There was more snow on this side, and to travel through it he soon
found that he must put on the snowshoes again; but after that the
descent was actually restful compared with the labors of the climb.
Yonder was the dark streak of the timberline again. Far down the
valley he watched it curving in and out along the mountainside like a
water level. Below was the darkness of the forest where other things
lived, and where Bull could live more easily, also. Never had trees
seemed such beautiful and friendly things to him.
Once a thought stopped him completely. He was in a new world. He was
seeing everything for the first time. On other days he had gone out
with others. Under their guidance, not trusted to undertake an
expedition by himself, he looked at nothing until it was pointed out
to him, heard nothing that was not first called to his attention. He
had always wondered at the acuteness of the senses of all other men.
But now, looking on the mountains for himself, he decided, with a
start of the heart, that they were beautiful--beautiful and terrible
at once, with the reality that he had never found in his books. What
leveled spear of a knight, in the pages of romance, could equal the
invisible thrust of this wind?
He reached the timberline. Looking back, he saw the summit, a
brilliant line of white against a blue sky. Again the heart of Bull
Hunter leaped. Here was a great treasure that he had taken in with one
grasp of the eyes and which he could never lose!
He turned down the valley. Where it swerved out into the lower plain,
stood Johnstown, and there he was to cross the flight of Pete Reeve,
if Pete were indeed flying. But it was incredible that the man who had
struck down Uncle Bill Campbell should flee from any man or number
of men.
He had reached the bottom of the narrow valley. A dull noise came down
to him from the mountain in the lull of the wind. He looked up.
Far away, miles and miles, near the summit of Scalped Mountain, a
snaky form of mist was twisting swiftly down. He looked curiously. The
thing grew, traveling with great speed that increased with every
moment. It increased--it gained velocity--a snowslide!
He watched it in doubt. It was twisting like a snake down the farther
side of the mountain, but, in his experience, slides were as
treacherous as serpents. Bull started hastily for a low cliff that
stood up from the floor of the valley, clear of the trees.
He had not gone far when the wind fell away to a whisper, and a dull
roaring caught his ear. He looked back over his shoulder in alarm. A
great wall of white was shooting down the mountainside. The little
slide of surface snow, which had twisted across the surface of the old
snows of the winter, had been gaining in weight, in momentum, picking
up claws of shrubbery, teeth of stone, and eating through layer after
layer of the old snow, packed hard as ice. Now it was a roaring mass
with a front steadily increasing in height, and far away in the rear
it tossed up a tail of snow dust, a flying mist that gave Bull an
impression of speed greater than the main wall of the snow itself.
The noise grew amazingly, and coming in range of the opposite wall of
the valley, a low and steadily increasing thunder poured into the ears
of Bull. It was a fascinating thing to watch, and at this distance to
the side he was quite safe. But at the very moment that he reached
this decision, the front of the slide smashed with a noise like
volleyed canyon against the side of a hill, tossed immense arms of
white in the air, floundered, and then veered with the speed of an
express train rounding a curve and rocked away down the slope straight
for Bull. Turned cold with dread, he saw it hit the timberline with a
great crashing, and the dark forms of the trees were dashed up by the
running mass of stones and then swallowed in the boiling front of
the slide.
He waited to see no more, but dashed on for the saving cliff. Once his
back was turned it seemed that the slide gained speed. The immense
roaring literally leaped on him from behind, and in the roar, his
senses were drowned. He could feel his knees weaken and buckle, but
the cliff, now just before him, gave him fresh strength. But was the
cliff high enough? He hurried up to higher ground and flung himself
prostrate. The front of the slide was cutting down the heavily
forested slope as though the trees were blades of grass before a keen
scythe. The noise passed all description.
Once he thought the mass was changing direction. It put out a massive
arm to the left, licked down five hundred trees at a gulp, and then,
smashing its fist into a hillside, flung back into the valley floor,
tossing the great trees in its top and poured straight at him. He
watched it in one of those dazes during which one sees everything. The
whole body came like water down a chute, but one part of the front
wall spilled out ahead and then another, and then the top, overtaking
the rest, toppled crashing to the bottom. And so it rushed out of
sight beneath the cliff. But would it wash over the top?
The first answer was an impact that shook the ground under him, and
then he heard a noise like a huge ripping explosion. A dozen lofty
geysers of snow streamed up into the air, dazzling against the sun,
misty at the edges of each column, whose center was solid tons and
tons of snow. Old pines and spruces, their branches shaved away in the
tumult of the slide, were picked up and hurled like javelins over the
cliff; a shower of fragments beat on the body of Bull; and then the
main mass of snow washed up over the edge of the cliff in a great
mound, and the slide was ended.
He crawled slowly back to his feet. Far up the mountainside, beginning
in a point, the track of the slide swept down in a broadening scar,
black and raw, across forest and snow. Far down the valley the last
echoes of thunder were passing away to a murmur, and the valley floor,
beneath the cliff, was a mass of snow and tree trunks.
Bull took off the snowshoes and climbed along the valley wall until he
could descend to the clear floor beneath him. Then he headed down
toward Johnstown.
It was well past midday when he escaped the slide; it was the
beginning of night when, at the conclusion of that first heroic march,
he reached Johnstown. With hunger his stomach cleaved to his back, and
his knees were weak with the labor.
Stamping through the snow to the hotel he asked the idlers around the
stove, "Has any of you gents seen a man named Pete Reeve pass through
this town?"
