Sour Creek Valley

by Max Brand

  I was partly desperate and partly mad. I don’t mean angry, but crazy. Just that. The idea that this mite of a kid had deliberately worked up a trap for me to try out my “honor” was enough to make me laugh all the rest of my days—I being a jailbird and the rest of it, as I’ve told you before. I saw a blur of faces, and I jumped at them.

  The boxing that I had been doing at Fulsom made my hands work instinctively. I felt my knuckles bite through flesh to the bone. A pair of them went down, yelling, and brought down a couple more as they fell. Then I waded along through that gap and found the snarling face of Shorty in front of me. He whaled away with a swing that would’ve knocked a hole right through the ribs of an ox, but he was a mite too slow, and I was inside of the punch in time. I took Shorty by his throat. He dropped back, straight down the stairs, with me on top of him.

  We did one somersault complete, down that flight of stairs and through the door into the living room. When I picked myself up, there was no stir in Shorty. He had got his head whanged on the steps until he was done.

  I didn’t have empty hands long. The whole tangle of cowpunchers were coming down those stairs with a rush and a roar. Of course, the first man down was the fastest of the lot. He happened to be the biggest, too. I mean Rusty McArdle, if you have to be told.

  As he came through the doorway, he saw my empty hands, and he shied his Colt across the room. It exploded when it hit, and it sent a bullet humming an inch from my head—as if it was trying to fight for its boss even when it was out of his hand.

  I saw that big chap come driving, and I let him have it. Oh, it was a pretty thing to see the way that he ducked under my wallop. It was the prettiest thing in the world, if you were off at a distance, watching. Natural speed and ring training was what he had. He ducked under my punch, as I was saying, and, coming up again, he clipped me with an uppercut right on the button.

  Just like somebody had hit you on the back of the head with a hammer; that was the way it felt to me. It let loose a bomb that exploded inside of my head. My knees turned into worn-out springs, and they almost let me down to the floor.

  I did start falling, but I fell into McArdle as he tore in. He tried to tear himself loose, but I hung on for my life. While he smashed at my ribs, my head cleared. He fought himself away and bashed at me with a full-arm punch, his teeth set and his eyes full of the joy of fighting. That was a punch!

  It ought to have torn the head off my shoulders, of course, but he was just a little too anxious to finish me then and there. He was “pressing,” as the golf nuts call it. The result was that he didn’t hit the ball at all! I was able to back out of the sweep of his fist. As he lunged in, he tried to cover up, but he tried too late. I got him. It was a sweet feeling, I tell you. I got him on the chin with a lifting punch that snapped his head straight back onto his shoulders, flopping him on the floor as flat as a pancake.

  What I wanted to do was to drop on top of him and choke him down, regular rough-and-tumble, but my own head was filled with nightmares and cobwebs and dust. I couldn’t exactly locate the place where he was lying on the floor, I was so groggy. Then I heard one of the cowpunchers saying in a mighty respectful sort of a voice, “Look at that, bunkies. This gent is giving Rusty a fair fight … and there’s Rusty on the floor for the first time in his life.”

  They seemed to be staggered by the look of things as much as I was staggered by the fist of Rusty. Then my head cleared altogether, and I saw Rusty come up off the floor, bad hurt. There was a wild look in his eye—startled, too, as though he hadn’t known that hands were made that could flatten him this way, lucky punch or not. He came tearing, and I set myself, letting him have it as he plunged, one for each side of his head.

  It slowed him up, but it didn’t stop him. He was a tiger. That part of what Pepillo had said was true enough. He got in close, and then he began to hammer at me with the fastest flock of fists that I ever saw or heard of. I tried to back away from that cloud of hornets, but it was like a bull trying to back away from a wildcat. The cowpunchers were going wild with joy, and their yelling seemed to take Rusty up on a wave top and throw him after me.

  I tried to dodge his rush, but it was a clumsy try, compared with his neat footwork. Just as I sidestepped, he slammed me. Everything turned to air under me. I dropped a thousand feet and landed on bedrock.

