Sour Creek Valley Page 6

  It brought a fair howl from those wild men, and it brought a cold perspiration out on me. It looked as though Pepillo was sort of inspired. He couldn’t have said wronger things if he had studied for a year.

  I think that one or two of them would’ve got out and made a rush for the kid, right then and there, but Rusty McArdle waved them back.

  “This is sort of amusin’,” he said to the kid. “Your boss must be a sort of a duke, or something?”

  “That,” Pepillo said as quick as a wink, “is something that you had ought to ask his gun.”

  “Oh,” said Rusty, “by the way that he come in and went out of the room again, tonight, we all sort of suspected that he might’ve left his gun behind him.”

  It brought another roar from the boys. They liked the way that Rusty phrased things for them. And it certainly was pretty neat, you got to admit that.

  However, it didn’t bother the Pepillo. He tilted up his head a little, and he slapped his gloves into his other hand, as pert as you please.

  “I shall tell you something for your good,” said the kid. “The señor has a most frightful temper. Even I am sometimes afraid of him …” He made a pause there, as though he expected them to laugh.

  They did. They pretty near busted themselves.

  “Leave him be, boys,” said Rusty. “I want to hear all the rest of this. I guess that four-flusher upstairs has taught him this spiel by heart before he come down. Go on, little one.”

  “Ah, friend,” the boy said to Rusty, “I am too kind to repeat to him everything that you have said. I do not wish to see you die.”

  That seemed to tickle the boys a lot. Hard as they were, it was easy to see that they looked on Rusty as about the hardest thing this side of chilled steel. I felt the same way about him. All that I wanted was to wring the kid’s neck. My second idea was that I had better get ready to hop onto a horse and ride for Sour City as fast as four strong legs and a pair of spurs would take me. However, I waited out this talk, half trembling and half dying out of curiosity to know what that little thick-headed, sassy devil would have the nerve to say to the lions. You never would’ve guessed.

  “I like your sympathy,” said Rusty. “I ain’t ambitious to fill no early grave. I’d dodged it a couple of times, so far, and, somehow, I don’t see anything in your boss to make me worry.”

  Pepillo looked him over and up and down, so long and so steady that finally it made even Rusty stop grinning and begin to frown.

  “What are you lookin’ at, youngster?” he asked.

  “I am only wondering,” said Pepillo, “how the señor will kill you.”

  Pretty sassy, that, but Rusty came right back. “With help,” he said, “he’ll never man it by himself.”

  “I do not think it will be with a gun,” said the kid.

  “I don’t think so, either,” said Rusty. The gang yelled with their pleasure again.

  “It will be with his hands,” the kid said, “because there is enough of you to entertain him for a few moments. However, if you have sense enough to come to your wits now, and if you will ask my pardon, señor, and then beg me to intercede for you with the señor, I may be able to get you off.”

  “Say, boy,” exclaimed Rusty McArdle, “I’m doggoned if you don’t sort of rile me! Now you trot right on back to your boss, and you tell him that this sort of a bluff was pretty good fifty years ago, but that the world has growed up since, and that the most growed-up part of the world is the gents that is sittin’ in this room right now, and lookin’ you in the face!”

  They all had to rumble their pleasure at that. Nothing pleases a man so much as being considered mighty dangerous.

  “After all,” said Pepillo, “I suppose that it is better to have it over with at once. I shall tell him what I have heard.” He turned around on his heel, as cool as ever.

  Then Shorty started up out of his chair and came along across the floor with an ugly waddle of a step.

  “Wait a minute, grasshopper,” Shorty snapped. “You tell him extra special from me, that he don’t need to start in with Rusty McArdle. Rusty is a man-size man. But me, I’m the kid around this ranch. Still, I’m plenty good enough to make that bluffer take water and like it. You tell him that he’ll have to start in with me, or else the boys won’t waste no time on him. They’ll just roll him in some spare tar that they got handy and then fix him up a coat of feathers. You tell him that!”

