“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.

“Drunk, en?”

“Nope.  Not drunk.  He was asked if he didn’t do the murder.”

“Great guns!  Who asked him?”

“I done it,” said Bull as simply as ever.

Reeve bit his lip.  He had just put Bull down as a simple-minded hulk. 
He was forced to revise his opinion.

“You done that?  You follered him up, eh?”

“I just done a little thinking.  So I asked him.”

Reeve shook his head.  “Maybe you hypnotized him,” he suggested.

“Nope.  I just asked him.  I got a lot of folks sitting around, and then I began telling the sheriff how he done the shooting.”

“And he admitted it?”

“Nope.  He jumped for a gun.”

“And then you heaved a chair at him.”  Pete Reeve drew in a long breath.  “But what reason did you have, son?  I got to ask you that before I thank you the way I want to thank you.  But, before you kick out, you’ll find that Pete Reeve is a friend.”

“My reason was,” said Bull, “that I had business to do with you that couldn’t be done in a jail.  So I had to get you out.”

“And now where’re we headed?”

“Where we can do that business.”

They had reached a broad break in the cottonwoods; the moonlight was falling so softly and brightly.

Bull paused and looked around him.  “I guess this’ll have to do,” he declared.

“All right, son.  You can be as mysterious as you want.  Now what you got me here for?”

“To kill you,” said Bull gently.

Pete Reeve flinched back.  Then he tapped his holster, made sure of the gun, became more easy.  “That’s interesting,” he announced.  “You couldn’t wait for the law to hang me, eh?”