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 passed 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 accumulating 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 embarrassing.

“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.”