Waifs and Strays [Part 1]
by
O Henry
Part 2 out of 2
handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away.
Mr. Easton knows his business."
"Will we see you again soon in Washington?" asked the girl.
"Not soon, I think," said Easton. "My butterfly days are over, I
fear."
"I love the West," said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were
shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to
speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner:
"Mamma and I spent the summer in Denver. She went home a week ago
because father was slightly ill. I could live and be happy in the
West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money isn't everything.
But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid--"
"Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glum-faced man. "This isn't quite
fair. I'm needing a drink, and haven't had a smoke all day. Haven't
you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won't you? I'm
half dead for a pipe."
The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow
smile on his face.
"I can't deny a petition for tobacco," he said, lightly. "It's the
one friend of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls,
you know." He held out his hand for a farewell.
"It's too bad you are not going East," she said, reclothing herself
with manner and style. "But you must go on to Leavenworth, I
suppose?"
"Yes," said Easton, "I must go on to Leavenworth."
The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker.
The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the
conversation. Said one of them: "That marshal's a good sort of
chap. Some of these Western fellows are all right."
"Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn't he?" asked the
other.
"Young!" exclaimed the first speaker, "why--Oh! didn't you catch on?
Say--did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his
~right~ hand?"
THE CACTUS
The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative
. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to
the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an
entire courtship while removing one's gloves.
That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor
apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a
red earthen jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was
provided with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with
the slightest breeze with a peculiar beckoning motion.
Trysdale's friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard
complaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in
evening dress. White favors like stars upon their coats shone
through the gloom of the apartment.
As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale's
mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed
that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been
banked in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the
lowpitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp
garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the
minister irrevocably binding her to another.
>From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had
become a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and
how he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he
had suddenly found himself confronted by a thing he had never before
faced --his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He
saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn
to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought that to others, before
now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare.
Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how
free from either she had always been--But why--
As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an
unworthy, sullen exultation that had served to support him. He had
told himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the
man to whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor
consolation had been wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift,
limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he
knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised
to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had
crumbled; its last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had
been no quarrel between them, nothing--
For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of
those last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned.
She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had
accepted her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet
incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself);
so childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so
sincere. She had invested him with an almost supernatural number of
high attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the
oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no promise
of blossom or fruit.
As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the
crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came
vividly back to him. The scene was the night when he had asked her
to come up on his pedestal with him and share his greatness. He
could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the
memory of her convincing beauty that night--the careless wave of her
hair, the tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and words. But
they had been enough, and they had brought him to speak. During
their conversation she had said:
"And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language
like a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is
there anything you do not know?"
Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty
(he sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting
Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries.
Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man
to have magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition.
But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and
flattering. He allowed the imputation to pass without denial.
Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious
bay of Spanish scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and,
among its soft convolutions, he did not feel the prick of the thorn
that was to pierce him later.
How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a
snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have
sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her
eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct answer. "I will send
you my answer to-morrow," she said; and he, the indulgent, confident
victor, smilingly granted the delay. The next day he waited,
impatient, in his rooms for the word. At noon her groom came to the
door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was
no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous
foreign or botanical name. He waited until night, but her answer did
not come. His large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her.
Two evenings later they met at a dinner. Their greetings were
conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager.
He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly
swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and
ice. Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where
was his fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the
answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit. If--
The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon
his thoughts, aroused him.
"I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look
unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted
merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two
thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way
from South America to connive at the sacrifice--please to observe how
lightly my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had,
too, and now she's gone. Come now! take something to ease your
conscience."
"I don't drink just now, thanks," said Trysdale.
"Your brandy," resumed the other, coming over and joining him, "is
abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda, and try
some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It's worth the, trip.
Hallo! here's an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this
cactus, Trysdale?"
"A present," said Trysdale, "from a friend. Know the species?"
"Very well. It's a tropical concern. See hundreds of 'em around
Punta every day. Here's the name on this tag tied to it. Know any
Spanish, Trysdale?"
"No," said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a smile--"Is it
Spanish?"
"Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning
to you. They call it by this name--Ventomarme. Name means in English,
'Come and take me.'"
THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR
I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York
burglar, highwayman, and murderer.
"But, my dear Knight," said I, "it sounds incredible. You have
undoubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your
profession known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous
deeds under the very noses of the police--you have boldly entered the
homes of millionaires and held them up with an empty gun while you
made free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens
in the glare of Broadway's electric lights; you have killed and robbed
with superb openness and absolute impunity--but when you boast that
within forty-eight hours after committing a murder you can run down
and actually bring me face to face with the detective assigned to
apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my doubts--remember, you
are in New York."
Avery Knight smiled indulgently.
"You pique my professional pride, doctor," he said in a nettled
tone. "I will convince you."
