by Max Brand
It came through me like another bullet. I grabbed Shorty and I jammed his back against the wall of the bunkhouse, while the boys were piling out of the place.
“Girl?” I said to Shorty. “Did you say girl?”
There was plenty of moonshine to show me his face, and there was more wonder in it than excitement that minute.
“You mean to say that all this time,” Shorty said, “and you didn’t know?”
I knew then! Oh, it was clear enough what a dundering idiot and blockhead I had been. Seemed to me, then, that I should have known on the very first day, by the look of the small, soft feet of the kid that I met in front of Gregorio’s shop. It seemed to me that I should’ve known by the sound of the voice, that was softer and sweeter than even a boy’s had any right to be. I should’ve known by a thousand other things, too. Most of all—oh, what a fool I had been—I should have known by the face of the ghost that had come to me in the middle of the night!
Seeing it now, with new eyes as I raced a horse through the night with Rusty and Shorty ahead of me, I knew that from the first there had been something familiar about that face. The face of the boy—the face of Pepillo. And not that of Stephen Randal’s dead wife at all.
Besides, would any man have done for a mere brother what Pablo Almadares was willing to do for this girl?
It was clear as bright midday. This was Leonor Mauricio who had run away from her father to escape from that promised marriage to Pablo Almadares. But he had won after all and in spite of all. She had sold herself a second time for my sake, to bring the cattle into the valley. Now she was keeping her promise in fact, and riding away with him.
Rusty, keeping the lead, had swung onto the upper road that led along the creek. That was the way that the fugitives had taken. Through the moonlight it seemed to me that I could see them galloping.
I was the last of the three, because my horse was a little slower, though it was strong as a devil beneath me. Still, I was leading the mob of cowpunchers who were following the same trail far behind me.
They were too far away. It was up to the three of us, and, somehow, I felt a prophecy in me that I should come to grips with this Almadares before the night was ended, and one of us should die and one of us should live for the sake of Leonor—Pepillo—the Blue Jay.
Aye, Blue Jay was the name, but he had never before made such mischief as would follow on this night!
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Going down a slope, I pushed up to Shorty and hollered ahead to big Rusty McArdle.
“What horses did they take, Rusty?”
He turned in the saddle without slackening his pace. “Dan Murphy’s gray and the bald-faced bay mare.”
Those two names knocked nine-tenths of my hopes out from under me, because both of those animals were pretty well known to us on the ranch for speed. Besides, here were the three of us, all on more than average cow ponies, to be sure, but all of us heavyweights of the rankest kind. Yonder there was Pepillo—somehow, I couldn’t think of her by any other name—and young Pablo Almadares, the both of them lightweights—Pepillo in particular.
No, it didn’t look like we had much chance but still, no matter what I might think, there was the fact of the matter—that the two of them didn’t seem to draw any farther ahead of me.
“Lame!” yelled Shorty at my ear. “Lame, by heaven, one of them!”
That must’ve been it, of course. In another moment, there was a glint of a horse ahead of us, and we went crashing past the bald-faced mare. We spurred on, then, with Shorty and Rusty pulling well into the lead. As they rode they yelled like a couple of Indians on a trail.
Far ahead of us we saw a flash, and there was the gray horse, straining hard and carrying his double load very fast—but never fast enough. Oh, we could see them wonderful clear in that bright moonlight, but that demon Almadares could see us just as well. I saw the wink of his rifle as he turned. He fired, and there was Shorty doubled up in the saddle.
I pulled up beside him. “Shorty, are you bad hurt?”
“You fool!” cried Shorty. “Ride like the devil and get him for me! Don’t waste time on me!”
I didn’t wait to be asked twice. A man can’t leave a pal that’s wounded, of course—not unless he’s told to go on, but how I blessed Shorty for letting me keep on that trail, because still there was a sort of a voice in me, saying that before the end I would have this out with Almadares, hand to hand.
