south and all the
pain of travel and the crossing of the mountains at the peril of his
life? There would be nothing but scorn from Uncle Bill when he
returned, and not that moment of praise for which he yearned. To gain
that great end he must kill Pete Reeve, but not by the aid of the law.
"I dunno," he said to the sheriff who waited impatiently. "I figure
that what I know wouldn't be no good to you."
The sheriff snorted. "You been letting me waste all this time on you?"
he asked Bull. "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
Bull scratched his head in perplexity. But as he raised the great arm
and put his hand behind his head, the sheriff winced back a little.
"I'm sorry," said Bull.
The sheriff dismissed him with a grunt of disgust, and strode off.
Bull started out to find information. This idea was growing slowly in
his mind. He must kill Pete Reeve, and to accomplish that great end he
must first free him from the jail. He went back to the hotel and went
into the kitchen to find food. The proprietor himself came back to
serve him. He was a pudgy little man with a dignified pointed beard of
which he was inordinately proud.
"It's between times for meals," he declared, "but you being the
biggest man that ever come into the hotel, I'll make an exception."
And he began to hunt through the cupboard for cold meat.
"I seen Pete Reeve," began Bull bluntly. "How come he's in jail?"
"Him?" asked the other. "Ain't you heard?"
"No."
The little man sighed with pleasure; he had given up hope of finding a
new listener for that oft-told tale. "It happened last night," he
confided. "Along late in the afternoon in rides Johnny Strange. He
tells us he was out to Dan Armstrong's place when, about noon, a
little gray-headed man that give the name of Pete Reeve came in and
asked for chow. Of course Johnny Strange pricks up his ears when he
hears the name. We all heard about Pete Reeve, off and on, as about
the slickest gunman that the ranges ever turned out. So he looks Pete
over and wonders at finding such a little man."
The proprietor drew himself up to his full height. "He didn't know
that size don't make the man! Well, Armstrong trotted out some chuck
for Reeve, and after Pete had eaten, Johnny Strange suggested a game.
They sat in at three-handed stud poker.
"Things went along pretty good for Johnny. He made a considerable
winning. Then it come late in the afternoon, and he seen he'd have to
be getting back home. He offered to bet everything he'd won, or double
or nothing, and when the boys didn't want to do that, it give him a
clean hand to stand up and get out. He got up and said good-bye and
hung around a while to see how the next hands went. So far as he could
make out, Pete Reeve was losing pretty steady. Then he come on in.
"Well, when Johnny Strange told about Pete being out there, Sheriff
Anderson was in the room and he rises up.
"'Don't look good to me,' he says. 'If a gunfighter is losing money,
most like he'll fight to win it back. Maybe I'll go out and look that
game over.'
"And saying that he slopes out of the room.
"Well, none of us took much stock in the sheriff going out to take
care of Armstrong. You see Armstrong was the old sheriff, and he give
Anderson a pretty stiff run for his money last election. They both
been spending most of their time and energy the last few years hating
each other. When one of 'em is in office the other goes around saying
that the gent that has the plum is a crook; and then Anderson goes
out, and Armstrong comes in, and Anderson says the same thing about
Armstrong. Take 'em general and they always had the boys worried when
they was together, for fear of a gunfight and bullets flying. And so,
when Anderson stands up and says he's going out to see that Reeve
don't do no harm to Armstrong, we all sat back and kind of laughed.
"But we laughed at the wrong thing. Long about an hour or so after
dark we hear two men come walking up on the veranda, and one of 'em we
knowed by the sound was the sheriff."
"How could you tell by the sound?" asked Bull innocently.
"Well, you see the sheriff always wears steel rims on his heels like
he was a horse. He's kind of close with his money is old Anderson,
I'll tell a man! We hear the ring of them heels on the porch, and
pretty soon in comes the sheriff, herding a gent in ahead of him. And
who d'you think that gent was? It was Reeve! Yes, sir, the old sheriff
had stepped out and grabbed his man. He wasn't there quick enough to
stop the killing of Armstrong, but he got there fast enough to nab
Reeve. Seems that when he was riding up to the house he heard a shot
fired, and then he seen a man run out of the house and jump on his
hoss, and the sheriff didn't stop to ask no questions. He just out
with his gat and drills the gent's hoss. And while Reeve was
struggling on the ground, with the hoss flopping around and dying, the
sheriff runs up and sticks the irons on Reeve. Then he goes into the
house and finds Armstrong lying shot through the heart. Clear as day!
