by Max Brand
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.
CHAPTER 11
When they were together, they made a study in contrasts. By seeing one it was possible to imagine the other. For instance, seeing the high, narrow forehead, peaked face, the gray-flecked hair of Pete Reeve, his nervous step, his piercing and uneasy eyes—seeing this man with his body from which all spare flesh was wasted so that he remained only muscle and nerve, it was easy to conjure up the figure of Bull Hunter by thinking of opposites.
Their very voices held a world of difference. The tone of Pete Reeve was pitched a little high, hard, and somewhat nasal, and when he was angry his words came shrill and ringing. The mere sound of his voice was irritating—it put one on edge with expectancy of action. Whereas the full, deep, slow, musical voice of Bull Hunter was a veritable sleep producer. Men might fear Charlie Bull Hunter because of his tremendous bulk; but children, hearing his voice, were unafraid.
The motions of Pete Reeve were as fast and as deft as the whiplash striking of a snake. The motions of Bull Hunter were premeditated and cautious, as befitting one whose hands might crush what they touched, and whose footfall made a flooring groan.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall. They had moved a ponderous stool into the room so that Bull might have something on which to sit, but long habit had made him uneasy in a chair, and he kept to the floor by preference, with the great square chin resting on his fist and his knee supporting his elbow. That position pressed the forearm against the biceps and the big muscles bulged out on either side, vast as the thigh of a strong man.
With lionlike wrinkles of attention between his eyes, he listened to the exposition of the little man, and followed his movements with patient submission—like a pupil to whom a great master has consented to unfold the secrets of his brushwork; in such a manner did Bull Hunter drink in the words and the acts of Pete Reeve. And, indeed, where guns were the subject of conversation it would have been hard to find a man more thoroughly equipped to pose as an expert
than Pete Reeve. That fleshless hand, all speed of motion as it whipped out the gun from the nerve and sinew, became an incredible ghost with the holster and the long, heavy Colt danced and flashed at his fingertips as though it were a gilded shadow.
As he worked he talked, and as he talked he strode constantly back and forth through the room with his light-falling, mincing steps. He grew excited. He flushed. There came a thrill and a ring and a deepening of the voice. For the master was indeed talking of the secrets of his craft.
A thousand men of the mountains and the cattle ranges, men who, for personal pride or for physical need, studied accuracy and speed in gunplay, would have paid untold prices to learn these secrets from the lips of the little man. To Bull Hunter the mysteries were revealed for nothing, freely, and drilled and drummed into him through the weeks of his convalescence; and still the lessons continued now that he was hale and hearty once more—as the clean-swept platters from which he ate three times a day gave evidence.
“I’ve practiced, you admit,” said Bull in his slow voice, as Pete Reeve came to a pause. “But I haven’t got your way with a gun, Pete. You’ve got a genius for it. I don’t blame you for laughing at me when I try to get out my gun fast. I can shoot straight. That’s because I haven’t any nerves, as you say, but I’ll never be able to get out a gun as fast as a thought—the way you do. Fact is, Pete, I don’t think fast, you know.”
“Shut up!” exploded Pete Reeve, who had been inwardly chafing with impatience during the whole length of this speech. “Sometimes you talk like a fool, Bull, and this is one time!”
Bull shook his head. “My arms are too big,” he said sadly. “The muscle gets in my way. I can feel it bind when I try to jerk out the gun fast. Better give up the job, Pete. I sure appreciate all the pains you’ve taken with me—but I’ll never be a gunfighter.”
Pete Reeve shook his head with a sigh and then dropped into a chair, growing suddenly inert.
“No use,” he groaned. “All because you ain’t got any confidence, Bull.” He leaned forward in his sudden way. “Know something? I been keeping it back, but now I’ll tell you the straight of it. You’re faster with a gun right now than four men out of five!”
Bull gaped in amazement.
“Fact!” cried Reeve. “You get it out slicker than most; and after it’s out, you shoot as straight as any man I’ve ever seen. Trouble is, you don’t appreciate yourself. You’ve had it drilled into you so long that you’re stupid that now you believe it. All nonsense! You got more than a million have and you’re fast right now on the draw. Once get hold of how important it is, and you’ll keep trying. But you think it’s only a game. You just play at it; you don’t work! I wish you could have seen me when I was first practicing with a gun! I lived with it. Hours every day it was my companion, and right up to now, there ain’t a day goes by that I don’t spend some time keeping on edge with my revolver. Bull, you’ll have to do the same thing. You hear?”
He sprang up again. It was impossible for him to remain seated a long time.
“You think it don’t mean much. Look here!”
The Colt flicked into his hand and lay trembling in his palm, and as he talked, it shifted smoothly, as if of its own volition, forward toward his fingertips, backward, to the side, dropping out until it seemed about to fall, only to be caught with one finger through the trigger-guard and spun up again. Always the heavy weapon was in motion as though some of the nervous spirit of Reeve had entered the heavy metal. It responded to his thoughts rather than to his muscles. Bull Hunter gazed enchanted. He was accustomed to forgetting himself and admiring others.
“Look here!” went on the little man. “Look at me. I weigh about a hundred and twenty. I’m skinny. I’m a runt. And look at you. You weigh—heaven knows what! No fat, but all muscle from your head to your feet. You’re the strongest man that I’ve ever seen. Take me, I’m not a coward; but you, Bull, you don’t know what fear means. Well, there you are, without fear, and stronger than three strong men. You’re pretty fast with a gun, and you shoot straight as a hawk looks. And still, if we stood face to face and went for our guns, I’d live; and you with your muscle would be dead, Bull.”
“I know,” Bull nodded.
