by Max Brand
“H’m,” grumbled Bridewell. “You think you could handle these big timbers all day?”
“Yes,” said Bull, “if none of ’em are any bigger than that last one. Yes, I could handle ’em all day easily.”
It was impossible to doubt that he said this judiciously and not with a desire to overstate his powers. In spite of himself the old rancher believed.
“You see,” explained Bull eagerly, “you said that you needed three men for that work. That’s why I ask.”
“And I suppose you’d want the pay of three men?”
Bull shook his head. “Anything you want to pay me,” he declared.
The rancher frowned. This sounded like the beginning of a shrewd bargain, and his respect and suspicion were equally increased.
“Suppose you say what you want?” he asked.
“Well,” Bull said slowly, “I’d have to have a place to sleep. And—I’m a pretty big eater.”
“I guess you are,” said Bridewell. “But if you do three men’s work you got a right to three men’s food. What else do you want?”
Bull considered, as though there were few other wishes that he could express. “I haven’t any money,” he apologized. “D’you think maybe you could pay me a little something outside of food and a place to sleep?”
Bridewell blinked, and then prepared himself to become angry, when it dawned on him that this was not intended for sarcasm. He found that Bull was searching his face eagerly, as though he feared that he were asking too much.
“What would do you?” suggested Bridewell tentatively.
“I dunno,” said Bull, sighing with relief. “Anything you think.”
It was plain that the big man was half-witted—or nearly so. Bridewell kept the sparkle of exultation out of his eyes.
“You leave it to me, then, and I’ll do what’s more’n right by you. When d’you want to start work?”
“Right now.”
CHAPTER 15
When Bull left the dining room that night after supper, Mrs. Bridewell looked across the table at her husband with horror in her eyes.
“Did you see?” she gasped. “He ate the whole pot of beans!”
“Sure I seen him,” and he grinned.
“But—he’ll eat us out of house and home! Why, he’s like a wolf!”
Bridewell chuckled with superior knowledge. “He’s ate enough for three,” he admitted, “but he’s worked enough for six—besides, most of his wages come in food. But work? I never seen anything like it! He handled more timbers than a dozen. When it come to spiking them in place he seen me swinging that twelve-pound sledge and near breaking my back. ‘I think it’s easier this way,’ he says. ‘Besides you can hit a lot faster if you use just one hand.’ And he takes the hammer, and sends that big spike in all the way to the head with one lick. And he wondered why I didn’t work the same way! Ain’t got any idea how strong he is.”
Mrs. Bridewell listened with wide eyes. “The idea,” she murmured. “The idea! Where’s he now?”
Her husband went to the back door. “He’s sitting over by the pump talking to Tod. Sitting talking like they was one age. I reckon he’s sort of half-witted.”
“How come?” sharply asked Mrs. Bridewell. “Ain’t Tod got more brains than most growed-up men?”
“I reckon he has,” admitted the proud father.
And if they had put the same question to Bull Hunter, the giant would have agreed with them emphatically. He approached the child tamer of Diablo with a diffidence that was almost reverence. The freckle-faced boy looked up from his whittling when the shadow of Bull fell athwart him, with an equal admiration; also with suspicion, for the cowpunchers, on the whole, were apt to make game of the youngster and his grave, grown-up ways. He was, therefore, shrewdly suspicious of jests at his expense.
Furthermore, he had seen the big stranger heaving the great timbers about and whirling the sledge with one hand; he half suspected that the jokes might be pointed with the weight of that heavy hand. His amazement was accordingly great when he found the big man actually sitting down beside him, cross-legged, and he was absolutely stupefied when Bull Hunter said, “I’ve been aiming at this chance to talk to you, Tod, all day.”
“H’m,” grunted Tod noncommittally, and examined the other with a cautious side glance.
But the face of Bull Hunter was unutterably free from guile. Tod instantly began to adjust himself. The men he most worshiped were the lean, swift, profanely formidable cowpunchers. But there was something in him that responded with a thrill to this accepted equality with such a man as Bull Hunter. Even his father he had seen stricken to an awed silence at the sight of Bull’s prowess.