  “Shall I tell him that … from dirt like you?” asked Pepillo.

  While that word simply paralyzed all the nerves in the body of Shorty, and made his huge arms swing sort of helpless at his side, what did the kid do but waltz up and switch Shorty across the face with his gloves, flick-flack, just like that.

  It paralyzed me, too, when I saw it. It wasn’t with the fingers of the gloves; it was with the buckle ends of them. One of the buckles tore Shorty’s lips a little and sent a stream of crimson trickling down toward his chin.

  I had a chance to watch all of this, because Shorty was so dumb with rage and astonishment and humiliation that he simply couldn’t move. All the while Pepillo was turning around and walking off as easy and as slow as you please. He got to the door while the mad-bull look was still gathering on the face of Shorty.

  It exploded, just then. He gave a roar that didn’t have any words in it. His eyes had turned red, and his mouth worked in a horrible way to see. Then he lunged after Pepillo with both of his long, thick arms stretched out. His hands, they were like the legs of pouncing spiders—hands bigger than mine, even!

  That door flicked shut behind Pepillo, but not in any hurry. However, he must have locked it that instant when he was on the other side, because Shorty reached that door and smashed against it. He recoiled without opening it.

  “That kid needs a quirting down,” cried somebody, “and we’ll take his boss along with him! Come on, boys!”

  They were willing and ready for that sort of a game. Pepillo had just roused their blood. Maybe, ordinarily, they would’ve had the good sense and the decency to admire the kid for his nerve and his sassy way. I suppose that they’d had a little too much red-eye.

  Most of all, there was a lot of them together, and maybe you notice that a mob always makes itself worse or better than any man in it. Either a mob is all angels or all devils. It’s easier to be all devils, than it is to be all angels. However, a hundred men is always braver than any one man, and a hundred men is always stupider and more cowardly than any one man.

  This night, the cowpunchers on the Randal Ranch were in a bad way. They meant trouble, big trouble, and stacks of it, long continued.

  I saw them rush that door and pile up against it, but it was made of strong stuff and they couldn’t open it just yet. I took one more glimpse of their distorted faces. They were just plain black with rage.

  Then I turned away. I wanted to get clean of that place and hike for Sour City. I never wanted anything so bad in all my born days. I never was a hero. But I never don’t pretend to be a hero. A good mix and a free-for-all—sure, that is fun and good fun—but those twelve men meant murder!

  However, I thought about the kid in the nick of time. No matter what a mess he had made of things, he, no doubt, had meant right. If those ruffians got hold of him, they would near kill him.

  I went up that drainage pipe faster than I ever went any place in my life. I fair ran with my hands. When I came to the window of my room, I looked in, and there was Pepillo with all of the sap run out of him. He was sitting at the table, with his head bowed in his arms, sobbing like a baby.

  Chapter Eleven

  It hit me bad. You wouldn’t believe how mighty awful bad it hit me. I’ve seen growed-up men, strong and all that, get hurt so bad that they cried. There’s nothing much worse than that. Somehow this kid had seemed stronger than any man. There was so much sap in him, so much sassiness and meanness and “go” to him
, that I couldn’t imagine him breaking down—not if there was a whole battery of guns turned loose and looking him right in the eye. However, there he was, sitting with his head down, his whole skinny little body shaking with sobs.

  It flabbergasted me. I called from the window, “Kid, it’s time to go!”

  He leaped up from that table as though a bullet had gone through him—a bullet of joy, I should say. All at once he was smiling through the tears. He gave two flicks with his hands to his face, and every last one of those tears was gone galley west, and only a sparkle of them left in his long, black lashes.

  “I thought you had gone,” gasped out the Blue Jay. “I thought that you had snuck down … and that you were afraid … and that you had run away from me.”

  “I did sneak down,” I said, “and I did see. I was afraid, and I’m thinking of leaving you here, flat and cold, unless you hurry up and come along with me.”

