He started up to make the kill, and, as he did so, the colt raised his head and looked idly about him. It was a head very like the head of Diablo, when The Ghost had slipped out into the corral on many a night to touch noses with the stallion, and while he was crouched for the spring, The Ghost felt his muscles relax.
At length, as noiselessly as he had come, he slipped from the corral and fled away across the hills.
It was the beginning of a period of ceaseless wandering. He killed irregularly, joylessly, only for food. Neither did it matter what was his prey, but more and more there was a growing distaste for the creatures of man. Now he caught squirrels and chipmunks and rabbits, beggarly prey for The Ghost as he had once been. But, alas, he was changed! There was one single instant of joy, a battle with a lone veteran of a wolf whom he met on a narrow trail along a cañon side. That fight ended with his foe toppling a thousand feet below to destruction, and The Ghost went on.
One who watched him would have known that he was hunting; but of that The Ghost was unaware. He only knew that his heart ached steadily, that his muscles were growing lean and his skin was hanging in folds, for it was the old tragedy of the wilderness. Wild creatures which have been once tamed can never be truly wild again; the chain with which men hold their slaves has no weight. It is the mind, and this chain can never be broken.
While The Ghost hunted for happiness in the mountains where he had been a king, roaming in great and ever widening circles, chance brought him the explanation which he himself could never have arrived at, for, as he lay under a tree one day, a dust cloud, far down a winding trail, dissolved into a horseman; and when the horseman drew near, he saw the glint of the sun on the shining black charger. Then a veering of the wind brought him an old, old scent.
The Ghost leaped to his feet. There was something like a great thirst in his throat, and yet the coldest, clearest water that ever bubbled in a mountain spring could never have satisfied it. Presently he sat back on his haunches, and the long, weird, heart-chilling wolf yell went echoing down the mountainside.
In response the sun flashed on a naked rifle barrel, as the rider swung it into place. The Ghost winced away. Well he knew the meaning of that glimmer of steel, wavering back and forth in a straight line that steadied to a point. Yet he knew the hand on the gun also, and he rose mournfully and raised his head to wait for the end. Twice, blinking at that point of light on the barrel, as the rider drew the bead, he thought the end had come; and then the rifle was lowered, and the hand of the man went up.
A voice was calling him down the wind, a voice that made his heart thunder in response. The Ghost fled like the wind to meet Bull Hunter. Three swift circles he made around the horse and rider, with Diablo whinnying a soft welcome, and then he ran to them and placed his forepaws on the knee of the master and licked his hand.
He knew that the other hand stroked his battle-scarred head, while the voice, speaking as kindly as ever, was saying to him: ”Old Pete Reeve was right. You’re like him, partner. You’re no dog, and you’re no wolf, but you belong in between. Just where, darned if I know, but you and me’ll work it out together. If only I could do the same for Pete!”
Chapter XVIII
The Challenge
It was far north on the mountain desert, in one of those towns which grow up like weeds and die like weeds in the West, according as lumber and mining camps are opened and closed and as the cattle centers change.
Viewed by the hawk’s eye from above, the town was merely a rough collection of shacks, whose roofs sent back the sunshine in a myriad of heat waves. The houses were weathered to the color of the desert, a deadly drab. Some of them had been painted once or twice, but dry heat in summer and fierce storms in winter peeled up the paint and soaked it away. It was not a town in the desert; it was part of the desert, called by grace a town, yet to its inhabitants it was a haven of refuge. Under those low roofs was shade, and the floors could be doused with water many times a day for the sake of coolness.
Dunkin and Pete Reeve sat on the veranda, freshly drenched from buckets, and each took his ease, tilted far back in a chair, the soles of his feet braced against separate pillars. In that position the hotel proprietor found them as he came sweating up the steps.
“When I asked for the hotel mail,” said he, “the postmaster give me this letter for you, Mr. Hardy.”
Then he passed on into the hotel. As for Hardy, alias Dunkin, he sat as one stunned, turning the letter over and over in his hands.
“But it can’t be for me,” he declared to Reeve. “Must be some other John Hardy around here, a real one, I mean. Nobody that would write to me knows I’m here.”
“It’s meant for you, right enough,” Reeve assured him. “If there was another Hardy around here wouldn’t they know about him? Open up and let’s hear the good news.”
Dunkin, still shaking his head, opened the letter and read aloud:
“I’ve been looking for you a long time, Dunkin, and just the other day a gent blew into town and told me about a fellow named Hardy. What he said tallied pretty closely with you; and when he spoke about Pete Reeve, I was sure it was you.
“So I’m writing this letter to let you know why I want to see you. For reasons I can’t explain, it’s come to the point where one of us has to go down, and naturally I’d rather that one should be you. I don’t care how you want to fight, on horses or foot, or with rifles or Colts or knives.
“I’m over in Tuckertown now, the eighteenth, and I’ll wait here till the morning of the day after to-morrow. If you don’t come looking for me by that time I’ll come looking for you.
“Say hello to Pete Reeve for me.
“CHARLES HUNTER.”
Dunkin finished the letter in a staggering voice. Then he laughed, crumpled it up, threw it on the floor, picked it up and unraveled the tangle of paper again, and finally launched a stream of tremendous curses.
“I’ll go to Tuckertown for him,” he said at length. “And when I get through with him, there won’t be enough left to fill a coffeepot. But what’s happened to him? Has he gone crazy?”
“He always hated you,” said Pete Reeve with a surprising lack of emotion.
“Say, I think you’re on his side.”
“Sure I am, except that he’s hunting you, while you and me happen to be partners, and the law of the range stands that a gent has to back up his partner. No, Dunkin, if Bull comes for you, while you and me are on the trail, he’ll have to drop both of us in order to get one.”
“Thanks,” said Dunkin, “but I don’t need no help. I’ll settle the business of this gent in a jiffy. After I say one word the buzzards can finish the sentence.”
He enjoyed his own little joke so hugely that he almost laughed himself back into a good humor. But he came out of his laughter sharply, and, rising from the chair, he said: “He’s waiting for me. Want to come along to Tuckertown and see the party?”
“The party is more like to come off right here,” said Reeve gravely. “This is the twentieth, and he’s due to come. His letter must have got hung up in the mails some way. It’s only eight miles to Tucker-town.”
“Why did he write, the fool? Why not come over like a man and give me a dare? I’ve always hated him, too!”
“Even a snake gives you a rattle before he hits you,” said Reeve. “Bull wanted to give you fair warning of what was coming. And if I was you, Dunkin, I’d take that warning and start riding.”