“That’s what this gun means,” cried Pete. “This gun, and the fact that I can get it out of the leather faster’n you do. Not very much faster. But by just as much quicker as it takes for an eyelid to wink. That ain’t much time, but it’s enough time to mean life or death! That’s all! I’m not the only man that’s faster’n you are. They’s others. I’ve never been beat to the draw, but they’s some that’s shot so close to me that it sounded like one gun going off—with a sort of a stammer. And any one of those men would of shot you dead, Bull, if you’d fought ’em. Now, knowing that, tell me, are you going to keep practicing?”
“I’ll keep tryin’, Pete. But I’ll never get much faster. You see, my arm—it’s too big, too heavy. It gets in my way, handling a little thing like a revolver!”
Pete spun the big Colt and shoved it back into the holster so incredibly fast that the steel hissed against the leather.
“There you go running yourself down,” he muttered.
He began to pace the room again, biting his nether lip, and now and then shooting side glances at Bull, glances partly guilty and partly scornful. Presently he came to a halt. He had also come to a new resolution, one that cost him so much that beads of perspiration came out on his forehead.
“Bull,” he said gravely, “I’m going to tell you the secret.”
“You’ve told me a dozen already,” Bull sighed. “You’ve taught me how to swing the muzzle up, and not too far up, and how to lean back instead of forward, and how to harden the arm muscles just as I pull the trigger, and how to squeeze with the whole hand and keep my wrist stiff, and how—”
“None of them things counts,” said Pete gravely, almost sadly, “compared to what I’m going to tell you. Stand up!”
It was plain that he was going to give something from the depths of his mind. The cost and importance of it made his eyes like steel and drew his mouth to a thin, straight line.
Bull Hunter arose; and as the great body unfolded and the legs straightened, it seemed that he would never reach his full height. At length he stood, enormous, wide, towering. He was not a freak, but simply a perfectly proportioned man increased to a huge scale.
Pete Reeve canted his head back and looked into the face of the giant. There was a momentary affectionate appreciation in his eye. Then he hardened his expression.
“Let your arm hang loose.”
Bull Hunter obeyed. The hand came just above the holster that was strapped on his thigh. All these weeks Pete Reeve had kept him from going an instant without that gun except when he slept. And even when he slept the gun had to be under his pillow.
“Because it helps to have it near all the time,” Pete had explained. “It sort of soaks into your dreams. It’s never out of your mind. It haunts you, like the face of the girl you love. You see!”
Bull Hunter did not see, but he had nodded humbly, after his fashion, and obeyed. Now, with his arm fallen loose at his side he peered studiously into the face of his master gunman and waited for the next order.
“Draw!”
The command was snapped out; Bull’s gun whipped from the holster; and Pete Reeve drew in the same instant, carelessly, his eyes watching the movement of Bull instead of paying heed and put his gun up again, but Bull followed the example almost reluctantly.
“Nearly beat you that time, Pete,” he exclaimed happily. “But maybe you weren’t half trying?”
“Beat me?” sneered Pete. “I wasn’t half trying, but you didn’t beat me. I shot you twice before you had your muzzle in line. I shot you in the throat and through the teeth before your gun was ready.”
Bull, with a shrug of the massive shoulders, touched the mentioned places and looked with awe at the little man.
“Now, listen!”
Bull grew
tense.
“Watch my draw!”
Pete did not put his hand near the butt of his weapon. He held his arm out before him, dangling in the air. There was a convulsive moment. One could see the imaginary weapon shoot from the holster and become level and rigid, pointed at its mark.
“I’ve seen before—fast as my eye could go,” Bull sighed.
“Look again,” said Pete, gritting his teeth with impatience. “This time I’m going so slow a cow could see and beat me.”
He made the same motion, but to an ordinary eye it was still as fast as light. Bull shook his head.
“Idiot!” cried Pete, his voice jumping up the scale, flat and harsh and piercing. “It’s the wrist! Not the arm, but the—”
He stopped with an expression of dismay. Even now he regretted revealing the mystery, it seemed. But then he went on.
“I found out quick that I couldn’t beat a good gunman if I used the old methods. Practice makes perfect; they practiced as much as I did. So I studied the methods and the great idea come to me. They all use the whole arm. Look at you! Your shoulder bulges up when you make the draw, and you raise the whole arm. Matter of fact, you’d ought only to use your fingers. Not stir a muscle above the wrist. Now try!”
Bull tried—the gun did come clear of the holster.
“No good,” he said gravely. “It’s magic when you do it, Pete. It just makes a fool of me.”
“Shut up and listen!” Pete said sharply. “I’m telling you a thing that’ll save your life some day!”
He drew a little closer. His emotion made him swell to a greater stature, and he rose a little on tiptoe as if partly to make up for the differences between their bulks.
Bull obeyed.
“Now start thinking. Start concentrating on that right hand. There’s nothing else to your body. You see? You forget you got a muscle. There’s three things in the world. You see? Just three things and no more. There’s your gun with a bullet in it; there’s your hand that’s going to get the gun out; and there’s your target—that doorknob, say! Keep on thinking. They ain’t any more to your body. You’re just a hand and an eye. All your nerves are down there in that hand. They’re all piled down there. That hand is full of electricity. Don’t let your eyes wander. Keep on concentrating. You’re stocking the electricity in that hand. When your hand moves, it’ll be as fast as the jump of a spark! And when that hand moves, the gun is going to come out clean in it. It’s got to come out with it! You hear? It’s got to! Your fingertips catch under the butt; they flick up. They don’t draw the gun; they throw it out of the holster; they pitch the muzzle up, and the butt comes smack back against the palm of your hand. And in the same part of a second you pull the trigger. You hear?”