We climbed a long slope, and at the head of it Rusty had pressed well ahead of me. He was wonderfully close to that Almadares and the gray. I yelled for Rusty to rein back and to let me come up and we’d both close in on them, but Rusty wanted to have the glory of this all for himself. He spurred and quirted his horse ahead, with a revolver cocked out in front of him.
What good was that? How could he shoot, when there was the girl right in the arms of Almadares? No, he could only bluff, and Almadares was not the kind that could be bluffed out particular easy, I can tell you.
That long rifle swung about and steadied to a mere point of light. Rusty McArdle pitched from his saddle and lay in a horrible heap on the ground. As he fell, the explosion of the rifle rang like a beating hammer in my ear.
I didn’t wait to ask questions, because I figured that Rusty was sure a dead man, or dying. I jumped from the saddle and knelt by him.
“Big Boy!” Rusty gasped out in surprise.
“Aye,” I said. “It’s me, Rusty. What’ll you have? Where did the slug hit you?”
“It missed me … I mean it only grazed me,” said Rusty. “Take my horse, Big Boy. He’s better than yours. And ride, ride. She’s too good for any Mexican dog.”
This was what Rusty McArdle said as he lay there. I listened, and away off behind me I thought that I could hear the trampling of the horses coming up the pass, and I said to myself that the rest of the boys would be there pretty quick.
But, oh, while I was trying to tell myself that, I dropped a hand on the breast of Rusty, and it was sopping wet with crimson. I knew right well where my duty and my conscience lay.
Rusty was saying, “What are you waiting for? You thickhead, you was always sort of half stupid. I’m only grazed … skin broke, and that’s all. Ride on, partner. You’ll never get at him from behind. You got to cut ahead and try to rush him down the Slide. That’s the only way. Go on, Big Boy … good luck if you go, and curse you for a welcher if you stay here. Are you afraid of his gun?”
That was what Rusty said, gasping the words out and trying to make himself sneer at me to sting me into going. Only the pain was so terrible that he couldn’t control himself, and the sneer turned into an awful gasping.
I looked around me, and if ever a man asked God to tell him what was the right thing to do, it was me as I knelt there. Up the valley of Sour Creek was Almadares carrying Pepillo into purgatory. And here was Rusty McArdle dying for lack of a bunkie’s help.
There was only the whiteness and the brightness of Sour Creek under the moon, and there were some willows hanging their black heads against the silver of the water, and an owl with a voice like a loon went over our heads—to give me help.
“My horse is better than yours,” said Rusty. “Will you take him, Big Boy? I’ve been a poor sort of a man.”
Well, maybe you think that was a funny thing for him to say, but I suppose that while Rusty lay there, feeling the life drip out of him, he got a flash of everything that he had been. And every man has got a feeling that he owes something, I dunno to what. He had never paid in his life and he hoped to pay with his death.
Anyway, I grabbed his hand, with no word to say to him. Then I jumped into the saddle on his horse, and I drove that pony straight into the hills.
He was right. It was a better mount than the one that I had had. I could tell it by the life in his haunches as he drove and lifted me up the first slope. But I sa
ved him a little. There was no use killing his strength in that first effort. Up above was where he needed his strength.
The road along Sour Creek was the fastest and the easiest grade for going up the valley toward the south mountains. But right here Sour Creek made a big swing, going through the first steep-sided hills, and what Rusty had suggested was that I should cut across the cord of the arc that the creek made, and so come out at the straight again. At that place was what we all called the Slide—because there was a long, smooth, graveled fall of ground that dropped from the head of the rise right down to the trail that went along the bank of the river.
When I got to the top of the plateau, I turned that horse loose. I bit into him with spur and quirt and I jockeyed him along, easing myself into the stirrups.
That was a time for saving ground, too. When I came out at the top of the Slide, I could see Pablo Almadares and the girl rocking along at the laboring canter of their horse, rocking along like a pair of shadows against the whiteness of Sour Creek under the moon.
