"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.
CHAPTER 6
The bed on which Bull Hunter reposed his bulk that night was not the
cot to which he was shown by his host. One glance at the spindling
wooden legs of the canvas-bottomed cot was enough for Bull, and having
wrapped himself in the covers he lay down on the floor and was
instantly asleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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