  I felt McArdle drop on top of me. Right then and there would’ve been the finish of Blondy Kitchin, because that fellow had his thumbs on my throat. Being knocked down had maddened him, and he was ready for a kill. But this was no barroom fight. This was on the range, and these here were range men that were watching. They got to him in a cluster—and through the blackness that was over my eyes I saw them coming like shadows. Shorty was the first of the lot.

  They grabbed Rusty McArdle and pulled him off of me. “Not that way, Rusty!” I heard them yell at him. “When he flattened you, he gave you a chance to get up again!”

  I heard Rusty say, “I forgot. I’m sorry I lost my head. Yes … he’s a white man!”

  “He’ll never get up,” said one of them. “He’s had enough.”

  I agreed with them, too. I had enough. I was beaten. My skull was just a copper bell, and there were hammers beating in it. All at once a voice like a needle ran through my brain and stopped the hammers’ clattering and booming.

  “Señor! Señor! In the name of heaven!”

  Pepillo—he couldn’t let me be!

  That voice of his was like a dash of cold water through my body. It braced me up and raised me to my knee. I steadied myself there, with my head clear as a crystal, for the minute. I looked up at big Rusty McArdle, and he nodded to me, saying through his teeth, “Step up, stranger. I want to get in one more pass at you. You’re the first that ever come for a second one.”

  I came, well enough, but I came low and managed to lunge in under the whip of his arm as he tried for my head. I came up in close, and sank my right fist, with all of my weight behind, into his ribs. Seemed to me like my hand went in up to the wrist, and I heard a gasp and a groan from Rusty.

  He fought himself away, quick as a wink. He was hurt. There was a twisted look on his face. He was hurt, too, by the scared expression on the faces of the cowpunchers as they stood around and watched. But he wasn’t too hurt to fight! He was nothing but game, that McArdle. He came at me—tiger, tiger, tiger all the time. He drove me before him. My head was simply rocking from one side to the other, but he was fighting too vicious to set himself well for a knockout. As my shoulders hit the wall on the farther side of the room, I pitched forward and managed to fall into another clinch.

  I was sick, all right. Everything was a blur, except for a lightning flash that let in the sight of Pepillo on his knees, as though he had been praying, and the squeak of his voice as he yelled to me, “Señor, señor! He weakens! The battle is yours!”

  Numb and dumb as I was, that imp shot life into me. I got new strength in me. I grabbed McArdle harder, and it seemed to me that he sort of winced and buckled under my hand. Then I knew that he was going.

  “Rusty,” I said, “you’re a tiger, but now you’re done. Will you give up?”

  He gasped out, “I’ll see you cursed first. Stop clawing me and stand off and fight like a man, if you dare.”

  I just laughed at him through the cloud that covered my eyes. I pushed him away, and he staggered back, with his knees sinking. Condition was telling, now. He was strong, and he was fast as chain lightning, but he didn’t have in his arms the seasoning of two years of hard labor. It was Fulsom that was fighting for me now—just as much as the voice and the sight of the little imp, Pepillo.

  Game, though—McArdle was game as steel. He tried to cover up his weakness by rushing, but he had spent himself in the rally that had driven me across the room. I stopped that rush with a half-arm left, then I hit him away like a spinning top, with a long right. His knees were too weak to stop hi
m. He kept reeling and staggering, and, from the effects of that last punch, his head sagged from side to side.

  I heard Shorty gasping out, “Buck up, Rusty. Don’t go down. It ain’t possible. It ain’t possible.”

  It was possible, though. He was helpless, and all that I had to do was to follow him up and hit him once more.

  The effort to knock him out would probably set me staggering, too, and I didn’t want those fellows to see how nearly I was beaten. So I said, “Rusty, you’re beat. I want you to take some time and come to. I’m going outside to wait till your head is cleared. This time it was fists. The next time it’ll be guns. You get ready for the guns. Or else get ready to tell me that I’m the boss.”

  I started for the door, studying every step to keep from wobbling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I got along through the doorway fine as silk and found myself safe out in the dark, with the night wind cooling off my face and the stars shining over me.

