Sour Creek Valley Read online

  I listened to that riot in the house and thought about what Randal had said to me. The more I thought, the nearer I was to turning around and starting on back for town.

  Clearing my throat, I asked Randal how his uncle was in the habit of meeting his men.

  “He had a very breezy way,” Randal said. “He would walk in and smile at everybody and shake hands all around.”

  That wasn’t very easy for me. I’m no joy bird. Smiling is my hardest job, but I decided that I would try that way of meeting this gang of thugs that called themselves cowpunchers. I was all nerved up to this. As we walked up to the door, Randal laid his hand on the knob.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, like he was going to introduce me on a stage.

  “I’m ready,” I said, feeling very shaky. “Let her go.”

  Just then Pepillo give my arm a tug. “Señor,” he said, “go straight to your room. Do not stop to talk with them.”

  I gave him one look, but his face was in shadow. However, I knew that he must’ve heard our talk, and he must’ve got an idea that was working on the insides of him. Then the door opened. It let a blast of light out onto me, and I stepped into the house behind Randal, finding myself in a regular whirl of cigarette smoke.

  Around that room was about a dozen or so of the toughest eggs that I ever laid eyes on. They were hand-picked. I’d been in Fulsom, not so long before, where I’d seen a choice lot of thugs and second-timers. Well, Fulsom’s was a beauty gallery compared to that lot. They even wore their guns in the house!

  I saw a sort of a smear and a blur of faces, but nothing more than general impressions right and left, because everything was pulled to a focus on one man—that was Rusty McArdle.

  He had got up from the piano stool, and now he walked to the middle of the room. He was as big as me and made a lot better. Not so much hands and feet, but thicker through the chest and made tapering like a mast, other end up. He had a shock of hair the color of rust, that had given him his name, and he had a pair of blue eyes that was filled to the brim with lightnings.

  I never saw a gent like that, so filled with energy. It made you want to smile, just to see him. He could’ve walked out onto a stage and looked at the audience and just walked off again. They would’ve clapped for him to come back. That’s how much of a man he was.

  But I wasn’t in the audience. I was up there on the stage with him, and I’ll tell you it was an uncertain sort of a feeling. I would’ve been glad to be almost any other place rather than there.

  “Well, boys,” cried Randal, “I’ve brought out a new man to run the place, and a good one! I hope that you’ll all get on with him.”

  He had started out very brave and cheerful, but his voice strained like he was half choked before he got to the end. It was a miserable situation.

  Not one of them devils said anything. They just looked—except Rusty McArdle. He grinned straight in my face—the sort of a smile that says a lot more than words.

  Right then I knew that there was no use staying in that room. I couldn’t go around with a smile and shake hands with them all, after the style of the dead man. The kid had been right when he told me to go straight to my room.

  “I’m going upstairs to get washed up,” I said to Randal.

  He sent a sick look at me, as much as to say: This is a pretty lame beginning for you. Then he led the way out of that big living room. And the dimness of the hall outside was like a blessing on my eyes, I can tell you.

  Randal didn’t say anything till he got me upstairs, where he showed me into a fine, big room with a double bed in it, and curtains at the windows, and a carpet on the floor, and everything extreme civilized. There he began to pace up and down.

  “Why didn’t you do something?” asked Randal. “Why didn’t you strike while the iron was hot? You snuck away like a beaten cur! Blondy, you’ve ruined things before you even had a chance to put them right. You might as well start back for town right now. But, if I were you, I’d climb out a window. I wouldn’t go back through that room to the front door!”

  I wouldn’t ordinarily take talk like that from any man, no matter what money he was paying to me, but just then my spirit was a mite broke.

  “Listen!” he exclaimed. “That’s for you.”

  From downstairs, there came a roar of laughter. I knew that Randal was right. That that was for the new manager of the ranch.

  Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Pepillo nodding toward Randal and hooking his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. I took that hint.

  “Leave me be for a while, Randal,” I said. “I want to be alone and think this thing over. You’re not helping me any. Things are about as bad as they can be out here.”

  He had a lot more to say, and I could see the bad look in his eye that means that a gent has his steam up high. But it seemed to occur to him that maybe there was still a ghost of a chance that I could turn some sort of a trick for him and for myself. He left everything else unsaid and flung out of the door, slamming it behind him.

  I listened to the echo of it crashing from wall to wall, and I was sicker than ever. My courage was about down to zero. As far as that rough gang downstairs was concerned, I could see myself as one of them—but I could never see myself handling those tough fellows with a bad one like Rusty McArdle at the head of them to tell them what to think.

  Pepillo woke me up a little. He shied his hat into a corner of the room and made a face at the door. “That,” he said, “is a pig, is it not?”

  I couldn’t help grinning, in spite of my misery.

  He sat down on the table and folded his legs in under him very neat. There he sat with his chin on his two small fists, smiling at me.

