Sour Creek Valley

by Max Brand

  Besides, he made me mad. It was only that he wanted to take me away from his grandson, and not because he had any idea that I could ever be worth any three or four thousand dollars a year to him.

  I turned on Henry Randal, saying, “I have held in for a long time, and I can’t hold in anymore. I’ve heard you yapping and snarling and biting at my heels all day long, and now you want to take me away from Harry, to work on your place. Now lemme tell you something. You offer me forty thousand dollars a year instead of four thousand, and I’ll still tell you to go to the devil, Mister Randal, any way that you please!”

  “Good,” Randal said. “Of course, I knew that Harry had been paying high for you, but I didn’t guess how high.”

  “Ah,” I said, with the light busting loose in my head all at once, “I suppose that I’m just a hired gunfighter, eh?”

  “You?” asked Henry Randal, still blinking his bright bird eyes at me, and still not seeming to be a bit mad at me for telling him what I thought. “Oh, no, you aren’t a gunfighter. D’you think that I could call a nice, polite young gent like you by a wicked name? Not me, sonny, not me! You aren’t a gunfighter. You’re a little woolly lamb, you are. No, Mister Smith-Jones, or Jones-Smith, or whoever you are … I don’t need to talk to you anymore. I see that Harry has bought you, and a high price he must’ve paid. Only, young fellow, you want to be sure to collect your pay, while your boss has the ready cash on hand.”

  He began to cackle and nod to himself. He was a wicked-looking old chap, right enough; smart, too, but like most smart folks, he was apt to overreach himself. Here he was writing me down as a bad fighting man, when, as a matter of fact, I was no hand with a gun at all. I’ve let you in on the ground floor and showed you the facts. The only thing that was against me ever, were some killings that weren’t really any fault of mine. They were sort of shoved onto me at close quarters. Besides, they didn’t amount to much. However, old Randal had made up his mind. During the rest of the ride, now and then, he would bust out chuckling, very pleased with himself.

  When we got home to the ranch house, we met Harry, and his face showed the strain that he had been under. He gave me one wild look, and I shrugged my shoulders. I could answer for a good many things, but I couldn’t answer for how many cows that old chap had been able to count. When we got inside, old Randal turned right loose. He didn’t want his grandson to have any peaceful moments, if he could help it.

  “It looks to me, Harry,” he said, “that you’re at least fifty cows short. I won’t be sure till I look over the herd tomorrow, so I want a good, fast horse ready at daybreak. But I should say that you are down about fifty. About fifty in the hole, my boy. And where are you going to get them in before tomorrow night, Harry?” He began to rub his hands together and laugh, very pleased with himself.

  Harry was white, he was so broke up and so scared. I went on up the stairs, because I didn’t want to be in on any more of that family fight. I got to my room, and there was Pepillo with his fingers working like lightning, braiding horsehair for a chain. It was a relief to see him.

  I went over to the window and leaned out to take a breath of air and cool off. That old man had heated me up a lot, I can tell you! Then I heard old Randal talking at the window of the living room just underneath me. I suppose that he had no idea my room was right over it.

  “You know all about this Smith, do you?”

  “I know enough about him,” Harry said, very gloomy.

  “And you’re glad to have him here?”

  “Why not?” asked poor Harry.

  “Well, my son,” said old Randal, “let me tell you that I know a bit more about range men than you ever could know, because you weren’t born with the sense to know them and their ways. I tell you that this fellow is a bad one. A real bad actor, my boy. You’ve got him here working for a big price. But I tell you that before he’s through with you, he’ll collect a bigger price than you can afford to pay.”

  “What’s he been saying?” asked Harry.

  “He said something to a running rabbit that was more than a hundred yards away. He said it with a plain Colt, old son. Though that gun only spoke one word, the rabbit was ready to hear no more. You understand me?”

  “He hit a rabbit on the wing with a Colt … more than a hundred yards off?” gasped out Harry.

  “He did,” old Randal said solemnly. “Now, Harry, I know that you’re about two-thirds rascal. But I don’t care about that. If you got brains enough to run this ranch, I don’t care what help you use. Only, I want to tell you that a chap who can shoot like that isn’t honest. He’s spent too much of his life practicing with guns. Too much. He’s a dangerous poison, my lad. And look out that you don’t find it out for yourself!”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  When I stood back from the window, there was Pepillo beside me, grinning at me.

  “But did you really do it, señor?”

  “To the rabbit? Yes … by luck. Nothing but a ten-thousand-to-one shot that happened to land. And that’s the truth. But between you and me, Pepillo, this here happy home of ours is about played out, and it’s time for you and me to be thinking about travels.”

  “Why?” asked Pepillo.

  “Old Randal is a hawk,” I told the kid. “Nothing misses his eyes. And he’s seen enough today to know about how many cattle there are in the valley. Whatever else we can do, we can’t get back the missing cattle, kid. That means the end of Harry Randal’s pipe dream, and that means the end of you and me here. Where should we head for next?”

  “Why, Big Boy,” said Pepillo, “that would be giving up your hopes of the ranch, wouldn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “And that would break your heart, would it not?”

