Sour Creek Valley Read online

  “All right, Pepillo,” I said. “I am a gringo swine while there is nobody else around but you and me. You savvy? But the minute that another gent hears you using language like that on me, I’ll be right up and break you in two!”

  He seemed to like that idea. He stopped cussing and began to laugh at me and at the whole idea, and you could see that he was tickled all over.

  “Then, señor,” he says, “you would have me to be your mozo, and what would you do for me?”

  “I would keep you in decent clothes,” I said. “I would see that you got a chance at schooling, even if I had to teach you myself …”

  Pepillo put back his head and laughed again. Doggone me if it wasn’t a queer sensation to let myself be laughed at by anybody, particularly by a little runt of a kid like that. But he had that sort of a silly, sweet sound to his laughter, like the same as he had in his cussing, and I liked to hear it.

  “All right, señor,” said Pepillo, “and what else will you do for me?”

  “Teach you manners.”

  “How?”

  “This way,” I said, making a pass at him.

  I grabbed thin air. He was just a mite faster moving than the lash of a four-horse whip when it curls over to snap the haunches of the near leader.

  “You would beat me?” asked Pepillo, dropping his head a little to one side.

  “I would give you such a licking as nobody else could ever improve on, if I had the running of you, youngster!”

  “So,” said Pepillo, “I am to be beaten and taught manners and sent to school, maybe. And what else will you do?”

  It appealed to something serious in me, and I said, “Look here, kid, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll start in and make a change in you. I’ll keep you dressed clean and decent. I’ll see that you have enough to eat … that nothing too much is ever asked of you. Besides that, I’ll see to it that you get some of the bad ideas out of your head. I’ll see that you turn straight. You got the makings of a good-for-nothing thief, and do you know what comes of thieves and suchlike, kid?”

  “Ah,” Pepillo said, making his eyes as big as moons, “tell me.”

  “They die with a rope around their throats.”

  “So!” gasped out Pepillo. “Ah, señor!”

  “You little devil,” I said, “you’re laughing at me, ain’t you? But I tell you … what you need is a master, and I’ll be one to you. I’ve been through things myself, kid, and I know how to keep you from having to go through the same thing. You hear me talk?”

  Pepillo leaned up against the side of the store, thinking very hard. He looked up to me, once or twice, with a smile in his eyes and on his lips, as if he was thinking what an awful lark it would be and what an awful fool he would make out of me.

  Then he said, “You might beat me, señor. You might take a very cruel whip and beat me … but if you laid a hand on me, señor, I should stab you in the heart.”

  He looked like he meant it, too; he was about as meek and submissive as a young wolf.

  “All right. I’ll treat you decent. But if you join up with me, you got to promise that you’ll stick to your side of the contract for a whole year. Understand, before I blow the price of a suit of clothes and all the rest on you.”

  “You shall have my hand on it,” he said.

  I reached out and flicked a forefinger under his throat. Sure enough, I got hold of a silk string and jerked out a little ebony cross worked with fine gold and even set with jewels.

  “No handshaking!” I cried. “You’ll swear by the cross that you wear around your neck, youngster!”

  He had clapped both hands over the cross and turned red and then pale. He was all worked up. “You dog … you son of a dog … you bull-faced, big-jawed, stupid-eyed …”

  “Go on,” I said, “and when you get tired, let me know when you will talk sense again.”

  He was a queer kid. All at once he stood up straight, and he said, “What shall I swear to you, señor, and what is your name?”

  “Kitchin is my name. Mostly they call me Blondy, you know.”

  “That’s not a name.”

  “My real name is a joke.”

  “I cannot swear to a false name,” he said, very serious.

  “It would spoil my time on the range if it was known,” I said. “But as a matter of fact, my front name is really Percival. That’s a hot one, ain’t it?”

  “Then what am I to swear to you. Don Percival?”

  “To stick by me for a year and to do what you’re told all that time.”