Reeve loses a lot of money, and when it comes to a pinch he hates to
see that money gone when he could get it back for the price of one
slug. So he outs with his gun and shoots Armstrong. And the worst part
of it was that Armstrong didn't have no gun on at the time. The
sheriff found Armstrong's gun hanging on the wall along with his
cartridge belt. Yep, it was plain murder, and Pete Reeve'll hang as
high as the sky--and a good thing, too!"
This story was a shock to Bull for a reason that would not have
affected most men. That a man who had had the courage to stand up and
face Uncle Bill in a fair duel should have been so cowardly, so
venomous as to take a mean advantage of a gambling companion seemed to
Bull altogether too strange to be reasonable. Certainly, if he had had
a difference with this fellow, thought Bull, Pete Reeve was the man to
let the other use his own weapons before he fought. But to shoot him
down across a table, unwarned--this was too much to believe! And yet
it was the truth, and Pete Reeve was to hang for it.
The big man sat shaking his head. "And they found the money on Pete
Reeve?" he asked gloomily. "They found the money he took off this
Armstrong?"
"There's the funny part of the yarn," said the proprietor glibly.
"Pete had the nerve to shoot the gent down in cold blood, but when he
seen him fall he lost his nerve. He didn't wait to grab the money, but
ran out and jumped on his hoss and tried to get away. So there you
are. But it pretty often happens that way! Take the oldest gunfighter
in the world, and, if his stomach ain't resting just right, it sort of
upsets him to see a crimson stain. I seen it happen that way with the
worst of 'em, and in the old days they used to be a rough crowd in my
barroom. They don't turn out that style of gent no more!" He sighed as
his mind flickered back into the heroic past.
"And Reeve--he admits he done the killing?" Bull asked hopelessly.
"Him? Nope, he's too foxy for that. But the only story he told was so
foolish that we laughed at him, and he ain't had the nerve to try to
bluff us ever since. He says that he was sitting peaceable with
Armstrong when all at once without no warning they was a shot from the
window--the east window, I remember he was particular to say--and
Armstrong dropped forward on the table, shot through the heart.
"Reeve says that he didn't wait to ask no questions. He blew the
candle out, and having got the darkness on his side, he made a jump
through the door and got onto his hoss. He says that he wanted to
break away to the trees and try to get a shot at the murderer from
cover, but the minute he got onto his hoss, he had his hoss shot from
under him."
"Was they any shots fired then?"
"Yep. Reeve says that he fired a couple of times when he fell. But the
sheriff says that Reeve only fired once, as his hoss was falling, and
that the other shot that was found fired out of Reeve's gun was fired
into the heart of Armstrong. Oh, they ain't any doubt about it. All
Reeve has got is a cock-and-bull yarn that would make a fool laugh!"
Although Bull had been many times assured by his uncle and his cousins
that he was a fool of the first magnitude, he was in no mood for
laughter. Somewhere in the tale there was something wrong, for his
mind refused to conjure up the picture of Reeve pulling his gun and
shooting across the table into the breast of a helpless, unwarned man.
That would not be the method of a man who could stand up to Uncle
Bill. That would not be the method of the man who had sat up on his
bunk and looked so calmly into the face of the sheriff.
Bull stood up and dragged his hat firmly over his eyes. "I'd kind of
like to see the place where that shooting was done," he declared.
"You got lots of time before night," said the proprietor. "Ain't
more'n a mile and a half out the north trail. Take that path right out
there, and you can ride out inside of five minutes."
There was no horse for Bull Hunter to ride. But, having thanked his
host, he stepped out into the cooler sunshine of the late afternoon.
The trail led through scattering groves of cottonwood most of the way,
for it was bottom land, partially flooded in the winter season of
rain, and, even in the driest and hottest part of the summer, marshy
in places. He followed the twisting little trail through spots of
shadow and stretches of open sky until he reached the shack which was
obviously that of the dead Armstrong.
The moment he entered the little cabin he received proof positive.