  Downstairs, there was the yelling and the yapping of those crazy fighting men. The kid just rested his hands against the edge of that table, saying to me, with a smile, “I feared that you had gone away from me. I feared that you had run away and thought only of yourself. Oh, señor!”

  Yes, sir, you would’ve thought that I was Santa Claus, to see his blush and his silly grin. Or that I was his best girl come back to him after a long parting.

  “You big rattlebrain,” I said, “don’t you hear them yelling? They’ll be up here in a minute. I’ve seen and I’ve heard you, and of all of the fool jobs that I ever saw in the world, you did the most foolish, and the worst in every way. You’ve pretty near dug a grave for me here in this house. Now you come tearing, or I’ll start along without you!”

  Darn my eyes, he didn’t budge. No, sir, he just stood there, and he smiled at me, perfectly contented and happy.

  “Hurry! I have to start, Pepillo,” I said.

  He just shook his head. “Ah, no, señor, you will not leave me.”

  I didn’t know what could be working in his head, the young fool. I started down the pipe, calling, “All right, here I go!”

  But I didn’t hear him coming with a rush to the window, and so I heaved myself back and looked in. There he was, standing right by the table and smiling at the window, still.

  “You see, it will not do. I understand.”

  That’s what he said to me!

  “You understand what, you blockhead? You understand nothing!” I cried. “Why, you empty-skulled kid, they’ll tear you to bits, if they lay hands on you. You understand?”

  “They will not lay hands on me,” Pepillo said as easy as ever.

  “Doggone me,” I yelled at him, “you’ve gone nutty! You have, for a fact. I want to know what will keep them from getting their hands on you, then?”

  “You, señor,” he said very sweetly.

  It made me so mad, and it bewildered me so that I thought I would choke. I couldn’t see. A mist came up before my eyes.

  “I’d like to wring your idiot neck myself!”

  He only shook his head and smiled still. I was sure that he was crazy, now.

  “Pepillo,” I begged him, “for heaven’s sake, come along before you get the pair of us killed by staying here.”

  He put his head to one side, like a bird on a branch in the summer sunshine. “I cannot go, señor. I have too much pleasure hearing the music of the pack.”

  “Crazy or not, they won’t spare you. And if you won’t come willing, I’ll take you by force.”

  I heaved myself in through the window, and I made a pass at him. Strike me dead if I didn’t nearly get a knife jabbed through the palm of my hand.

  There stood Pepillo in the corner of the room with that Mexican, mean smile, showing all his teeth at me—and there was one of his long, thin-bladed knives in his hand.

  “If you touch me, I’ll kill you, señor!” he cried. “I have promised you that before, and now I swear it to you on my honor and on the cross that I wear!”

  “You treacherous polecat!”

  I was staggered and all abroad. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn next. I never saw actions that looked more like insanity, and yet Blue Jay was the last person in the world to go crazy. He was more apt to drive other folks mad.

  He stood there, changing his smile to a real one.

  “It is very pleasant, señor. Feel how the house trembles as they break down the door? They will be here, and at once.”

  At that moment, they sent down the lower door with a great smashing and crashing that went echoing through the house. I heard a yell in a room near mine. The voice was Randal’s. I was glad, anyway, that he should have some of the misery that I was having. I only wished that he had it all for bringing me out to a set of tigers like these crazy men.

  However, that didn’t get Pepillo any nearer to the window. I had only the split part of a second, now, to move him. Up the stairs I could hear their feet making thunder. I reached for the drawer of the table, first, and jerked it open to snatch out my gun.

  It was gone! The drawer of the table was empty. When I looked up, feeling pretty drawn and desperate, that rat of a boy showed me my Colt.

  “If you try a gun, they will surely kill you, señor, and for that reason I took the temptation away from you. You must fight them with your hands, señor.”

  That is what Blue Jay stood up and said to me—as calm as you please, a whole lot calmer than I am as I write this here down in black and white. I sure get wind all over again. He sure was calculated to try out the strength of a man’s nerves, that Pepillo was.