  Chapter Nine

  Just to look at him was enough to cheer a man up a good deal. For instance, have you ever seen a blue jay fluttering around through the trees? You know that the murderer and thief and gossip is going around, hunting for trouble and ready to talk even where there ain’t anything to make talk about. Still, there is something so bright about a jay, when the sun hits him, and he looks so sassy and so happy that you can’t help smiling.

  It was that way with Pepillo. He was a mischief-maker, and there wasn’t any doubt about that. Yet you couldn’t help smiling, in spite of the damage that he might be doing. Right then, I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing with me or at me. It didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

  I should tell you how he had fixed himself up in the store. He had wheedled Gregorio out of a pair of red morocco boots that you could see a mile away, they were so shiny. He had a tan-colored linen suit on him—with a sort of an under-jacket of a very bright green-blue—a yellow shirt, and a black felt hat with a red feather stuck in one side of it.

  He looked like something out of a book—and an old-time book, at that! A queer set of clothes, that was. It sort of took my breath, the first time that I saw them on him. But he had a way about him that just set off those clothes. He was as proud as a peacock, as mischievous as a blue jay, as fierce as a hawk, and as graceful as a swallow. He was like a cross between a singing bird and a falcon. I feasted my eyes on him, and he grinned at me. All the time the lights in his eyes kept changing, as the fires inside of his devilish little head kept burning mean or kind. I didn’t know whether he was gonna sympathize with me or mock me or give me good advice.

  He said, “This pig … this Randal, he does not count, no-o-o-o?”

  He had a way of saying the word like that, letting his voice go half an octave up the scale while he hung onto his question mark.

  “Maybe he doesn’t, but that leaves plenty more of the rest that do count.”

  He only shook his head, Pepillo did. He jumped down from the table and went into the corner of the room. Picking up his hat and flaunting the crimson feather on it, he cocked it on his head. Then he rolled himself a cigarette. It was a treat to watch him making
his little nimble fingers go faster than your eye could follow, and doing it all with one hand, while he looked at you and talked about something else. He was terrible proud of the way he could roll a cigarette. He lighted his smoke and blew out a puff at the ceiling.

  “There is only one,” said Pepillo.

  “Only one what?”

  “Ha, señor!” he said. “If I am to do your thinking for you, you must follow me closely.”

  “You darned little blue jay,” I said, “how can I listen to what you got to say when I’m so busy watching you?”

  “Is it so?” asked Pepillo. He took a step or two so he could view himself in the mirror at the other end of that room. There he stood, cocking his head a little to one side and then a little to the other. Then he made a bow and give a smile to the image of himself in the mirror.

  “It is true! I am worth looking at. And shall I not have success when I grow up?”

  It wasn’t hard to guess that what he meant was success with the ladies. Of course, he was right. With that silver voice and that wonderful pair of eyes and handsome face, he would be sure to grow up into a regular heart-buster.

  “Aye,” I said to Pepillo, “if you live out the next two or three years, you’ll be leaving me to marry a girl.”

  “Do not fear, señor,” said Pepillo. “For, when I leave you to marry the beautiful American heiress, I shall take you with me.”

  “What might I be doing then?”

  “You would be my valet, señor.”

  There was nothing handy but my quirt, and he dodged that. He could almost have dodged a bullet, he was so lightning fast with his feet.

  “However,” I said, “you ain’t gonna live that long, because I’m gonna get so mad at you, someday, that I’ll put out a hand …”

  “And grasp a nettle, señor,” said Blue Jay.

  You couldn’t put him down. It was like hitting a cork in the water.

  “But,” continued Pepillo, “this Randal is no help, and he is no hindrance. As for the rest, they might each of them be dangerous, except that there is one of them so much greater than the rest.”

  “You mean that Rusty McArdle?” I asked. “Yes, and a lot too dangerous for me, I guess.”

  “Bah!” yelled Pepillo, stamping his red boot. “Are you not ashamed to confess such a fear to me?”

  “You’re my conscience, kid,” I said. “You’re my bad conscience, and I don’t mind you seeing the shadier side of me. Yep, I’m afraid of that McArdle.”

  “So?” said the kid, and he smiled at me. There wasn’t any mirth in that smile. It was one of the kind that show all the teeth and make a man look like a cat—plumb mean. They have a way of smiling like that down in Mexico. “You are afraid, then. But why?”

  “Why? You had a look at him, didn’t you?”

  “I had a dozen looks.”

  I believed it, too. Those dark brown eyes of his were about twelve times as fast as the eyes of anybody else.

  “And what did you see?”

  “A big man.”

  “A very big man.”

  “He does not work,” said Pepillo, “so he cannot be as strong as he looks.”

  “Some need hard work to keep their muscles up,” I said, “and some are born strong and stay strong. This Rusty is one of that kind.”

  Said Pepillo: “You are beaten before you strike a blow!”

  “There wouldn’t be many blows,” I said. “That Rusty wears a gun, and he’s got a nervous sort of a hand. He can shoot, fast and straight, and don’t you have any doubts about it.”

