Bull Hunter, Page 2

  CHAPTER 2

  He left the three behind him, bewildered and frightened. Had lightningsplit a thick tree beside them, or an unexpected landslide thunderedpast and swept the ground away at their feet, they could have beenhardly 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 thebottom was the white remnant of the taproot where it had burst underthe 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, puffingunder 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 threwit down! Why--why--I didn't know men was made like that. And hisface--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'dlike 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 lateafternoon, warning her that she must start home. She seemed puzzledand a little frightened. When she left them it was with a wave of thehand and with no words of farewell. They watched her go down the trailthat jerked back and forth across the pitch of the slope; twice herpony 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 beingoverheard.

  "And think if he'd ever lay a hold on one of us like that!" saidHarry. 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 theway I handled him the other night! He--he let me trip him up and throwhim!" He shuddered. "Why, if he'd laid hold of me just once, he'd ofsquashed my muscles like they was rotten fruit!"

  Of one accord they turned back to the house. At the door they pausedand peered in, as into the den of a bear. There sat Bull on thefloor--he risked his weight to none of the crazy chairs--still lookingat his stained hands. Then they drew back and again looked at eachother with scared eyes and spoke in undertones.

  "After this maybe he won't want to follow orders. Maybe he'll get sortof free and easy and independent."

  "If he does, you watch Dad give him his marching orders. Dad won'thave no one lifting heads agin' him."

  "Neither will I," snapped Joe. "I guess we own this house. I guess wesupport 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 forthe stove tonight. Go chop some quick."

  The floor squeaked and groaned under Bull's weight as he rose, andagain 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. Thebrothers watched him throw aside the top logs and get at the heaviertrunks underneath. He tore one of these out, laid it in place, and thesun flashed on the swift circle of the ax. Joe and Harry stepped backas 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 steelwas wrenching out with a squeak of the metal against the resistingwood. Again the blinding circle and the indescribable sound of theax's impact, slicing through the wood. A great chip snapped up highover the shoulder of the chopper and dropped solidly to the ground atthe feet of the brothers. Again they exchanged glances and drew alittle closer together. The log divided under the shower of eatingblows, and Bull attacked the next section.

  Presently he came to a pause, leaning on the handle of the ax andstaring 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 workagain; then they started the preparations for the evening meal. Thesimple preparations were soon completed, but after the potatoes wereboiled, they delayed frying the bacon, for their father, old BillCampbell, had not yet returned from his hunting trip and he dislikedlong-cooked food. Things had to be freshly served to suit Bill, andhis sons dared the wrath of heaven rather than the biting reproachesof the old man.

  It was strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he wasalways back before the coming of evening. An old and practicedmountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction orsense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went downand the soft, beautiful mountain twilight began.

  There were other reasons which would ordinarily have disturbed Billand brought him home even ahead of time. Snow had fallen heavily abovethe timberline a few days before, and now the keen whistling of thewind and the swift curtaining of clouds, which was drawing across thesky, 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. Anyone of a number of things might have happened to their father, butthey were not worried. For one thing, they wasted no love on the sternold man. They knew well enough that he had plenty of money, but hekept them here to a dog's life in the shack, and they hated him forit. Besides, they had a keen grievance which obscured any worry aboutBill--they were hungry, wildly hungry. The darkness set in, and thefeeble light wandered from the smoked chimney of the lantern and madethe window black.

  Outside, the wind began to scream, sighing in the distance among thefirs, and then pouncing upon the cabin and shaking it as though inrage. 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 theprint of his book. The sight of his stolid immobility merely sharpenedtheir 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 candlefor him. He read slowly, lingering over every page, for now and againhis eyes drifted away from the print, and he dreamed over what he hadread. In reality he was not reading for the plot, but for the pictureshe found, and he dreaded coming to the end of a book also, for bookswere rare in his life. A scrap of a magazine was a treasure. A fullvolume was a nameless delight.

  And so he worked slowly through every paragraph and made it his anddreamed over it until he knew every thought and every picture byheart. Once slowly devoured in this way, it was useless to reread abook. It was far better to simply sit and let the slow memory of ittrail through his mind link by link, just as he had first read it andwith all the embroiderings which his own fancy had conjured up.

  Often this stupid pondering over a book would madden the two brothers.It irritated them till they would move the lantern away from him. Buthe always followed the light with a sigh and uncomplainingly settleddown again. Sometimes they even snatched the book out of his hands. Inthat case he sat looking down at his empty fingers, dreaming over hisown thoughts as contentedly as though the living page were in hisvision. There was small satisfaction in tormenting him in these ways.

  Tonight they dared not bother him. The stained hands were still intheir minds, and the tremendous, joyous laughter as he whirled thestump over his head still rang in their ears. But they watched himwith a sullen envy of his immobility. Just as a man without anovercoat envies the woolly coat of a dog on a windy December day.

  Only one sound roused the reader. It was a sudden loud s
norting fromthe shed behind the house and a dull trampling that came to himthrough the noise of the rising wind. It brought Bull lurching to hisfeet, and the stove jingled as his weight struck the yielding centerboards of the floor. Out into the blackness he strode. The wind shutaround him at once and plastered his clothes against his body as if hehad been drenched to the skin in water. Then he closed the door.

  "What brung him to life?" asked Harry.

  "Nothin', He just heard ol' Maggie snort. Always bothers him whenMaggie gets scared of something--the old fool!"

  Maggie was an ancient, broken-down draft horse. Strange vicissitudeshad brought her up into the mountains via the logging camp. She waskept, not because there was any real hauling to be done for BillCampbell, but because, having got her for nothing, she reminded him ofthe bargain she had been. And Bull, apparently understanding thesluggish nature of the old mare by sympathy of kind, use to work herto the single plow among the rocks of their clearing. Here, everyautumn, they planted seed that never grew to mature grain. But thatwas Bill Campbell's idea of making a home.

  Presently Bull came back and settled with a slump into his old place.

  "Going to snow?" asked Harry.

  "Yep."

  "Feel it in the wind?"

  It was an old joke among them, for Bull often declared with ridiculoussolemnity that he could foretell snow by the change in the air.

  "Yep," answered Bull, "I felt the wind."

  He looked up at them, abashed, but they were too hungry to wastebreath with laughter. They merely sneered at him as he settled backinto his book. And, just as his head bowed, a far shouting swept downat them as the wind veered to a new point.

  "Uncle Bill!" said Bull and rose again to open the door.

  The others wedged in behind his bulk and stared into the blackness.