by Max Brand
Part of me felt that he must be right, and yet I was afraid to let him go. Somehow, down in my boots, I felt that he was trying to sacrifice himself in some way for my safety. I couldn’t stand for him doing that, of course. I put my back against the door and shook my head.
“The door is locked, Blue Jay,” I said. “And here we stay, if it’s going to come to a pinch like this. And let them get you if they can!”
Chapter Thirty
Of course I meant what I said and then I stepped to the window and shouted, “Hey, boys! Shorty! Rusty!”
My voice was sure to go booming out to the bunkhouse and turn out the lot of them. I roused other attention than that, too. Two or three rifles began to crackle and a whir of lead smashed every bit of glass out of that window and sent it clinking to the floor. The big slugs thudded through the farther wall of the room.
I stepped back, and there was the Blue Jay clinging to me in a blue funk. It was queer. You wouldn’t expect him to show the white feather as bad as that, and I was pretty disgusted to hear him whining, “It is no use. You cannot keep him away.”
“You little blockhead,” I told Blue Jay, “the door’s locked. No use bothering about that. It will take a good deal of battering before it can possibly go down. And before that could happen, the boys will be here. Do you hear them?”
My shouting and the noise of the rifles had been enough to raise the dead, and it didn’t need much of an alarm to get out my cowpunchers from the bunkhouse. I could hear them shouting as the door of the bunkhouse was rushed open. Now they were in the open, coming toward the house, and no matter who was outside the house, or how many, they would have their hands full directly.
There was only one immediate danger, so far as I could see, which was that those gents outside might swarm up the outside of the house and try to force a way through the window. Though I was a pretty bad shot, I thought that I could promise them a hot time as they climbed through into the room. So I had my Colt out and faced that way.
In the thing that followed, I’ve thought ever since that if I’d been alone, I should have done a lot better. It was Pepillo who paralyzed me. Although he saw what was happening before I did, his way of giving me a warning was a scream that stopped the blood running in my veins and turned me numb.
I swung around—and there was my locked door swinging open. On the threshold stood a chap in a tight Mexican jacket—I saw that much—with a black mask across his face. I tried to get my gun up and fire, but I hadn’t a chance. He simply twitched up the muzzle of his Colt and fired from the hip. That’s the fastest way, of course, only usually the gent that fires from the hip breaks the window or plows up the ceiling. This time it was different. That bullet clipped me alongside the head. It was a feeling as if a red-hot knife had plowed its way along my scalp, and at the same time a hammer seemed to hit me. I dropped into blackness and didn’t feel the floor as I struck it. I was out, completely.
But I wasn’t out more than a second. When I scrambled to my knees, there was the scent of burning powder in my nostrils and the house was rocking with an uproar.
I ran out into the hallway and, looking down the stairs, I saw Pepillo in the arms of a gent who was carrying him through the front door—the same gent that had stood in the door of my room and shot me down. How could I recognize him for sure? Because there was something light and fast and strong about him that spoke to me as surely as though I had seen the face behind the mask.
I started down the steps five at a time, and the gent in the Mexican jacket turned and let me have it again. The dark was against him. His bullet winged right past my cheek, but it was a clean miss, no matter how close.
His second shot would have nailed me, I suppose, but he never had a chance to fire a second one. As he swung to shoot, two forms heaved into the doorway, one as big as myself, and the other short and squat. I knew them in spite of having only moonshine to see them by—Shorty and Rusty McArdle! There was never a more welcome sight to any man’s eyes.
They caught the stranger as a wave catches a box and picked him up and carried him before them. By the time that I got down there, the work was over. Pepillo was crouched in a corner, with a hand across his eyes, as though he was trying to shut out terrible sights and terrible thoughts. Here was the stranger with big Rusty standing behind him, holding his hands so that he could not move.
The stranger said in very good English, “Your man is breaking my wrists, señor. Will you ask him to stop it?”
There was no need for brutality. Shorty had frisked the chap in the jacket and got his knife and his guns—two pairs! So I passed Rusty the word to get a Colt out and keep it out, and to keep in his place behind the stranger. In the meantime, I had another job on my hands, because the house servants and the cowpunchers were flocking into the place, and here was young Randal and old Randal coming down the steps four at a time.
Old Henry Randal walked up to the stranger, whose mask had been taken off by Shorty. “Pablo Almadares!” he cried. “On my soul and body, it’s Pablo Almadares!”
I knew that he was right, too. That fellow was so handsome, so graceful, and so easy, that you could tell he was a fighter. He had his head up, and his big, black eyes were as calm as you please while he looked us over. Only, when they lighted on me, a flash came across them, like a glint of red fire in a glass, and his lips straightened out a little. It made me back up, that look did. The way a dog backs up when a wolf snarls. I herded the cowpunchers out of the house by telling them that some of the pals of Almadares were still outside of the house and that they ought to nab them.
Now that they had Pablo, they were keen to round up some of the rest of the gang, and they left pronto. After that I had to push the Negroes out of the room. That left Harry and Henry Randal and Shorty and Rusty and Pepillo, besides Pablo and me.
