“Dunkin rode away, but not Pete Reeve.”
“What!”
He came close to her, grown terrible all at once; and he stretched out his hands for the explanation, as though he were stretching them out to seize and crush her. She had never before been able to understand, in spite of his bulk, how this mild-voiced fellow could ever be formidable to fighting men. But a full realization of what he might be in action came suddenly to her and dazed her.
“Not Pete Reeve?” asked Bull Hunter, still following her, as she shrank away.
“Does he mean as much to you as all that?”
“As much as that? As much as the world! He’s saved my life and made me a man and taught me everything I know and been my friend. What’s happened to him?”
“It happened in the jail - I don’t know. It just came to me by hearsay, and there’s nothing definite.”
He turned gray with fear and suddenly caught her hands. “They killed Pete Reeve?” he asked. Then his voice thundered: “They killed Pete Reeve! And I’ll break a dozen of ‘em to bits for it. They killed him! Pete Reeve is dead!”
“No, no! I give you my word. What I heard was that a bullet grazed his head and then knocked him unconscious”
“But Dunkin stayed over the body like a brave man,” said Bull in his agony. “Dunkin stayed there and fought them off. He stayed till Pete Reeve got his senses back, and then they fought their way through and got clear. Tell me, was that what happened?”
He still held her hands, and his face showed a dozen emotions. The girl shrank from him in her distress. There was as much difference between the placid Bull Hunter, whom she had known before, and this raging giant, as the difference between a June sky and a thunderstorm.
“I wish I could say it. That was what you would have done, I know. You’d have stayed and fought them off for your friend. But Dunkin, whom Pete Reeve had just saved, when he saw his friend drop, simply turned and ran for his life and rode away on Reeve’s horse!”
The chin of Bull Hunter dropped on his breast, and his hands fell limply away from hers.
“But is it so terrible? Won’t he be able”
“He’ll hang,” said Bull Hunter simply. “He’s killed ten men, all in fair fight, and not a one of ‘em but deserved the killing. But his record is long and black. This is the end of Pete Reeve.” He lifted his head. “Unless I could do something!” he whispered. “Oh, if I could do something!”
She caught a dizzy glimpse into the future; she saw the giant, plunging on the guards at the jail in White River. “But they’ve changed everything. Since Dunkin got away they have half a dozen men sleeping in the front room of the jail. You won’t do some mad thing?”
“Mary,” he said, “Pete Reeve has been my partner.”
There was no answer to this. All her arguments dried up in her throat and left her staring blankly at him. She felt, as she had never felt before, the mighty power of the friendship between man and man. It made the people she had grown up with seem paltry creatures. What would her father do for a friend in need? What would Hal Dunbar himself, for all his might of hand, do in the service of a man whose life was threatened by the law? But here was one who would risk his own life.
A panic took her, and yet she was thrilling with happiness at the thought of him. When her eyes cleared she saw that he was holding out his hand, and when she extended hers to meet it, she felt the locket and gold chain drop into her palm, still warm from the body of the giant.
She stared at him without understanding.
“I’ll never see you again,” said Bull Hunter. “Maybe I’ll get bumped off when I try to bust the jail; maybe not. But my trail will never come back here. Now that I’m going I’ll talk frank to you. I’ve loved you, Mary; I’ve worshiped you; I’ve kept you in front of me night and day. The thought of you kept me honest when I was living with thieves, and just a wish that you wouldn’t explain, made me go out and risk three men’s lives and lose my friend. I didn’t care. A touch of your hand was worth more to me than all that. But now, just for a whim of yours, Pete Reeve is dead - worse than dead, because, all the days he’s in there at that jail, he’s bound to think of what’s coming to him. And he was meant for a death under an open sky. He was meant for a fighting death that other men would never forget. Because of you he’s trapped.
”And I see you for the first time. There’s no thought in you except for yourself. There’s no generosity in your nature. You never think of giving, but always of taking.”
She tried to go back from him; she wanted desperately to turn and flee to the house, but the steady, sad voice still held her.
“You’ve taught me one thing that may be worth all the rest. They ain’t a thing in the world after this that I can trust because of what it seems to be. Not a thing! I’ll forget what trusting people means. And the worst of it is, I know, that I’ll keep on loving you, Mary Hood, to the end of my life.”
Then he was gone. She saw him swing across the garden and disappear among the trees; presently she heard the rush of a galloping horse through the underbrush.
The locket slipped from her hand, struck the catch in its fall and lay open at her feet. Mary Hood stamped on the lovely face of the miniature and turned and fled to the house.
Chapter XXI
The Choice
There was cruel work for Diablo on that back trail to the town of White River, for Bull Hunter rode like a madman, hardly stopping for food and sleep. When they reached the little village Bull went straight to the jail.
The moment he set foot in the street it was apparent that the town considered him a distinguished visitor. He saw women in gingham come to doors and stand with their arms akimbo, smiling and nodding at him. A boy ran fearlessly out and strove to shake hands with him as he swept by. A little crowd gathered in his wake, like dust behind a wind, and followed him to the jail.
When he went through the door he was accorded a real reception. The “half dozen” guards, of whom Mary had spoken, proved to be only three, but they sat in the front room of the jail, armed to the teeth with rifle, revolver, and even prominently displayed knives. Plainly the next visitor who came unannounced to the White River jail, would be accorded a reception which he would never forget.
The sheriff introduced Bull to the guards, and they shook hands with the carelessness of Westerners who wish to prove that they are not overimpressed on meeting a distinguished man. But Bull Hunter was too unhappy to notice. The sheriff immediately afterward drew him into his little office.
“I’ve news for you, Hunter,” he said, “and great news at that. You surprised me a good deal when you wouldn’t take that two thousand on the head of Dunkin. A good thing for you that you didn’t, because Dunkin would have been gone before you got the money. But there’s better game than that for you, Hunter, a lot better.”
He settled back in his chair and smiled benevolently upon the giant. “Matter of fact we want men like you around White River. If I had a fellow like you to call on as a deputy now and then, when a hard job comes up, there’d be such a falling off in crime around these parts that it’d make your head swim. Yes, sir! And now, Hunter, I’ve been in touch with the authorities to find out if there’s any need of paying the reward on the head of Pete Reeve. The man whose bullet stunned him won’t get it - wouldn’t take it if he could, because he happens to be the richest man in these parts. But we all figure it out that, if you hadn’t taken Dunkin, Reeve would never have come in and practically put himself in our hands, so to speak. That reward needs a taker, and with a little work on the side, I think I could get it for you. In return for that ...”