My pony tried to balk at the edge of the slope, but I fair lifted him over the edge. After that, the fall of the ground did the rest. The mustang laid back his ears and squatted, and down we went with a rush. We knocked loose a shower of pebbles and rocks that went leaping down the Slide before us.
Even if Almadares hadn’t had the eye of a hawk, that rattle of rocks would have told him what was coming. I heard a wild, shrill cry coming through the wind, “Señor, go back!”
That was Pepillo, telling me that it was sure death to come on. I felt it was death, too—felt it right in my bones, but it was a lot too late to turn back now. The fall of the ground had taken charge of me, and as I went down it on wings, a sort of a crazy enthusiasm got hold on me.
I saw Almadares halt. I saw his rifle pitch up to his shoulder. And that was to be the end of me, I thought. No, it was Pepillo that knocked the barrel of the rifle up.
Almadares put his politeness in his pocket. He turned and threw Pepillo to the ground, and there she lay, stunned, while he jerked up his rifle again. I had come down in a swirl of dust and dirt and flying pebbles right to the trail along the edge of the creek, and now I got the staggering pony righted and drove full at the Mexican with my revolver barking as fast as I could pull the trigger. Aye, but how was I to do any execution from the back of a galloping horse?
The rifle went up again to the shoulder of Almadares. I saw a spurt of flame, and a heavy weight struck my breast and tore through me.
It jerked me a little around in the saddle and it turned my body numb. But my arms and my hands were still alive. As I came flying in, a roar like a beast came out of my throat, and I threw the revolver. It hit the rifle, not Pablo, but it turned his last shot wild, and the next second I was at him.
I couldn’t spare the time or the hand for reining in the pony. I just reached for Almadares as we went by and I caught him around the body. The shock dragged us from our horses. We went down with a smash, me undermost, with the feeling that I had a fighting wildcat and not a man in my hands. He tried to claw loose, but his effort only pulled me to my feet, still with a hold on him.
But the last of my strength was going fast. I couldn’t last to throttle him. My body was turning into the weakness of water, and a red-hot sword was plunging through my breast, drawing out, and plunging through again. Yet I still had my arms and my hands.
“Almadares,” I said, “will you give up to me, on your honor?”
“Gringo dog!” cried Almadares, trying to claw out his knife.
I lifted him above my head. The sway of him sent me staggering, like I was drunk, but I managed to throw him off, and he dropped like a stone, reaching vainly at me as he fell. He turned over in the air. There was a horrible, soft, crunching sound as he struck a flat-faced rock beside the water. Then he slipped off into the current and went sliding down Sour Creek.
That was what I saw before the blackness walked across my eyes. I turned around, trying to feel my way.
“Pepillo!” I said. “The moon has got behind a cloud … where are you?”
I couldn’t make out what it was that came in answer, but I closed my arms and found the softness of a woman inside of them. What did I care, then, for what might come afterward?
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Have you ever been so sick that you enjoyed the fever and the weakness like water humming up and down your veins? That was the way with me. When I came out of the shadows, the first time, I remember that there was a flare of sun, and on the edge of my bed against the sun there was a girl sitting in a blue dress, with black hair, and clear olive skin, and eyes browner than the shadows under oak trees. I reached out a hand as the darkness began to swing across my eyes.
My hand was caught in slim, cold fingers.
“Big Boy!”
“Pepillo!” I said.
As I went out again, there was a ghost of perfume in my nostrils—jasmine! When I came out of the dark again, I was stronger. The dreams that I had been having were happier dreams, and now, when I turned my head, I saw that it was twilight, and right beside my bed, in a chair all piled with pillows, was the Blue Jay, with her head turned toward me, smiling in her sleep, looking so wonderful beautiful and happy and kind that I had to close my eyes quick to keep it from being too much for me.
I slept that night, deep, and when I wakened in the sunrise time, I had strength back in me, and I said to Pepillo, “Blue Jay, what the devil should I be calling you? I ask your pardon for swearing.”