  “And you, señor?”

  “I’ll give you my word that I’ll treat you fair and square, on my word of honor.”

  Pepillo nodded. “Your word of honor is good enough for me,” he said. He was tremendously serious as he went on, “I am a very bad boy, señor. I have done much wrong in my life. And if you can make me into a good man …”

  Even in spite of his seriousness, there was something about that that made him bust out laughing. When he sobered up, he grabbed hold on his cross, and he tilted his head up to the sky and he said, soft and shaky, “I shall work for you and serve you in all things, help me, God!” He looked down slowly toward the earth again and stood there a while, thinking.

  “Hey, Pepillo,” I said, “smile, will you?”

  “Ah, Señor Kitchin, it is a serious thing. It is a year out of my life, but I give it into your hands because I know that you will take care of me.”

  He walked into the store to get fitted out by Gregorio, and I tried to figure out whether I liked him best sassy or serious. When he was serious there was something about him that sort of scared me.

  In another minute, I could hear him chirping in the store as gay as ever, and swearing at Gregorio, and beating the prices down. That was a relief, I can tell you!

  Chapter Seven

  That was in the days before every hired man had a flivver; automobiles were something to dream about, but not to see. When I got to the brick hotel back in the white man’s part of Sour City, with Pepillo and my luggage in the wagon, there was Randal sitting up on the seat of a buckboard, reining in a pair of fine horses and gentling them down a little with his voice. They were the kind that needed gentling.

  You could tell by one look at those horses why it was that Randal wasn’t apt to make any howling success as an economical rancher. That span was a pair of steppers that would’ve been more useful on a race track than in toting hired men and their blanket rolls to the ranch house, bringing in empty boxes, and bringing out groceries and meat.

  I threw in my luggage and climbed into the place beside Randal, which was a pretty hard job, because those horses were all the time starting and backing, half-rearing, prancing, and looking mighty pretty and useless, you can bet your life. When I was finally settled, the kid quickly jumped up into the back of the buckboard as slick as you please.

  “What’s this?” asked Randal.

  “That’s my mozo,” I said.

  He gave me a quick side glance. “Whole hog, eh?” he said.

  “Or none,” I replied.

  “All right,” said Randal, “I wish you luck, but I don’t think that you’ll ever get by with the boys if you have a servant like this. They ain’t the kind that like servants.”

  “They’ll like Pepillo,” I said. “They’ll like him, or go to the devil. And I don’t think that I care much which.”

  You see, I was happy about that boy. He had a way with him that meant a good deal to me. He was sassy, and he was a crook. Well, so was I. I figured that I could do a whole lot of good for him, and that he could do a whole lot of good for me. Which is the best way to have any deal arranged—something on both sides, you know. Still, it rather tickled me to think that here was I, a jailbird, aiming to take care of the raising of a kid like Pepillo, that might’ve bothered a whole train load of f
ather confessors to look after him and his sins.

  The road that we followed pitched up a fairly steep grade from Sour City. Pretty soon we came to a height on a place where the road dropped over the top of a hill. There, Randal pulled up the horses and nodded to me. I knew what he meant, so I took a look, figuring that this must be the ranch.

  Starting from the outside, I circled my eye around on tall mountains, west and south and east. Where we were, toward the north, there were rolling hills, with a cut through them where the Sour Creek rolled through on its way down the bigger valley outside. Inside those mountains and those hills there was as neat a valley as I ever hope to see, all checked about and crossed over with the little streams that ran down to the Sour Creek. The sides of those streams were lined with trees. Also, there were groves dotted around casual, here and there, where the cows could lie down for shade in the middle of the day or get shelter in a storm, and where your eye could rest pretty pleasant.

  I never saw a range where a gent could ride over with more pleasure than that Sour Creek Valley. Right about in the middle, with the road pointing a straight white finger at it, there was the roof of a house, just about covered up with trees. I didn’t have to ask if that was the ranch house.

