"And now," said Pete Reeve, looking almost ruefully at his pupil, "with a little practice on that, they ain't a man in the world that could safely take a chance with you. I couldn't myself."
"Pete!"
"I mean it, son. Not a man in the world. I was afraid all the time. I was afraid you didn't have that there electricity in you or whatever they call it. I was afraid you had too much beef and not enough nerves. But you haven't. And now that you have the knack, keep practicing every day--thinking the gun out of the leather--that's the trick!"
Bull Hunter looked down to the gun with great, staring eyes, as though it was the first time in his life that he had seen the weapon. Pete Reeve noted his expression and abruptly became silent, grinning happily, for there was the dawn of a great discovery in the eyes of the big man.
The gun was no longer a gun. It was a part of him. It was flesh of his flesh. He had literally thought it out of the holster, and the report of the weapon had startled him more than it had frightened anyone else in the building. He looked in amazement down to the broad expanse of his right hand. It was trembling a little, as though, in fact, that hand were filled with electric currents. He closed his fingers about the butt of the gun. At once the hand became steady as a rock. He toyed with the weapon in loosely opened fingers again, and it slid deftly. It seemed impossible for it to fall into an awkward position.
The voice of Pete Reeve came from a great distance. "And they's only one thing lacking to make you perfect--and that's to have to fight once for your life and drop the other gent. After that happens--well, Pete Reeve will have a successor!"
How much that meant Bull Hunter very well knew. The terrible fame of Pete Reeve ran the length and the breadth of the mountains. Of course Bull did not for a moment dream that Pete meant what he said. It was all figurative. It was said to fill him with self-confidence, but part of it was true. He was no longer the clumsy-handed Bull Hunter of the moment before.
A great change had taken place. From that moment his very ways of thinking would be different. He would be capable of less misty movements of the mind. He would be capable of using his brain as fast as his hand acted. A tingle of new life, new possibilities were opening before him. He had always accepted himself as a stupidly hopeless burden in the world, a burden on his friends, useless, cloddish. Now he found that he had hopes. His own mind and body was an undiscovered country which he was just beginning to enter. What might be therein was worth a dream or two, and Bull Hunter straightway began to dream, happily. That was a talent which he had always possessed in superabundance.
The brief remainder of the day passed quickly; and then just before supper time a stranger came to call on Pete Reeve. He was a tall, bony fellow with straight-looking eyes and an imperious lift of his head when he addressed anyone. Manners was his name--Hugh Manners. When he was introduced he ran his eyes unabashedly over the great bulk of Bull Hunter, and then promptly he turned his back on the big man and excluded him from the heart of the conversation. It irritated Bull unwontedly. He discovered that he had changed a great deal from the old days at his uncle's shack when he was used to the scorn and the indifference of all men as a worthless and stupid hulk of flesh, with no mind worth considering, but he said nothing. Another great talent of Bull's was his ability to keep silent.
Shortly after this they went down to the supper table. All through the meal Hugh Manners engaged Pete Reeve in soft, rapid-voiced conversation which was so nicely gauged as to range that Bull Hunter heard no more than murmurs. He seemed to have a great many important things to say to Pete, and he kept Pete nodding and listening with a frown of serious interest. At first Pete tried to make up for the insolent neglect of his companion by drawing a word or two from Bull from time to time, but it was easy for Bull to see that Pete wished to hear his newfound friend hold forth. It hurt Bull, but he resigned himself and drew out of the talk.
After supper he went up to the room and found a book. There had been little time for reading since he passed the first stages of convalescence from his wounds. Pete Reeve had kept him constantly occupied with gun work, and the hunger for print had been accumulating in Bull. He started to satisfy it now beside the smoking lamp. He hardly heard Pete and Hugh Manners enter the room and go out again onto the second story of the veranda on which their room opened. From time to time the murmur of their voices came to him, but he regarded it not.