  I said, “Pepillo, you are most likely the death of me, but I’m gonna make one more try to save you from them devils. Will you come?”

  “Be warned, señor. I shall not come. Not I. Not a step from this room.”

  “Will you tell me why in the devil you won’t come?” I asked him.

  “Ah, well,” said Pepillo, “you would not understand.”

  “Talk out!” I cried.

  “It is because your honor is lost if you run away. And you will not run away if I stay here.”

  There it was; the cat was out of the bag at last. No, this Blue Jay wasn’t crazy; he was worse than crazy. He was what the chaplain had always called “romantic.” Everything wild that the chaplain didn’t like, he used to call romantic. A pretty good word, got out of fool story books.

  “They aren’t really bad,” the chaplain used to say to me about the bad criminals, “it’s just that the romantic vein has run away with them. They want to imitate the greatness of other criminals before them. All because the writers of idiotic romances have made the idea seem attractive. That’s all that there is to it.”

  Good old chaplain. He mostly had an idea for everything, but in that spot maybe he was partly right. Certainly, when I stood helpless in front of that fool kid, I saw that he was right about what made the wheels go around in Pepillo.

  Honor! He didn’t want me to run away from that house because I would lose my honor. Maybe was I a knight, or a baron, or something? Had the king given me a trust? Honor! And me that was fresh out of two years in a penitentiary. Honor.

  I yelled, “You peanut head! You little yap! Honor? I tell you that I’m just out of the pen! D’you still talk about my honor?”

  “Ah, señor,” he said, “I trust you completely and utterly. You must stay for the sake of your great soul.”

  “My great foot!” I cried, and I made a dive at him.

  Well, sir, he heaved himself up, stiff and straight, and raised the knife in the air. There was such a white devil in his face and such cold steel in his eyes that I couldn’t do the trick. All the nerve ran out of me, and I stood there panting and cursing him. I was half exhausted. That minute of clashing my will against the will of that mite of a kid made me feel just as though I had run a mile at full speed.

  Then: “They have come fo
r you, my master,” said Blue Jay.

  Wham! Crash! They reached the door of that room.

  “Come out!” they yelled. “We want the man-killer! We want the new boss! We want to have a look at him and see what’s inside of him! Are you comin’ out, boss?”

  That was a whole chorus of them, but chiefly there was the bull roar of Shorty above all the rest of them. When I listened to them, I turned away from Pepillo, feeling mighty weak, I can tell you.

  “Señor,” said the kid behind me. “Do not let them come in at you. If you do that, you are lost.”

  “Why, you little unspeakable fool!” I cried. “There’s one man alone out there that’s more than a match for me. There’s Rusty. He’s got everything that I have and something more.”

  “It is a great lie,” said Pepillo. “He is not a bulldog, as you are. He is only a tiger … dreadful for one minute … and then very weak. You will see.”

  “And the rest of the crowd?”

  “They will be nothing. Oh, if I had only half of your strength, I would step out and throw them in a heap.”

  He would’ve, too. There was that stuff in him that makes one man the boss over twenty. There wasn’t any of that kind of stuff in me, I can tell you.

  However, I saw that it was better to die fighting than it was to die standing still. So I sashayed up to the door and turned around, saying to the kid, “Pepillo, you are a thousand kinds of a fool, but you’re game, bless you. So long, because I ain’t apt to see you again.”

  I said that, and he gave me a smile and a wave of his hand. What surprised me was that he was white as a sheet, with his eyes just sticking out of his head, exactly as though even Pepillo was scared, too, but didn’t want me to see it. However, I didn’t have any time to work that all out with my slow-motion mind.

  I jerked that door open, and I dived out at the crowd of them that was outside.

  Chapter Twelve

  Did you ever see a rat that was cornered by dogs? He flies in their faces. That was what I did. It wasn’t courage. You don’t call a rat brave.