Sour Creek Valley

by Max Brand

  “I got to admit it,” I said. “I been mighty close enough times.”

  Pepillo got very earnest. “It is this that you must know,” he said. “There are two bloods in Mexico. There is the true Spanish blood, and there is the Indian blood. Alas, the blood of the Spaniard is not as much as we might wish. And where there is mostly the blood of the Indians, they are what you find Indians everywhere … brave, wild, strange, savage, like tigers. But the Spanish blood …”

  “Tell me, Pepillo,” I said, “is there any Indian in you?”

  “Not one drop!” said the kid, and I believed him, because his skin, though it was olive colored, was wonderful clear. “But as for the harms that my people have done you, Señor Kitchin, I am sorry!”

  “Kid,” I said, “they never done me so much harm as you’ve done me good. Shake on it.”

  Which we did, and it was great to be friends again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Pepillo set his mind on it, he could manage more things than you would ever guess. My face was bunged up pretty bad, and it was either purple and blue, or else it was swelling and red, where those fists of Rusty McArdle had banged home. There was still a wavering feeling in the back of my head, and I could tell well enough that, if he had happened to land one clean wallop, while he was well set, he would have knocked me out proper and right on the spot.

  Pepillo made me lie down, and then he began to work on my face with cold dressings, until the pain and the swellings went down simply wonderful. After that, he got out a little bottle of a strong liniment which made you jump to have it rubbed on your skin, it was so hot. When he was done, I was so relieved and tired that I pretty near wasn’t able to get out of my clothes and into bed.

  Though there were oceans of room in it, Pepillo wouldn’t sleep on the bed. He said that he had slept out so long that beds were a terrible bore to him. He just took a big sheepskin rug that was on the floor and rolled himself up in it, and he slept there.

  That was like him. Always doing something different from everybody else. I barely turned over and got my eyes closed, when there came a rap on the door and the voice of one of the Negroes saying, “Breakfast in twenty minute, suh.”

  I yelled, “You call this a joke to wake a man up in the middle of the night … and …”

  “Señor,” said Pepillo, “open your eyes.”

  I opened ’em, and doggone me if it wasn’t broad daylight, the sky in the east all covered with rose, and a cloud hanging there over the rising sun so bright you wouldn’t believe it. Pepillo looked like he had been up for an hour. He was as fresh as a daisy, and you wouldn’t think that him and me had been through so much only the day and the night before. He says that he was going out to look the place over, and so I got up and washed and shaved.

  That liniment of the kid’s was powerful hot, but it was powerful good. It had taken all the swellings and most of the ache out of the flesh of my face. Only for a spot on the temple and a couple more along the chin where there were still black-and-blue marks, I was pretty much as though I hadn’t stood up the night before to the hardest punching, two-fisted fighting man that I ever met in my life. Matter of fact, you would have to look close at my face to see even them traces.

  I had finished shaving and was about to get into my coat, when I hear a voice roar out and then a terrible cursing, and a sort of a squeal that came out of Pepillo, I gathered. My first step got me to the head of the stairs. My second one landed me at the bottom of them. My third step brought me plumb outside of the house. There I saw dozens of hard-boiled cowpunchers standing around and laughing their heads off while Shorty swarmed up a tree, swinging himself along wonderful fast with those long, gorilla arms of his. Just half a reach ahead of him went the kid, climbing fast, too, but losing in the race, and yelling his head off for help.

  “Señor Kitchin! He will murder me!”

  He sees me and wastes time, throwing out an imploring hand toward me. Shorty gave me an ugly side glance, too. I saw those cowpunchers standing around, looking at me like so many foxes. They wondered what I was gonna do about the kid, who they knew was a pet of mine.

  There ain’t nothing like favoritism to spoil a crew on a ranch. Besides, I saw that the kid had something coming to him. I yelled out, “I’m home base, Pepillo. You get to me, and you’re safe. Shorty won’t bother you none, but as long as you’re roaming around free he’s got his sporting chance at you, and if he tags you, I reckon that you sure will be it!”