The furniture had not apparently been disturbed since the shooting.
The table still leaned crazily, as though it had not recovered from a
violent shock on one side. One chair was overturned. A box had been
smashed to splinters, probably by having someone put a foot
through it.
Bull examined the deal table. Across the center of it there was a dark
stain, and on the farther side, two hands were printed distinctly into
the wood, in the same dull color. The whole scene rose revoltingly
distinct in the mind of Bull.
Here sat Dan Armstrong playing his cheerful game, laughing and
jesting, because forsooth he was the winner. And there, on the
opposite side of the table, sat Pete Reeve, the guest in the house of
his host, growing darker and darker as the money was transferred from
his pocket to the pocket of the jovial Armstrong. Then, a sudden
taking of offense at some harmless jest, the cold flash of steel as
Reeve leaned and jumped to his feet, and then the explosion of the
revolver, with Armstrong settling slowly, limply forward on the table.
There he lay with a stream pouring across the table from the death
wound, his helpless arms outstretched on the wood.
Then Reeve, panic-stricken, perhaps with a sudden stirring of remorse,
started for the door, struck the box on his way, smashing it to bits,
and as soon as he got outside, leaped for his horse. Luckily
retribution had overtaken the murderer in the very moment of escape.
Bull Hunter sighed. Never had the strength of the arm of the law been
so vividly brought home to him as by this incident. Suppose that he
had fulfilled his purpose and killed Reeve? Would not the law have
reached for him in the same fashion and taken and crushed him?
He shuddered, and looking up from his broodings, he glanced through
the opposite window and saw that the woods were growing dark in that
direction. Night was approaching, and, with the feeling of night,
there was a ghostly sense of death, as though the spirit of the dead
man were returning to his old home. On the other side of the house,
however, the woods showed brighter. This was the east window--the east
window through which Reeve declared that the shot had been fired.
Bull shook his head. He stepped out of the cabin and looked about. It
was a prosperous little stretch of meadow, cleared into the
cottonwoods and reclaiming part of the marshland--all very rich soil,
as one could see at a glance. There was a field which had been
recently upturned by the plow, perhaps the work of yesterday. The
furrows were still black, still not dried out by the sun. Today would
have been the time for harrowing, but that work was indefinitely
postponed by the grim visitor. No doubt this Armstrong was an
industrious man. The sense of a wasted life was brought home to Bull;
a bullet had ended it all!
Absent-mindedly he passed around the side of the house and started for
the east window through which Reeve had said that the bullet was
fired, but he shook his head at once.
On the east side the house leaned against a mass of white stone. It
rose high, rough, ragged. Certainly a man stalking a house to fire a
shot would never come up to it from this side! His own words were
convicting Reeve of the murder!
Still he continued to clamber over the stones until he stood by the
window. To be sure, if a man stood there, he could easily have fired
into the room and into the breast of a man sitting on the far side of
the table. Armstrong was found there. Bull looked down to his feet as
a thoughtful man will do, and there, very clearly marked against the
white of the stone, he saw a dark streak--two of them, side by side.
He bent and looked at them. Then he rubbed the places with his
fingertips and examined the skin. A stain had come away from the rock.
It was as if the rocks had been rubbed with lead or a soft iron. And
then, strangely, into the mind of Bull came the memory of what the
hotel man had said of the sheriff's iron-shod heels.
The sheriff had gone for many a year hating Armstrong. The truth
rushed over the brain of the big man. What a chance for a crafty mind!
To kill his enemy and place the blame on the shoulders of one already
known to be a man-killer! Bull Hunter leaped from the rocks and
started back for the town with long, ground-devouring strides.
CHAPTER 8
There were two reasons for the happiness which lightened the step of
Bull Hunter as he strode back for the town. In the first place he saw
a hope of liberating Reeve from jail and accomplishing his own mission
of killing the man. In the second place he felt a peculiar joy at the
thought of freeing such a man from the imputation of a cowardly murder.
Yet he had small grounds for his hopes. Two little dark marks on the
white, friable stone, marks that the first small shower of rain would
wash away, marks that the first keen sandstorm would rub off--this was
his only proof. And with this to free one man from danger of the rope
and place the head of another under the noose--it was a task to try
the resources of a cleverer man than Bull.