“Well, I’ll be hanged, Bull, here you are as big as life, pretty near, and you don’t act like you knew me!”

“Sure I do.  Sit down, Harry.  What brung you all this ways?”

“Why, anxious to see how you was doing.”

Again Bull blinked.  Such anxiety from Harry was a mystery.

“They ain’t talking about much else up our way,” said Harry, “but how you come across the mountains in the storm, and how big you are, and how you got the sheriff, and how you rushed Pete Reeve bare-handed.  Sure is some story!  All the way down I just had to say that I was Bull Hunter’s cousin to get free meals!” He licked his lips and grinned again.  “So I come down to see how you was.”

“I’m doing tolerable fair,” said Bull slowly, “and it was good of you to come this long ways to ask that question.  How’s things to home?”

“Dad’s bunged up for life; can’t do nothing but cuss, but at that he lays over anything you ever hear.”  Harry’s eyes flicked nervously about the room.  “It was him that sent me down!  Where’s Reeve?”

This was in a whisper.  Bull gestured toward the next room.

“Asleep?  Can he hear if I talk?”

“Asleep,” said Bull.  “Been up with me two days.  I took a bad turn a while back.  Pete’s helping himself to a nap, and he needs one!”

“Now, listen!” said Harry.  “Dad figured this out, and Dad’s mostly never wrong.  He says, ’Reeve shot up Bull.  Now he’s hanging around trying to make up by nursing Bull, according to reports, because he’s afraid of what Bull’ll do when he gets back on his feet.  But Bull has got to know that, even when he’s back on his feet, he can’t beat Reeve—­not while Reeve can pull a gun.  Nobody can beat that devil.  If he wants to beat Reeve, just take advantage of him while Reeve ain’t expecting anything—­which means while Bull is sick.’  Do you get what Dad means?”

“Sort of,” said Bull faintly.  He shut out the eager, dirty, unshaven face.  “I’ll just close my eyes against the light.  I can hear you pretty well.  Go on.”

“Here’s the idea.  Everybody knows you hate Reeve, and Reeve fears you.  Otherwise would he act like this, aside from being afraid of a lynching, in case you should die?  No, he wouldn’t.  Well, one of these days you take this gun”—­here Harry shoved one under the pillow of Bull—­“and call Pete Reeve over to you, and when he leans over your bed, blow his brains out!  That’s easy, and it’ll do what you’ll want to do someday.  You hear?  Then you can say that Reeve started something—­that you shot in self-defense.  Everybody’ll believe you, and you’ll get one big name for killing Reeve!  You foller me?”

Bull opened his eyes, but they were squinting as though he was in the severest pain.  “Listen, Harry,” he said at last.  “I been thinking things out.  I owe a lot to your dad for taking me in and keeping me.  But all I owe him I can pay back in cash—­someday.  I don’t owe him no love.  Not you, neither.”