Their very voices held a world of difference.  The tone of Pete Reeve was pitched a little high, hard, and somewhat nasal, and when he was angry his words came shrill and ringing.  The mere sound of his voice was irritating—­it put one on edge with expectancy of action.  Whereas the full, deep, slow, musical voice of Bull Hunter was a veritable sleep producer.  Men might fear Charlie Bull Hunter because of his tremendous bulk; but children, hearing his voice, were unafraid.

The motions of Pete Reeve were as fast and as deft as the whiplash striking of a snake.  The motions of Bull Hunter were premeditated and cautious, as befitting one whose hands might crush what they touched, and whose footfall made a flooring groan.

He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall.  They had moved a ponderous stool into the room so that Bull might have something on which to sit, but long habit had made him uneasy in a chair, and he kept to the floor by preference, with the great square chin resting on his fist and his knee supporting his elbow.  That position pressed the forearm against the biceps and the big muscles bulged out on either side, vast as the thigh of a strong man.

With lionlike wrinkles of attention between his eyes, he listened to the exposition of the little man, and followed his movements with patient submission—­like a pupil to whom a great master has consented to unfold the secrets of his brushwork; in such a manner did Bull Hunter drink in the words and the acts of Pete Reeve.  And, indeed, where guns were the subject of conversation it would have been hard to find a man more thoroughly equipped to pose as an expert than Pete Reeve.  That fleshless hand, all speed of motion as it whipped out the gun from the nerve and sinew, became an incredible ghost with the holster and the long, heavy Colt danced and flashed at his fingertips as though it were a gilded shadow.

As he worked he talked, and as he talked he strode constantly back and forth through the room with his light-falling, mincing steps.  He grew excited.  He flushed.  There came a thrill and a ring and a deepening of the voice.  For the master was indeed talking of the secrets of his craft.

A thousand men of the mountains and the cattle ranges, men who, for personal pride or for physical need, studied accuracy and speed in gunplay, would have paid untold prices to learn these secrets from the lips of the little man.  To Bull Hunter the mysteries were revealed for nothing, freely, and drilled and drummed into him through the weeks of his convalescence; and still the lessons continued now that he was hale and hearty once more—­as the clean-swept platters from which he ate three times a day gave evidence.

“I’ve practiced, you admit,” said Bull in his slow voice, as Pete Reeve came to a pause.  “But I haven’t got your way with a gun, Pete.  You’ve got a genius for it.  I don’t blame you for laughing at me when I try to get out my gun fast.  I can shoot straight.  That’s because I haven’t any nerves, as you say, but I’ll never be able to get out a gun as fast as a thought—­the way you do.  Fact is, Pete, I don’t think fast, you know.”