The sheriff shouted. Two of his guards lunged at the door and knocked it open. When they reached the hole in the rear wall, the fugitives were far away in the moonlight and could not be brought down. There was a hot chase, but a useless one.
They returned and examined the scene of the break, using lanterns. Here they found what the sheriff was certain was the implement used in breaking down the wall. It was a gigantic stone, with the face of it battered from the pounding against the bricks. Two of the sheriff’s men essayed to lift it and succeeded only with the greatest difficulty. Accordingly they agreed that it would be impossible for any one man to use such a massive object as a tool to be swung in the hands.
But every one agreed that, if there were a man in the world capable of swinging that mass of rock above his head, it must be Bull Hunter and no other. These details answered Mrs. Caswell’s description of the giant, and the sheriff had a warrant for the apprehension of Bull Hunter sworn out in due legal form, and a reward for his arrest was immediately added.
It may be noted that the rock which Bull Hunter used as a hammer is now on exhibition in the new White River jail.
Chapter XXIII
A Decision
Something has to be done,” said big Hal Dunbar, and his handsome face clouded as he spoke. His ranch foreman, listening, swallowed a groan. For nearly fifteen years he had worked the will of this heir to the great Dunbar ranch and watched the headstrong child grow into the imperious, tyrannical man, sullen and dangerous whenever his will was thwarted. But closely as Jack Hood knew his young master, he had never seen Dunbar half so gloomy as to-day.
In his hand, as he spoke, Dunbar held out a small trinket, consisting of a gold chain, broken in several places, and what seemed to be a crushed and disfigured locket.
“You understand?” he repeated, as he dropped the locket into the hand of Jack Hood.
The latter examined it and saw the miniature photograph of a woman’s face, but hopelessly marred, scratched, and crushed beyond recognition of the features.
“Good heavens!” he muttered presently. “It’s Mary’s locket. She’ll be a wild one when she finds out this has happened.” Then he started as another idea came into his mind. ”But where, Halhow did you get this? Or am I going crazy? Wasn’t this stole from me by that skunk, Dunkin, and ain’t he half a hundred miles away, and ...” Hal Dunbar interrupted calmly enough: “Wait a minute. I’ll tell you a few things that link up with all this. You remember it was a month ago yesterday that I asked Mary for the hundredth time to marry me?”
“Guess it was about then.”
“It was exactly then,” reiterated Dunbar. “That was the time she said she would marry me in six weeks to the day.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Then, the next morning, that blundering fool, Bull Hunter, appeared, and we chased him.”
“Chased him out of sight. I nearly rode the blue roan to death that day.” The foreman grinned at the memory.
“But we didn’t ride far enough for all that,” said Dunbar growlingly. “The hound must have doubled back on us.”
“Eh?”
The patience of Hal Dunbar left him. Suddenly his face was suffused an ugly red. He was thundering the words: “I tell you he must have doubled back, and he saw your daughter while the rest of us were riding our horses to death on a blind trail. That’s what happened, and this is how I know. When I got back, Mary was in her room and said she had a headache. When she did come down she wouldn’t say a word about the marriage, and a little while later she said that she couldn’t think of marrying me inside of six weeks. She wanted longer. She wouldn’t give me any definite answer at all.”
“I remember,” said Jack Hood, nodding.
“You remember? Then why the devil don’t you do something about it? You let your girl treat me as if she was the lady of the land and I a slave, or something.” He controlled himself a little and went on: “Well, it never came into my head why she had changed her mind so quick that day, till this morning I was out walking in the garden, and I come on this, behind a bush. You know what it is?”
“Yep. It’s Mary’s locket. Plumb spoiled.”
“Do you know who spoiled it?”
“I dunno. Some idiot.”
“She did it herself!”
“What!”
“I saw a print over it. That happened pretty near a month ago, but it was stamped into the ground where the garden mold was soft, and where it hasn’t been disturbed since. So there was a shadow of a print of the foot left, and the print was Mary’s shoe.”
“Can’t be,” said Jack Hood, shaking his head.
“Who else around here has a foot no bigger’n a child’s?”
Jack Hood was silenced.
“I can tell you just about what happened,” continued Hal Dunbar. “Bull Hunter came here to see Mary. He blundered up in full view, and we chased him. He dodged away from us and circled back to the house. When he arrived he found Mary alone in the garden, and he came up and talked to her. What he returned for was to give back that locket. But they talked about other things, too, and in the end Mary was so cut up that she stamped the locket he had brought her into the ground.”
Jack Hood sat as one stunned. “I dunno,” he repeated again. “I don’t understand!”
“Sure, you don’t,” said Hal Dunbar with a snarl.
“Sure, you don’t understand what they could of talked about. But one thing is sure - they weren’t talking about the price of beef on foot! Why has Mary been glum this whole month? Why has she had a frown for me every time I came near her? I tell you that Bull Hunter has some sort of a hold on her, Heaven knows how!”
Her father shook his head. “Then how come she’d leave the locket lying there a whole month, pretty near?”
“Just another proof that she was all wrought up that day. She was so excited she was blind. She dropped the locket and stamped on it and then ran away. When her senses came back to her, she goes to the garden to look for it again, but she’s forgotten just where she left it, and, besides, maybe a little dust had blown over it and kept it from shining. It was kind of under a bush, too. That explains it easy enough. And sometimes I think, Hood, that your girl is in love with that murdering outlaw!”
The attack on his daughter’s taste roused Hood to momentary remonstrance.
“He ain’t a murderer!”
“Didn’t he shoot you down?”
“Because I got mad about nothing and picked a fight with him and got what was coming to me. He could of killed me that dayhe only winged me instead.”
“Well, let the murder side of it go. At least you have to admit that he’s an outlaw?”
“And what for?” exclaimed Jack Hood with heat. “Because a friend of his that happened to be a robber got stuck in jail? And because Bull Hunter went down to White River like a man and got Pete Reeve out of the jail? They talk about how he done it still. Sure they outlawed him for doing it, but I’d like to have one or two friends that would break the law because they was that fond of me!”
“I see how it is,” said Dunbar bitterly. “You agree with Mary. You want her to marry him. Well, go ahead and take her to him. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
“Listen,” replied Jack Hood. “D’you think I’m a fool? I’d rather see her dead, pretty near, than thrown away on Hunter.”