About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous-looking citizen was
rounding a clump of bushes where the walk curved. Knight suddenly
drew a revolver and shot the man in the back. His victim fell and
lay without moving.
The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes
his money, watch, and a valuable ring and cravat pin. He then
rejoined me smiling calmly, and we continued our walk.
Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the
shot had been fired. Avery Knight stopped him.
"I have just killed a man," he announced, seriously, "and robbed him
of his possessions."
"G'wan," said the policeman, angrily, "or I'll run yez in! Want yer
name in the papers, don't yez? I never knew the cranks to come around
so quick after a shootin' before. Out of th' park, now, for yours, or
I'll fan yez."
"What you have done," I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I walked
on, "was easy. But when you come to the task of hunting down the
detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have
undertaken a difficult feat."
"Perhaps so," said Knight, lightly. "I will admit that my success
depends in a degree upon the sort of man they start after me. If it
should be an ordinary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight
of him. If they honor me by giving the case to some one of their
celebrated sleuths I do not fear to match my cunning and powers of
induction against his."
On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look
on his keen countenance.
"How goes the mysterious murder?" I asked.
"As usual," said Knight, smilingly. "I have put in the morning at the
police station and at the inquest. It seems that a card case of mine
containing cards with my name and address was found near the body.
They have three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description
of me. The case has been placed in the hands of Shamrock Jolnes, the
famous detective. He left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment.
I waited at my address until two, thinking he might call there."
I laughed, tauntingly.
"You will never see Jolnes," I continued, "until this murder has been
forgotten, two or three weeks from now. I had a better opinion of
your shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you
waited he has got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction
theories now, and no wrongdoer has yet been known to come upon him
while thus engaged. I advise you to give it up."
"Doctor," said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and
a squaring of his chin, "in spite of the record your city holds of
something like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the
perpetrator, and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake
to break that record. To-morrow I will take you to Shamrock Jolnes--
I will unmask him before you and prove to you that it is not an
impossibility for an officer of the law and a manslayer to stand face
to face in your city."
"Do it," said I, "and you'll have the sincere thanks of the Police
Department."
On the next day Knight called for me in a cab.
"I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he admitted. "I know
something of detectives' methods, and I followed out a few of them,
expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a .45-
caliber, I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in
Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the
Columbia University, as the man's being shot in the back naturally
suggested hazing. But I could not find a trace of him."
"--Nor will you," I said, emphatically.
"Not by ordinary methods," said Knight. "I might walk up and down
Broadway for a month without success. But you have aroused my pride,
doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise
you I will never kill or rob in your city again."
"Nonsense, man," I replied. "When our burglars walk into our houses
and politely demand, thousands of dollars' worth of jewels, and then
dine and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a
mere murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is
looking for you?"
Avery Knight, sat lost in thought for a while. At length he looked
up brightly.
"Doc," said he, "I have it. Put on your hat, and come with me. In
half an hour I guarantee that you shall stand in the presence of
Shamrock Jolnes."
I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions
to the driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway,
turning presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again.
It was with a rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful
and gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and superb self-
confidence had prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of
bringing me into the presence of a murderer and the New York detective
in pursuit of him simultaneously. Even yet I could not believe it
possible.
"Are you sure that you are not being led into some trap?" I asked.
"Suppose that your clue, whatever it is, should bring us only into
the presence of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen
cops!"
"My dear doctor," said Knight, a little stiffly. "I would remind you
that I am no gambler."
"I beg your pardon," said I. "But I do not think you will find
Jolnes."
The cab stopped before one of the handsomest residences on the avenue.
Walking up and down in front of the house was a man with long red
whiskers, with a detective's badge showing on the lapel of his coat.
Now and then the man would remove his whiskers to wipe his face, and
then I would recognize at once the well-known features of the great
New York detective. Jolnes was keeping a sharp watch upon the doors
and windows of the house.
"Well, doctor," said Knight, unable to repress a note of triumph in
his voice, "have you seen?"
"It is wonderful--wonderful!" I could not help exclaiming as our cab
started on its return trip. "But how did you do it? By what process
of induction--"
"My dear doctor," interrupted the great murderer, "the inductive
theory is what the detectives use. My process is more modern. I
call it the saltatorial theory. Without bothering with the tedious
mental phenomena necessary to the solution of a mystery from slight
clues, I jump at once to a conclusion. I will explain to you the
method I employed in this case.
"In the first place, I argued that as the crime was committed in New
York City in broad daylight, in a public place and under peculiarly
atrocious circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth
available was let loose upon the case, the perpetrator would never
be discovered. Do you not think my postulation justified by
precedent?"
"Perhaps so," I replied, doggedly. "But if Big Bill Dev--"
"Stop that," interrupted Knight, with a smile, "I've heard that
several times. It's too late now. I will proceed.
