The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bull Hunter, by Max Brand

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Title: Bull Hunter

Author: Max Brand

Release Date: November 27, 2003 [EBook #10324]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BULL HUNTER

BY

MAX BRAND

BULL HUNTER

CHAPTER 1

It was the big central taproot which baffled them. They had hewed
easily through the great side roots, large as branches, covered with
soft brown bark; they had dug down and cut through the forest of
tender small roots below; but when they had passed the main body of
the stump and worked under it, they found that their hole around the
trunk was not large enough in diameter to enable them to reach to the
taproot and cut through it. They could only reach it feebly with the
hatchet, fraying it, but there was no chance for a free swing to sever
the tough wood. Instead of widening the hole at once, they kept
laboring at the root, working the stump back and forth, as though they
hoped to crystallize that stubborn taproot and snap it like a wire.
Still it held and defied them. They laid hold of it together and
tugged with a grunt; something tore beneath that effort, but the stump
held, and upward progress ceased.

They stopped, too tired for profanity, and gazed down the mountainside
after the manner of baffled men, who look far off from the thing that
troubles them. They could tell by the trees that it was a high
altitude. There were no cottonwoods, though the cottonwoods will
follow a stream for more than a mile above sea level. Far below them a
pale mist obscured the beautiful silver spruce which had reached their
upward limit. Around the cabin marched a scattering of the balsam fir.
They were nine thousand feet above the sea, at least. Still higher up
the sallow forest of lodgepole pines began; and above these, beyond
the timberline, rose the bald summit itself.

They were big men, framed for such a country, defying the roughness
with a roughness of their own--these stalwart sons of old Bill
Campbell. Both Harry and Joe Campbell were fully six feet tal