Bull tried--the gun did come clear of the holster.
"No good," he said gravely. "It"s magic when you do it, Pete. It just makes a fool of me."
"Shut up and listen!" Pete said sharply. "I"m telling you a thing that"ll save your life some day!"
He drew a little closer. His emotion made him swell to a greater stature, and he rose a little on tiptoe as if partly to make up for the differences between their bulks.
Bull obeyed.
"Now start thinking. Start concentrating on that right hand. There"s nothing else to your body. You see? You forget you got a muscle.
There"s three things in the world. You see? Just three things and no more. There"s your gun with a bullet in it; there"s your hand that"s going to get the gun out; and there"s your target--that doork.n.o.b, say!
Keep on thinking. They ain"t any more to your body. You"re just a hand and an eye. All your nerves are down there in that hand. They"re all piled down there. That hand is full of electricity. Don"t let your eyes wander. Keep on concentrating. You"re stocking the electricity in that hand. When your hand moves, it"ll be as fast as the jump of a spark! And when that hand moves, the gun is going to come out clean in it. It"s _got_ to come out with it! You hear? It"s _got_ to! Your fingertips catch under the b.u.t.t; they flick up. They don"t draw the gun; they throw it out of the holster; they pitch the muzzle up, and the b.u.t.t comes smack back against the palm of your hand. And in the same part of a second you pull the trigger. You hear?"
He leaned forward, trembling from head to foot. The eyes of the big man were beginning to narrow.
"I hear; I understand!" he said through his teeth.
"You don"t pull the gun. You _think_ it out of the leather. And then the bullet hits the doork.n.o.b. You don"t move your arm. Your arm doesn"t exist. You"re just a hand and a brain--thinking! And that thought sends a bullet at the mark!" He leaped back. "Draw!"
There was a wink of light at the hip of Bull Hunter, and the gun roared.
Instantly he cried out, alarmed, confused, ashamed.
"I didn"t mean to shoot, Pete. I"m a fool! I didn"t mean to! It--I sort of couldn"t help it. The--the trigger was just pulled without my wanting it to! Lord, what"ll people think!"
But Pete Reeve had flung his arms around the big man as far as they would go, and he hugged him in a hysteria of joy. Then he leaped back, dancing, throwing up his hands.
"You done it!" he cried, his voice squeaking, hysterical.
"I made a fool of myself, all right," said Bull, bewildered by this exhibition of joy where he had expected anger.
"Fool nothing! Look at that k.n.o.b!"
The doork.n.o.b was a smashed wreck, driven into the thick wood of the door by the heavy slug of the revolver. Footsteps were running up the stairs of the hotel. Pete Reeve ran to the door and flung it open.
"It"s all right, boys," he called. "Cleaning a gun and it went off. No harm done!"
CHAPTER 12
"And now," said Pete Reeve, looking almost ruefully at his pupil, "with a little practice on that, they ain"t a man in the world that could safely take a chance with you. I couldn"t myself."
"Pete!"
"I mean it, son. Not a man in the world. I was afraid all the time. I was afraid you didn"t have that there electricity in you or whatever they call it. I was afraid you had too much beef and not enough nerves. But you haven"t. And now that you have the knack, keep practicing every day--thinking the gun out of the leather--that"s the trick!"
Bull Hunter looked down to the gun with great, staring eyes, as though it was the first time in his life that he had seen the weapon. Pete Reeve noted his expression and abruptly became silent, grinning happily, for there was the dawn of a great discovery in the eyes of the big man.
The gun was no longer a gun. It was a part of him. It was flesh of his flesh. He had literally thought it out of the holster, and the report of the weapon had startled him more than it had frightened anyone else in the building. He looked in amazement down to the broad expanse of his right hand. It was trembling a little, as though, in fact, that hand were filled with electric currents. He closed his fingers about the b.u.t.t of the gun. At once the hand became steady as a rock. He toyed with the weapon in loosely opened fingers again, and it slid deftly. It seemed impossible for it to fall into an awkward position.
The voice of Pete Reeve came from a great distance. "And they"s only one thing lacking to make you perfect--and that"s to have to fight once for your life and drop the other gent. After that happens--well, Pete Reeve will have a successor!"
