Bull Hunter

When old Farmer Morton and his son came in their buckboard through the marshes, they heard the screaming of Pete Reeve for help.  Leaving their team, they bolted across country to the open glade.  There they found Pete still shouting for help, kneeling above the body of a man, and working desperately to arrange an effectual tourniquet.  They ran close and discovered the two men.

Old Morton knew enough rude surgery to stop the bleeding.  It was he who counted the pulse and listened to the heart.  “Low,” he said, “very low—­life is just flickerin’, stranger.”

“If they’s as much light of life in him,” said Pete Reeve, “as the flicker of a candle, I’ll fan it up till it’s as big as a forest fire.  Man, he’s got to live.”

“H’m!” said Morton.  “And how come the shooting?”

“Stop your fool questions,” said Reeve.  “Help me get him to town and to a bed.”

It was useless to attempt to carry that great, loose-limbed body.  They brought the buckboard perilously through the shrubbery and then managed, with infinite labor, to lift Bull Hunter into it.  With Pete Reeve supporting the head of the wounded man and cautioning them to drive gently, they managed the journey to the town as softly as possible.  At the hotel a strong-armed cortege bore Bull to a bed, and they carried him reverently.  Had his senses been with him he would have wondered greatly; and had his uncle, or his uncle’s sons, been there, they would surely have laughed uproariously.

In the hotel room Pete Reeve took command at once.  “He’s too big to die,” he told the dubious doctor.  “He’s got to live.  And the minute you say he can’t, out you go and another doc comes in.  Now do your work.”

The doctor, haunted by the deep, fiery eyes of the gunfighter, stepped into the room to minister to his patient.  He had a vague feeling that, if Bull Hunter died, Pete Reeve would blame him for lack of care.  In truth, Pete seemed ready to blame everyone.  He threatened to destroy the whole village if a dog was allowed to howl in the night, or if the baby next door were permitted to cry in the day.

Silence settled over the little town—­silence and the fear of Pete Reeve.  Pete himself never left the sickroom.  Wide-eyed, silent-footed, he was ever about.  He seemed never to sleep, and the doctor swore that the only reason Bull Hunter did not die was because death feared to enter the room while the awful Reeve was there.

But the long hours of unconsciousness and delirium wore away.  Then came the critical period when a relapse was feared.  Finally the time came when it could be confidently stated that Bull was recovering his health and his strength.

All this filled a matter of weeks.  Bull was still unable to leave his bed.  He was dull and listless, bony of hand, and liable to sleep many hours through the very heart of the day.  At this point of his recovery the door opened one day, and, in the warmth of the afternoon, a big man came into the room, shutting the door softly behind him.

Bull turned his head slowly and then blinked, for it was the unshaven face of his cousin, Harry Campbell, that he saw.  With his eyes closed, Bull wondered why that face was so distinctly unpleasant.  When he opened them again, Harry had drawn closer, his hat pushed on the back of his head after the manner of a baffled man, and a faint smile working at the corners of his lips.  He took the limp hand of Bull in his and squeezed it cautiously.  Then he laid the hand back on the sheet and grinned more confidently at Bull.

“Well, I’ll be hanged, Bull, here you are as big as life, pretty near, and you don’t act like you knew me!”

“Sure I do.  Sit down, Harry.  What brung you all this ways?”

“Why, anxious to see how you was doing.”

Again Bull blinked.  Such anxiety from Harry was a mystery.

“They ain’t talking about much else up our way,” said Harry, “but how you come across the mountains in the storm, and how big you are, and how you got the sheriff, and how you rushed Pete Reeve bare-handed.  Sure is some story!  All the way down I just had to say that I was Bull Hunter’s cousin to get free meals!” He licked his lips and grinned again.  “So I come down to see how you was.”

“I’m doing tolerable fair,” said Bull slowly, “and it was good of you to come this long ways to ask that question.  How’s things to home?”

“Dad’s bunged up for life; can’t do nothing but cuss, but at that he lays over anything you ever hear.”  Harry’s eyes flicked nervously about the room.  “It was him that sent me down!  Where’s Reeve?”