  “I’m all right,” I said to myself. “All I got to do is to take a couple of deep breaths. Then my head will clear, and I can figure out what I’ll do if big Rusty decides to call my bluff. I can relax.”

  Well, that was what I did. I relaxed. I loosened up my jaw muscles and let go of myself all over. When I say that I let myself go, I want you to know that it was exactly as though I was falling a whole block. A wave of darkness started up at me from the ground. The stars begun to spin around and turn into big, red globes, and the red globes exploded like shells, each turning into a million rockets shooting across the night, horizontally. I didn’t choose the place to fall; I just stretched myself out on the dry grass and wished for help.

  It was that punch of Rusty’s that had knocked me down. By rights, I would have been unconscious, if the voice of the kid hadn’t jabbed a needle into me and braced me up in spite of myself. The rest of that fight was just nerves, as far as I was concerned. Now that I relaxed, I was down and out.

  I heard a step, and I figured that one of them had come out, and now they would see what a bluffer I was. I was too sick to care. Then the voice of Pepillo came dropping to me like rain on the desert. There was never anything more welcome.

  He sat down, took my head in his lap, and began to rub my forehead and my eyes. I give you my word that with every rub he took a million busting rockets out of the skies.

  “Are you in great pain, señor?” Pepillo asked, as gentle as a lamb.

  “Keep rubbing,” I managed to gasp out, “and keep talking.”

  Now, it may seem queer to you, but the fact is that that smooth, clear voice of the kid was like a staff for me to lean on. Hanging onto that voice was like following a thread that was taking me out of the labyrinth of darkness that I had fallen into. He wasn’t so sassy now. He seemed to have sobered down a lot, and you would’ve thought that he was even respectful to have heard him,

  “I thought that you were lost,” said Pepillo, still rubbing the busting stars out of the sky. “But it was just as I hoped. When he knocked you down, you stood up stronger than ever! Ah, but when he drove you across the room … every blow that fell on you, it fell on me, also. I still ache with the pain of those terrible strokes. He drove you to the wall … but, ah, the thought of defeat made you a lion again.”

  “Go on talking,” I said, “but don’t talk like a fool. I was licked, kid. But when you yelled at me, you let in a flash of light, and I could see to hit him again. Go on talking. Will Rusty fight again?”

  “Not if you go back soon enough,” said the kid. “Rusty McArdle is even sicker than you, and he will not be well again so soon. He knows that he was a beaten man. There is a weight on him, be sure, and that weight is the knowledge that you spared him, when you might have struck him down at the end. It is a weight on the others, also. They could withstand your strength, señor … but they cannot withstand your mercy. It is a club that beats them to the ground. Ah, if I could have told you what to do, I should not have had wit enough to suggest that.”

  I was still too groggy to explain in detail. I only mumbled to him that I hadn’t finished off Rusty because I was too weak to risk the try. Pepillo only laughed.

  “That is the way with genius,” he said. “It doesn’t understand itself. It lives in a cloud.”

  “Lay off from that sort of talk, Pepillo. Leave it be, because it doesn’t buy nothing with me. But help me to sit up. I’m better now.”

  He helped to prop me up. I held my head in my hands for a while, and then I took hold of his shoulder and managed to get to my feet. I was still wobbly, and I staggered around a bit while he dusted the dirt and the leaves off me. Pretty soon I was coming back to myself.

  There were two things to buck me up. One was that I wanted to get back inside of the house as soon as I could, before Rusty was shipshape again. The other was that the feeling that I had beat him was like three fingers of red-eye burning in me and giving me power. I managed to take a straight step. I dragged down a few clean breaths of air, and then I was ready. Pepillo put the handle of the old, smooth Colt in my fingers.

  “Go in with this, señor,” he said. “They are men of that sort. They will expect to see a gun now.”

  He was right, of course, but the feel of that gun was a nasty thing. However, I had started to work by bluff, and I had to keep right on by bluff, I went up to the front door of the house, kicked it open, and stepped into the living room, wearing the blackest frown that I could raise.