They looked at him in amazement. He had closed the door behind him,
and now, with his battered hat pushed high on his head, he seemed
taller than the entrance--taller and as wide, a mountain of a man. The
efforts of the march had collected a continual frown on his forehead,
and as he peered about from face to face, no one for a moment was able
to answer, but each looked to his companion.
It was the proprietor who answered finally. Talk was his commercial
medium and staff of life. "What sort of a looking man, captain?"
Bull blinked at him. He was not used to honorary epithets such as
this, and he searched the face of the proprietor carefully to detect
mockery. To his surprise the other showed signs of what Bull dimly
recognized as fear. Fear of him--of Bull Hunter!
"The way you look at me," said the other and laughed uneasily, "I
figure it's pretty lucky that I ain't this here Pete Reeve. That
so, boys?"
The boys joined in the laughter, but they kept it subdued, their eyes
upon the giant at the door. He was leaning against the wall, and the
sight of his outspread hand was far from reassuring.
But Bull went on to describe his man. "Not very big; hands like the
claws of a bird's; iron-gray hair; quick ways." That was Uncle Bill's
description.
"Sure he's been here," said the owner. "I recognized him right off. He
was through about dusk. He came over the mountains and just got past
the summit, he said, before the storm hit. Lucky, eh?" He looked at
the battered coat of Bull. "Kind of appears like you mightn't of been
so lucky?"
"Me?" asked Bull gently. "Nope. I was at the timberline on the other
side about daybreak today."
There was a sudden and chilly silence; men looked at one another.
Obviously no man could have traveled that distance between dawn and
dark, but it was as well not to express disbelief to a man who could
tell a lie as big as his body.
"I got to eat," said Bull.
The proprietor jumped out of his chair. "I can fix you up, son."
He led the way, Bull following with his enormous strides, and, as the
floor creaked under him, the eyes of the others jerked after him,
stride by stride. It was beginning to seem possible that this man had
done what he said he had done. When the door slammed behind him and
his steps went creaking through the room beyond, a mutter of a hum
arose around the stove.
As a matter of fact it was the beginning of the great legend that was
finally to bulk around the name of the big man. And it was fitting
that the huge figure of Bull Hunter should have come upon the
attention of men in this way, descending out of the storm and the
mountains.
That he had done something historic was far from the mind of Bull as
he stalked into the dining room.
"You sit right down here," his host was saying, placing a chair at the
table.
Bull tried the chair with his hand. It groaned and squeaked under the
weight. "Chairs don't seem to be made for me," he said simply.
"Besides I'm more used to sitting on the floor." He dropped to the
floor accordingly, with the effect of a small earthquake. The
proprietor stared, but he swallowed his astonishment. "What you'd like
to eat is something hearty, I figure."
"What you got?" said Bull.
"Well, Mrs. Jarney come in this morning with a dozen fresh eggs. Got
some prime bacon, too, and some jerky and--"
"That dozen eggs," said Bull thoughtfully, "will start me, and then a
platter of bacon, and you might mix up a bowl of flapjacks. You ain't
got a quart or so of canned milk, partner?"
The proprietor could only nod, for he dared not trust his voice.
Fleeing to the kitchen he repeated the prodigious order to his wife.
Then he circled by a back way and communicated the tidings to the
"boys" around the stove.
"A couple of dozen eggs, he says to me, and a few pounds of beef and
three or four quarts of milk and a bowl of flapjacks and a platter of
bacon," was the way the second version of the historic order for food
came to the idlers.
Half a dozen of the men risked the cold and the wind to steal around
to the side of the house and peer through the window at the huge,
bunched figure that sat on the floor. They found him with his chin
dropped upon the burly fist and a frown on his forehead, for Bull
was thinking.
He would have been glad to have found Pete Reeve in Johnstown and have
the matter over with. But, after all, it was beginning to occur to him
that it might not be wise to kill the man in the presence of other
people. They might attempt to correct him with the assistance of a
rope and a limb of a tree. Somewhere he must cut in ahead of this
Reeve and start out at him if possible. As for his ability to keep
pace with a horse he had no doubt that he could do it fairly well.
More than once he had gone out on foot, while Harry and Joe rode, and
he had pressed the little ponies, bearing their riders slowly up and
down the slopes, to keep pace with him. On the level, of course, it
was a different matter, but in broken country he more than kept up.
"Have you got a grudge agin' Reeve?" asked the host, as he brought in
the fried eggs.
"Maybe," admitted Bull, and instantly he began to attack the food.
The proprietor watched with a growing awe. No chinook ever ate snow as
this hungry giant melted food to nothingness. He came back with the
first stack of flapjacks and bacon and more questions. "But I'd think
that a gent like you'd be pretty careful about tangling with Pete
Reeve--him being so handy with a gun and you such a tolerable
big target."
"I've figured that all out," said Bull calmly. "But they's so much of
me to kill that I don't figure one bullet could do the work. Do you?"
The eyes of the proprietor grew large. He swallowed, and before he
could answer Bull continued in the exposition of his theory. "Before
he shoots the next shot, maybe I can get my hands on him."
"You going to fight him bare hands agin' a gun?"
"You see," said Bull apologetically, "I ain't much good with a gun,
but I feel sort of curious about what would happen if I got my grip
on a man."
And that was the foundation on which another section of the Bull
Hunter legend was built.