The tale halted. To be defeated is one thing; to be forced to confess
defeat is another. Uncle Bill determined on the bitterer alternative.
"He made a clean fight," declared Uncle Bill. "First he cussed me out
proper. Then he went for his gat and he beat me to the draw. They
ain't no disgrace to that. You'll learn pretty soon that anybody might
get beaten sooner or later--if he fights enough men. And my gun hung
in the leather. Before I got it on him he'd shot me clean through the
right shoulder--a placed shot, boys. He wanted to land me there. It
tumbled me off my hoss. I rolled away and tried to get to my gun that
had fallen on the ground. He shot me ag'in through the leg and
stopped 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 worst
you got.'
"That was why he sent me home alive. To make me live and keep hating
him, the same's he'd lived and hated me. But he made a mistake. Pete
Reeve is a wise fox, but he made one mistake. He forgot that I might
have somebody to send on his trail. He didn't know that I had two boys
I'd raised so's they was each better with a gun nor me. He didn't
dream of that, curse him! But when you, Harry, or you, Joe, pump the
lead into him, shoot him so's he'll live long enough to know who
killed him and why!"
As he spoke, there was a quality in his voice that seemed to find the
boys in the darkness and point each of them out. "Which of you takes
the trail?"
A little silence followed. Bull wondered at it.
"He's gone by way of Johnstown," continued the wounded man. "If one of
you cuts across the summit toward Shantung he's pretty sure to cut in
across Pete's trail. Which is goin' to start? Well, you can match for
the chance! Because him that comes back with Pete Reeve marked off the
slate 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 make
anyone risk death!
"Is that the Pete Reeve," said Harry's voice, "that shot up Mike
Rivers over the hill to the Tompkins place, about four year back?"
"That's him. Why?"
Again the silence. Then Bull heard the old man cursing
softly--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 be
sure death. Listen!"
There was a lull in the wind, and in the breeze that was left, they
could hear the whisper of the snow crushing steadily against
the 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 all
my life to make you handy with guns? What for d'you think I wasted all
them hours showin' you how to pull a trigger and where to shoot and
how 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 fights
back."
"Maybe, if we started together--" ventured Joe.
His father broke in, "Boy, I ain't going to send out a pack of men to
run down Pete Reeve. He met me single and he fought me clean, and he's
going to be pulled down by no pack of yaller dogs! Go one of you alone
or else both of you stay here."
He waited, but there was no response. "Is this the way my blood is
showin' 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 by
even the sound of breathing until someone began to snore. Then Bull
knew that the sleep of the night had settled down.
He lay with his hands folded behind his head, thinking. They were
willing enough to go together to do this difficult thing. But had they
not lifted together at the stump and failed to do the thing which he
had done single-handed? That thought stuck in his memory and would not
out. And suppose he, Bull, were to accomplish this great feat and
return to the shack? Would not Bill Campbell feel doubly repaid for
the living he had furnished for his nephew? More than once the grim
old 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 on
the trail.
Not that all this was clear in the mind of Bull, but he felt something
like a command pushing him on that difficult south trail, through the
storm and the snow that would now be piling above the timberline. He
waited until there was no noise but the snoring of the sleepers and
the rush and roar of the wind which continually set something stirring
in the room. These sounds served to cover effectually any noises he
made 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 hook
where it accumulated dust from month to month. His ancient, secondhand
cartridge belt with the antiquated revolver he removed from another
hook--he had never been given enough ammunition to become a shot of
any quality--and he pushed quickly into the night.
The moment he was through the door, the storm caught him in the face a
stinging blow, and the rush of snow chilled his skin. That stinging
blow steadied to a blast. It was a tremendous, heavy fall. The wind
had scoured the drifts from the clearing and was already banking them
around the little house. In the morning, as like as not, the boys
would have to dig their way out.
He went straight to the horse shed for his snowshoes that hung on the
wall there. Ordinary snowshoes would not endure his ponderous weight,
and Uncle Bill Campbell had fashioned these himself, heavy and
uncomfortable articles, but capable of enduring the strain.
Fumbling his way down behind the stalls, Bill's roan lashed out at him
with savage heels; but Maggie, the old draft horse, whinnied softly,
greeting that familiar heavy step. He tied the snowshoes on his back
and then stopped for a last word to Maggie. She raised her head and
dropped it clumsily on his shoulder. She was among the little, agile
mountain ponies what he was among men, and their bulk had rendered
each of them more or less helpless. There seemed to be a mute
understanding between them, and it was never more apparent than when
Maggie whinnied gently in his ear. He stroked her big, bony head, a
lump forming in his throat. If the bullets of little Pete Reeve
dropped him in some far-off trail, the old-broken-down horse would be
the only living creature that would mourn for him.
Outside, the night and the storm swallowed him at once. Before he had
gone fifty feet the house was out of sight. Then, entering the forest
of balsam firs, the force of the wind was lessened, and he made good
time up the first part of the grade. There would probably be no use
for the snowshoes in this region of broken shrubbery before he came to
the timberline.
He swept on with a lengthening stride. He knew this part of the
country like a book, of course, and he seldom stumbled, save when he
came out into a clearing and the wind smote at him from an unexpected
angle. In one of these clearings he stopped and took stock of his
position. Far away to the west and the south, the head of Scalped
Mountain was lost in dim, rushing clouds. He must make for that goal.
Progress became less easy almost at once. The trees that grew in this
elevated region were not tall enough to act as wind breaks; they were
hardly more than shrubs a great deal of the time, and merely served to
force 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 flung
in his face like a blanket.
