Sour Creek Valley Read online

  You could’ve flattened Shorty, he was so astonished. He’d just heard from me what he considered about the biggest compliment that any man could pay to that gang of thugs. Then he searched my face to find out what my hidden meanings might be. I went right on, grinning at him.

  “Shorty,” I continued, “if I was one of the common punchers, working for ordinary pay, I’d reckon to do just about what you boys are doing. But I ain’t. I get higher pay, and I get it for running a ranch. You understand? I can see how you boys figured. And I can sympathize with you a lot. But that ain’t my job. I’m here to run this here outfit, and, by heaven, I’m gonna do it! I ain’t gonna turn loose the boys that can’t get on with me. It would simply mean sending them back into the hills to gang up with the rustlers. No, when I fire one of you gents, it’s gonna be fair and square shooting. All I ask is that if one of you drop me, you plant me where I dropped, and stick a shingle in the ground to say that a bucking horse got the best of me. And if I manage to drop you boys, I’ll do the same by you, honest and faithful, because I live up to my promises.”

  A grin began to fight with the wonder in the eyes of Shorty, and I went right on with my speech.

  “With a fighting gang like you,” I said, “this ranch can be wrecked, or it can be made. If I got you boys behind me, I can make you famous, because we’ll go through them mountains like a hot shot through butter. We’ll make the rustlers scatter for the lowlands, pronto. You’ve been famous for being a mean lot, but I’ll make you famous for being something more than mean. You understand me, Shorty?”

  He looked me fair and square in the face. Oh, but he had a mean eye. He was having a struggle with himself, and asking himself if he could really do anything but hate me with his whole heart. He couldn’t make up his mind, right then.

  “Go back to the bunkhouse,” I said. “Tell the boys what I say. If they’ll play the game with me, I’ll play the game with them. If they want to down me, let ’em elect their representative, and I’m ready for him, night or day. So long, Shorty.”

  He got to the door, and then I stopped him again.

  “There’s one thing that we ain’t talked about,” I said. “And that’s the way you boys have been using this place for a clubhouse. Right now, tonight, it quits. The colored boys are gonna get orders to clean up all of your things that they find in here and take them out to the bunkhouse. When you’re off the range, after this, you’re gonna stay in that bunkhouse, and no place else. Because if you come in here, there’s gonna be so much trouble, Shorty, that it will make tonight look like a Salvation Army picnic!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Instead of answering, Shorty went out with just a black look at me, which was his declaration of independence, as you might say. I noticed that he didn’t slam the door, and at a time like that, actions speak a lot louder than words, of course. When he was gone, I told Pepillo to pull down the shades. He was already doing it. He skinned around that room, not making any more noise than a blowing feather, and here we were with the eyes of the outside world shut away.

  “Was it all right?” I asked Pepillo.

  He stopped for a minute to consider that, then he shrugged his shoulders with a very Frenchy sort of an expression.

  “Oh … it would do,” said Pepillo. “But before you make another speech, let me help you to write it down first. Oh, yes, it was very good, but you could have stepped on them harder. He would have stood for much more than you gave him.”

  I had no chance to argue points with Pepillo, because right then the door opened, and in comes Randal again. He was smoking a cigarette, and he was pretty thoughtful. He walked up and stood looking down at me.

  “Well,” said Randal, “I don’t know whether you’re better as a fighter or as a bluff.”

  It made me mad, of course. I only had to look back a very short distance to remember how he had been in a blue funk. I didn’t wish to make trouble just then, because I was feeling weak and comfortable. So I just let myself smile up at Harry Randal. He snarled and began to pace the room. You would think that I had done him harm, instead of putting down those wild cowpunchers that he had collected.

  Pepillo came and stood just behind my chair with his arms folded on the top of it, which brought his lips pretty close to my ear. He murmured, “This pig is full of wonder. That is why he is nasty. Some pigs are that way, señor.”

  “How old are you, Pepillo?” I asked.

  “I am fourteen, señor.”

  “You talk like you are forty.”

  “I have not lived fourteen years in an eggshell,” said Pepillo. “Look. The pig is going to ask questions.”

  Randal turned around and braced his feet. He chawed away at his cigar and frowned at me. “Big Boy,” he said, “when you came into this house, you were scared to death.”

  “Was I?”

  “Don’t try to lie out of it,” said Randal. “But send that brat away. I want to talk to you.”

  I was about to do what he wanted, but Pepillo jabbed me with his elbow and whispered behind his hand, “No.”

  So I said, “This kid is as tight as a drum. He won’t leak any news, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Besides, I’m used to having him with me.”

  “Except when you’re in jail?” asked Randal.

  My, what a mean disposition that Randal had.

  “You’re talking foolish,” I said to Randal. “Do you want to make trouble with me?”

  He didn’t even hear me. “I can’t make it out,” he went on. “You come in here shaking. And ten minutes later you come out and slam through the crowd of them, knock three or four down, throw Shorty down the stairs, and beat Rusty McArdle to a pulp. Gad! I didn’t think that any man could have done that. What happened to you between the time that you came into the house and the time that you beat McArdle? That’s what I can’t make out.”