"If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I reasoned, although
the best detective talent was employed to ferret them out, it must
be true that the detectives went about their work in the wrong way.
And not only in the wrong way, but exactly opposite from the right
way. That was my clue.
"I slew the man in Central Park. Now, let me describe myself to you.
"I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate publicity. I have no money
to speak of; I do not like oatmeal, and it is the one ambition of my
life to die rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do not
care for my fellowmen and I never give a cent to beggars or charity.
"Now, my dear doctor, that is the true description of myself, the man
whom that shrewd detective was to hunt down. You who are familiar
with the history of crime in New York of late should be able to
foretell the result. When I promised you to exhibit to your
incredulous gaze the sleuth who was set upon me, you laughed at me
because you said that detectives and murderers never met in New York.
I have demonstrated to you that the theory is possible."
"But how did you do it?" I asked again.
"It was very simple," replied the distinguished murderer. "I
assumed that the detective would go exactly opposite to the clues
he had. I have given you a description of myself. Therefore, he
must necessarily set to work and trail a short man with a white
beard who likes to be in the papers, who is very wealthy, is fond
'of oatmeal, wants to die poor, and is of an extremely generous
and philanthropic disposition. When thus far is reached the mind
hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to the spot where
Shamrock Jolnes was piping off Andrew Carnegie's residence."
"Knight," said I, "you're a wonder. If there was no danger of your
reforming, what a rounds man you'd make for the Nineteenth Precinct!"
THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET
[This story has been rewritten and published in "Strictly Business"
under the title, The Proof of the Pudding.]
Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway
in that month and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few
breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems to decide a serious
question in art.
There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis and me--and two
or three million sunworshippers who remained at desks and counters.
The elect had fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had already
begun to draw for additional funds. Every evening Hollis and I
prowled about the deserted town searching for coolness in empty
cafes, dining-rooms, and roofgardens. We knew to the tenth part of a
revolution the speed of every electric fan in Gotham, and we followed
the swiftest as they varied. Hollis's fiancee. Miss Loris Sherman,
had been in the Adirondacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a month. In
another week he would join her party there. In the meantime, he
cursed the city cheerfully and optimistically, and sought my society
because I suffered him to show me her photograph during the black
coffee every time we dined together.
My revenge was to read to him my one-act play.
It was one insufferable evening when the overplus of the day's heat
was being hurled quiveringly back to the heavens by every surcharged
brick and stone and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the
cunning of the two-legged beasts we had found an oasis where the
hoofs of Apollo's steed had not been allowed to strike. Our seats
were on an ocean of cool, polished oak; the white linen of fifty
deserted tables flapped like seagulls in the artificial breeze; a
mile away a waiter lingered for a heliographic signal--we might have
roared songs there or fought a duel without molestation.
Out came Miss Loris's photo with the coffee, and I once more praised
the elegant poise of the neck, the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy
hair, and the eyes that followed one, like those in an oil painting.
"She's the greatest ever," said Hollis, with enthusiasm. "Good as
Great Northern Preferred, and a disposition built like a watch. One
week more and I'll be happy Jonny-on-the-spot. Old Tom Tolliver, my
best college chum, went up there two weeks ago. He writes me that
Loris doesn't talk about anything but me. Oh, I guess Rip Van Winkle
didn't have all the good luck!"
"Yes, yes," said I, hurriedly, pulling out my typewritten play.
"She's no doubt a charming girl. Now, here's that little curtain-
raiser you promised to listen to."
"Ever been tried on the stage?" asked Hollis.
"Not exactly," I answered. "I read half of it the other day to a
fellow whose brother knows Robert Edeson; but he had to catch a train
before I finished."
"Go on," said Hollis, sliding back in his chair like a good fellow.
"I'm no stage carpenter, but I'll tell you what I think of it from a
first-row balcony standpoint. I'm a theatre bug during the season,
and I can size up a fake play almost as quick as the gallery can.
Flag the waiter once more, and then go ahead as hard as you like with
it. I'll be the dog."
I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not without some
elocution. There was one scene in it that I believed in greatly.
The comedy swiftly rises into thrilling and unexpectedly developed
drama. Capt. Marchmont suddenly becomes cognizant that his wife is
an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him from the day of
their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them from that
moment--she with her magnificent lies and siren charm, winding about
him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with his
man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his
heart. That scene I always thought was a crackerjack. When Capt.
Marchmont discovers her duplicity by reading on a blotter in a mirror
the impression of a note that she has written to the Count, he raises
his hand to heaven and exclaims: "O God, who created woman while Adam
slept, and gave her to him for a companion, take back Thy gift and
return instead the sleep, though it last forever!"
"Rot," said Hollis, rudely, when I had given those lines with proper
emphasis.
