Bull Hunter by Max Brand (best books to read now txt) 📗

to take a mean advantage of a gambling companion seemed to Bull altogether too strange to be reasonable. Certainly, if he had had a difference with this fellow, thought Bull, Pete Reeve was the man to let the other use his own weapons before he fought. But to shoot him down across a table, unwarned—this was too much to believe! And yet it was the truth, and Pete Reeve was to hang for it.

The big man sat shaking his head. "And they found the money on Pete
Reeve?" he asked gloomily. "They found the money he took off this
Armstrong?"

"There's the funny part of the yarn," said the proprietor glibly. "Pete had the nerve to shoot the gent down in cold blood, but when he seen him fall he lost his nerve. He didn't wait to grab the money, but ran out and jumped on his hoss and tried to get away. So there you are. But it pretty often happens that way! Take the oldest gunfighter in the world, and, if his stomach ain't resting just right, it sort of upsets him to see a crimson stain. I seen it happen that way with the worst of 'em, and in the old days they used to be a rough crowd in my barroom. They don't turn out that style of gent no more!" He sighed as his mind flickered back into the heroic past.

"And Reeve—he admits he done the killing?" Bull asked hopelessly.

"Him? Nope, he's too foxy for that. But the only story he told was so foolish that we laughed at him, and he ain't had the nerve to try to bluff us ever since. He says that he was sitting peaceable with Armstrong when all at once without no warning they was a shot from the window—the east window, I remember he was particular to say—and Armstrong dropped forward on the table, shot through the heart.

"Reeve says that he didn't wait to ask no questions. He blew the candle out, and having got the darkness on his side, he made a jump through the door and got onto his hoss. He says that he wanted to break away to the trees and try to get a shot at the murderer from cover, but the minute he got onto his hoss, he had his hoss shot from under him."

"Was they any shots fired then?"

"Yep. Reeve says that he fired a couple of times when he fell. But the sheriff says that Reeve only fired once, as his hoss was falling, and that the other shot that was found fired out of Reeve's gun was fired into the heart of Armstrong. Oh, they ain't any doubt about it. All Reeve has got is a cock-and-bull yarn that would make a fool laugh!"

Although Bull had been many times assured by his uncle and his cousins that he was a fool of the first magnitude, he was in no mood for laughter. Somewhere in the tale there was something wrong, for his mind refused to conjure up the picture of Reeve pulling his gun and shooting across the table into the breast of a helpless, unwarned man. That would not be the method of a man who could stand up to Uncle Bill. That would not be the method of the man who had sat up on his bunk and looked so calmly into the face of the sheriff.

Bull stood up and dragged his hat firmly over his eyes. "I'd kind of like to see the place where that shooting was done," he declared.

"You got lots of time before night," said the proprietor. "Ain't more'n a mile and a half out the north trail. Take that path right out there, and you can ride out inside of five minutes."

There was no horse for Bull Hunter to ride. But, having thanked his host, he stepped out into the cooler sunshine of the late afternoon.

The trail led through scattering groves of cottonwood most of the way, for it was bottom land, partially flooded in the winter season of rain, and, even in the driest and hottest part of the summer, marshy in places. He followed the twisting little trail through spots of shadow and stretches of open sky until he reached the shack which was obviously that of the dead Armstrong.

The moment he entered the little cabin he received proof positive.

The furniture had not apparently been disturbed since the shooting. The table still leaned crazily, as though it had not recovered from a violent shock on one side. One chair was overturned. A box had been smashed to splinters, probably by having someone put a foot through it.

Bull examined the deal table. Across the center of it there was a dark stain, and on the farther side, two hands were printed distinctly into the wood, in the same dull color. The whole scene rose revoltingly distinct in the mind of Bull.

Here sat Dan Armstrong playing his cheerful game, laughing and jesting, because forsooth he was the winner. And there, on the opposite side of the table, sat Pete Reeve, the guest in the house of his host, growing darker and darker as the money was transferred from his pocket to the pocket of the jovial Armstrong. Then, a sudden taking of offense at some harmless jest, the cold flash of steel as Reeve leaned and jumped to his feet, and then the explosion of the revolver, with Armstrong settling slowly, limply forward on the table. There he lay with a stream pouring across the table from the death wound, his helpless arms outstretched on the wood.

Then Reeve, panic-stricken, perhaps with a sudden stirring of remorse, started for the door, struck the box on his way, smashing it to bits, and as soon as he got outside, leaped for his horse. Luckily retribution had overtaken the murderer in the very moment of escape. Bull Hunter sighed. Never had the strength of the arm of the law been so vividly brought home to him as by this incident. Suppose that he had fulfilled his purpose and killed Reeve? Would not the law have reached for him in the same fashion and taken and crushed him?