  I hadn’t thought of it before, but now that I turned my mind backward, I could see that only one thing had happened, and that was the Blue Jay. It was Pepillo that had made me fight like a crazy man, instead of running away as fast as I could. How could I explain that a kid like him was at the bottom of what I had done?

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said, “if I was to say that I was just thinking things over when I came into the house. As soon as I got something mapped out, I went ahead and did it.”

  “Bunk!” said Randal. “Purest bunk in the world, and I know it. However … I can’t figure it out just yet, but I will sooner or later. There’s a secret, somewhere. I can tell by the grin on the face of that brat. However, the next thing to work out is what will you do in the morning?”

  “See if the boys will toe the line,” I said, “and, if they will, start my thinking at that point. I suppose that the rustlers come next. What do you know about them?”

  Randal threw up his hands. “I know too much,” he said. “I know, because I heard part of the story from Uncle Stephen, and the rest of it I’ve worked out myself. I learned about it, because I hoped that I could enable myself to beat the lot of them, once I knew who and what they really were. But the more I’ve learned, the more hopeless I see that the job is.”

  He laid out the whole thing to me, and I repeat it to you, just word for word the way that he said it to me. No, not in the same words, because that would take a lot too long. I’ll tell you all the facts of importance that he gave me—important and queer, I thought them.

  It seems that back in the beginning, along in the forties or fifties, whenever it was that the Mexican War came, all of this part of the range belonged to old Mexico. Sour Creek and Sour Creek Valley, from the water divide of one mountain range to the water divide of the other, belonged by a Spanish grant to a family by name of Mauricio. It’s a funny name for a family, ain’t it?

  Well, after the Mexican War, we Americans came along and laughed at Mexican ideas in general and Spanish land grants in pa
rticular. We grabbed land right and left, and we got rich quick. Up here in the valley of Sour Creek, when the Mauricios were driven out of the valley, they just turned around and went to the mountains. They settled down in the cañons and lived off of what the Americans raised in the valley. Like landlords, you understand, except that they collected their rent with a gun. When people tried to clean out those badlands to the south, they had no luck at all. You could hide a hundred thousand cows in those cañons too easy.

  Nobody paid much attention, after a while. From the insides of those mountains, the Mauricios lived like lords. They got everything down to a regular system. From every cattle owner, they took a certain amount, and nothing was said, because the cowmen all knew that if one rustler was hunted out of those mountains, another rustler was pretty sure to get in.

  The great thing about the Mauricios was that they stole in good order. They never took from any one man more than he could stand, and they never let another rustler poach on their preserves. You might say that they came to have a sort of legitimate right to rustle on those lands that once belonged to them by right of law.

  This lasted until Stephen Randal come along. He didn’t give a hang for traditions, except the ones that he started himself. The first thing that he did—he shut up the mouths of the cañons that opened into Sour Creek, as well as he could, and he hired about a hundred men for that job. He spent money like water, but he was willing to. Chance gave him his innings.

  The representatives of the Mauricios just then were two brothers, Valentin and Gaspar. Valentin was the smart thinker, and Gaspar was the fighter. By chance, this Gaspar got mixed up with Stephen Randal, and Randal shot him dead. That took a lot of the sap out of Valentin Mauricio. He could’ve gone on poaching, in spite of all the men that Randal hired, but he didn’t have the hankering to trip up on Steve Randal’s big feet.

  He drifted south into Mexico, fetching along with him Leonor, the daughter of that dead Gaspar. Down in Mexico, Valentin tried his hand at legitimate business, but the open range had an attraction for him. He started a silver business—intercepting burro-drawn trains carrying high-class ore from the higher mines in the mountains. He did pretty well at that trade. But all the time he was hankering to get back to the mountains near Sour Creek—the hereditary domains of the proud old Mauricios, you understand. Only Valentin Mauricio wanted to have an ally who could handle Stephen Randal.

  He found the very man. His niece, Leonor, was growing up very pretty, and that face of hers turned the head of the wildest, handsomest, most useless man in Mexico, mean Pablo Almadares.

  Maybe you’ve heard of Pablo Almadares. He was talked about like something in a story book, for a while. He was like something out of a book. This Almadares went wild about Leonor.

  “I’ll give you my niece,” said Valentin Mauricio, “but first you give me a hand up yonder at Sour Creek.”

  No sooner said than done, as they say in the story. Almadares rode up north with him, and he landed just before Stephen Randal died. Which was too bad, as all hands agreed, because the scrap between them two would’ve been enough to make you happy just to think about. Of course, Almadares would’ve won. He always won. However, Randal died in peace. Right after that, Almadares made a great raid and scooped in a tremendous lot of cows from this and other ranches.

  After that, things were quiet. Seemed as though Almadares must’ve been married and went away to Mexico to enjoy his honeymoon. Only just lately the trouble started once more, and the cows seemed to be melting away off the range.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That was the frame to the picture that I knew about already, and the frame made a good deal of difference. You can tackle a doctoring case pretty cheerful, when you know that it’s just a matter of a broken leg that will knit and get well, or a fever that will burn itself out. When you bump up against an incurable, you feel sort of helpless. Here was I engaged in the job of putting a blanket over the head of a firm that had been rustling cows for ages.