Everybody was feeling satisfied except Pepillo and Almadares. It was a queer thing to see the kid cowering in the corner and watching Almadares as though he had been hypnotized and never so much as looking at me or asking me if my head was bad hurt, while Rusty clipped the hair away and swabbed me with iodine that burned in and set my whole brain on fire.
As for Shorty, he sat down with a long gun in each hand; his eyes were fair blazing as they studied that outlaw. He never moved his eyes and he never moved his guns, but if Almadares leaned forward a little, one of Shorty’s guns would lean forward along with him, and if Pablo straightened in his chair, one of Shorty’s guns would straighten, too.
There was enough reward for that fellow to make one cowpuncher pretty rich, and even though Shorty and Rusty would have to divide the reward between them, still there would be what you might call plenty for each of them. Shorty was enjoying the taste of that money beforehand, but he wasn’t allowing his daydreams to come between him and the facts. He forgot everything in the world except the fact that Pablo Almadares meant just as much money dead as he did alive—and my, my, but Shorty wanted a good excuse to make him good and safe and dead!
That left the Randals. Harry Randal was sort of sunning himself in the firelight of good fortune, as you might say. He lolled back in his chair and he smoked a cigarette, blowing the smoke very lazy and sort of insulting toward his grandfather.
“Grandfather,” said Harry, “it sort of looks as if I’m going to win the bargain, after all. It sort of looks, Grandfather, as though I have stopped up the rustling leak right at the source. There’ll be no more trouble now that we have the head of the gang. With this Almadares fellow out of the way, the rustlers are going to shun Sour Creek Valley as though it were loaded with poison. Am I right, Pablo?”
Almadares smiled. “Señor, you compliment me very highly, oh, very highly indeed, my friend!” replied that calm crook.
Old Henry Randal started walking up and down the room in his pajamas and his slippers, packing his little clay pipe tight and then lighting it, leaving behind him a trail of tobacco s
moke so strong that even Shorty blinked when some of it blew his way.
“Now, take it all in all,” said Henry Randal, “I have to confess that matters are not turning out as they should have turned out. In the first place, there’s the mysterious fact that the cows increase overnight …”
“You’d simply failed to see a herd of them packed away into one of the gullies,” Harry said, very bland.
The old chap turned around and shot one glance at him. “Young man,” he said, “I want you to know that I never fail to see anything when seeing is what I’m out to do. But overlooking the cows, let’s get down to another thing. What in the devil could have made this Pablo Almadares want to kidnap a worthless and unknown brat like this Pepillo, will you tell me? Almadares, will you tell me what’s the value of this brat?”
Almadares puts back his head, and he smiled at me. “Perhaps Señor Kitchin can tell us the secret value in it,” he said.
“Kitchin, Kitchin?” cried Henry Randal, not missing a trick. “Is that your real name, Smith-Jones?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“You do not know?” asked Almadares, lifting his eyebrows very wicked, and still showing his teeth in that true Mexican smile of his.
“Kitchin?” Henry Randal said. “It seems to me that I heard of a prospector by the name of Kitchin making a strike. Almadares, where does this Kitchin hail from?”
“From Fulsom Prison, for the past two years,” said Almadares.
“Fulsom Prison!” Henry Randal cried.
“Fulsom!” gasped out Shorty and Rusty in one breath.
Then Henry Randal began to laugh. “Ah, well,” he said, “I guessed one half of the story before it was told. Don’t look so down-hearted, Harry. The main thing is to have a man who can run your ranch and who can run it well, and so long as you have the right man for that, can’t you overlook his record?”
“Thanks, Pablo,” I said to Almadares. “I won’t forget!”
“Señor,” he said, with emotion, “this is nothing compared with what I should like to do for you.”
“All right,” Henry Randall said, “but still I should like to know what about Pepillo, yonder, has made you risk your life, Almadares, in a crazy way like this.”
“I tell you the truth,” said Almadares. “I thought that Señor Kitchin would fight like an honest … murderer. I did not dream that he would ever call for help and bring his … men …”
“Well,” said Henry Randal, “for that mistake you’ll hang, my young friend Almadares.”
Almadares’s smile didn’t waver a fraction of a second.
“Hang?” gasped out Pepillo. “Hang?” He jumped to his feet.
Almadares stood up, too, laid his hand on his heart and bowed very low. “Certainly, I shall hang,” he said. “And for all of this I thank you, my dear friend.”
“Pablo,” Shorty said, “you pretty near escaped hanging then, and if you jump up again like that you will die with your boots on. Because I’ll kill you, son, as sure as you’re an inch high.”
“Mind the kid,” said Rusty. “He’s fainting!”
Chapter
Thirty-One
I thought that he would drop, for a minute. But when I stepped to him, Pepillo turned and give me a look of hate and scorn and disgust that stopped me short. Then he turned around and walked right out of the room. I glanced at this Almadares, and the very first thing that I saw was that his eyes were not black after all, but a very dark brown—exactly like the eyes of Pepillo. At that, an explanation of everything jumped through my mind. It was so clear that fire couldn’t have been truer. It was so bright a truth that it dazzled me.
