CHAPTER 4
The tale halted. To be defeated is one thing; to be forced to confessdefeat is another. Uncle Bill determined on the bitterer alternative.
"He made a clean fight," declared Uncle Bill. "First he cussed me outproper. Then he went for his gat and he beat me to the draw. Theyain't no disgrace to that. You'll learn pretty soon that anybody mightget beaten sooner or later--if he fights enough men. And my gun hungin the leather. Before I got it on him he'd shot me clean through theright shoulder--a placed shot, boys. He wanted to land me there. Ittumbled me off my hoss. I rolled away and tried to get to my gun thathad fallen on the ground. He shot me ag'in through the leg andstopped me.
"Then he got off his hoss and fixed up the wounds. He done a good job,as you seen. 'Bill' says he, 'you ain't dead; you're worse'n dead.That right arm of yours is going to be stiff the rest of your days.You're a one-armed man from now on, and that one arm is the worstyou got.'
"That was why he sent me home alive. To make me live and keep hatinghim, the same's he'd lived and hated me. But he made a mistake. PeteReeve is a wise fox, but he made one mistake. He forgot that I mighthave somebody to send on his trail. He didn't know that I had two boysI'd raised so's they was each better with a gun nor me. He didn'tdream of that, curse him! But when you, Harry, or you, Joe, pump thelead into him, shoot him so's he'll live long enough to know whokilled him and why!"
As he spoke, there was a quality in his voice that seemed to find theboys in the darkness and point each of them out. "Which of you takesthe trail?"
A little silence followed. Bull wondered at it.
"He's gone by way of Johnstown," continued the wounded man. "If one ofyou cuts across the summit toward Shantung he's pretty sure to cut inacross Pete's trail. Which is goin' to start? Well, you can match forthe chance! Because him that comes back with Pete Reeve marked off theslate is a man!"
That chilly little silence made Bull's heart beat. To be called a man,to be praised by stern Bill Campbell--surely these were things to makeanyone risk death!
"Is that the Pete Reeve," said Harry's voice, "that shot up MikeRivers over the hill to the Tompkins place, about four year back?"
"That's him. Why?"
Again the silence. Then Bull heard the old man cursingsoftly--meditatively, one might almost have said.
"Cut across for Johnstown," said Joe softly, "in a storm like this?They won't be no trails left to find above the timberline. It'd besure death. Listen!"
There was a lull in the wind, and in the breeze that was left, theycould hear the whisper of the snow crushing steadily againstthe window.
"It's heavy fall, right enough," declared Harry.
"And this Pete Reeve--why, he's a gunfighter, Dad."
"And what are you?" asked the old man. "Ain't I labored and slaved allmy life to make you handy with guns? What for d'you think I wasted allthem hours showin' you how to pull a trigger and where to shoot andhow to get a gun out of the leather?"
"To kill for meat," suggested Harry.
"Meat, nothing! The kind of meat I mean walks on two feet and fightsback."
"Maybe, if we started together--" ventured Joe.
His father broke in, "Boy, I ain't going to send out a pack of men torun down Pete Reeve. He met me single and he fought me clean, and he'sgoing to be pulled down by no pack of yaller dogs! Go one of you aloneor else both of you stay here."
He waited, but there was no response. "Is this the way my blood isshowin' up in my sons? Is this the result of all my trainin'?"
After that there was no more talk. The long silence was not broken byeven the sound of breathing until someone began to snore. Then Bullknew that the sleep of the night had settled down.
He lay with his hands folded behind his head, thinking. They werewilling enough to go together to do this difficult thing. But had theynot lifted together at the stump and failed to do the thing which hehad done single-handed? That thought stuck in his memory and would notout. And suppose he, Bull, were to accomplish this great feat andreturn to the shack? Would not Bill Campbell feel doubly repaid forthe living he had furnished for his nephew? More than once the grimold man had cursed the luck that saddled him with a stupid incubus.But the curses would turn to compliments if Bull left this little man,this catlike and dangerous fighter, this Pete Reeve, dead onthe trail.
Not that all this was clear in the mind of Bull, but he felt somethinglike a command pushing him on that difficult south trail, through thestorm and the snow that would now be piling above the timberline. Hewaited until there was no noise but the snoring of the sleepers andthe rush and roar of the wind which continually set something stirringin the room. These sounds served to cover effectually any noises hemade as he felt about and made up his small pack. His old canvas coat,his most treasured article of apparel, he took down from the hookwhere it accumulated dust from month to month. His ancient, secondhandcartridge belt with the antiquated revolver he removed from anotherhook--he had never been given enough ammunition to become a shot ofany quality--and he pushed quickly into the night.