How much that meant Bull Hunter very well knew. The terrible fame of Pete Reeve ran the length and the breadth of the mountains. Of course Bull did not for a moment dream that Pete meant what he said. It was all figurative. It was said to fill him with self-confidence, but part of it was true. He was no longer the clumsy-handed Bull Hunter of the moment before.
A great change had taken place. From that moment his very ways of thinking would be different. He would be capable of less misty movements of the mind. He would be capable of using his brain as fast as his hand acted. A tingle of new life, new possibilities were opening before him. He had always accepted himself as a stupidly hopeless burden in the world, a burden on his friends, useless, cloddish. Now he found that he had hopes. His own mind and body was an undiscovered country which he was just beginning to enter. What might be therein was worth a dream or two, and Bull Hunter straightway began to dream, happily. That was a talent which he had always possessed in superabundance.
The brief remainder of the day pa.s.sed quickly; and then just before supper time a stranger came to call on Pete Reeve. He was a tall, bony fellow with straight-looking eyes and an imperious lift of his head when he addressed anyone. Manners was his name--Hugh Manners. When he was introduced he ran his eyes unabashedly over the great bulk of Bull Hunter, and then promptly he turned his back on the big man and excluded him from the heart of the conversation. It irritated Bull unwontedly. He discovered that he had changed a great deal from the old days at his uncle"s shack when he was used to the scorn and the indifference of all men as a worthless and stupid hulk of flesh, with no mind worth considering, but he said nothing. Another great talent of Bull"s was his ability to keep silent.
Shortly after this they went down to the supper table. All through the meal Hugh Manners engaged Pete Reeve in soft, rapid-voiced conversation which was so nicely gauged as to range that Bull Hunter heard no more than murmurs. He seemed to have a great many important things to say to Pete, and he kept Pete nodding and listening with a frown of serious interest. At first Pete tried to make up for the insolent neglect of his companion by drawing a word or two from Bull from time to time, but it was easy for Bull to see that Pete wished to hear his newfound friend hold forth. It hurt Bull, but he resigned himself and drew out of the talk.
After supper he went up to the room and found a book. There had been little time for reading since he pa.s.sed the first stages of convalescence from his wounds. Pete Reeve had kept him constantly occupied with gun work, and the hunger for print had been acc.u.mulating in Bull. He started to satisfy it now beside the smoking lamp. He hardly heard Pete and Hugh Manners enter the room and go out again onto the second story of the veranda on which their room opened. From time to time the murmur of their voices came to him, but he regarded it not.
It was only when he had lowered the book to muse over a strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping very softly, for he had grown accustomed to lightening his footfall, and now unconsciously the murmuring voices of the talkers made him move stealthily--not to steal upon them, but to keep from breaking in on their talk. But when he came to the door opening on the veranda the words he heard banished all thought of falling stars. He listened, dazed.
Pete Reeve had just broken into the steady flow of the newcomer"s talk.
"It"s no use, Hugh. I can"t go, you see. I"m tied down here with the big fellow."
"Tied down?" thought Bull Hunter, and he winced.
A curse, then, "Why don"t you throw the big hulk over?"
"He ain"t a hulk," protested Pete somewhat sharply, and the heart of Bull warmed again.
"Hush," said Hugh Manners. "He"ll be hearing."
"No danger. He"s at his books, and that means that he wouldn"t hear a cannon. That"s his way."
"He don"t look like a book-learned gent," said Hugh Manners with more respect in his voice.
"He don"t look like a lot of things that he is," said Pete. "I don"t know what he is myself--except that he"s the straightest, gentlest, kindest, simplest fellow that ever walked."
Bull Hunter turned to escape from hearing this eulogy, but he dared not move for fear his retreat might be heard--and that would be immensely embarra.s.sing.
"Just what he is I don"t know," said Pete again. "He doesn"t know himself. He"s had what you might call an extra-long childhood--that"s why he"s got that misty look in his eyes."
"That fool look," scoffed Hugh Manners.
"You think so? I tell you, Manners, he"s just waking up, and when he"s clear waked up he"ll be a world-beater! You saw that doork.n.o.b?"
"Smashed? Yep. What of it?"
"He done it with a gun, standing clean across the room, with a flash draw, shooting from the hip--and he made a clean center hit of it."
Pete brought out these facts jerkily, one by one, piling one extraordinary thing upon the other; and when he had finished, Hugh Manners gasped.