“You see,” explained Bull frankly, “I been wondering how you managed to handle Diablo the way you do.”
Tod chuckled. “It’s just a trick. You watch me a while with him, you’ll soon catch on.”
But Bull shook his head as he answered, “Maybe a mighty bright man might figure it out, but I’m not good at figuring things out, Tod.”
The boy blinked. He was accustomed to the studied understatement of the cowpunchers and he was accustomed, also, to their real vanity which underlay the surface shyness. But it was patent that Bull Hunter, in spite of his size, was truly humble. This conception was new to Tod and slowly grew in his brain. His active eyes ran over the bulk beside him; he almost pitied the giant.
“Besides,” pondered Bull heavily, “I guess there’s a whole lot of bright men that have seen you handle Diablo, but they couldn’t make out what you did. They tried to ride Diablo and got their necks nearly broken. They were good riders, but I’m not. You see, Diablo’s the first horse I’ve ever seen that could really carry me.” He added apologetically, “I’m so heavy.”
No vanity, certainly. He gestured toward himself as though he were ashamed of his brawn, and the heart of Tod warmed and expanded. He himself would never be large, and his heart had ached because of his smallness many a time.
“Yep,” he said judiciously, “you’re pretty heavy. About the heaviest I ever seen, I guess. Maybe Hal Dunbar is as big, but I never seen Hal.”
“I’ve heard a good deal about Hal, but—”
He stopped short and stiffened. Tod saw that the eyes of the big man had fixed on the corral in which stood Diablo. A puff of wind had come, and the great black had thrown up his head into it, an imposing picture with mane and tail blown sidewise. Not until the stallion turned away from the unseen thing which he had scented in the wind, did Bull turn to his small companion with a sigh.
Tod nodded, his eyes glinting. “I know,” he said. “I used to feel that way—before I learned how to handle Diablo.” He interpreted, “You feel like it’d be pretty fine to get onto Diablo’s back and have him gallop under you.”
“About the finest thing in the world,” sighed Bull Hunter. He cast out his great hands before him as he tried to explain the mysterious emotions which the horse had excited in him. “You see, Tod, I’m pretty big and I’m pretty slow. Most folks have horses, and they get about pretty lively on ’em, but I’ve always had to walk.”
The enormity of this lack made Tod stare, for travel and horses were inseparably connected in his mind. He shuddered a little at the thought of the big man stalking across the burning and interminable sands of the desert or toiling through the mountains. It seemed to him that he could see the signs of that pain stamped in the face of Bull Hunter, and his heart leaped again in sympathy.
“So when I saw Diablo—” Bull paused. But Tod had understood. Suddenly the boy became excited.
“Suppose you was to learn to ride Diablo before Hal Dunbar come to try him out? Suppose that?”
“Could you teach me?” the giant asked in an almost awed whisper.
The child looked over his companion with a vague wonder. It would be a tremendous responsibility, this teaching of the giant, but what could be more spectacular than to have such a man as his pupil? But to share his unique empire over Diablo—that woul
d be a great price to pay!
“No,” he decided, “it wouldn’t do. Besides, suppose even I could teach you how to ride Diablo—with a saddle, which I don’t think I could—what would happen when Hal Dunbar come up to these parts and found that the hoss he wanted was somebody else’s? He’d make an awful fuss—and he’s a fighting man, Bull.”
He said this impressively, leaning a little toward the giant, and he was rewarded infinitely by seeing the right hand of the giant stir a little toward the holster at his thigh.
“I guess I’d have to take my chance with him,” was all Bull answered in his mildest tone.
Tod was beginning to guess that there was a certain amount of mental strength under this quiet exterior. He had often noted that his father, who made by far the most noise, was more easily placated than his mother, in spite of her gentle silences. The strength of Bull Hunter had a strain of the same thing about it.
