The little man shook his head soberly. “If you’re wrong and Bull finds that I’m following him, it’ll be bad business,” he declared. “He hates to be spied on, even by me.”
“But I know that I’m right,” she said eagerly. “I’m cold with the fear of it, Pete. Will you go?”
He rose slowly from his chair. “I’d ought to laugh at you,” he answered. “But I can’t. There’s something spooky in the way a girl gets ideas about things she don’t really know, and maybe you’re right this time. Anyway, we can’t take any chances. I’ll saddle up the roan and follow Diablo as close as I can. But that isn’t any easy job if Bull starts riding hard.”
She thanked him huskily as he left, and from the window of the hotel she saw him lead out his little cow pony, swing into the saddle, and disappear instantly into the dusk.
The black horse was a glimmering phantom in the night far ahead of Pete Reeve, and he spurred hard after it. If Diablo had been extended to three quarters of his usual speed, he would have drawn out of sight at once, but to-night for some reason Bull Hunter was riding merely at a long, ranging gallop, giving the stallion his own way in the matter of taking hill and dale. Pete Reeve, by dint of spurring now and then, was able to keep barely within eye-shot of the rider before him.
It was precarious work to keep barely within view without being seen himself, and he kept his eyes riveted on the shadow in the darkness. The way was that leading straight to Five Roads, and with every mile he put behind him he became more and more convinced that the girl had been right. For Bull Hunter did not ride in the careless fashion of one who is following a whim. He kept to a steady, purposeful gait, and the little man who trailed him began to suspect more and more definitely that there was a rendezvous ahead.
He rode a little closer now, for it was complete night, and the moon had not yet risen, though the light in the east gave promise of it. Pressing on with his eyes fastened on the form that moved before him, he swung a little from the beaten trail - the next moment the roan, putting his foot into an old squirrel hole, pitched forward on his head. Pete Reeve shot out of the saddle and landed heavily on his back.
When, after a time, he wakened from the trance, it was with the feeling that he had been asleep for endless hours, but he could tell by the moon, low in the east, that it had not been long. The poor roan had broken its leg and lay snorting and groaning. Pete put it out of its misery with a bullet, but he did not wait to remove the saddle.
A moral certainty had grown in him that Bull Hunter was indeed riding toward a rendezvous, perhaps to a danger. Otherwise, why such secrecy, such care in leaving even The Ghost behind? No doubt he could not arrive in time to ward off trouble, but if there were a fight he might come in time to help at the finish. Throwing his hat and cartridge belt away to lighten him, and carrying his naked Colt in his hand, Reeve started running down the road.
In the meantime Bull Hunter had come, at moonrise, to that clump of tall trees by the road, and he had found Hal Dunbar waiting on horseback. He halted, dismounted, led Diablo to the side of the road, and then advanced. Hal Dunbara mighty figure came to meet him half way.
“Have you kept your word?” asked Hal Dunbar. “Have you come unarmed?”
“I have nothing but my bare hands,” said Bull quietly. “But before we start, Dunbar, I want to make a last appeal to you. You’ve been ...”
“You’ve not only played the sneak, but now are you going to play the fool, too, and maybe the coward?”
On the heels of his words he leaped at Bull Hunter. His right fist, driven with all the power of his body and of his leap, landed fair and true on the jaw of the other, such a blow as Bull Hunter had never felt before. It sent him reeling back and cast a cloud of misty darkness across his mind.
Hal Dunbar paused an instant to see the colossus drop. Yet, to his amazement, the other giant did not fall. The slight pause gave Hunter’s brain a chance to clear. They rushed together, shocked, and again the heavy fists of Dunbar crushed home. This time he changed his aim, and the blows thudded against the body of Hunter.
It was like smiting ribs of steel. Hal Dunbar gave back, gasping his astonishment. Here was a man of stone indeed, and the first fear in battle that he had ever had came to the rancher. He tried again and again, every trick at his command. He hooked and swung and drove long straight rights with all the strength of his big body behind them. Half of those punches landed fairly and squarely. They shook Bull Hunter, but they did not topple him from his balance. His face was bleeding from half a dozen cuts - the flesh of his body must have been bruised purple - but still there was not the slightest faltering.
He seemed to be fighting a helpless, hopeless fight. The trained footwork of his antagonist kept him easily out of the range of his own unskillful punches, while from a distance Dunbar whipped his blows home and then danced away again.
But at the very moment when Dunbar seemed to have victory in the hollow of his hand, with only time as the question, his terror began to become blind panic, for the strength and endurance of Hunter were incredible. Blows that should have felled an ox glanced harmlessly from him.
Finally a blow landed squarely. It was not a powerful blow, but it sent a jar up the arm of Hunter, and the new sensation excited him. He was a new man. He came in with a low shout, rushing eagerly, no longer dull-eyed, but keenly aggressive. He became lighter on his feet, infinitely swifter of hand. At the very time that Dunbar was beating him he had been studying the methods of the tall fellow, and now he used them himself.
Then it became impossible to avoid him altogether. For all his lightness of footwork, Dunbar found terrific punches crashing through his guard. He himself was fighting like a madman, striking three times to every once for Hunter; his arms were growing weary, his guard lowering - and then like a flash, striking overhand, the long arm of Hunter shot across, and his right fist met the jaw of Dunbar. The latter dropped as though hit by a club, and Hunter leaned over him.
In the shadow of the trees Riley raised his revolver, but Hunter was saying: “Dunbar, call this the end. You’re growing tired. You’re getting weak. I can feel it. Don’t force this on. You’ve fought hard. You’ve cut me to pieces, but now you’re done, and I’ve no malice.”
He stopped. Hal Dunbar had worked himself to his knees, looking up with a bleeding face at his conqueror. As he kneeled there, his hand closed on a huge, knotted branch of a tree, torn off in some storm by wind or lightning or both, and flung here beside the road.
The feel of the wood sent a thrill of new and savage hope through him. Vaguely he realized, not that his enemy had spared him when he might have finished the battle with a helpless foe, but simply that he was alive and that a chance to kill had been thrust into his hand. He leaped from his knees straight at Hunter, swung the branch, and struck.
The first blow beat down the arms which Hunter had raised to guard his head and struck him glancingly, but the second landed heavily, and Hunter crumpled on the ground in a shapeless heap. Hal Dunbar, with savage joy, caught him by the shoulder and wrenched him back. He laid his hand on the heart. It beat steadily but feebly, and Dunbar, gone mad with the battle, swung up the club for the finishing blow.
He was stopped by a cold, sharp voice from the wood which he hardly recognized as the voice of Riley.
“If you hit him again with that, I’ll shoot you full of holes.”
The amazement turned his blood to ice. He turned, gaping, and there came little Riley, walking from the shadow of the wood with the revolver leveled.
“I couldn’t stand the gaff,” said Riley calmly. “All the time you were fighting, I watched, and when I seen Hunter knock you down I pulled the gun, to kill him. But he let you get up, and then you whale him with a club and want to brain him after you’ve knocked him cold. Listen, Dunbar, I’m through with you. I ain’t a saint, but neither am I skunk. I’m through with you, and so will every other decent man be some of these days. Step back from Hunter or I’ll kill you.”