Pitkin nodded uneasily. “Yeah,” he said. “Evered turned round to me by and by; and he looked at me under them black eyebrows of his, and he says: ‘Want I should kill this bull, do you?’ I ’lows that I did. ‘Want him killed now, do you?’ he says, and I told him I did. And I did too. I was scared of that bull, I say. But not the way he did kill it.”
He shuddered openly; and Motley asked again, “What did he do?”
“Stepped up aside the bull,” said Pitkin hurriedly. “Yanked out that knife of his—that same knife—out of his sheath. Up with it, and down, so quick I never see what he did. Down with the knife right behind the bull’s horns. Right into the neck bone. And that bull o’ mine went down like a ton o’ brick. Like two ton o’ brick. Stone dead.”
Will Bissell echoed, “Stabbed it in the neck?”
“Right through the neck bone. With that damned heavy knife o’ his.” He wiped his forehead again. “We had a hell of a time h’isting that bull, too,” he said weakly. “A hell of a time.”
No one spoke for a moment. They were digesting this tale of Evered. Then Judd said: “I’d like to see that red bull of his git after that man.”
One or two nodded, caught themselves, looked sheepishly round to discover whether they had been seen. Evered’s red bull was as well and unfavorably known as the man himself. A huge brute, shoulder high to a tall man, ugly of disposition, forever bellowing challenges across the hills from Evered’s barn, frightening womenfolk in their homes a mile away. A creature of terror, ruthlessly curbed and goaded by Evered. It was known that the butcher took delight in mastering the bull, torturing the beast with ingenious twists of the nose ring, with blows on the leg joints, and nose, and the knobs where horns should have been. The red bull was of a hornless breed. The great head of it was like a buffalo’s head, like a huge malicious battering ram. It was impossible to look at the beast without a tremor of alarm.
“It’s ugly business to see Evered handle that bull,” Will Belter said, half to himself.
And after a little silence Jean Bubier echoed: “Almost as ugly as to see the man with his wife. When I have see that, sometime, I have think I might take his own knife to him.”
Judd, the malicious, laughed in an ugly way; and he said, “Guess Evered would treat her worse if he got an eye on her and that man Semler.”