All this was learned and verified later when Bull was a legend. When
he strode into Halstead on that late afternoon no one had ever heard
of the man out of the mountains. He was simply an oddity in a country
where oddities draw small attention.
Yet a rumor advanced before Bull. A child, playing in the incredible
heat of the sun, saw the dusty giant heaving in the distance and ran
to its mother, frightened, and the worn-faced mother came to the porch
and shaded her eyes to look. She passed on the word with a call that
traveled from house to house. So that, when Bull entered the long,
irregular street of Halstead, he found it lined on either side by
children, old men, women. It was almost as though they had heard of
the thing he had come to do and were there to watch.
Bull shrank from their eyes. He would far rather have slipped around
the back of the village and gone toward its center unobserved. A pair
of staring eyes to Bull was like the pointing of a loaded gun.
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