"I beg your pardon!" I said, as sweetly as I could.
"Come now," went on Hollis, "don't be an idiot. You know very well
that nobody spouts any stuff like that these days. That sketch went
along all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that
right-arm exercise and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain
talk as you or I or Bill Jones would."
"I'll admit," said I, earnestly (for my theory was being touched
upon), "that on all ordinary occasions all of us use commonplace
language to convey our thoughts. You will rememberthat up to the
moment when the captain makes his terrible discovery all the
characters on the stage talk pretty much as they would, in real life.
But I believe that I am right in allowing him lines suitable to the
strong and tragic situation into which he falls."
"Tragic, my eye!" said my friend, irreverently. "In Shakespeare's
day he might have sputtered out some high-cockalorum nonsense of
that sort, because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank
verse and discharged the cook with an epic. But not for B'way in
the summer of 1905!"
"It is my opinion," said I, "that great human emotions shake up our
vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A
sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions
out of an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used
in fiction or on the stage to portray those emotions."
"That's where you fellows are wrong," said Hollis. "Plain, every-day
talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the
cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer,
instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics."
"Possibly, a little later," I continued. "But just at the time--just
as the blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical and
deep-tongued isn't wrung from a man in spite of his modern and
practical way of speaking, then I'm wrong."
"Of course," said Hollis, kindly, "you've got to whoop her up some
degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain
kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out
of the atmosphere, and scream: "Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!" What she
would actually do would be to call up the police by 'phone, ring for
some strong tea, and get the little darling's photo out, ready for
the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner--a stage corner
--it's all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and hiss:
"All is lost!" Off the stage he would remark: "This is a conspiracy
against me-- I refer you to my lawyers.'"
"I get no consolation," said I, gloomily, "from your concession of an
accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I was
following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a
commonplace way, they should do the same on the stage."
And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great
hotel and began to nibble languidly at the gay flies in the swift
current of Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled.
We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but
soon the weariness of Manhattan in summer overcame us. Nine stories
up, facing the south, was Hollis's apartment, and we soon stepped into
an elevator bound for that cooler haven.
I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten,
and I stood at a sideboard mixing things, with cracked ice and
glasses all about me. A breeze from the bay came in the windows not
altogether blighted by the asphalt furnace over which it had passed.
Hollis, whistling softly, turned over a late-arrived letter or two
on his table, and drew around the coolest wicker armchairs.
I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when I heard a sound.
Some man's voice groaned hoarsely: "False, oh, God!--false, and
Love is a lie and friendship but the byword of devils!"
I looked around quickly. Hollis lay across the table with his head
down upon his outstretched arms. And then he looked up at me and
laughed in his ordinary manner.
I knew him--he was poking fun at me about my theory. And it did seem
so unnatural, those swelling words during our quiet gossip, that I
half began to believe I had been mistaken--that my theory was wrong.
Hollis raised himself slowly from the table.
"You were right about that theatrical business, old man," he said,
quietly, as he tossed a note to me.
I read it.
Loris had run away with Tom Tolliver.
A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS
"I see," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black
slouch hat, "that another street car motorman in your city has
narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by
lighting a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the street."
"Do you think they would have lynched him?" asked the New Yorker,
in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for
the boat.
"Not until after the election," said the tall man, cutting a corner
off his plug of tobacco. "I've been in your city long enough to know
something about your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least
dangerous of them all, except the National Guard and the Dressmakers'
Convention.
"You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for pigs'
knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always
crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and
then suddenly turns back to ask his inother whether it was pale ale
or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells
and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is
a horrible grinding and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek,
and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers torn away by the
fender, screaming for his lost nickel.
"In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens,
crying, 'Lynch the motorman! Lynch the motorman!' at the top of
their voices. Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a
rope; but they find the last one has just been cut up and labelled.
Hundreds of the excited mob press close to the cowering motorman,
whose hand is observed to tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick
of pepsin gum from his pocket to his mouth.
"When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on the
motorman, some bringing camp stools and sitting quite close to him,
and all shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces his way
through them to the side of their prospective victim.
"'Hello, Mike,' says the motorman in a low voice, 'nice day. Shall
I sneak off a block or so, or would you like to rescue me?'
"'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the policeman, 'I'd like
to disperse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I haven't defeated a
lynching mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only
300, that wanted to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears.
It would boost me some down at the station.'
"'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything to oblige. I'll
turn pale and tremble.'
"And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says,
'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight seconds the desperate mob has scattered
and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to
search for Willie's nickel."
"I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman
because of an accident," said the New Yorker.
"You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They know the
motorman's all right, and that he wouldn't even run over a stray
dog if he could help it. And they know that not a man among 'em
would tie the knot to hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried
and condemned and sentenced according to law."
"Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?"
asked the New Yorker.
"To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, "that he is safe.
If they really wanted to do him up they would go into the houses
and drop bricks on him from the third-story windows."
"New Yorkers are not cowards," said the other man, a little stiffly.
"Not one at a time," agreed the tall man, promptly. "You've got a
fine lot of single-handed scrappers in your town. I'd rather fight
three of you than one; and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's
victims in a bunch before I'd pass two citizens on a dark corner,
with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded up in a bunch you
lose your nerve. Get you in crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L'
road guards and George B. Cortelyou and the tintype booths at Coney
Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. ~E pluribus nihil.~
Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler,
"Lynch him!' he says to himself, "Oh, dear, I suppose I must look
pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance
premium lapse to-morrow. This is a sure tip for me to play Methuselah
straight across the board in the next handicap.'
"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of
New York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned
over to them for lynching. "For God's sake, officers,' cries the
distracted wretch, 'have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let
them wrest me from ye?'
"'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's
three of us--me and Darrel and the plain-clothes man; and there's only
sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they
took ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner,
Darrel, and we'll be movin' along to the station.'"
"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so
harmless," said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride.
"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on
a visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them."
"That must have been during the Cooper Union riots," remarked the
New Yorker.
"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man--"but it was a union
riot--at the Vanastor wedding."
"You seem to be in favor of lynch law," said the New Yorker,
severely.
"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are
certain cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a
righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing.
I am an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you that less
than six months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one "of
that race that is creating a wide chasm between your section of
country and mine, sir."
"It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists
in the South, but--"
"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew;
"and I don't think you will condemn my course when I tell you that
the colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my
own brother."
THE SNOW MAN
EDITORIAL NOTE.--~Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter
(known through his literary work as "O. Henry") this American master
of short-story writing had begun for Hampton's Magazine the story
printed below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled
to give up writing about at the point where the girl enters the
story.
When he realized that he could do no more {it was his lifelong habit
to write with a pencil, never dictating to a stenographer), O. Henry
told in detail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon,
whom he had often spoken of as one of the most effective short-story
writers of the present time. Mr. Porter had delineated all of the
characters, leaving only the rounding out of the plot in the final
pages to Mr. Lyon.~
Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little
children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in
which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away.
The man who can stand the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading
by Fahrenheit, Reaumur, or Moses's carven tablets of stone.
Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the canyon of Big Lost River,
and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was
deepening. The flakes were as large as an hour's circular tatting by
Miss Wilkins's ablest spinster, betokening a heavy snowfall and less
entertainment and more adventure than the completion of the tatting
could promise. I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I would
be welcome as a snow-bound pilgrim, both for hospitality's sake and
because Ross had few chances to confide in living creatures who did
not neigh, bellow, bleat, yelp, or howl during his discourse.
The ranch house was just within the jaws of the canyon where its
builder may have fatuously fancied that the timbered and rocky walls
on both sides would have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds;
but I feared the drift. Even now through the endless, bottomless rift
in the hills--the speaking tube of the four winds--came roaring the
voice of the proprietor to the little room on the top floor.
At my "hello," a ranch hand came from an outer building and received
my thankful horse. In another minute, Ross and I sat by a stove in
the dining-room of the four-room ranch house, while the big, simple
welcome of the household lay at my disposal. Fanned by the whizzing
norther, the fine, dry snow was sifted and bolted through the cracks
and knotholes of the logs. The cook room, without a separating door,
appended.
In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely and weather-beaten
man moving with professional sureness about his red-hot stove.
His face was stolid and unreadable--something like that of a great
thinker, or of one who had no thoughts to conceal. I thought his
eye seemed unwarrantably superior to the elements and to the man,
but quickly attributed that to the characteristic self-importance
of a petty chef. "Camp cook" was the niche that I gave him in the
Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple fits a dumpling.
Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and
talked, shuddering frequently, half from nerves and half from the
freezing draughts. So he brought the bottle and the cook brought
boiling water, and we made prodigious hot toddies against the attacks
of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. They sounded like icicles
dropping from the eaves, or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms on
a Louis XIV chandelier that I once heard at a boarder's dance in the
parlor of a ten-a-week boarding-house in Gramercy Square. ~Sic
transit.~
Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of
the stars; but they who believe that all things, from a without-wine
table d'hote to the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music,
might have found a nocturne or a symphony to express the isolation of
that blotted-out world. The clink of glass and bottle, the aeolian
chorus of the wind in the house crannies, its deeper trombone through
the canyon below, and the Wagnerian crash of the cook's pots and pans,
united in a fit, discordant melody, I thought. No less welcome an
accompaniment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison cutlet
indorsed by the solvent fumes of true Java, bringing rich promises
of comfort to our yearning souls.