  It tickled the cowpunchers. They yelled like a lot of wolves. They liked that decision of mine. But then they knew, just as I knew, that no snip of a kid can be allowed to walk up and welt a man in the face, the way that the kid had done to Shorty last night, and get away with it the next day.

  Pepillo squealed louder than the rest, “I am betrayed! Ah, señor, have mercy! Have mercy! He will kill me!”

  I was kind of afraid that he would, too. Shorty wasn’t ever a beauty winner, but when he climbed up that tree, he sure did look like a freehand sketch of the devil going after a condemned soul. If he laid those big hands of his on the kid, bones were sure to snap. However, Pepillo had to have his lesson someday.

  The way that Pepillo swarmed up that tree was a caution. Still I wondered how he managed to keep out of the grip of Shorty. Pretty soon he threw himself out to the end of a big branch, and there he hung by his hands from pretty near the tip of it. Shorty went right out after him.

  “Shorty,” yelled the kid, “if the branch breaks, we’ll both be killed.”

  “What’s that to me?” asked Shorty. “So long as I send you to the devil before me!”

  He meant it, too. He’d been brooding on two things, I suppose. One was the way he’d been thrown downstairs, and the other was the way that the kid had hit him. Since he couldn’t very well take it out on me, he poured all of his broodings onto the head of Pepillo.

  “Señor Kitchin!” yelled Pepillo to me.

  I was scared and I was sick. It looked like a death to me.

  “Shorty!” yelled big McArdle, coming into view for the first time. “Leave the kid be. Get back, or you’ll have him dead.”

  “I’ll run my own business!” Shorty shouted back.

  “Get back, curse you!” roared Rusty McArdle, and he pulled a gun.

  “You dog, you shoot!” yelled Shorty, and he worked himself farther out on the branch. I think that McArdle would’ve shot, too—for a leg, maybe—because it sure looked as though the kid would fall and break his neck.

  I grabbed the revolver and said, “Rusty, it’s fine of you to want the kid to have a square chance. I like him better than you do, but he’s a boy and he’s got to fight himself out of the dirty holes that he gets into.”

  “All right, chief,” Rusty said, putting away his gun. “I guess that it ain’t gonna be so hard for you and me to understand each other, after all.”

  The kid, up there swinging in the air, saw his last hope go when McArdle put away his Colt. Then the big hand of Shorty reached for him. I didn’t think that any kid had that much nerve in him, but Pepillo did. He would rather die than let Shorty grab him. He loosed his hold on the end of the branch, and he dropped straight for what looked like sure death to me.

  But it wasn’t. He grabbed at a branch that was a little beneath him. It was only a flying grip he got, and it was broken at once. That grip broke the fall for him, and he fell the rest of the way, landing like a cat.

  Shorty was behind him, dropping through the tree like a monkey from branch to branch. When Shorty hit the ground, the kid was already halfway toward me, and though Shorty was following him like a fish jumping clear of water, Pepillo came like a bird on wings, half scared and half tickled with the excitement.

  When he got to me, he grabbed hold on my belt and stood there dancing with fear and pleasure and thumbing his nose at Shorty.

  Shorty, crimson in the
face, his eyes bulging, pawed for a minute at his belt. I had an idea that I might have to go for my gun, too. Which would’ve been the end of me on that ranch and, most like, the end of me anywhere. Because when it came to be shooting, I couldn’t keep with fast company like all of them boys were.

  Who would you think would help me out of a mean hole like that one? Why, you couldn’t guess in a million years, so I’ve got to tell you that it was big Rusty McArdle.

  He spoke up and said, “Don’t throw yourself away, old kid. Just use the bean. Big Boy gave you your chance at Pepillo, didn’t he? Now you play white man and give the kid his chance, too.”

  It took Shorty a while to work himself out of his fighting trance. He was like that. He liked a fight so well that when he got worked up to the pitch, it was hard for him to ease down. He simply swelled up with a fighting meanness, and then he would shiver and shake all over, and sway from side to side, rolling his eyes, until he was a nightmare to look at, you can bet.

