He left the three behind him, bewildered and frightened. Had lightning
split a thick tree beside them, or an unexpected landslide thundered
past and swept the ground away at their feet, they could have been
hardly 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 the
bottom was the white remnant of the taproot where it had burst under
the 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, puffing
under 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 threw
it down! Why--why--I didn't know men was made like that. And his
face--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'd
like 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 late
afternoon, warning her that she must start home. She seemed puzzled
and a little frightened. When she left them it was with a wave of the
hand and with no words of farewell. They watched her go down the trail
that jerked back and forth across the pitch of the slope; twice her
pony 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 being
overheard.
"And think if he'd ever lay a hold on one of us like that!" said
Harry. 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 the
way I handled him the other night! He--he let me trip him up and throw
him!" He shuddered. "Why, if he'd laid hold of me just once, he'd of
squashed my muscles like they was rotten fruit!"
Of one accord they turned back to the house. At the door they paused
and peered in, as into the den of a bear. There sat Bull on the
floor--he risked his weight to none of the crazy chairs--still looking
at his stained hands. Then they drew back and again looked at each
other with scared eyes and spoke in undertones.
"After this maybe he won't want to follow orders. Maybe he'll get sort
of free and easy and independent."
"If he does, you watch Dad give him his marching orders. Dad won't
have no one lifting heads agin' him."
"Neither will I," snapped Joe. "I guess we own this house. I guess we
support 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 for
the stove tonight. Go chop some quick."
The floor squeaked and groaned under Bull's weight as he rose, and
again 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. The
brothers watched him throw aside the top logs and get at the heavier
trunks underneath. He tore one of these out, laid it in place, and the
sun flashed on the swift circle of the ax. Joe and Harry stepped back
as 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 steel
was wrenching out with a squeak of the metal against the resisting
wood. Again the blinding circle and the indescribable sound of the
ax's impact, slicing through the wood. A great chip snapped up high
over the shoulder of the chopper and dropped solidly to the ground at
the feet of the brothers. Again they exchanged glances and drew a
little closer together. The log divided under the shower of eating
blows, and Bull attacked the next section.
Presently he came to a pause, leaning on the handle of the ax and
staring 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 work
again; then they started the preparations for the evening meal. The
simple preparations were soon completed, but after the potatoes were
boiled, they delayed frying the bacon, for their father, old Bill
Campbell, had not yet returned from his hunting trip and he disliked
long-cooked food. Things had to be freshly served to suit Bill, and
his sons dared the wrath of heaven rather than the biting reproaches
of the old man.
It was strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he was
always back before the coming of evening. An old and practiced
mountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction or
sense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went down
and the soft, beautiful mountain twilight began.
There were other reasons which would ordinarily have disturbed Bill
and brought him home even ahead of time. Snow had fallen heavily above
the timberline a few days before, and now the keen whistling of the
wind and the swift curtaining of clouds, which was drawing across the
sky, 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. Any
one of a number of things might have happened to their father, but
they were not worried. For one thing, they wasted no love on the stern
old man. They knew well enough that he had plenty of money, but he
kept them here to a dog's life in the shack, and they hated him for
it. Besides, they had a keen grievance which obscured any worry about
Bill--they were hungry, wildly hungry. The darkness set in, and the
feeble light wandered from the smoked chimney of the lantern and made
the window black.
Outside, the wind began to scream, sighing in the distance among the
firs, and then pouncing upon the cabin and shaking it as though in
rage. 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 the
print of his book. The sight of his stolid immobility merely sharpened
their 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 candle
for him. He read slowly, lingering over every page, for now and again
his eyes drifted away from the print, and he dreamed over what he had
read. In reality he was not reading for the plot, but for the pictures
he found, and he dreaded coming to the end of a book also, for books
were rare in his life. A scrap of a magazine was a treasure. A full
volume was a nameless delight.
And so he worked slowly through every paragraph and made it his and
dreamed over it until he knew every thought and every picture by
heart. Once slowly devoured in this way, it was useless to reread a
book. It was far better to simply sit and let the slow memory of it
trail through his mind link by link, just as he had first read it and
with 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. But
he always followed the light with a sigh and uncomplainingly settled
down again. Sometimes they even snatched the book out of his hands. In
that case he sat looking down at his empty fingers, dreaming over his
own thoughts as contentedly as though the living page were in his
vision. There was small satisfaction in tormenting him in these ways.
Tonight they dared not bother him. The stained hands were still in
their minds, and the tremendous, joyous laughter as he whirled the
stump over his head still rang in their ears. But they watched him
with a sullen envy of his immobility. Just as a man without an
overcoat envies the woolly coat of a dog on a windy December day.
Only one sound roused the reader. It was a sudden loud snorting from
the shed behind the house and a dull trampling that came to him
through the noise of the rising wind. It brought Bull lurching to his
feet, and the stove jingled as his weight struck the yielding center
boards of the floor. Out into the blackness he strode. The wind shut
around him at once and plastered his clothes against his body as if he
had 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 when
Maggie gets scared of something--the old fool!"
Maggie was an ancient, broken-down draft horse. Strange vicissitudes
had brought her up into the mountains via the logging camp. She was
kept, not because there was any real hauling to be done for Bill
Campbell, but because, having got her for nothing, she reminded him of
the bargain she had been. And Bull, apparently understanding the
sluggish nature of the old mare by sympathy of kind, use to work her
to the single plow among the rocks of their clearing. Here, every
autumn, they planted seed that never grew to mature grain. But that
was 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 ridiculous
solemnity 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 waste
breath with laughter. They merely sneered at him as he settled back
into his book. And, just as his head bowed, a far shouting swept down
at 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.