The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me
democratically as he cast the heavy plates around as though he were
pitching quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some
appraisement and curiosity and much conciliation. There was no
prophet to tell us when that drifting evil outside might cease to
fall; and it is well, when snow-bound, to stand somewhere within the
radius of the cook's favorable consideration. But I could read
neither favor nor disapproval in the face and manner of our
pot-wrestler.
He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of
commonplace, bull-necked, pink-faced, callous calm. He wore brown
duck trousers too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with
sleeves rolled above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady
scowl on his features that looked to me as though he had fixed it
there purposely as a protection against the weakness of an inherent
amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. And then I let
supper usurp his brief occupancy of my thoughts.
"Draw up, George," said Ross. "Let's all eat while the grub's hot."
"You fellows go on and chew," answered the cook. "I ate mine in the
kitchen before sun-down."
"Think it'll be a big snow, George?" asked the ranchman.
George had turned to reenter the cook room. He moved slowly around
and, looking at his face, it seemed to me that he was turning over
the wisdom and knowledge of centuries in his head.
"It might," was his delayed reply.
At the door of the kitchen he stopped and looked back at us. Both
Ross and I held our knives and forks poised and gave him our regard.
Some men have the power of drawing the attention of others without
speaking a word. Their attitude is more effective than a shout.
"And again it mightn't," said George, and went back to his stove.
After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes. He
stood for a moment, while his spurious frown deepened.
"It might stop any minute," he said, "or it might keep up for days."
At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into
his dishpan, light his pipe, and put the tableware through its
required lavation. He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old
saddle blanket a paperback book, and settled himself to read by his
dim oil lamp.
And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set
forth again the bottles and glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep
channel through which the long dammed flood of his discourse would
soon be booming. But I was half content, comparing my fate with that
of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing for his supper, thus
doubling the burdens of both himself and his host.
"Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a foreword. "It
ain't, somehow, it seems to me, salubrious. I can stand water and
mud and two inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and
medium-sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets
me all locoed. I reckon the reason it rattles you is because it
changes the look of things so much. It's like you had a wife and
left her in the morning with the same old blue cotton wrapper on, and
rides in of a night and runs across her all outfitted in a white silk
evening frock, waving an ostrich-feather fan, and monkeying with a
posy of lily flowers. Wouldn't it make you look for your pocket
compass? You'd be liable to kiss her before you collected your
presence of mind."
By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up into the clouds (so
it pleased me to fancy) and there condensed into the finer snowflakes
of thought; and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and
bitter enemies will do. I thought of Boss's preamble about the
mysterious influence upon man exerted by that ermine-lined monster
that now covered our little world, and knew he was right.
Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts,
rat-traps, and well-disguised blessings that the gods chuck down to
us from the Olympian peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing
is the snow. By scientific analysis it is absolute beauty and purity
--so, at the beginning we look doubtfully at chemistry.
It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another. It hides in a
night the old scars and familiar places with which we have grown
heart-sick or enamored. So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our
embroidered robes and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or in the
reindeer sleigh into the white country where the seven colors converge.
This is when our fancy can overcome the bane of it.
But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow-madness, made known
by people turned wild and distracted by the bewildering veil that has
obscured the only world they know. In the cities, the white fairy who
sets the brains of her dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast
for the comedy role. Her diamond shoe buckles glitter like frost;
with a pirouette she invites the spotless carnival.
But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world
of the outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return.
It makes of the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing
and stumbling in space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes
its strangeness and beauty, There Nature, low comedienne, plays her
tricks on man. Though she has put him forth as her highest product,
it appears that she has fashioned him with what seems almost
incredible carelessness and indexterity. One-sided and without
balance, with his two halves unequally fashioned and joined, must he
ever jog his eccentric way. The snow falls, the darkness caps it,
and the ridiculous man-biped strays in accurate circles until he
succumbs in the ruins of his defective architecture.
In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as
plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the
mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is
a derivative from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which
the caloric has been extracted. Good has been said of it; even the
poets, crazed by its spell and shivering in their attics under its
touch, have indited permanent melodies commemorative of its beauty.
Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague--a corroding
plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped. It beneficently covers
the wheat fields, swelling the crop--and the Flour Trust gets us by
the throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white
kirtle over the red seams of the rugged north--and the Alaskan short
story is born. Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler
burrowing from the icy air--and, melting to-morrow, drowns his
brother in the valley below.
At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe.
When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest
huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the
bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles,
their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all from the
isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test.
It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed
of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam,
Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine.
This is no story, you say; well, let it begin.
There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and
reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?).
We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward
named himself). But just then he was no more than a worm struggling
for life, enveloped in a killing white chrysalis.