  “Now, look here,” said Randal. “While we’re talking about this side of the business, you might as well tell me if there’s any watered stock in the business, eh? Because if there is, this is the time to tell me about it, before I get my heart all down in my boots, you understand?”

  “There is American legal tender, and there is printed Mexican money,” I said. “Sometimes it will take as much as a hundred of them printed dollars to make one American hundred cents. And it’s the same way with reputations. A gent that is considered a regular buster down there, south of the Río Grande, maybe will turn out to be just a cheapskate throwing a bluff when he comes north of the river. Give me the lowdown and confess, old-timer, that some of these here Mexican bad men are just a lot more Mexican than they are bad … I mean, sneaking and treacherous and low, but not real dangerous to a man …”

  “Oh, gringo dog,” said a voice at my ear. “Then let me tell you that when Pablo Almadares comes to hunt you, you will not stand to fight as you did against Señor McArdle, but you will turn and run like a whipped coyote. Then you will see how quickly and how easily he will catch you, and how he will kill you, because you are a gringo! Gringo … and a pig!”

  That was the report from Pepillo. I forgot about him being a Mexican. It made me feel pretty cheap and bad, too.

  “Pepillo,” I said, “you little blue jay, I forgot that you might belong to any one race. I looked on you like you were a bird of all the feathers that there are. I forgot that you are a greaser. But you’re an exception. The rest of them are nothing, but you’re the bright and shining exception, Pepillo, in a line of bad sports!”

  I thought that that, maybe, would soothe him down a good deal, but I had riled him so bad, now, that his steam was near the busting point.

  “We do not live for filthy dollars,” said Pepillo. “We live for glory and Mexico. Mexico is a nation of warriors!”

  To see that imp stand there, throw back his head, and almost close his eyes with happiness, you would think that there was really nothing but pity to be had for everything and everybody that wasn’t Mexican. Then he opened his eyes wide and glared at me.

  “But you … Yankee pig … Yankee dog … I hate you … like the dirt under my feet!” Then he whirled around and made for the door.

  “Look here, Pepillo,” I said, “dammit, I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t look, though. He was through the door in a flash, and then he was up the stairs. I went after him like a steam engine. Slam went the door of my room in my face, and the lock clicked.

  “Pepillo,” I asked, “are you gonna be a little fool and run away?”

  “What matter does it make? I am only a greaser! I am only a Mexican! What difference does it make to you what I do?”

  “Kid,” I said, “if you start crying, I’m gonna bust down the door.”

  I had made another wrong step. He was filled with anger. “I am not crying,” shouted Pepillo, “except for anger that such a lump of a creature should have shamed me! I should have driven my knife into your back! I am not crying!” All this with his voice wobbling back and forth, very hard, to keep from a squawk one minute and a moan the next.

  “Pepillo,” I said, shaking the lock of that door, “I apologize. I want you to forgive me. I am sorry!”

  “Do I care if you are sorry? No, I do not care. I shall never see your face again.”

  I thought it over. There wasn’t any doubt that I was fond of the little devil and that he had worked his way right into my heart. Besides that, I had got to leaning tremendous on him. You simply wouldn’t believe how I had got into the habit of turning to him when I wanted to have any thinking done for me. But I could see that Pepillo was spoiled pretty bad. I had made so much of him that, if I kept on soothing him and petting him, he would soon be too hot for me to handle altogether.

  So I said, “You suit yourself. I’m sorry that I ran down your country. I’d hate to h
ave you leave me. I’m mighty fond of you, kid. But I ain’t gonna treat you like a baby. You can beat it when you get ready, but once you go, you can make sure that I won’t ever come begging you to come back to me!”

  I heard a peal of mocking laughter from the inside of the room that went through me like an echo in an empty house. When I got down the stairs I was pretty blue.

  Randal was staring and sneering when I got down to the living room. “You been up there babying that kid?” he asked. “If any brat said half that much to me, I’d bust him in two and nail the halves on two posts. You make a fool of yourself, big boy.”

  I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Somehow, it made me so mad to have Harry Randal tell me how I had ought to treat Pepillo, that I couldn’t risk speaking. One word would have let me explode, and then I would’ve gone for Randal, you know. So I only gave him a mean look—but there was enough meanness in that ugly look to calm him down again.

  He said, “Let’s get back to the thing that we were talking about. You were asking about the Mexicans in this deal … were they real men or just fakers?”

  “That’s it, and it makes a lot of difference.”

  “Well,” said Randal, “I don’t know what part of the range you were brought up on, but for my part I know that an average Mexican is about as strong, as brave, as tough, and as mean as any Yankee that ever lived. I know it, because I’ve been around them all of my life. But maybe you’ve had a different experience with them.”

  Mexicans was always partial to me as a pincushion, except that the pins that they tried to stick in me was always made of steel ground to a sharp point—and mostly long enough to kill. Right down to the kid, there were always knives in the air when I came across a Mexican.