  All I could do was to say, “Is the whole thing one ranch?”

  Randal grinned sideways at me, that way that he had, and he nodded. “The fences for the boundaries,” he said, “run all around this here valley on the water divides. Uncle Stephen picked out this place at a time when he could’ve fenced in the entire lower valley as well as this place, but he decided that this was enough for any one man to give his attention to, and work properly. So he settled down here. The old fool! He might have had ten million in land if he’d spread himself a little more.”

  I looked around and I didn’t say anything. I’ll tell you that I agreed with old Stephen and not with his nephew. That big, oblong valley was a whopping piece of land. It would make your head ache, if you were to close your eyes of a night and try to think of all the nooks and the corners on it, and all of the landmarks. It just filled a man’s eye, and it would certainly fill his hands, too. I didn’t wonder that Uncle Stephen had been able to make fifty thousand dollars a year out of that land. I only wondered that he hadn’t been able to make two hundred thousand dollars out of it—or even more!

  That was before I had a chance to look close at the southern mountains. When I saw them close up, I understood.

  Off at a little distance, they looked perfectly natural and nice and harmless, with some white streaks down the sides of them. When you came closer, you could see that those streaks developed into a regular network across the faces of the mountains, and every cord and crevice of that network was made by the work of the water that was flowing along through limestone formations. That water had been working a few billions of years chewing out the stone and making itself white-walled cañons.

  You talk about a labyrinth—that was it! I didn’t have a chance to look at it close, of course. But, before we got to the ranch house, I could see there were about a thousand blind alleys among those mountains, and about a thousand alleys that weren’t blind.

  Take it by and large, a gent could walk every day of his life in those limestone alleys and try to get the plan of them into his head, but he never would’ve succeeded. Not a chance! What they needed was a gent with a brain that would understand everything that it saw at a glance and keep it printed solid in his head. You understand?

  Randal got sort of nervous as we pulled along toward the ranch. “You don’t seem none too cheerful,” he said.

  “Well,” I replied, “I’ve heard folks talk about a thieves’ paradise, but till I saw those cañons, I didn’t know what they meant. Now I understand. Will you tell me, in the first place, just what sort of a gent that Uncle Stephen of yours was?”

  “I’ll show you pretty soon,” said Randal.

  We drove along about another mile up the valley and pretty soon he pulled up the horses and pointed to a fence where the three lines of barbed wire lay hanging on the ground and rusting away.

  “About two days before Uncle Stephen died,” said Randal, “he was riding along this way, and he wanted to see how his shooting eye was. So, he outs with his Colt and he blazes away with it in rapid succession three times. When he got done with his shooting, there were the three wires hanging limp on the ground. The boys that were along with him thought so much of that bit of shooting that when Uncle Stephen died, a couple of days later, they swore that that fence should never be repaired, and they keep to their oath. Because of it, I have to let a fifty-acre field lie idle, as you see. But tradition is a great thing on this ranch, and I can’t break the traditions. That broken fence stands for the ghost of Uncle Stephen, as you might say, and the boys won’t have it fixed. I wanted to show it to you to let you understand the sort of stuff that he was made of.”

  It was enough. I looked at those three clipped wires and I understood.

  You’ve heard what I think of revolvers for accuracy. And I don’t stand alone. If you doubt me, you meet up with the head of the police department in a big town, and you talk to him. Maybe he’s got under him a thousand men that are paid to carry revolvers and to practice with them. They get extra pay and prizes and a lot of glory for being able to shoot straight. They get ammunition furnished to them free for practice, and, besides all that, they all know that it’s to their own interest to know how to shoot straighter than the crooks. But you ask the chief if he’s got three real revolver shots in his thousand men, and if he’s an honest chief, he’ll lose no time to tell you that he ain’t.

