Part 1 (1/2)

Bull Hunter.

by Max Brand.

CHAPTER 1

It was the big central taproot which baffled them. They had hewed easily through the great side roots, large as branches, covered with soft brown bark; they had dug down and cut through the forest of tender small roots below; but when they had pa.s.sed the main body of the stump and worked under it, they found that their hole around the trunk was not large enough in diameter to enable them to reach to the taproot and cut through it. They could only reach it feebly with the hatchet, fraying it, but there was no chance for a free swing to sever the tough wood. Instead of widening the hole at once, they kept laboring at the root, working the stump back and forth, as though they hoped to crystallize that stubborn taproot and snap it like a wire.

Still it held and defied them. They laid hold of it together and tugged with a grunt; something tore beneath that effort, but the stump held, and upward progress ceased.

They stopped, too tired for profanity, and gazed down the mountainside after the manner of baffled men, who look far off from the thing that troubles them. They could tell by the trees that it was a high alt.i.tude. There were no cottonwoods, though the cottonwoods will follow a stream for more than a mile above sea level. Far below them a pale mist obscured the beautiful silver spruce which had reached their upward limit. Around the cabin marched a scattering of the balsam fir.

They were nine thousand feet above the sea, at least. Still higher up the sallow forest of lodgepole pines began; and above these, beyond the timberline, rose the bald summit itself.

They were big men, framed for such a country, defying the roughness with a roughness of their own--these stalwart sons of old Bill Campbell. Both Harry and Joe Campbell were fully six feet tall, with mighty bones and sinews and work-toughened muscles to justify their stature. Behind them stood their home, a shack better suited for the housing of cattle than of men. But such leather-skinned men as these were more tender to their horses than to themselves. They slept and ate in the shack, but they lived in the wind and the sun.

Although they had looked down the stern slopes to the lower Rockies, they did not see the girl who followed the loosely winding trail. She was partly sheltered by the firs and came out just above them. They began moiling at the stump again, sweating, cursing, and the girl halted her horse near by. The profanity did not distress her. She was so accustomed to it that the words had lost all edge and point for her; but her freckled face stirred to a smile of pleasure at the sight of their strength, as they alternately smote at the taproot and then strove in creaking, grunting unison to work it loose.

They remained so long oblivious of her presence that at length she called, ”Why don't you dig a bigger hole, boys?”

She laughed in delight as they jerked up their heads in astonishment.

Her laughter was young and sweet to the ear, but there was not a great deal outside her laughter that was attractive about her.

However, Joe and Harry gaped and grinned and blushed at her in the time-old fas.h.i.+on, for she lived in a country where to be a woman is sufficient, beauty is an unnecessary luxury, soon taxed out of existence by the life. She possessed the main essentials of social power; she could dance unflaggingly from dark to dawn at the nearest schoolhouse dance, chattering every minute; and she could maintain a rugged silence from dawn to dark again, as she rode her pony home.

Harry Campbell took off his hat, not in politeness, but to scratch his head. ”Say, Jessie, where'd you drop from? Didn't see you coming no ways.”

”Maybe I come down like rain,” said Jessie.

All three laughed heartily at this jest.

Jessie swung sidewise in her saddle with the lithe grace of a boy, dropped her elbow on the high pommel, and gave advice. ”You got a pretty bad taproot under yonder. Better chop out a bigger hole, boys.

But, say, what you clearing this here land for? Ain't no good for nothing, is it?” She looked around her. Here and there the clearing around the shanty ate raggedly into the forest, but still the plowed land was chopped up with a jutting of boulders.

”Sure it ain't no good for nothing,” said Joe. ”It's just the old man's idea.”

He jerked a grimy thumb over his shoulder to indicate the controlling and absent power of the old man, somewhere in the woods.

”Sure makes him glum when we ain't working. If they ain't nothing worthwhile to do he always sets us to grubbing up roots; and if we ain't diggin' up roots, we got to get out old 'Maggie' mare and try to plow. Plow in rocks like them! n.o.body but Bull can do it.”

”I didn't know Bull could do nothing,” said the girl with interest.

”Aw, he's a fool, right enough,” said Harry, ”but he just has a sort of head for knowing where the rocks are under the ground, and somehow he seems to make old Maggie hoss know where they lie, too. Outside of that he sure ain't no good. Everybody knows that.”

”Kind of too bad he ain't got no brains,” said the girl. ”All his strength is in his back, and none is in his head, my dad says. If he had some part of sense he'd be a powerful good hand.”

”Sure would be,” agreed Harry. ”But he ain't no good now. Give him an ax maybe, and he hits one or two wallopin' licks with it and then stands and rests on the handle and starts to dreaming like a fool.

Same way with everything. But, say, Joe, maybe he could start this stump out of the hole.”

”But I seen you both try to get the stump up,” said the girl in wonder.