“If they’s as much light of life in him,” said Pete Reeve, “as the flicker of a candle, I’ll fan it up till it’s as big as a forest fire.  Man, he’s got to live.”

“H’m!” said Morton.  “And how come the shooting?”

“Stop your fool questions,” said Reeve.  “Help me get him to town and to a bed.”

It was useless to attempt to carry that great, loose-limbed body.  They brought the buckboard perilously through the shrubbery and then managed, with infinite labor, to lift Bull Hunter into it.  With Pete Reeve supporting the head of the wounded man and cautioning them to drive gently, they managed the journey to the town as softly as possible.  At the hotel a strong-armed cortege bore Bull to a bed, and they carried him reverently.  Had his senses been with him he would have wondered greatly; and had his uncle, or his uncle’s sons, been there, they would surely have laughed uproariously.

In the hotel room Pete Reeve took command at once.  “He’s too big to die,” he told the dubious doctor.  “He’s got to live.  And the minute you say he can’t, out you go and another doc comes in.  Now do your work.”

The doctor, haunted by the deep, fiery eyes of the gunfighter, stepped into the room to minister to his patient.  He had a vague feeling that, if Bull Hunter died, Pete Reeve would blame him for lack of care.  In truth, Pete seemed ready to blame everyone.  He threatened to destroy the whole village if a dog was allowed to howl in the night, or if the baby next door were permitted to cry in the day.

Silence settled over the little town—­silence and the fear of Pete Reeve.  Pete himself never left the sickroom.  Wide-eyed, silent-footed, he was ever about.  He seemed never to sleep, and the doctor swore that the only reason Bull Hunter did not die was because death feared to enter the room while the awful Reeve was there.

But the long hours of unconsciousness and delirium wore away.  Then came the critical period when a relapse was feared.  Finally the time came when it could be confidently stated that Bull was recovering his health and his strength.

All this filled a matter of weeks.  Bull was still unable to leave his bed.  He was dull and listless, bony of hand, and liable to sleep many hours through the very heart of the day.  At this point of his recovery the door opened one day, and, in the warmth of the afternoon, a big man came into the room, shutting the door softly behind him.

Bull turned his head slowly and then blinked, for it was the unshaven face of his cousin, Harry Campbell, that he saw.  With his eyes closed, Bull wondered why that face was so distinctly unpleasant.  When he opened them again, Harry had drawn closer, his hat pushed on the back of his head after the manner of a baffled man, and a faint smile working at the corners of his lips.  He took the limp hand of Bull in his and squeezed it cautiously.  Then he laid the hand back on the sheet and grinned more confidently at Bull.