What Bull Hunter saw was not the escape of the sheriff, but a sudden blind rage against everything and everybody. It was a pa.s.sion that set him trembling through all of his great body. One touch of trust, one word of encouragement had been enough to make him a giant to tear up the stump in the presence of Jessie and his cousins; how far more mighty he was in the grip of this new emotion, this rage.

His own gun was far away, but guns were not what he wanted. They were uncongenial toys to his great hands. Instead, he reached down and caught up that ma.s.sive chair of oak, built to resist time, built to bear even such a bulk as that of Bull Hunter with ease. Yet he caught it up in one hand, weighed it behind his head at the full limit of his extended arm, and then, bending forward, he catapulted the great missile down the length of the table. It hit the lamp on the way and splintered it to small bits, its momentum unimpeded. Hurtling on across the table it shot at the sheriff as he whirled with his guns in his hands.

Fast as the chair shot forward, the hand of the sheriff was faster still. Bull saw the big guns twitch up, silver in the moonshine. They exploded in one voice, as if the flying ma.s.s of wood were an animate object. Then the sheriff was struck and hurled crashing along the floor.

CHAPTER 9

At that fall the six men scampered from beneath the table to seize the downed man. There was no need of their haste. Sheriff Anderson was a wreck rather than a fighting man. One arm was horribly crumpled beneath him; his ribs were shattered, there was a great gash where the rung of the chair had cut into the bone like a knife.

They stood chattering about the fallen man, straightening him out, feeling his pulse, making sure that he, who would soon hang at the will of the law, was alive. Outside, voices were rushing toward them, doors slamming.

Bull Hunter broke through the circle, bent over the limp body, and drew a big bundle of keys from a pocket. Then, without a word, he went back to the far end of the room, buckled on his gun belt, and in silence left the room.

The others paid no heed. They and the newcomers who had poured into the room were fascinated by the work of the giant rather than the giant's self. They had a lantern, swinging dull light and grotesque shadows across the place now, and by the illumination, two of the men went to the wall and picked up the great oaken chair. They raised it slowly between them, a battered ma.s.s of disconnected wood. Then they looked to the far end of the long table where he who had thrown the missile had stood. Another line had been written into the history of Bull Hunter--the first line that was written in red.

Bull himself was on his way to the jail. He found it unguarded. The deputy had gone to find the cause of the commotion at the hotel. The steel bars, moreover, were sufficient to retain the prisoner and keep out would-be rescuers.

In the dim light of his lantern, Bull saw that Pete Reeve was sitting cross-legged on his bunk, like a little, dried-up idol, smoking a cigarette. His only greeting to the big man was a lifting of the eyebrows. But, when the big key was fitted into the lock and the lock turned, he showed his first signs of interest. He was standing up when Bull opened the door and strode in.

"Have you got your things?" said Bull curtly.

"What things, big fellow?"

"Why, guns and things--and your hat, of course."

Pete Reeve walked to the corner of the cell and took a sombrero off the wall. "Here's that hat," he answered, "but they ain't pa.s.sing out guns to jailbirds--not in these parts!"

"You ain't a jailbird," answered Bull, "so we'll get that gun. Know where it is?"

Reeve followed without a question through the open door, only stopping as he pa.s.sed beyond the bars, to look back to them with a shudder. It was the first sign of emotion he had shown since his arrest. But his step was lighter and quicker as he followed Bull into the front room.

"In that closet, yonder," said Reeve, pointing to a door. "That's where they keep the guns."

Bull shook out his bundle of keys into the great palm of his hand.

"Not those keys--the deputy has the key to the closet," said Pete. "I saw Anderson give it to him."

Bull sighed. "I ain't got much time, partner," he said. Approaching the door, he examined it wistfully. "But, maybe, they's another way."

He drew back a little, raised his right leg, and smashed the heavy cowhide boot against the door. The wood split from top to bottom, and Bull's leg was driven on through the aperture. He paused to wrench the fragments of the door from lock and hinges and then beckoned to Pete Reeve. "Look for your gun in here, Reeve."

The little man cast one twinkling glance at his companion and then was instantly among the litter of the closet floor. He emerged strapping a belt about him, the holster tugging far down, so that the muzzle of the gun was almost at his knee. Bull appreciated the diminutive size of the man for the first time, seeing him in conjunction with the big gun on his thigh.

There was an odd change in the little man also, the moment his gun was in place. He tugged his broad-brimmed hat a little lower across his eyes and poised himself, as if on tiptoe; his glance was a constant flicker about the room until it came to rest on Bull. "Suppose you lemme in on the meaning of all this. Who are you and where do you figure on letting me loose? What in thunder is it all about?"

"We'll talk later. Now you got to get started."

Bull waved to the door. Pete Reeve darted past him with noiseless steps and paused a moment at the threshold of the jail. Plainly he was ready for fight or flight, and his right hand was toying constantly with the holstered b.u.t.t of his gun. Bull followed to the outside.

"Hosses?" asked the little man curtly.

"On foot," answered Bull with equal brevity, and he led the way straight across the street. There was no danger of being seen. All the life of the town was drawn to a center about the hotel. Lights were flashing behind its windows, men were constantly pounding across the veranda, running in and out. Bull led the way past the building and cut for the cottonwoods.

"And now?" demanded Pete Reeve. "Now, partner?"

That word stung Bull. It had not been applied to him more than a half a dozen times in his life, together with its implications of free and equal brotherhood. To be called partner by the great man who had conquered terrible Uncle Bill Campbell!

"They's a mess in the hotel," said Bull, explaining as shortly as he could. "Seems that Sheriff Anderson was the gent that done the killing of Armstrong. It got found out and the sheriff tried to get away. Lots of noise and trouble."

"Ah," said Reeve, "it was him, then--the old hound! I might have knowed! But I kep' on figuring that they was two of 'em! Well, the sheriff was a handy boy with his gun. Did he drop anybody before they got him? I heard two guns go off like one. Them must of been the sheriff's cannons."

"They was," said Bull, "but them bullets didn't hit nothing but wood."

"Wild, eh? Shot into the wall?"

"Nope. Into a chair."

The little man was struggling and panting sometimes breaking into a trot to keep up with the immense strides of his companion. "A chair?

You don't say so!"

Bull was silent.

"How come he shot at a chair? Drunk?"

"The chair was sailing through the air at him."

"H'm!" returned Pete Reeve. "Somebody throwed a chair at him, and the sheriff got rattled and shot at it instead of dodging? Well, I've seen a pile of funnier things than that happen in gun play, off and on. Who threw the chair?"

"I did."

"You?" He squinted up at the lofty form of Bull Hunter. "What name did you say?" he asked gently.

"Hunter is my name. Mostly they call me Bull."

"You got the size for that name, partner. So you cleaned up the sheriff with a chair?" he sighed. "I wish I'd been there to see it.

But who got the inside on the sheriff?"

"I dunno what you mean?"

Pete Reeve looked closely at his companion. Plainly he was bewildered, somewhere between a smile and a frown.

"I mean who found out that the sheriff done it?"

"He told it himself," said Bull.