She was sitting cross-legged on the broad arm of that chair, though how she ever managed, you would have to ask her. And she grinned at me. It was a wonderful relief to find that Pepillo still could grin like that, even after getting to be a woman.
“You need not call me Leonor,” she said, “but I should like to know your own name. All of it.”
I closed my eyes. “You will laugh like the devil, it’s so silly.”
“I will not laugh like a devil,” said Pepillo. “Tell me!”
“It’s Percival,” I said, groaning. “Percival Kitchin. And that’s the truth, though you wouldn’t ever believe it to look at me.”
It was a grand thing, I tell you, to hear her laugh, and to see her rocking back and forth like a bird on a branch.
“Big Boy,” she said, “it’s a wonderful joke, isn’t it? But isn’t it the devil to have to grow up in one day?” “Blue Jay, as long as there is trouble to make, you’ll make it. And as for growing up in one day, it won’t happen as long as you live.”
“Well,” said the Blue Jay, cocking her head to one side, “I am going to have to mollycoddle you when you come home at night after working all day.”
“Blue Jay,” I said, “whenever you try to pet me, I’ll know that you’re laughing behind my back, you devil!”
“Hush,” Pepillo whispered. “Do you not see that I am so foolish, and I love you so much, that I tremble at being near you?”
“Are you laughing at me, Pepillo, because I wouldn’t trust you, you mocking devil?”
“Ah, my dear,” she said, “but I really know nothing whatever about oil paintings.”
“Oil paintings be cursed!”
“Hush,” said Pepillo. “Because I think that Shorty will hear you swearing at me, Big Boy.”
“Shorty!”
I tried to pull myself up on my elbows, but Pepillo took me by the shoulders and pressed me back, dead easy.
There was Shorty, looking pretty white, but grinning pretty near broader than human and looking so awful ugly, you wouldn’t believe it.
“Seems like you found somebody strong enough to handle you, at last,” said Shorty. “Seems like you’re beat, Big Boy. A life decision is what Pepillo has got over you.”
“Pepillo,” I said, “beat it, will you?”
She went out onto the balcony outside of the ro
om and she began to sing there, not loud enough to drown out our talk, but just so the sweetness of her voice came tangling like flowers through our words.
“Now, Shorty,” I said, “what I want to know …”
Shorty put up his hand and he got a little whiter than before.
“It was no good, Big Boy,” he said. “We done what we could. But he didn’t seem to care to fight none. He bucked up till he heard that you had got Almadares good, and that Pepillo was safe, and that you was gonna live through it. And then he closed his eyes. ‘That,’ said Rusty McArdle, ‘is enough. Boys, I got one thing to ask. When I die, I want to be planted down here by the side of Sour Creek. Because this here is the place … I never paid when I entered … but I’m glad to pay going out.’ That was the way that he died. He let go.”
What would become of a gent like Rusty? Well, I dunno. I would be afraid to ask a preacher, you understand, but I would bet on Rusty’s outside chance, so long as he was in the race. He was a clean fighter, was Rusty. God bless him!
* * * * *
Pepillo said, “Now, what a silly way to end up your history, without saying any of the really important things.”
“Like what?”
“Why, about the ranch. Do you want them to think that you own the Sour Creek place, Big Boy?”
No, of course I didn’t, so here it is. What busted things was that Harry Randal got too confident and too much up in the air about what was gonna be his, and before his probation time was up, he got into a gambling game that nicked him for enough thousands to put the ranch in the hole very deep and bad. He lost his hope of his grandfather’s millions right there.
But how come it that we are still back on the Sour Creek Ranch? I’ll tell you. I had ought to ask the pardon of Henry Randal for the way that I’ve been talking about him, but I’ve put down everything in black and white, just as the ideas ran into my head at the time that they were happening. However, when Harry’s debts ran up big and he had to sell out, it was Henry Randal that bought in the place for a song, and then he sent for me and installed me here as boss. But not on a salary—on shares, and doggone fat shares, too!
