CHAPTER 2
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.