“You’d take a chance with Hal Dunbar?” he repeated wonderingly. He trembled a little, with a sort of nervous ecstasy at the thought of that coming encounter. “That’s more’n anybody else in these parts would do. Why, everybody’s heard about Hal Dunbar. Everybody’s scared of him. He can ride anything that’s big enough to carry him; he can fight like a wildcat with his hands; and he can shoot like”—his eye wandered toward a superlative—“like Pete Reeve, almost,” he concluded with a tone of awe.
A spark of tenderness shone in the eye of Bull. “D’you know Pete Reeve?”
“No, and I don’t want to. Ma had a brother once, and he met up with Pete Reeve.”
A tragedy was inferred in that oblique reference. Bull decided that this was a conversational topic on which he must remain silent, and yet he yearned to speak of the little withered catlike fellow with the wise brain who had done so much for him.
“When I’m big enough,” mused the boy with a quiet savagery, “maybe I’ll meet up with Pete Reeve.”
Bull switched the talk to a more comfortable topic. “But how’d you make a start with that man-eating Diablo?”
Tod studied, the question. “I got a way with hosses, you see,” he began modestly.
He played two brown fingers in his mouth and sent out a shrilling whistle that was answered immediately by a whinny, and a little chestnut gelding, sun-faded to a sand color nearly, cantered into view around the corner of a shed and approached them. He came to a pause nearby, and having studied Bull Hunter with large, unafraid, curious eyes for a moment, began to nibble impertinently at the ragged hat brim of the child.
“Git away!” exclaimed Tod, and when the chestnut made no move to go, the brown fist flashed up at the reaching head. But the head was jerked away with a motion of catlike deftness.
“He’s a terrible bother, Crackajack is,” said the boy angrily, and from the corner of his eye he stole a glance of unspeakable pride at the big man.
“He’s a beauty,” exclaimed Bull Hunter. “A regular beauty!”
For Crackajack combined the toughness of a mustang and the lean, strong running lines of a thoroughbred in miniature. His legs were as delicately made as the legs of a deer; his head was a little model of impish intelligence and beauty.
“You and Crackajack are pals,” said Bull. “I guess that’s what you are!”
“We get on tolerable well,” admitted the boy, whose heart was full with this praise of his pet.
Bull continued on the agreeable topic. “And I’ll bet he’s fast, too. He looks like speed to me!”
“Maybe you don’t know hosses, but you sure got hoss sense.” Tod chuckled. “Most folks take Crackajack for a toy pony. He ain’t. I’ve seen him carry a full-grown man all day and keep up with the best of ’em. He don’t mind the weight of me no more’n if I was a feather. He’s fast, he’s tough, and he knows more’n a hoss should know, you might say!”
He changed his voice, and a brief command made Crackajack give up his teasing and retreat. Bull watched the exquisite little creature go, with a smile of pleasure. He did not know it, but that smile unlocked the last door to Tod’s heart.
“He was pretty near as wild as Diablo when I first got him,” said the boy. “And mean—say, he’d been kicked around all his life. But I fatted him up in the barn, and he got so’s he’d follow me around. And now he runs loose like a dog and comes when I whistle. He knows more things than you could shake a stick at, Crackajack does.” “I’ll bet he does,” said Bull with shining eyes.
“Say,” said the boy suddenly, “I’m going to tell you about the way I worked with Diablo.”
“I’ll take that mighty kind,” said Bull gratefully. “D’you think I’d have a chance with him even if you showed me how?”
“You got to have a way with hosses,” admitted the boy, and he examined Bull again. “But I think you’ll get on with hossflesh pretty well. When Diablo first come, he used to go plumb crazy when anybody come near his corral. He still does if a growed man comes there. Well, they used to go out and stand and watch him and laugh at him prancing around and kicking up a fuss at the sight of ’em.
“And it made me mad. Made me plumb mad to see them bother Diablo when he wasn’t doing no harm, when they wasn’t gaining anything by it, either.”
“I used to go out when nobody was around and stand by the bars with a bit of hay and grain heads in my hand. First off he’d prance around even at me, but pretty soon he seen that I wasn’t big enough to do him no harm, and then he’d just stand still and snort and look at me. Along about the third time he took notice of the grain heads and come and smelled them, and the next day he ate ’em.