I said, rather husky, “Shorty, I want you to put this Almadares down in the same room where young Dance was kept. Put him down there, and you and Rusty keep turns guarding him. You might as well stay at the mouth of the tunnel, because there’s nothing but the side passage that leads to the room besides that one hallway, and the door to the passage is rusted as thick as the devil and I have the key to it. But keep a tight watch on him … and keep your ears open. You understand?”
I didn’t have to say that. I knew that they would understand, and I started for the door.
Old Henry Randal piped up, saying, “Kitchin!”
I turned to him.
“Kitchin,” he said, “I don’t want you to think that I respect you any the less. Matter of fact, I have more respect for a crook who has paid the penalty for at least part of his crimes than I have for one who has come off scot-free.”
I didn’t want his good opinion. I went on out of that room and I climbed the stairs slowly, with a pulse of blood jumping into the wound in my head with every step that I took. It seemed as though the pain helped to make me think clearly, though; it seemed as though I could be sure of what I saw now.
I got up to my room, and there was my Pepillo sitting with his elbows on the center table and his face in his hands, pretty near spent. When the door closed, he didn’t so much as look up. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off with a little gasp of disgust.
“I ain’t a beast, kid,” I said, “and I have no call to be used like this by you at all, and you ought to know it. But I understand, Pepillo. Poor kid … everything is clear to me at last … I understand perfect.”
He dropped his hands and looked at me—sort of half scared and half bewildered. “You understand?”
I nodded at him, and then I explained, “I noticed that his eyes were the same color as yours. That gave me the first clue. And then I could see, Blue Jay, that he had the same sort of a graceful way about him … and he looks slim and light, but very strong, just the way that you will be when you grow up. So that’s why I could see the truth about the pair of you.”
“Be quick and simple,” Pepillo said, and he half closed his eyes, so that I saw how really white his face was. “Be quick and be simple, for I have no strength to work riddles tonight.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You don’t have to, poor kid. But I tell you that I understand everything. It was Almadares that sent the cattle down into the valley. Ain’t that right?”
By his quick start I knew that it was right, though he didn’t speak.
“And he sent down the cattle because you sent word to him to ask them from him … and that was why you turned loose Sammy Dance.”
Pepillo went back a step and, with a hand pressed against his face, he stared at me in a sort of horror. “How have you come to guess at these things, señor?”
“Because I finally guessed at the main secret,” I said. “You are … the brother of Pablo Almadares.”
Pepillo left the wall with a lurch and covered his eyes with his hands. He was so choked that I didn’t wait for him to speak.
“Sit down, kid,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve told Shorty to put Almadares in the same room where Sammy Dance was kept. And I’ve told them to keep guard at the end of the hall. There’s another way to the little corner cellar room where Almadares will be kept, and that passage ends in a door that’s never used, and the lock is filled with rust. But here’s the key to it, Pepillo, and oil will soften rust. If you squirt that lock full of oil and wait ten minutes, chances are that you can turn that lock without making a sound. Then go down and turn your brother loose.”
Pepillo tried to speak, but there was too much in him to come out in words. He made a gesture with both hands, and then I said, “Take it easy for half an hour or so, and then start work. I’m going out for a walk.”
I left the room and went out into the night.
The whole thing looked pretty good to me. I would be turning that Almadares loose, and he looked to me like pretty much of a white man. He hated me, of course, but he thought that I had kept his brother away from him. But now that I was turning him free, he would get over that. When Pepillo told him what I had done
, instead of a dead rustler, we would have a rustler in the mountains that would be a friend to the ranch, and that would be better still.
It was certainly a wicked look that this Almadares had given me when he was in the living room, but that was all explained now to my satisfaction. Time passed pretty fast for me as I walked under the trees in front of the house.
I went around and had a look at the bunkhouse. The boys were having a pretty good time now, and they were whooping it up in great style. Bright as the moon was—and it stood at the full right in the center of the sky—the light from the bunkhouse windows went a step or two into the night, and it showed me half a dozen ponies tied up in front of the bunkhouse. Those fellows inside were not taking anything for granted. If there was going to be more trouble this night, they had their ponies ready to follow.
I had been walking around for about an hour. Anyway, the lights were out in the bunkhouse, and the chill of the night air was beginning to make the fresh wound in my head ache. Then a gun crackled from the house, and I heard two voices booming out—the voice of Shorty and the voice of Rusty McArdle!
I saw as much as I heard, too. Yonder, close to the bunkhouse, I saw two figures running—and it was Pepillo, without any doubt, and his brother, Pablo Almadares, alongside of him. They grabbed two of the tethered horses and they were off in a minute. Here was Rusty and Shorty swarming after them as hard as they could sprint.
That was more than I had bargained for. I should have thought that if Pepillo wanted to go away with his brother, he would’ve told me so before he started. I had given him plenty of chance. Still, I didn’t want them followed, and I hurried along to stop Rusty and Shorty if I could.
When I came up, Rusty was in the saddle already and Shorty was hauling away at the knot that tied another horse. He saw me and yelled, “They’re away! Pablo and the girl, both of them.”