The moment he was through the door, the storm caught him in the face astinging blow, and the rush of snow chilled his skin. That stingingblow steadied to a blast. It was a tremendous, heavy fall. The windhad scoured the drifts from the clearing and was already banking themaround the little house. In the morning, as like as not, the boyswould have to dig their way out.
He went straight to the horse shed for his snowshoes that hung on thewall there. Ordinary snowshoes would not endure his ponderous weight,and Uncle Bill Campbell had fashioned these himself, heavy anduncomfortable articles, but capable of enduring the strain.
Fumbling his way down behind the stalls, Bill's roan lashed out at himwith savage heels; but Maggie, the old draft horse, whinnied softly,greeting that familiar heavy step. He tied the snowshoes on his backand then stopped for a last word to Maggie. She raised her head anddropped it clumsily on his shoulder. She was among the little, agilemountain ponies what he was among men, and their bulk had renderedeach of them more or less helpless. There seemed to be a muteunderstanding between them, and it was never more apparent than whenMaggie whinnied gently in his ear. He stroked her big, bony head, alump forming in his throat. If the bullets of little Pete Reevedropped him in some far-off trail, the old-broken-down horse would bethe only living creature that would mourn for him.
Outside, the night and the storm swallowed him at once. Before he hadgone fifty feet the house was out of sight. Then, entering the forestof balsam firs, the force of the wind was lessened, and he made goodtime up the first part of the grade. There would probably be no usefor the snowshoes in this region of broken shrubbery before he came tothe timberline.
He swept on with a lengthening stride. He knew this part of thecountry like a book, of course, and he seldom stumbled, save when hecame out into a clearing and the wind smote at him from an unexpectedangle. In one of these clearings he stopped and took stock of hisposition. Far away to the west and the south, the head of ScalpedMountain was lost in dim, rushing clouds. He must make for that goal.
Progress became less easy almost at once. The trees that grew in thiselevated region were not tall enough to act as wind breaks; they werehardly more than shrubs a great deal of the time, and merely served toforce him into detours around dense hedges. Sometimes, in a clearing,he found himself staggering to the knees in a compacted drift of snow;sometimes an immense sheet of snow was picked up by the wind and flungin his face like a blanket.
Indeed the cold and the snow were nothing compared with the wind. Itwas now reaching the proportions of a westerly storm of the firstmagnitude. Off the towering slopes above, it came with the chill ofthe snow and with flying bits of sand, scooped up from around the baseof trees, or with a shower of twigs. Many a time he had to throw uphis arms across his face before he leaned and thrust on into the teethof the blast.
But he was growing accustomed to seeing through this veil of snow andthick darkness. All things were dreamlike in dimn
ess, of course, buthe could make out terrific cloud effects, as the clouds gushed overthe summit and down the slope a little way like the smoke of enormousguns; and again a pyramid of mist was like a false mountain beforehim, a mountain that took on movement and rushed to overwhelm him,only to melt away and become simply a shadow among shadows abovehis head.
Once or twice before the dawn, he rested, not from weariness perhaps,but from lack of breath, turning his back to the west and bowing hishead. Walking into the wind it had become positively difficult todraw breath!
Still it gained power incredibly. Up the side of Scalped Mountain itwas a steady weight pressing against him rather than a wind. And nowand then, when the weight relaxed, he stumbled forward on his knees.For there was now hardly any shelter. He was approaching thetimberline where trees stand as high as a man and little higher.
Dawn found him at the edge of the tree line. He flung himself on hisface, his head on his arms, to rest and wait until the treacheroustime of dawn should have passed. While the day grew steadily his heartsank. He needed the rest, but the cold bit into him while he layextended, and the peril of the summit would be before him for hismarch of the day. The wind mourned over him as if it anticipated hisdefeat. Never had there been such wind, he thought. It screamed abovehim. It dropped away in sudden lulls of more appalling silence. Then,far off, he would hear a wave of the storm begin, wash across a crest,thunder in a canyon, and then break on the timberline with a prolongedand mighty roaring. Those giant approaches made him hold his breath,and when the wave of confusion passed, he found himself oftenbreathless.