  The boys had been working like mad every minute of the time while I was away. I saw a knot of them around Rusty. They had drenched him with water, and they were fanning him on each side with a couple of coats.

  Any one of them could’ve shot my eyeteeth out, and I knew it. But they seemed to think that what I could do with my fists I could do just as well with a gun, and that Rusty was their one good bet against me. So they put their whole risk on him.

  Poor Rusty was still at sea. You could tell with one look at him that he was still gone. His jaw was set, and his face was pale and perspiring, just from the effort that he was making to pull himself together. It wouldn’t work. His eyes were still troubled and empty, and his head wasn’t upright on his neck.

  Figuring that I had that trick as good as in my hand, I walked over and stood above them, glowering blacker than ever.

  “We’ve had it out with the fists, McArdle,” I said, “and now we’ll have it out with guns. Stand up!”

  “Aye, curse you!” cried Rusty. “I’m ready!”

  He tried to stand up, but they hauled him down again. Shorty jumped out in front of me. He looked scared—and he was pretty badly marked from his fall down the stairs with two hundred pounds of me on top of him. He held both hands up, as if he wanted to show that he come as peacemaker.

  “Chief,” said Shorty, “Rusty ain’t fit. Bear down light on him, will you? He says he’ll fight, but he ain’t fit. It would be a murder, and by the cut of your jib I know that you ain’t a murderer, chief.”

  There was one word in that speech that tickled me, and he had used it twice. When he called me “chief” it was as much as to tell me that the boys had done laughing. They had decided to take me serious, and that was almost more than I had been able to pray for a little while ago.

  “If he can’t fight,” I said, “the rest of you take care of him till he can. Or if there is any of you that the rest would like to elect to step out here and have it out with me with powder and lead, let him talk up. I got a minute or two with nothing on my hands. Step up and take your choice.”

  I started to walk up and down that big room, paying no attention to them, my eyes on the watch in my hand. Finally, I slammed it into my pocket and whirled around on them. They jumped, and every one of them watched me as though he was seeing a ghost.

  “Get out!” I said, pointing to the door. “Get McArdle out of this here room and out of this here house. And get quick, because
I’m running bank full, and I’m about to flood over!”

  I knew that there was not one among them that would take talk like that from me, if he was alone. But now they started in to look at each other, and the mob wasn’t a quarter as brave as the least brave of the lot of them. They couldn’t make up their minds which should start the action. Each waited for the other fellow—and then the whole lot began to drift like sheep toward the back door. It was the prettiest picture that I ever saw in my born days.

  When they were filing out the back door, I hollered, “Shorty!”

  He was the nerviest of the lot, and so he was the slowest and last to leave. He started as if a bullet had been jammed through his back. Then he whirled around and faced me, pale but determined looking.

  “Come back here,” I said, pointing to a spot close to me on the floor.

  His big mouth puckered, and his lips curled as he thought of a whole lot of mean things that he might’ve said. But I suppose that room looked terrible big and empty to him, and every one of his pals, sneaking away out yonder through the night, was taking a part of the courage of Shorty along with him. He came back and stood right where I had pointed. He didn’t stand like any lamb; he stood like a wolf, snarling but silent.

  Shorty was game, and he was willing to go for his gun right now. I knew it, and I knew that I was standing just three feet and half a second away from my death, if I did the wrong thing or said it or made any sort of a false move. Believe me, I didn’t intend to take any chances. Still, I wanted to push Shorty just as far as it was safe.

  “Shorty,” I said, “I came out here having heard a lot of yarns about the gents on this ranch. I’d heard that they were plumb men. I’d heard that they were the toughest, wildest, hardest lot of yeggs that ever got outside of a prison and mobbed together. I’ve heard that there was no man on the range that could master them.”

  That was my beginning. I saw Shorty stick out his long jaw and get ready for the shock of hearing how measly and weak and useless I’d really found that crowd that had the famous name for hardness. Right there, I double-crossed him. I said to Shorty, “Well, Shorty, I came out here, and I found that you all lived right up to your name. Because of all the mean-looking lot of gun-toters I ever saw, you boys are the meanest and the most dangerous.”