This was in a whisper.  Bull gestured toward the next room.

“Asleep?  Can he hear if I talk?”

“Asleep,” said Bull.  “Been up with me two days.  I took a bad turn a while back.  Pete’s helping himself to a nap, and he needs one!”

“Now, listen!” said Harry.  “Dad figured this out, and Dad’s mostly never wrong.  He says, ’Reeve shot up Bull.  Now he’s hanging around trying to make up by nursing Bull, according to reports, because he’s afraid of what Bull’ll do when he gets back on his feet.  But Bull has got to know that, even when he’s back on his feet, he can’t beat Reeve—­not while Reeve can pull a gun.  Nobody can beat that devil.  If he wants to beat Reeve, just take advantage of him while Reeve ain’t expecting anything—­which means while Bull is sick.’  Do you get what Dad means?”

“Sort of,” said Bull faintly.  He shut out the eager, dirty, unshaven face.  “I’ll just close my eyes against the light.  I can hear you pretty well.  Go on.”

“Here’s the idea.  Everybody knows you hate Reeve, and Reeve fears you.  Otherwise would he act like this, aside from being afraid of a lynching, in case you should die?  No, he wouldn’t.  Well, one of these days you take this gun”—­here Harry shoved one under the pillow of Bull—­“and call Pete Reeve over to you, and when he leans over your bed, blow his brains out!  That’s easy, and it’ll do what you’ll want to do someday.  You hear?  Then you can say that Reeve started something—­that you shot in self-defense.  Everybody’ll believe you, and you’ll get one big name for killing Reeve!  You foller me?”

Bull opened his eyes, but they were squinting as though he was in the severest pain.  “Listen, Harry,” he said at last.  “I been thinking things out.  I owe a lot to your dad for taking me in and keeping me.  But all I owe him I can pay back in cash—­someday.  I don’t owe him no love.  Not you, neither.”

Harry had risen to his feet with a snarl.

“Sit down,” said Bull, letting his great voice swell ever so little.  “I’m pretty near dead, but I’m still man enough to wring the neck of a skunk!  Sit down!”

Harry obeyed limply, and his giant cousin went on, his voice softening again.  “When you come in I closed my eyes,” said Bull, “because it seemed to me like you was a dream.  I’d been awake.  I’d been living among men that sort of liked me and respected me and didn’t laugh at me.  And then you come, and I saw your dirty face, and it made me think of a bad nightmare I’d had when you and your brother and your dad treated me worse’n a dog.  Well, Harry, I’m through with that dream.  I’ll never go back to it.  I’m going to stay awake the rest of my life.  It was your dad that put the wish to kill Reeve into my head with his talk.  I met Reeve, and Reeve pumped some bullets with sense into me.  He let out some of my life, but he let in a lot of knowledge.  Among other things he showed me what a friend might be.  He’s stayed here and nursed me and talked to me—­like I was his equal, almost, instead of being sort of simple, like I really am.  And I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to cut loose from remembering you folks in the mountains.  I ain’t your kind.  I don’t want to be your kind.  I want to fight, like Pete Reeve.  I don’t want to murder like a Campbell!  All the way through, I want to be like Pete Reeve.  He don’t know it.  Maybe when I’m well he’ll go off by himself.  But whether he’s near or far, I’ve adopted him.  I’m going to pattern after him, and the happiest day of my life will be when I earn the right to have this man, that I tried to kill, come and take my hand and call me ‘friend’!  I guess that answers you, Harry.  Now get out and take my talk back to your dad, and don’t trouble me no more—­you spoil my sleep!”

As he spoke the door of the next room opened softly.  Peter Reeve stood at the entrance.  Harry, shaking with fear, backed toward the other door, then leaped far out, and whirled out of sight with a slam and clatter of feet on the stairs.  Pete Reeve came slowly to the bedside.

“I was awake, son,” he said, “and I couldn’t help hearing.”

Bull flushed heavily.

“It’s the best thing I ever heard,” said Pete.  “The best thing that’s ever come to my ears—­partner!”

With that word their hands joined.  In reality, far more than he dreamed, Bull had been born again.