  He was like that as he faced Pepillo and me. Then he threw his eye over toward the rest of the boys, as if he wanted to take their vote, and they all said the same thing: “You’ve had your chance, Shorty. Play white, now, and let the kid have a show, will you?”

  Shorty mopped his forehead. Then he walked up to me, a long, waddling step. “Big Boy,” he said—that Randal seemed to have got the name ready for circulating among them—“Big Boy, I give the gents the word that you passed on to me. And last night we decided that we’d see you cursed before we’d see ourselves kicked out of the house and still go on working … least of all for you. Well, I dunno how the rest of them figure, just now. But I got this to say. You give me justice with the kid, there, and it sure pleases me a lot. Big Boy, I’m gonna stay on with you and work for you, and I don’t care what the rest of them want. The bunkhouse is plenty good enough for me.”

  I could have blessed Shorty for that little speech of his. It might be that some of the others would be proud about buckling under to me, but after Shorty had set them the example, I thought that it would be a whole lot easier for them.

  Shorty went on: “All I got to say is that kid has got something coming to him, and when I catch him alone, I’m going to give it to him. Does that go with you?”

  “Shorty,” I said, “you’ve seen me act about it once, already. And I ain’t changed. Sure, I know that the kid has got something coming to him. You’re dead right. While he’s around me, me being his pal, you’ll let him be. But if you catch him alone, you’re free to give him the devil. That’s a fair and square deal.”

  Pepillo wrinkled up his face and begun to chatter, but Rusty McArdle said, “Shut up, Pepillo. You ought to be quirted. Big Boy, after what happened last night, I figured that the only way that I could ever look you in the face would be down the barrel of a gun. Well, old son, I dunno that I feel the same way about it now. Last night you give me a licking that I’m free to say was the first that I ever got. I dunno. I thought at the time that there was a little luck in it. If I’d saved myself and gone easier, I might’ve knocked you cold. But that’s done. I didn’t. Now, Big Boy, I dunno that I’m good for much on a range. I can’t sling a rope, and I ain’t any hand at riding range … but if you got any uses that I’m fit for, I’ll stick around the same as the rest.”

  It scared me, I tell you, to hear him talk like that. In the same place, I would’ve packed my blanket roll and started south in the night, or if I had the nerve to stay at all, it would have been to fight all over again. But there was something different in Rusty McArdle. He’d been through the grind in the ring, and he seemed to know what it was to fight, take a thumping, and come back like a man. I respected him a lot, and I shook hands with him.

  I said, “Rusty, I never saw a man that I was gladder to have under me. Never in my life. The kind of cows that I want you to ride herd on don’t wear horns, and they don’t eat grass. You know what I mean. I need you a lot. Outside of me, there is only one gent that you got to take orders from on this ranch … meaning an old pal of yours, Shorty … because he’s the assistant.”

  You might say that I had made a quick and a queer choice for foreman, but I hadn’t. I had worked it all over in my head.

  Maybe Shorty didn’t know as much about cows as he might, but that didn’t worry me none. I knew enough about them to serve the needs of that ranch. Except when I was off prospecting, I had worked cows all my life. When I saw a cow a mile off shaking her head, I could tell by the way that she shook it what was wrong with her. I could take one feel of the wind and know when it was strong enough to start steers drifting.

  I knew a lot of other things that you got to be partly born to and partly raised to, or else you won’t ever learn them from books or from what other folks have to say.

  My ideal foreman in that lot was Rusty, but it would’ve been a joke to appoint him, he was so green on the range. No matter how the facts turned out, I wanted those boys to think that their main job was to ride range, and their second job—a lot less important than the first—was to see that they kept down the varmints that destroyed the calf crop, wolves or men! Next to Rusty McArdle, it was plain that the natural leader in that pack of thugs was Shorty. So he was the man I made foreman.