It was only when he had lowered the book to muse over a strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping very softly, for he had grown accustomed to lightening his footfall, and now unconsciously the murmuring voices of the talkers made him move stealthily--not to steal upon them, but to keep from breaking in on their talk. But when he came to the door opening on the veranda the words he heard banished all thought of falling stars. He listened, dazed.
Pete Reeve had just broken into the steady flow of the newcomer's talk.
"It's no use, Hugh. I can't go, you see. I'm tied down here with the big fellow."
"Tied down?" thought Bull Hunter, and he winced.
A curse, then, "Why don't you throw the big hulk over?"
"He ain't a hulk," protested Pete somewhat sharply, and the heart of Bull warmed again.
"Hush," said Hugh Manners. "He'll be hearing."
"No danger. He's at his books, and that means that he wouldn't hear a cannon. That's his way."
"He don't look like a book-learned gent," said Hugh Manners with more respect in his voice.
"He don't look like a lot of things that he is," said Pete. "I don't know what he is myself--except that he's the straightest, gentlest, kindest, simplest fellow that ever walked."
Bull Hunter turned to escape from hearing this eulogy, but he dared not move for fear his retreat might be heard--and that would be immensely embarrassing.
"Just what he is I don't know," said Pete again. "He doesn't know himself. He's had what you might call an extra-long childhood--that's why he's got that misty look in his eyes."
"That fool look," scoffed Hugh Manners.
"You think so? I tell you, Manners, he's just waking up, and when he's clear waked up he'll be a world-beater! You saw that doorknob?"
"Smashed? Yep. What of it?"
"He done it with a gun, standing clean across the room, with a flash draw, shooting from the hip--and he made a clean center hit of it."
Pete brought out these facts jerkily, one by one, piling one extraordinary thing upon the other; and when he had finished, Hugh Manners gasped.
"I'm mighty glad," he said, "that you told me that, I--I might of made some mistake."
"You'd sure've made an awful mistake if you tangle with him, Manners. Don't forget it."
"Your work, I guess."
"Partly," said Pete modestly. "I speeded his draw up a bit, but he had the straight eye and the steady hand when I started with him. He didn't need much target practice--just the draw."
"And he's really fast?"
"He's got my draw."
That told volumes to Manners.
"And why not take him in with us?" he asked, after a reverent pause.
"Not that!" exclaimed Pete. "Besides, he couldn't ride and keep up with us. He'd wear out three hosses a day with his weight."
"Maybe we could find an extra-strong hoss. He ain't so big as to kill a good strong hoss, Pete. I've seen a hoss that carried--"
"No good," said Pete with decision. "I wouldn't even talk to him about our business. He don't guess it. He thinks that I'm--well, he don't have any idea about how I make a living, that's all!"
"But how will you make a living if you stick with him?"
"I dunno," Pete sighed. "But I'm not going to turn him down."
"But ain't you about used up your money?"
"It's pretty low."
"And you're supporting him?"
"Sure. He ain't got a cent."
Bull started. He had not thought of that matter at all, but it stood to reason that Pete had expended a large sum on him.
"Sponging?" said Manners cynically.
"Don't talk about it that way," said Pete uneasily. "He's like a big kid. He don't think about those things. If I was broke, he'd give me his last cent."
"That's what you think."
"Shut up, Manners. Bull is like--a cross between a son and a brother."
"Pretty big of bone for your son, Pete. You'll have a hard time supporting him," and Manners chuckled. Then, more seriously, "You're making a fool of yourself, pardner. Throw this big hulk over and come back--with me! They's loads of money staked out waiting for us!"
"Listen," said Pete solemnly. "I'm going to tell you why I'll never turn Bull Hunter down if I live to be a hundred! When I was a kid a dirty trick was done me by old Bill Campbell. I waited all these years till a little while ago to get back at him. Then I found him and fought him. I didn't kill him, but I ruined him and sent him back to his home tied on his hoss with a busted shoulder that he'll never be able to use again. His right shoulder, at that."