Day came. He was on the very verge of the line with a dense fence ofstunted trees just before him and the wilderness of snow beyond,sloping up to the crest, outlined in white against the solid gray sky.The Spartans of the forest were around him--fir, pine, spruce, birch,and trembling little aspens up there among the stoutest. All were ofone height, clean-shaven by the volleys of the wind-driven sand andpebbles that clipped off any treetop that aspired above the mass. Insolid numbers was their salvation, and they grew dense as grass, twofeet high on the battlefront. They were carved by that wind, for allstorms came here out of the west, and the storm face of every tree wasdenuded of branches. To the east the foliage streamed away. Even incalm weather those trees spoke of storm.
Bull Hunter sat up to put on his snowshoes. It was a white world belowhim and above. Winter, which a day before had vanished, now came backwith a rush off the summits, where its snows were still piled. Againthe heart of the big man quaked. Down in the hollow, over that ridge,was the house of the Campbells. They would be getting up now. Joewould be making the fire, and Harry slicing the bacon. It made acheerful picture to Bull. He could close his eyes and hear the firesnap and see the stove steam with smoke through every fissure beforethe draft caught in the chimney. From the shed came the neigh ofMaggie, calling softly to him.
He shook his head with a groan, stood up, and strode out of the timberinto the summit lands. It was a great desert. Never could it beconstrued as a place for life. Even lichens were almost out of placehere, and what folly could lead a man across the shifting snows? Butto be called a man, to be admired in silence, to be asked foropinions, to be deferred to--this was a treasure worth any price! Hebowed himself to the wind again and made for the summit with thepeculiar stride which a man must use with snowshoes.
He dared not slacken his efforts now. The cold had been increasing,and to pause meant peril of freezing. It was a highly electrified air,and the result was a series of maddening mirages. He stumbled oversolid rocks where nothing seemed to be in his way; and again whatseemed a rock of huge size was nothing at all. Bull discovered thatwhat seemed firm ground beneath him, as he started to round aprecipice, might after all be the effect of the mirage.
Added to this was another difficulty. As he wound slowly, aboutmidday, up the last reach, with the summit just above him, the windcarried masses of cloud over the crest and into his face. He walkedalternately in a bewildering, driving fog and then in an air madecrazy with electricity. Again and again, from one side or the other,he started when the storm boomed and cannonaded down a ravine and thenbelched out into the open. All this time the babel of the windsoverhead never ceased, and the force of the storm cut up under himwith such violence that he was almost raised from the earth.
Then an unexpected barrier obtruded--a literal mountain of ice wasbefore him. The snow of the recent fall had been whipped away, and thesurface of the mountain, here perilously steep, was now sleek andsolid with ice. Bull looked gloomily toward the summit so close abovehim, and the ice glimmered in the dull light. There was only one wayto make even the attempt. He sat down, took off his snowshoes,strapped them to his back, and began to work his way up the slope,battering out each foothold with the head of his ax. It was possibleto ascend in this manner, but it would be practically impossibleto descend.
Once committed to this way, he had either to go on to the summit, orelse perish. Working slowly, with little possible muscular exercise towarm him, he began to grow chilled and the wind-driven cold numbed hisears. But, more than that, the wind was now a grim peril, for, fromtime to time, it swerved and leaped on him heavily from the side.Once, off balance, he looked back at the dazzling slope below him. Hewould be a shapeless mass of flesh long before he tumbled tothe bottom.
Vaguely, as he hewed his footholds and worked his way up, he yearnedfor the cleverness of Harry or the wit of Joe. What an ally either ofthem would be! That he was undertaking a task from which either ofthem would have shrunk in horror never occurred to him. Yonder, beyondthe summit, lay his destiny--Johnstown--and this was the way towardit; it was a simple thing to Bull. He could no more vary from hiscourse than a magnetic needle can vary from its pole.
Suddenly he came on a break in the solid face of the ice. Above himwas a narrow rift through the ice to the gravel beneath; how it wasmade, Bull could not guess. But he took advantage of it. Presently hewas striding on toward the summit, beating his hands to restore thecirculation and gingerly rubbing his ears.
There was a magical change as he reached the summit and sat downbehind some rocks to regain his breath and quiet his shaken nerves.The clouds split apart in the zenith; the sun burst through; on bothsides the broad mountain billowed away to white lowlands; the air wasalive with little, brilliant spots of electricity.
It cheered Bull Hunter vastly. The gale, which was tumbling the cloudsdown the arch of the sky and toward the east, was more mighty thanever, but he put his head down to it confidently and beganthe descent.