  “The stuff that my heart is made of,” I said to him, “is not broken any too quick. It has been banged and hammered and stretched a good many times, but it’s never broke yet, and it’s never going to break. You understand me, Pepillo?”

  He nodded. “But,” said the kid, “you can’t tell. You may work something out tonight … some way of beating the game and fooling Henry Randal. Why not keep hoping?”

  Why not keep on hoping? Well, there was no good reason why I shouldn’t. It was easy to daydream. I hitched my heels onto the table in the center of the room and I started blowing rings of smoke at the ceiling.

  Pepillo said, “There is a very fine sunset, señor.”

  “Curse the sunset,” I replied.

  “All right,” said Pepillo. “Now, if you were to have everything that you are dreaming about, what would it be?”

  “You know, Pepillo, I would cultivate this here ranch like a garden. I would have it filled with the finest cows that ever walked.”

  “That is something,” said Pepillo. “But after all, cows cannot fill the heart of a man, can they?”

  “I would fence in some of the flats down by the river,” I said, “and I’d plant that rich ground there with orchard trees and such stuff. I’d have three or four hundred acres under irrigation, Pepillo, and do you know what that means?”

  “It does not seem much.”

  “Not much! Well, kid, it would bring in about how many thousands of dollars a year?”

  “How should I tell?” asked Pepillo. “How should I know about such things … and why should I care?”

  He made a face at me. The pillow on the bed was handy, and I chucked it at his head, but it missed, of course. You needed a bullet to tag that kid, he was so fast.

  “It would bring in about twenty thousand dollars a year … that land alone!”

  “When you had all of that money, what would you do with it … the money from the cattle, and the money from the irrigated land and all the rest … what would you do with it?”

  “Why, son,” I explained, “I’d buy more land, for one thing. I’d buy up land on all sides, an
d I’d show the folks how to work a real big ranch in a real big way.”

  “Very good,” said Pepillo, “but if you had a million acres, and a million dollars a year … then what would you do with the money?”

  Now, I had never thought that far ahead, you see. I scratched my head, and I thought it over for a while.

  “Look here, Pepillo. I’d buy me some fancy togs, I can tell you.”

  “Clothes?” cried Pepillo. “You could not spend very much money on them.”

  “I would begin to breed fine fat horses, and I would run them on the tracks.”

  “You have a million a year,” said Pepillo. “You are spending only a little part of it!”

  Well, that was true. Come to think of it, it would be pretty hard to spend that much money. I never had dreamed that far along the way.

  “I would build me a fine big house,” I said.

  “Isn’t this house good enough?”

  “I would build one all of stone.”

  “B-r-r! It would be frightfully cold!”

  “I would have furnaces in it,” I replied.

  “Stone houses are like prisons. If that house was so big, what would you have in it?”

  “I would have some classy chromos hanging on the walls, and I would have rugs with a nap on ’em, fetlock deep!”

  “The better to catch all the dust in the world. And who would there be except the cowpunchers to enjoy the house with you?”

  “I would get me a woman,” I said.

  “Bah!” exclaimed Pepillo. “You never could!”

  “Look here, you little rat. You mean to say that no girl would have me?”

  “No one able to appreciate oil paintings,” said Pepillo. “No one … except a woman no better than one of your cowpunchers you know. Unless you went out and bought a woman of education. Would you do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Faugh! Would you have a bought woman around you?”

  “Why not?” I answered. “I’ve had a notice around the world, and I’ve seen that these here marriages that start with a heap of love, and the ones that start in with just a sort of a business agreement, they turn out much different. Almost all of them change, one way or another.”

  “That is a great lie, and the father and the grandfather of all great lies,” said Pepillo.

  “Is it, kid? Now you write this down … when a gent and a girl marry because they’re in love, it means that they’re just blind. As soon as they begin to see the facts about each other, they are sick of each other, you can bet on that. And then the plate-throwing begins. No, kid, if I wanted a swell-looking girl to hold down this here house, I’d as soon go right out and …”

  “Bah!” interrupted Pepillo. “You talk like they were cattle.”

  “Maybe I do,” I said. “I have a lot of respect for a good cow. Anyway, I would go right out and I would mix with some of the fancy families. I would say … ‘Here I am with a million a year, healthy, sound, fairly good-natured, but set on having my own way. I want a wife … want one that knows how to run a house, buy swell clothes and jewels, talk fancy about music, and tell you why an oil painting beats a colored photograph all hollow. Have you got anything for me to look at? My banker is Blank and Blank.’

  “Now, kid, when I got through with that spiel, just one thing would stick in the heads of a lot of them. And they would think only about that million dollars. They would fetch out their best girls. ‘A million dollars,’ they would say in the ear of the girl. When she looked at me, she wouldn’t see that I was bowlegged, and rolled my own. All she would see would be flowers and a million a year. And I would have my pick.”

  “It is horrible,” Pepillo said, narrowing his eyes at me. “But what sort of a woman would you pick out, eh?”