  When I saw the three clipped wires of that fence, I can’t tell you how my arm ached and how my trigger finger went numb to think of all the hours and hours that Stephen Randal must’ve practiced to be able to shoot like that. It takes a gent that’s a hero to have as much patience as that. While he kept up his shooting, he ran a big ranch and chased thieves and kept his accounts, and made fifty thousand dollars a year, clear cash profit.

  I didn’t need no oil painting of Stephen Randal after that. I saw him just as clear as though I had had his cold eyes looking at me down the barrel of a gun. I saw him just as clear as though I had hit him with all my might and just busted my hand all to pieces on the edge of his jaw.

  “All I have to do is to follow the example of a gent like that uncle of yours? All that I have to do is to step right inside of his boots, eh?” I asked Randal.

  He nodded. “It’s about the only way that you could manage it, I guess. Uncle Stephen was a sort of a hero around here. They all still talk about him. They take off their hats to him, and they take them off to nothing else in the world.”

  It looked clear to me, so I said, “Well, Randal, I’ll tell you right now that this job is a bad one, and there’s about one chance in a hundred that it won’t lick me. But I’ll try my best. Here’s where I start right in studying Uncle Stephen.”

  Chapter Eight

  Of course, Randal thought that there was no other idea half so good as that. He said that he himself would have tried to do the imitation of his Uncle Stephen, but there were a couple of things in his way. In the first place, Stephen Randal was a great big man, pretty near as big as me. In the second place, the sergeant was no sort of a hand with horses, and that was pretty near a fatal blow to anybody that would want to step into the real boots of his uncle, who couldn’t get himself thrown by anything but an outlaw. He loved bucking horses so much that he wouldn’t have quiet ones on his place.

  I could handle horses—and I was big and strong. Of course, I was no hand with guns, but I had to hope that things would never come to a point where guns would be necessary. If a gent is steady enough and has nerve enough, guns ain’t necessary. It’s the weak fellow, that feels ground slipping beneath him, that has got to shoot.

  When we drove up to the house, a colored boy come out and took the heads of th
e horses, and another unloaded the baggage. Inside of the house, we could hear a regular old high-jinks going on. There was a piano banging somewhere in the offing, and half a dozen of the boys must’ve been doing a jig in lumbermen’s boots. The rest of them were whooping to help things along.

  “Moonshine again,” said Randal.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is somebody dead? Is that a wake, maybe?

  He explained that things usually got pretty noisy around the house at night. He said that during the time of his Uncle Stephen, he always let the men come in from the bunkhouse and use the big library and maybe the back living room, if they wanted to—except when he was giving a party.

  When Harry Randal came into control, the men began to spread. First, they got into the habit of walking into the house through the front door. Then they got into the habit of hanging up their hats in the hall. They sort of made the whole first floor of the house into their quarters. What was worse, they began to bring in moonshine whiskey, and after the day’s work, they would warm up and have a little fun of their own.

  “Well, Randal,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me this a long time ago?”

  “I should’ve,” he admitted, “but I was afraid to, old-timer, for fear that you would back down on me. This is a hard nut to crack, and I know it. They’re running wilder and wilder every minute of every day, and I’ve lost all control. They make a fool of every ranch manager that I bring out to the place. I can’t fire them. It would simply be turning them into that many rustlers. Then they asked me to hire some puncher who was able to play the piano. I couldn’t find one, and they went and found one themselves. He’s a hard-boiled one, too. His name is Rusty McArdle. He’s a fellow who had a decent start, but couldn’t use it. His folks gave him an education, and he can play the piano … very well, as you can hear for yourself. Nature gave him a pair of shoulders just as broad as yours. But he let his education go to pot and he finally had to use his broad shoulders to make a living. He was too lazy to work, and so he became a prize fighter. He would have made himself a near champion, if it hadn’t been that he made the town too hot to hold him. So he wound up on the range … and now he’s landed here. Rusty McArdle will be your worst problem, Blondy.”