There was a subdued exclamation from Manners, but Pete went on, "Seems he was the uncle of this Bull; took Bull in when Bull was orphaned, because he had to, not because he wanted to, and he raised Bull up to be a sort of general slave around the place. Well, when he comes back home all shot up he tries to get his sons to take my trail, but they didn't have the nerve. But Bull that they'd always looked down on for a big good-for-nothing hulk--Bull stepped out and took my trail on foot and hit across the mountains in a storm, above the timberline!
"And he followed till he come up with me here where he found me in jail, accused of a murder. Did he turn back? He didn't. He didn't want the law to hang me. He wanted to kill me with his own hands so's he could go back home and hear his uncle call him a man and praise him a little. That shows how simple he is.
"Well, I'll cut a long story short. Bull scouted around, found out that the sheriff had done the killing himself and just saddled the blame on me, and then he makes the sheriff confess, gets me out of jail, and takes me out in the woods.
"'Now,' says he, 'you've got a gun, and I've got a gun, and I'm going to kill you if I can.'
"No use arguing. He goes for his gun. I didn't want to kill a man who'd saved my life. I tried to stop him with bullets. I shot him through the right arm and made him drop his gun. Then he charged me barehanded!"
There was a gasp from Manners.
"Barehanded," repeated Pete. "That's the stuff that's in him! I shot him through the left leg. He pitched onto his face, and then hanged if he didn't get up on one arm and one leg and throw himself at me. He got that big arm of his around me. I couldn't do a thing. My gun was squeezed between him and me. He started fumbling. Pretty soon he found my throat with them big gorilla fingers of his. I thought my last minute had come. One squeeze would have smashed my windpipe--and good-bye, Pete Reeve!
"But he wouldn't kill me. After I'd filled him full of lead, he let me go. After he had the advantage he wouldn't take it." Pete choked. He concluded briefly, "He mighty near bled to death before I could get the wounds bandaged, and then I stayed on here and nursed him. Matter of fact, Manners, he saved my life twice and that's why I'm tied to him for life. Besides, between you and me, he means more to me than the rest of the world put together."
"Listen," said Manners, after a pause. "I see what you mean and I'll tell you what you got to do. That big boy will do anything you tell him. He follers you with his eyes. Well, we'll find a hoss that will carry him. I guarantee that. Then you put your game up to him, best foot forward, and he'll come with us."
"Not in a thousand years," said Pete with emotion. "That boy will never go crooked if I can keep him straight. Do you know what he's done? Because his uncle and cousins tried to get me, he's sworn never to see one of 'em again. He's given them up--his own flesh and blood--to follow me, and I'm going to stick to him. That's complete and final."
"No, Pete, of all the fools--"
Bull waited to hear no more. He stole back to the table on the far side of the room sick at heart and sat down to think or try to think.
The truth came to him slowly. Pete Reeve, whom he had taken as his ideal, was, as a matter of fact--he dared not think what! The blow shook him to the center. But he had been living on the charity of Reeve. He had been draining the resources of the generous fellow. And how would he ever be able to pay him back?
One thing was definite. He must put an end to any increase of the obligations. He must leave.
The moment the thought came to him he tore a flyleaf out of the book and wrote in his big, sprawling hand:
Dear Pete:
_I have to tell you that it has just occurred to me that you have been paying all the bills, and I've been paying none. That has to stop, and the only way for me to stop it is to go off all by myself. I hate to sneak away, but if I stay to say good-bye I know you'll argue me out of it because I'm no good at an argument. Good-bye and good luck, and remember that I'm not forgetting anything that has happened; that when I have enough money to pay you back I'm coming to find you if I have to travel all the way around the world._
_Your pardner,
BULL_
That done, he paused a moment, tempted to tear up the little slip. But the original impulse prevailed. He put the paper on the table, picked up his hat, and stole slowly from the room.