  “Something pretty,” I said. “But not too good-looking, because I don’t want all the fancy gents on the range getting lovesick and such stuff. Nope, I want a good, healthy, bright girl, not too full of dreams, fond of children, having sound feet and hands and good teeth. Somebody that sleeps well at night, doesn’t groan when you get up early, and meets you with a smile when you come in at night, and makes a fuss over you, like the house hadn’t got on very good while you were away.”

  I stopped and got rid of a big yawn.

  “Is that all that you want?” asked Pepillo. “She will run away with another man inside of six months.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “After she’s gone through the motions of being in love with me for six months, she will be in love. You take a girl, and you start in with a dream, and she winds up wide awake. But you start in by telling a girl all the facts about what she is gonna expect, and she begins with being wide awake, and she is apt to wind up in a dream. At least, the chances are pretty good that way, and I’d take the chance if I had the money. I see that you don’t approve.”

  “That,” said Pepillo slowly, “is the talk of a pig … not of a man.”

  “All right, son,” I said. “When you get a mite older, you’ll find out that men are a whole lot nearer to pigs than they are to angels. And you can take it straight from me. Angels are things that I never could understand at all, but pigs are something that I could always sympathize with.”

  “I see,” Pepillo says, nodding to himself. “The point is that you have never seen a real woman.”

  “Me? Dozens of ’em, kid, and held ’em in my arms and told ’em that I couldn’t live without ’em … and stayed awake all night aching at heart for them. I’ve left ’em feeling that I would die if I didn’t see ’em in twenty-four hours. But I never died, kid. Never! I lived and got fat instead. And this love stuff is just so much bunk.”

  “Bah!” cried Pepillo. “I have heard fools talk like that before. But if you were to see a real woman … one such as I mean … I think you would change your mind, eh?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Speaking of women, the way that we had been doing just then, it was sort of queer, the interruption that we had. A ruction busted out not far away, and when I got out to the hall, I saw Harry Randal trying to pacify his grandfather. The old man was wild.

  “It’s a crime and a shame, and you planned it out to spoil my stay at your house. You wanted to drive me away the quicker by putting me into this room. I never heard of such a low trick. And look where I’ve been put!” he cried.

  He goes back into the room, still jabbering, and I went along with him and Harry.

  “It was the room of Stephen’s wife!” yelled Henry Randal. “And I never could abide her, and you know it … and she never could abide me. Ain’t that her picture hanging there on the wall? Curse me, if I ever suspected anything or so much as looked around me, until I happened to open that closet for curiosity.”

  I looked at the picture on the wall. It was of a mighty pretty, dark-faced girl, very slim, and very good-looking in every way—smiling and happy—you understand? That picture was pretty faded, and it was all dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, but even so, it gave my heart a thrill. I looked it over, and then I turned around and stared at the closet which old Randal had thrown open. Scarlet, yellow, lavender, blue, crimson, white, brown, gold, and a dozen other colors; that closet was packed full of all the fine clothes of a woman.

  Old Randal was roaring, “There they are! I even recognize some of them! That there yaller-lace thing was what she was wearing the time that I told her what a woman’s place was in the house, and she reminded me that this was not my house! Yes, sir, and that infernal white affair, it’s what she was married in … and I wish that I had never seen that day. Didn’t I have a foreboding? I said to Stephen on that day … ‘Steve, I don’t wish you any bad luck, but isn’t she a mite too pretty to be good?’ That was what I said, and Steve would never forgive me for saying it. Not to his death day! And here you’ve put me jam up into this room on purpose … to drive me away home. But I won’
t be driven! I’ll stay a month! Aye, and there is the perfume that she always wore, filling the room and choking me!”

  It was jasmine. A thin, light fragrance of it that you had to think twice about before you could realize what was the sweetness that was coming toward you.

  I went back into the other room, and I sat down and closed my eyes.

  “You look sad,” said Pepillo.

  “Jasmine,” I said. “I’ve never smelled that stuff without seeing again all the pretty girls that I’ve ever been in love with, and without sorrowing after the whole lot of them.”

  “And yet you would say that you are not a great calf.”

  The ruction about the wrong room was straightened out, after a while, and the old, mean devil was lodged in another room. Harry came back to my room and stood in the door for a minute.

  “Well, Big Boy,” he said, “are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said.

  “For heaven’s sake, do something,” he said. “Because thinking would never make up the difference. He’s got my bank statement.”

  “And he’ll be able to count the cows, and that will straighten things out for him. He’ll know that you’re failing.”

  “He will.”

  “Harry, there’s such a thing as money in banks.”

  “Sure,” he said. “If you know how to sign the right checks to get at it.”

  “Yes, or how to hold a gun at the right head,” Pepillo said.

  “Shut up the kid!”

  “Pepillo won’t talk any more than you nor me. He’s sworn to me, and I’d trust him, old-timer, farther than I would trust myself.”

  Yes, sir, that was a fact, and it give me such a warm feeling to know that the kid would stick by me as much as me by him, that I reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. He glided away from beneath my touch. He was always like that—reaching for him was like reaching for a shadow. However, he turned and smiled a little at me, but his eyes were big and his lips was pinched with excitement.