He shuddered, and looking up from his broodings, he glanced through the opposite window and saw that the woods were growing dark in that direction. Night was approaching, and, with the feeling of night, there was a ghostly sense of death, as though the spirit of the dead man were returning to his old home. On the other side of the house, however, the woods showed brighter. This was the east window—the east window through which Reeve declared that the shot had been fired.

Bull shook his head. He stepped out of the cabin and looked about. It was a prosperous little stretch of meadow, cleared into the cottonwoods and reclaiming part of the marshland—all very rich soil, as one could see at a glance. There was a field which had been recently upturned by the plow, perhaps the work of yesterday. The furrows were still black, still not dried out by the sun. Today would have been the time for harrowing, but that work was indefinitely postponed by the grim visitor. No doubt this Armstrong was an industrious man. The sense of a wasted life was brought home to Bull; a bullet had ended it all!

Absent-mindedly he passed around the side of the house and started for the east window through which Reeve had said that the bullet was fired, but he shook his head at once.

On the east side the house leaned against a mass of white stone. It rose high, rough, ragged. Certainly a man stalking a house to fire a shot would never come up to it from this side! His own words were convicting Reeve of the murder!

Still he continued to clamber over the stones until he stood by the window. To be sure, if a man stood there, he could easily have fired into the room and into the breast of a man sitting on the far side of the table. Armstrong was found there. Bull looked down to his feet as a thoughtful man will do, and there, very clearly marked against the white of the stone, he saw a dark streak—two of them, side by side.

He bent and looked at them. Then he rubbed the places with his fingertips and examined the skin. A stain had come away from the rock. It was as if the rocks had been rubbed with lead or a soft iron. And then, strangely, into the mind of Bull came the memory of what the hotel man had said of the sheriff's iron-shod heels.

The sheriff had gone for many a year hating Armstrong. The truth rushed over the brain of the big man. What a chance for a crafty mind! To kill his enemy and place the blame on the shoulders of one already known to be a man-killer! Bull Hunter leaped from the rocks and started back for the town with long, ground-devouring strides.

CHAPTER 8

There were two reasons for the happiness which lightened the step of Bull Hunter as he strode back for the town. In the first place he saw a hope of liberating Reeve from jail and accomplishing his own mission of killing the man. In the second place he felt a peculiar joy at the thought of freeing such a man from the imputation of a cowardly murder.

Yet he had small grounds for his hopes. Two little dark marks on the white, friable stone, marks that the first small shower of rain would wash away, marks that the first keen sandstorm would rub off—this was his only proof. And with this to free one man from danger of the rope and place the head of another under the noose—it was a task to try the resources of a cleverer man than Bull.

Indeed, the high spirits of Bull in some measure left him as he drew nearer and nearer to the village. How could he convict the sheriff? How, with his clumsy wits and his clumsy tongue, could he bring the truth to light? Had he possessed the keen eyes of his uncle he felt that a single glance would have made the guilt stand up in the face of Anderson. But his own eyes, alas, were dull and clouded.

Thoughtfully, with bowed head, he held his course. A strange picture, surely, this man who so devoutly wished to free another from the danger of the law in order that he might take a life into his own hands. But the contrast did not strike home to Bull. To him everything that he did was as clear as day. But how to go to work? If the man were like himself it would be an easy matter. More than once he remembered how his cousins had shifted the blame for their own boyish pranks upon him. In the presence of their father they would accuse Bull with a well-planned lie, and the very fact that he had been accused made Bull blush and hang his head. Before he could be heard in his own behalf the cruel eye of his uncle had grown stern, and Bull was condemned as a culprit.

"The only time you show any sense," his uncle had said more than once, "is when you want to do something you hadn't ought to do!"

Steadily through the years he had served as a scapegoat for his cousins. They set a certain value upon him for his use in this respect. Ah, if only he had that keen, embarrassing eye of Bill Campbell with which to pierce to the guilty heart of the sheriff and make him speak! The eye of his uncle was like the eye of a crowd. It was an audience in itself and condemned or praised with the strength of numbers.

It was this thought of numbers that brought the clue to a possible solution to Bull Hunter. When it came to him he stopped short in the road, threw back his head and laughed.

"And what's all the celebration about?" asked a voice behind him.

He turned and found Sheriff Anderson on his horse directly behind him. The soft loam of the trail had covered the sound of the sheriffs approach. Bull blushed with a sudden sense of shame. Moreover, the sheriff seemed unapproachably stern and dignified. He sat erect in the saddle, a cavalier figure with his long, well-drilled mustaches.

"I dunno," said Bull vaguely, pushing his hat back to scratch his thatch of blond hair. "I didn't know I was celebrating, particular."

The sheriff watched him