There were a lot of burning questions which I had privately made up in my mind to propound to the Wild Hunter, or the even wilder medicine bear, upon the occasion of our next meeting. But when the lad was standing before me, with bended bow and flashing eyes, the burning importance of those questions did not appeal to me as forcibly as did the urgent necessity of sheltering my body behind the friendly stone. To be truthful, it must be admitted that the proposed inquiries were, for the time, entirely forgotten, and I even breathed a sigh of relief when the boy suddenly clambered up the face of the cliff, turned, gave us a fierce look of defiance, made some quick energetic gestures with his hand and disappeared.
He scaled that precipitous rock with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or moccasin-covered toes.
Not until the Indian had disappeared down a dry coulee did I venture from the shelter of the protecting rock, or realize that my carefully planned interview must be indefinitely postponed.
With his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his blue eyes fixed upon a rocky rib of the mountain behind which the boy had disappeared, Big Pete still stood like a statue. But gradually the statuesque pose resolved itself into a more commonplace posture, and the muscles of the face relaxed until the familiar twinkle hovered around the corners of his eyes. “What did he say when he made those motions, Pete?”
“Waugh! he said he was not afraid of any whitefaced coyote like us.” And bringing forth his pipe, Pete filled it from the beaded tobacco pouch which hung on his breast, and by means of a horn of punk, a flint and steel, he soon had the pipe aglow and was puffing away as calmly as if nothing unusual had occurred. Presently he exclaimed, “Gol durn his daguerrotype, what good did it do him to throw that sheep down the gulch? Reckon Le-loo and me could find a better grave for mutton chops than that canyon bottom. The mountains didn’t need the sheep an’ we did. But, I reckon it was his own sheep you killed, ’cause it had a porcupine collar same pattern as the trimmings of his shirt.”
Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, “Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?”
“He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw,” I answered enthusiastically.
“Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an’ maybe ye hain’t; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain’t.”
“Steady, Pete, old fellow, let us go slow; now tell me at what you’re driving?” I pleaded.
“It looks to me this hea’-a-way,” he explained. “I’ve seed his trail onct or twice, an’ I’ve seed him onct, but I never yet seed his trail and the Wild Hunter’s trail at the same time and place. ’Pears to me that a man who, when it’s convenient, kin make a wolf of hisself, might likewise make a boy of hisself whenever he felt that way. Never heared tell on enny real laid who cud climb like a squtton and shoot a bow better nor a Robin Hood or Injun, and that’s howsomever!”