“Well, I kept at it that way. Pretty soon I went inside the corral. Diablo just come up sort of excited and trembling and didn’t know whether to bash my head in with his forehoofs or let me go. Then he seen the grain heads and ate them while he was making up his mind what to do about me. And he winded up by just having a little talk with me. He was terribly dirty and dusty, and he was shedding. Nobody dared to brush him, and so I took a soft-haired brush and started to work on his neck. He liked it, and so I dressed him down and left him pretty near shining. And every day after that I went and had a talk with him and brushed him. Then I rode Crackajack up to the bars and let Diablo see me on him, with no bridle or saddle. Pretty soon I found out that it was the saddle and the bridle and the spurs that scared Diablo to death. He didn’t mind anything else so very much. So one day I climbed up the fence and slid onto Diablo’s back, and he just turned his head and snorted at me. Just then Pa seen me and let out a terrible yell, and Diablo pitched me right off over his head and over the fence. But I got right up and came back to him. He seen that he could get me off whenever he wanted to and he seen that I didn’t do him no harm when I got on.
“After that everything was easy. I never bothered him none with a saddle or a bridle. And there you are. D’you think you can do the same?”
“But the saddle and the bridle?” said Bull. “What about them?”
“That’s up to you to figure out a way of getting him used to ’em. I’ll go introduce you now, if I can.”
Bull rose, and the boy led the way.
“If he takes to you pretty kind,” said the boy, “you may have a chance. But if he begins acting up, it won’t be no use.”
CHAPTER 16
Diablo greeted them with a throwing up of his formidable head. He took his place in the very middle of his corral, but when Bull Hunter and his small guide reached the bars, the black stallion seemed to go suddenly mad. He flung himself into the air and came down bucking. Back and forth across the corral he threw himself in the wildest swirl of pitching that Bull Hunter had ever seen or ever dreamed of.
“He’s an educated bucker, you see?” said the boy in admiration. “They ain’t any trick that he don’t know. Look!”
Diablo had begun to sunfish in the most approved method, and swirled from this to some fence rowing as swift as the jagged course of lightning. At every jump Bull could see an imaginary rider snapped from the back of the bla
ck giant. A cloud of dust was sent swishing up, and in the midst of this fog, Diablo came to a pause as sudden as the beginning of his strange struggle against an imaginary foeman; but it seemed to Bull Hunter that the ground beneath his feet was still quivering from the impacts of that mighty body.
“That’s just his way of telling you what he’ll do when you try to saddle him,” chuckled the boy.
As he spoke he slipped through the bars of the corral.
“Look out!” exclaimed Bull in horror, for the stallion had rushed at the small intruder with gaping mouth. Bull reached for his gun—Diablo was already on the child, but at the last minute he swerved, and flashed around Tod in a circle.
“He’s all right,” Tod was shrilling through his laughter, for the horrified face of Bull amused him. “That’s just his way of saying that he’s glad to see me!”
In fact, Diablo came to a sudden halt directly behind the child, his head towering aloft above that of Tod while he flashed his defiance at Bull Hunter, as though he were making use of the small bulwark of Tod against the stranger.
“Diablo, you old fool,” the boy was saying, as he reached up and managed to wind his fingers in the end of Diablo’s mane, “you come along and meet my friend, Bull Hunter. I figure you’re going to get to know him pretty good before long. Hey, Bull, come up close to the bars so’s he can see you ain’t got a rope or a whip or spurs, and stick your hand out so’s he can sniff at it. That’s his way of saying how d’ye do.”
Bull obeyed, and to his amazement, Diablo responded to the small forward urge of the child’s hand and approached the bars one trembling step at a time. Bull began to talk to him softly. He had never talked like this to any living creature. He did not know exactly what he said. The words came of their own accord into his throat. He only knew that he wanted to reassure the big, powerful, uncertain brute, and though Diablo stopped short at the first sound of Bull’s voice and laid his ears back, he presently pricked one of those ears again and allowed himself to be drawn forward with long, crouching strides.
