A harsh oath cut him short. “Stop whining,” called Reeve. “If you’re half a man, give Dunkin back to me, or show yourself and fight me for him. Will you do that?” His voice quivered with rage and entreaty.
“I can’t.”
“Then Heaven help one of us when we meet the next time!”
Bull hesitated. He loved this man who had been half father and half brother to him. “Pete,” he said huskily, “will you listen to me say ten words?”
“If they’re man-talk go ahead!”
“Pete, you can’t keep up the life you’re leading. They’s no hope for it. You can beat the law nine times. The tenth time it’ll beat you, and it only needs to beat you once to end you. Get out of this country and”
“Say, shouted Pete Reeve, “are you sermonizing me?”
Bull Hunter turned the head of Diablo away and rode gloomily across the plateau, with Dunkin helpless on the saddle before him.
Chapter XX
A Woman’s Whim
In the town of White River they still tell how Bull Hunter brought Dunkin in. Fear, weariness and his uncomfortable position on the horse had made Dunkin wilt, and the celebrated robber and killer was a limp rag of a man when Bull Hunter literally handed him to the sheriff. The latter made preparations to secure the reward, put on the head of Dunkin, for Bull, but the giant refused absolutely to touch it.
“A lady asked me to bring him in,” he said, “so I did it.”
Then he turned joylessly on the trail to the Dunbar ranch. It was several days later when he reached it, and having had one bitter experience from blundering upon the house, he used some discretion on this occasion.
After all it was a surprisingly easy thing to do. He had only to wait in the shelter of the densest growth of trees until the men, to the very last one, had ridden out to their work of the day; then a little patience showed him Mary Hood walking in the garden. He waited until she was screened from the house by a hedge, and then he went out to her. He came rather diffidently, but the moment the girl saw him, she ran to him.
“Did you do it?” she asked eagerly. “How? When?”
She literally danced about him with impatience for his answer. Bull Hunter gazed at her in dismay and wonder and delight. Again she was dressed in white, all white from the soft hat on her head to her shoes. The wind kept a stir of silk about her, and her excitement made her smile and laugh and frown, all in a moment. It was only the third time that he had seen her, but she had apparently decided to let all barriers fall at once. Here, in a stride, he found himself admitted to her intimate friendship. Looking back to the long labor of the hunt for Dunkin, the capture, and even the parting with Pete Reeve, these were small things.
“Yes,” he was able to answer her at last. “I did it.”
“But how? I want to know every bit of it.”
Bull Hunter raised his face into the wind, as though hoping that it might bring him inspiration. “There isn’t much to it,” he said. “I just got on his trail, warned him I was coming and what I was going to try to do, and then I happened to catch him and bring him into the town of White River.”
“And that’s all there is to it?” asked the girl, smiling faintly.
“That’s all.”
She broke out at him, laughing: “But I know the whole story, Charlie. I know how you followed him and caught him in a noose, with that terrible Pete Reeve not far away; and I know how you rode into White River; and I know you refused the reward. It was a fine thing to do; it was a brave thing to do, Charlie, and the whole range is talking about it!”
She stopped, a little afraid that her enthusiasm had made her go too far, but one glance at his flushed, embarrassed face reassured her. “But you are not rich, and yet you refused a two-thousand-dollar reward. Why did you do that? The money is yours.”
“Of course I couldn’t take it,” answered Bull Hunter. “I’d already been paid for the job.”
“Paid for it?”
“Yes.”
He raised a hand to his throat and presently lifted above the edge of his shirt a thin chain of gold; and she knew that that was how he kept her locket. In spite of herself, she flushed. There were so many qualities of modesty, gallantry, pride and simplicity about this giant of a man that he continually took her by surprise.
“That’s a pleasant thing to say to me,” she answered softly. “Thank you.”
“Besides,” continued Bull, who had not quite finished with his thought, “if there is any reward coming it would have to come from you.”
She regarded him with something of a smile. Perhaps he was not quite so simple as she had suspected. “In what way?” she asked him.
“In a lot of ways,” said Bull. “But first I’d like to know why you were so anxious to catch him.”
“Because he had taken that locket, of course,” she replied.
“No; I was bringing you the locket when you asked me to go for him; and you gave me the locket for taking him.”
She was stopped completely. “I don’t like examinations,” she told him with a frown. “To tell you the truth I didn’t really care a whit about it. But you seemed so eager to do something for me, and that thing happened to pop into my mind.”
“You didn’t have a real reason for wanting to have him caught?” asked Bull Hunter in amazement.
“You looked so big and so young and so strong that day,” she explained, “that just for a moment I felt as if I were the lady and you were the knight out of some old story book. So I sent you to capture the villain, and the only villain I could think of, you see, was this Dunkin, the robber. My father is almost willing to forgive you for the old quarrel, because you took Dunkin in such a clever way.”
She stopped; the face of Bull Hunter was very grave.
“It sort of drifts in on me, little by little,” he said slowly. “You didn’t have no real reason for wanting Dunkin taken. It just popped into your mind?”
He walked up and down, and the girl, looking at the huge strides, the head bent in thought and the heavily puckered forehead, lost a little of her elation.
Presently he stopped before her again. He had been worshiping her beauty every moment of their talk, but now she saw a shadow in his eyes and she was alarmed. It was not, she told herself at once, that she cared particularly for this big, dull-witted fellow, butshe found it impossible to define what she did feel. With the solemn eyes of the big man resting upon her, she had a positive reaction of guilt.
“Mary Hood,” he said at length, “that was a long trail and a hard one. There was three men that might have died, instead of just one being captured unhurt, till the law hurts him. I didn’t know why you wanted him taken. I didn’t ask. Just that you wanted it was enough for me; and it still is. I’ll forget what’s happened; I’ll forget that Dunkin is in jail and due to hang”
“But he’s not in jail,” broke in the girl. “Surely you heard what happened?”
“Eh?” asked Bull Hunter.
“Of course he’s not in jail. He wasn’t in White River a single night. You see, that terrible little man, Pete Reeve, rode down out of the mountains and in the middle of the night attacked the jail; he shot down two of the guards and left them badly wounded, then he set Dunkin free.”
Bull Hunter closed his eyes, smiling faintly. He could see that picture, the little active gun fighter in his glory, storming the jail, the spit and bark of the guns, the crunching of bullets against the old brick walls. “And then they rode away together?” asked Bull Hunter.