“What brung him to life?” asked Harry.
“Nothin’, He just heard ol’ Maggie
snort. Always bothers him when Maggie gets scared
of something—the old fool!”
Maggie was an ancient, broken-down draft horse.
Strange vicissitudes had brought her up into the mountains
via the logging camp. She was kept, not because
there was any real hauling to be done for Bill Campbell,
but because, having got her for nothing, she reminded
him of the bargain she had been. And Bull, apparently
understanding the sluggish nature of the old mare
by sympathy of kind, use to work her to the single
plow among the rocks of their clearing. Here,
every autumn, they planted seed that never grew to
mature grain. But that was Bill Campbell’s
idea of making a home.
Presently Bull came back and settled with a slump
into his old place.
“Going to snow?” asked Harry.
“Yep.”
“Feel it in the wind?”
It was an old joke among them, for Bull often declared
with ridiculous solemnity that he could foretell snow
by the change in the air.
“Yep,” answered Bull, “I felt the
wind.”
He looked up at them, abashed, but they were too hungry
to waste breath with laughter. They merely sneered
at him as he settled back into his book. And,
just as his head bowed, a far shouting swept down
at them as the wind veered to a new point.
“Uncle Bill!” said Bull and rose again
to open the door.
The others wedged in behind his bulk and stared into
the blackness.
They stood with the wind taking them with its teeth
and pressing them heavily back. They could hear
the fire flare and flutter in the stove; then the
wind screamed again, and the wail came down to them.
“Uncle Bill!” repeated Bull and, lowering
his head, strode into the storm.
The others exchanged frightened glances and then followed,
but not outside of the shaft of light from the door.
In the first place it was probably not their father.
Who could imagine Bill shouting for help? Such
a thing had never been dreamed of by his worst enemies,
and they knew that their father’s were legion.
Besides it was cold, and this was a wild-goose chase
which meant a chilled hide and no gain.
But, presently, through the darkness they made out
the form of a horseman and the great bulk of Bull
coming back beside him. Then they ran out into
the night.
They recognized the hatless, squat figure of their
father at once, even in the dark, with the wind twitching
his beard sideways. When they called to him he
did not speak. Then they saw that Bull was leading
the horse.
Plainly something was wrong, and presently they discovered
that Bill Campbell was actually tied upon his horse.
He gave no orders, and they cut the ropes in silence.
Still he did not dismount.
“Bull,” he commanded, “lift me off
the hoss!”
