Bull Hunter | Page 6

flashed on the swift circle of the ax. Joe and Harry stepped back as
though the light had blinded them.
"He didn't never work like that before," declared Joe.
The ax was buried almost to the haft in the tough wood, and the steel
was wrenching out with a squeak of the metal against the resisting
wood. Again the blinding circle and the indescribable sound of the ax's
impact, slicing through the wood. A great chip snapped up high over

the shoulder of the chopper and dropped solidly to the ground at the
feet of the brothers. Again they exchanged glances and drew a little
closer together. The log divided under the shower of eating blows, and
Bull attacked the next section.
Presently he came to a pause, leaning on the handle of the ax and
staring into the distance. At this the brothers sighed with relief.
"I guess he ain't changed so much," said Harry. "But it was queer, eh?
Kind of like a bear waking up after he'd been sleeping all winter!"
They jarred Bull out of his dream with a shout and set him to work
again; then they started the preparations for the evening meal. The
simple preparations were soon completed, but after the potatoes were
boiled, they delayed frying the bacon, for their father, old Bill
Campbell, had not yet returned from his hunting trip and he disliked
long-cooked food. Things had to be freshly served to suit Bill, and his
sons dared the wrath of heaven rather than the biting reproaches of the
old man.
It was strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he was
always back before the coming of evening. An old and practiced
mountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction or
sense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went down
and the soft, beautiful mountain twilight began.
There were other reasons which would ordinarily have disturbed Bill
and brought him home even ahead of time. Snow had fallen heavily
above the timberline a few days before, and now the keen whistling of
the wind and the swift curtaining of clouds, which was drawing across
the sky, threatened a new storm that might even reach down to the
shack.
And yet no Bill appeared.
The brothers waited in the shack, and the darkness was increasing. Any
one of a number of things might have happened to their father, but they
were not worried. For one thing, they wasted no love on the stern old

man. They knew well enough that he had plenty of money, but he kept
them here to a dog's life in the shack, and they hated him for it. Besides,
they had a keen grievance which obscured any worry about Bill--they
were hungry, wildly hungry. The darkness set in, and the feeble light
wandered from the smoked chimney of the lantern and made the
window black.
Outside, the wind began to scream, sighing in the distance among the
firs, and then pouncing upon the cabin and shaking it as though in rage.
The fire would smoke in the stove at every one of these blasts, and the
flame leaped in the lantern.
Bull Hunter had to lean closer to the light and frown to make out the
print of his book. The sight of his stolid immobility merely sharpened
their hunger, for there was never any passion in this hulk of a man.
When he relaxed over a book the world went out like a snuffed candle
for him. He read slowly, lingering over every page, for now and again
his eyes drifted away from the print, and he dreamed over what he had
read. In reality he was not reading for the plot, but for the pictures he
found, and he dreaded coming to the end of a book also, for books were
rare in his life. A scrap of a magazine was a treasure. A full volume
was a nameless delight.
And so he worked slowly through every paragraph and made it his and
dreamed over it until he knew every thought and every picture by heart.
Once slowly devoured in this way, it was useless to reread a book. It
was far better to simply sit and let the slow memory of it trail through
his mind link by link, just as he had first read it and with all the
embroiderings which his own fancy had conjured up.
Often this stupid pondering over a book would madden the two
brothers. It irritated them till they would move the lantern away from
him. But he always followed the light with a sigh and uncomplainingly
settled down again. Sometimes they even snatched the book out of his
hands. In that case he sat looking