Indeed the cold and the snow were nothing compared with the wind. It
was now reaching the proportions of a westerly storm of the first
magnitude. Off the towering slopes above, it came with the chill of
the snow and with flying bits of sand, scooped up from around the base
of trees, or with a shower of twigs. Many a time he had to throw up
his arms across his face before he leaned and thrust on into the teeth
of the blast.
But he was growing accustomed to seeing through this veil of snow and
thick darkness. All things were dreamlike in dimness, of course, but
he could make out terrific cloud effects, as the clouds gushed over
the summit and down the slope a little way like the smoke of enormous
guns; and again a pyramid of mist was like a false mountain before
him, a mountain that took on movement and rushed to overwhelm him,
only to melt away and become simply a shadow among shadows above
his 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 his
head. Walking into the wind it had become positively difficult to
draw breath!
Still it gained power incredibly. Up the side of Scalped Mountain it
was a steady weight pressing against him rather than a wind. And now
and then, when the weight relaxed, he stumbled forward on his knees.
For there was now hardly any shelter. He was approaching the
timberline 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 his
face, his head on his arms, to rest and wait until the treacherous
time of dawn should have passed. While the day grew steadily his heart
sank. He needed the rest, but the cold bit into him while he lay
extended, and the peril of the summit would be before him for his
march of the day. The wind mourned over him as if it anticipated his
defeat. Never had there been such wind, he thought. It screamed above
him. 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 prolonged
and mighty roaring. Those giant approaches made him hold his breath,
and when the wave of confusion passed, he found himself often
breathless.
Day came. He was on the very verge of the line with a dense fence of
stunted 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 of
one height, clean-shaven by the volleys of the wind-driven sand and
pebbles that clipped off any treetop that aspired above the mass. In
solid numbers was their salvation, and they grew dense as grass, two
feet high on the battlefront. They were carved by that wind, for all
storms came here out of the west, and the storm face of every tree was
denuded of branches. To the east the foliage streamed away. Even in
calm weather those trees spoke of storm.
Bull Hunter sat up to put on his snowshoes. It was a white world below
him and above. Winter, which a day before had vanished, now came back
with a rush off the summits, where its snows were still piled. Again
the 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. Joe
would be making the fire, and Harry slicing the bacon. It made a
cheerful picture to Bull. He could close his eyes and hear the fire
snap and see the stove steam with smoke through every fissure before
the draft caught in the chimney. From the shed came the neigh of
Maggie, calling softly to him.
He shook his head with a groan, stood up, and strode out of the timber
into the summit lands. It was a great desert. Never could it be
construed as a place for life. Even lichens were almost out of place
here, and what folly could lead a man across the shifting snows? But
to be called a man, to be admired in silence, to be asked for
opinions, to be deferred to--this was a treasure worth any price! He
bowed himself to the wind again and made for the summit with the
peculiar 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 over
solid rocks where nothing seemed to be in his way; and again what
seemed a rock of huge size was nothing at all. Bull discovered that
what seemed firm ground beneath him, as he started to round a
precipice, might after all be the effect of the mirage.
Added to this was another difficulty. As he wound slowly, about
midday, up the last reach, with the summit just above him, the wind
carried masses of cloud over the crest and into his face. He walked
alternately in a bewildering, driving fog and then in an air made
crazy with electricity. Again and again, from one side or the other,
he started when the storm boomed and cannonaded down a ravine and then
belched out into the open. All this time the babel of the winds
overhead never ceased, and the force of the storm cut up under him
with such violence that he was almost raised from the earth.
Then an unexpected barrier obtruded--a literal mountain of ice was
before him. The snow of the recent fall had been whipped away, and the
surface of the mountain, here perilously steep, was now sleek and
solid with ice. Bull looked gloomily toward the summit so close above
him, and the ice glimmered in the dull light. There was only one way
to 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 possible
to ascend in this manner, but it would be practically impossible
to descend.
Once committed to this way, he had either to go on to the summit, or
else perish. Working slowly, with little possible muscular exercise to
warm him, he began to grow chilled and the wind-driven cold numbed his
ears. But, more than that, the wind was now a grim peril, for, from
time to time, it swerved and leaped on him heavily from the side.
Once, off balance, he looked back at the dazzling slope below him. He
would be a shapeless mass of flesh long before he tumbled to
the bottom.
Vaguely, as he hewed his footholds and worked his way up, he yearned
for the cleverness of Harry or the wit of Joe. What an ally either of
them would be! That he was undertaking a task from which either of
them would have shrunk in horror never occurred to him. Yonder, beyond
the summit, lay his destiny--Johnstown--and this was the way toward
it; it was a simple thing to Bull. He could no more vary from his
course than a magnetic needle can vary from its pole.
Suddenly he came on a break in the solid face of the ice. Above him
was a narrow rift through the ice to the gravel beneath; how it was
made, Bull could not guess. But he took advantage of it. Presently he
was striding on toward the summit, beating his hands to restore the
circulation and gingerly rubbing his ears.
There was a magical change as he reached the summit and sat down
behind some rocks to regain his breath and quiet his shaken nerves.
The clouds split apart in the zenith; the sun burst through; on both
sides the broad mountain billowed away to white lowlands; the air was
alive with little, brilliant spots of electricity.
It cheered Bull Hunter vastly. The gale, which was tumbling the clouds
down the arch of the sky and toward the east, was more mighty than
ever, but he put his head down to it confidently and began
the descent.