  Shorty was the most surprised of the lot, when he heard me speak. It was plain that I had pleased the boys, and it was plain that I had pleased Rusty. I have no doubt that he thought that he would have a pretty slick and easy job, now that his old pal was in the saddle. I didn’t care about that. What I wanted was harmony and fighting men.

  “Big Boy,” said McArdle, “this all sounds good to me. I’m with you.”

  Since my hand was still in his, he closed down on me with all his might.

  That was foolish of Rusty—very foolish. His strength was in his weight and his speed. You know how it is—ten pounds is as heavy as twenty, if it’s moving twice as fast. That was Rusty’s power—his ability to get his weight under way fast and keep it going at a sprinter’s gait. When it came to main might of hand for heaving or hauling or lifting, that natural strength of his wasn’t in it with muscles that had been made by swinging double jacks or bulldogging yearlings—not in it for a minute.

  I took the full power of his grip without half trying, and then I closed back on him—not all the way. I could’ve made him drop down on his knees and yell with pain, but the minute that I felt his knuckles grinding together I turned loose his hand, quick.

  “All right, Rusty,” I said.

  “All right, Big Boy,” he answered.

  The beauty of it was that nobody else that was there suspected anything, because it all happened in five seconds.

  However, I’d seen the pain and the surrender in the eyes of McArdle. I knew that since I’d beaten him a second time, there would not be much spirit in him for trying me a third time, with weapons that would fit him better. He was beaten, and once more I had left him on his feet, without disgracing him before the boys. I figured that he would be grateful for that. I figured that he was too clean and decent, inside of him, not to want to pay me back like an honest man.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For three days, I was in the saddle or driving in a buckboard about twenty hours a day. But I hardly knew when to quit, because I never felt tired. Suppose that somebody asked you to step into a room that was filled with gold that might be yours someday. Would you get tired counting it? That was the way that I felt when I rode over that range. I tell you honest that there was never anything made in the way of a range that could’ve had it beat. There was never anything. It had trees enough. It had good fences, and it had plenty of them. It had oceans of water, in the right places. It had a good bunkhouse, a fine ranch house, and, what was more to the business point of view, it had lots of fine, roomy, warm sheds where, if an extra bad winter came, you could close up every last head of stock on your place.

  It was stocked with A-1 cows, Herefords mostly. T
here’s some that like Durhams better, but give me the Herefords. I know them, and they know me. And I’ve got me a good market with Herefords when I’ve seen Durhams go begging. That’s my experience, and I don’t give a hang for the books that might disagree with experience. That ranch was stocked with fine cows, had a good crop of calves coming on, a fair-to-middling lot of yearlings, and a whopping bunch of two-year-olds. Besides that, there were some bulls that would’ve been blue-ribbon winners in any cattle show this side of Mars.

  Every day that I rode that range I got to see the value of the hands that were working the place for me. I’ve showed you their seamy side. Out on the range it was a different story, by a long way. There wasn’t any chapter heading in it that was the same. Their meanness turned into courage then, their foxiness turned into good cow-craft, and their strength kept them riding as long and as hard as though they expected to own that ranch, one day, instead of me.

  They thrived on work. That was one trouble with Randal. He’d been so afraid of them that, to get their favor, he had given them light work. Of course, that was the sure way to get the opposite thing. It gave them leisure, and it gave them energy in their leisure to think up trouble for themselves and everybody else. You can bet that when they got to the end of a day’s riding for me, they were barely strong enough to pull the saddles off their horses and sit through their suppers. At the end of the day, I kept out of their way. They were mean enough to take any man’s head off, beginning with mine.

  Every evening I was the meanest and the worst slave driver of a boss that ever worked the range. In the morning, they’d slept off their grouch, and they realized that they were pushing ahead the work on the ranch at a great rate. They were glad to hop into their saddles again. I tell you, they were such men that they got proud of the rate that they wore out their saddle strings. Even Rusty, who you would’ve thought was a lot too smart to be so childish, would begin to boast about the way that he had used up horses riding that range.