  “So can you, señor. Did I not see you pick out a revolver that meant much business?”

  “You saw me pick out a bluff,” I answered. “If the boys out here ever saw my gun … while I’m cleaning it, say … I want them to see a gat that looks real mean. But it’s all a bluff. I can’t shoot for sour grapes.”

  “A bluffer, too!” cried Pepillo. “What kind of a man are you, señor?”

  “Enough of a man to turn you upside down and shake the coin out of your pockets,” I answered.

  I thought that that would make him mad, but it didn’t. He just nodded.

  “True,” said Pepillo. “Of a hundred, you were the only one to see through me. That is very important, because it is not easy to look through me. Not at all!”

  Sure of himself? That’s putting it mildly. I never saw such a case of fathead in my life. Yet it wasn’t offensive. I don’t know why.

  “With this Rusty, the fight would be with guns,” I finished up.

  “You are wrong,” said Pepillo. “He would fight in any way that you want. He has never been beaten. And therefore, he would fight with the hands. And you have much hands, señor!”

  “His hands may be smaller, but they’re just as mucher as mine. You see, you ain’t got a move left, youngster.”

  He flicked his cigarette into a corner and let it burn its way into the carpet—the little rapscallion. Then he took out a pair of slim, yellow gloves, saying, “I don’t know. I have never yet been beaten in a place where I had plenty of time.”

  “There’s no time here,” I said. “Right now, tonight, is when I have to do something.”

  “Time?” asked this kid. “Five minutes is a long time. Wait, and you shall see. But I must have quiet, if I’m to think.”

  He looked down to the floor and frowned. Up from below came a regular roar of shouting and laughter. The boys down there were taking another pass at the moonshine and livening themselves up for some sort of deviltry that they might have in mind. It gave me a shiver because I didn’t have to think twice to guess that what they meant was something connected with the new manager on the ranch.

  Pepillo started to turn around. While he was doing that, he got another flash of himself in the mirror and paused to enjoy himself, standing like that, just poised on one foot like a dancer, drawing his gloves very slow and easy through his hand.

  “Ah, well,” said Pepillo, “I shall have to go down and speak to them myself, if you will not.”

  “Hey,” I cried, “wait a minute, kid! If you go down there, they’ll take you apart to see what makes you tick. You don’t know those roughs!”

  “So?” said this little cocky blue jay. “But I tell you, that in the part of the country where I was raised, these rough men would not be rough enough to be more than house mozos! No more than that.”

  And he flicked the door open and slipped away into the hall outside.

  Chapter Ten

  The minute that Pepillo was gone, I was eaten up with curiosity to see what he would really do—if he actually dared to go right into the room where those cowpunchers and Rusty McArdle were having their party.

  I couldn’t very well follow him down the stairs and look through the open doorway. So I did what Randal had suggested to me a little bit earlier. I heaved myself through the open window and climbed down the side of the house. It was only a story to go down, and there was a drain from the gutter at the eaves of the roof that ran down the wall beside my window. The grip in my hands was always my strongest point, and so I was able to lower myself to the ground dead easy. I found myself right up against the back windows of the big living room. When I peeked through, I could see the whole layout.

  Rusty had a glass of red-eye in one hand, and he was making a little speech with the other. That speech must have been something about me, by the way that he pointed and looked above him, now and then. By the way that the boys all roared with laughter, I could guess that he was arranging something extra special for me.

  However, by the time that I got to an open window, where I could hear everything just as well as I could see it, he had finished his speech. Then the door opened, and somebody said, “There comes his mozo.”

  “The little rat looks like he was pretty sure of himself,” said another.

 
He did, too. You’d think that Pepillo had come down from the king of England to tell the stable boys that they were acting real bad. He made a couple of steps into the room and stood there, giving a flash of those bright eyes of his to every face.

  There was a silence, too. I suppose that maybe it was wonder at the nerve of that little kid. Maybe it was because they were curious to hear what he would say.

  He said, “Amigos, it is not unknown to you that my master is now yours.”

  They blinked when he shot that home at them. Then one of them roared, “Why, they don’t make the kind of men that can be master of gents like us! You hear us, kid?”

  “You’ve had your thought for this month, Shorty,” said Rusty McArdle.

  This Shorty that had answered up was one of the queerest made men that ever stepped into stirrups. He wasn’t more than five feet high, and about three and a half of those feet must have been his body. His legs were hardly long enough to bother about, and they were bowed out to fit the sides of a horse. He was near as broad as he was long. When he was sitting down in a chair, his hanging hands just about touched the floor—like an ape, you’d say. Not that he had the monkey look, though, because he looked too mean to be stupid. A real stupid gent never looks like poison. And that was what Shorty would remind you of.

  Pepillo just put up his hand to command silence when they all growled at him. “I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “that I’ve had to persuade the señor from coming down here to you. It was a hard task. But I was able to do it, and I have come myself to tell you that it will be wiser for you to keep quiet.”