We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and
dragged forth a living thing with a Van Dyck beard and marvellous
diamond rings. We put it through the approved curriculum of snow-
rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of whiskey, working him up
to a graduating class entitled to a diploma of three fingers of rye
in half a glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had already
come from the quarters at Ross's bugle-like yell and kicked the
stranger's staggering pony to some sheltered corral where beasts were
entertained.
Let a paragraphic biography of Girod intervene.
Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity
and the snow had made him ~non compos vocis~. The adversity consisted
of the stranded San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second-
story work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from
town to town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he
worked the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line
of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we
surmised that he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes
ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most
sacred blue language he dilated upon the subject of snow; for Etienne
was Paris-born and loved the snow with the same passion that an orchid
does.
"Mee-ser-rhable!" commented Etienne, and took another three fingers.
"Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank... blank!" said Ross, and
followed suit.
"Rotten," said I.
The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst;
and insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages
(via the M. A. M wireless). One was that George considered our
vituperation against the snow childish; the other was that George did
not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I
had the message wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright eyes, you
don't really mean Dagoes, do you?" and over the wireless came three
deathly, psychic taps: "Yes." Then I reflected that to George all
foreigners were probably "Dagoes." I had once known another camp
cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for
Mlle.) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel therefore
at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not--
I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days,
Etienne stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and
shrieking and moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just
about as unbearable as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out
on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my
collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test
of flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to
stand.
However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and
from my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human
interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which
French writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and American
writers to the faro-dealer.
"I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!" was
Etienne's constant prediction.
"Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before," said Ross, over and over.
He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg
stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal
deposited on one side of him, and "Roughing It," "The Jumping Frog,"
and "Life on the Mississippi" on the other. For every chapter he lit
a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time, gave him a recurrent
premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker's colic or whatever it is
they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals.
To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor
Still's Amber-Colored U. S. A. Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight
hours--nerves.
"Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before.
Positive fact." Ross slammed "Roughing It" on the floor. "When
you're snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just
seems to bring out all your cussedness. You read a man's poor,
pitiful attempts to be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to
tear the book up, get out your bandana, and have a good, long cry."
At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out
of his mouth long enough to exclaim: "Humor! Humor at such a time
as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable--"
"Supper," announced George.
These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God
makes the planets and we make the platters neat." By that time, the
ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental
distraction, not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall
never be forgotten by Ross or me or Etienne.
After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder
ached wretchedly, and with half-closed eyes I tried to forget it by
watching the deft movements of the stolid cook.
Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift
step, he moved to the door, threw it open, and stood there.
The rest of us had heard nothing.
"What is it, George?" asked Ross.
The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb.
With careful precision he prodded something. Then he made one
careful step into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under
the arms as he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. Another step
inside the door, which he shut methodically behind him, and he dumped
the burden at a safe distance from the fire.
He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under
that Orphic suspense until,
"A woman," remarked George.
Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present
avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian
for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams.
A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear
whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops;
the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening
June wind in the leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen;
fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer track. General
impression upon the dazed beholder--you could not see the forest for
the trees.
Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture
stalks into the ranch house. Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman
--all snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I
never did, with women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the
effect upon Ross and Etienne Girod.
Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he
discarded the Pittsburg scandals. Also, he shaved off a three days'
beard.
Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from
a little tube of grease Hongroise in his vest pocket. He combed it
with a little aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it
with manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and
Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a
blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed,
pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the
notorious troubadour, could not have equalled Etienne.
Ross's method of advance was brusque, domineering. "Little woman,"
he said, "you're welcome here!"--and with what he thought subtle
double meaning--"welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow or
no snow."
Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen
berries creeping into the birch bark. She looked around hurriedly as
if seeking escape. But there was none, save the kitchen and the room
allotted her. She made an excuse and disappeared into her own room.
Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following:
"Mees Adams, I was almost to perislh-die-of monotony w'en your fair
and beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house." I opened my
starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger,
the Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to
the school-teacher's. "I am French--you see--temperamental--nervous!
I cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but--a woman
comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 'rahs and a tiger. "What a
difference! All is light and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile.
You have 'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel
your 'eart. So!" He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this
vantage point he suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand,
"Ah! Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how I ad--"
"Dinner," remarked George. He was standing just behind the
Frenchman's ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher's
eyes. After thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the
flinty, frozen maelstrom of his face: "Dinner," he concluded, "will
be ready in two minutes."
Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I must get ready for
dinner," she said brightly, and went into her room.
Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned
away, I waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily
ours alone, and told him what had happened.
He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. "Yeller-
hided, unwashed, palm-readin' skunk," he said under his breath. "I'll
shoot him full o' holes if he don't watch out--talkin' that way to my
wife!"
I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. "Your wife!"
I gasped.
"Well, I mean to make her that," he announced.
The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pent-up
emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers.
Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as
a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does
a henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross.
The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was
feverish. Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white
cold, where for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher's
vision locked in and turned upon herself, nobody knows through what
profound feminine introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast
among men, instead of finding relief and security, she beheld herself
plunged anew into other discomforts. Even in her own room she could
hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. "I'll blow you full o'
holes!" shouted Ross. "Witnesses," shrieked Etienne, waving his
hand at the cook and me. She could not have known the previous
harassed condition of the men, fretting under indoor conditions. All
she knew was, that where she had expected the frank freemasonry of
the West, she found the subtle tangle of two men's minds, bent upon
exacting whatever romance there might be in her situation.
She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me.
They also came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a
natural state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all
forced to retire. Once she did manage to whisper: "I am so worried
here. I don't know what to do."
To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a
hunch-savant and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being
in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right.
But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that
perhaps I might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man
coming with a bundle.
Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who
had been sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made
another dash. It was typical Ross talk.
He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool
and perfect spot where Miss Adams' forehead met the neat part in her
fragrant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I
was in a profound slumber.
"Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough for a man like me to
see you bothered this way. You"--gulp--"you have been alone in this
world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time
like this you need a protector the worst kind--a protector who would
take a three-ring delight in smashing the saffron-colored kisser off
of any yeller-skinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem.
Hem. I am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on
my life without the"--gulp--"sweet radiance"--gulp--"of a woman around
the house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this,
when I am pretty near locoed from havin' to stall indoors, and hence
it was with delight I welcomed your first appearance in this here
shack. Since then I have been packed jam full of more different kinds
of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and superb, than has fallen my way
in years."
Miss Adams made a useless movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck
firm. "I don't want to annoy you, Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it
comes to that you'll have to be annoyed. And I'll have to have my
say. This palm-ticklin' slob of a Frenchman ought to be kicked off
the place and if you'll say the word, off he goes. But I don't want
to do the wrong thing. You've got to show a preference. I'm gettin'
around to the point, Miss--Miss Willie, in my own brick fashion. I've
stood about all I can stand these last two days and somethin's got to
happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheepherder.
Miss Willie"--he lassooed her hand by main force--"just say the word.
You need somebody to take your part all your life long. Will you
mar--"
"Supper," remarked George, tersely, from the kitchen door.
Miss Adams hurried away.
Ross turned angrily. "You--"
"I have been revolving it in my head," said George.
He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big
platter of pork and beans. Then somberly the potatoes. Then
profoundly the biscuits. "I have been revolving it in my mind.
There ain't no use waitin' any longer for Swengalley. Might as
well eat now."
>From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I watched the progress
of that meal. Ross, muddled, glowering, disappointed; Etienne,
eternally blandishing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking
at her food, hesitant about answering questions, almost hysterical;
now and then the solid, flitting shadow of the cook, passing behind
their backs like a Dreadnaught in a fog.
I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes
before it struck the hour. I know, therefore, the slow freight of
Anticipation. For I have awakened at three in the morning, heard the
clock gurgle, and waited those three minutes for the three strokes I
knew were to come. ~Alors~. In Ross's ranch house that night the
slow freight of Climax whistled in the distance.
Etienne began it after supper. Miss Aclams had suddenly displayed a
lively interest in the kitchen layout and I could see her in there,
chatting brightly at George--not with him--the while he ducked his
head and rattled his pans.
"My fren'," said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud from his cigarette
and patting Ross lightly on the shoulder with a bediamonded hand
which, hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, "I see I mus' be
frank with you. Firs', because we are rivals; second, because you
take these matters so serious. I--I am Frenchman. I love the women"
--he threw back his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an
unsavory kiss toward the kitchen. "It is, I suppose, a trait of my
nation. All Frenchmen love the women--pretty women. Now, look:
Here I am!" He spread out his arms. "Cold outside! I detes' the
col-l-l! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable snow! Two men!
This--" pointing to me--"an' this!" Pointing to' Ross. "I am
distracted! For two whole days I stan' at the window an' tear my
'air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun'ly distress inside my 'ead!
An' suddenly--be'old! A woman, a nice, pretty, charming, innocen'
young woman! I, naturally, rejoice. I become myself again--gay,
light-'earted, "appy. I address myself to mademoiselle; it passes
the time. That, m'sieu', is wot the women are for--pass the time!
Entertainment--like the music, like the wine!
"They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen'. To play with
thees woman, follow her through her humor, pursue her--ah! that is
the mos' delightful way to sen' the hours about their business."
Ross banged the table. "Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!" he
roared. "I object to your pursuin' anything or anybody in my house.
Now, you listen to me, you--" He picked up the box of stogies and
used it on the table as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the
attention of the girl in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the
room. "I don't know anything about your French ways of lovemakin' an'
I don't care. In my section of the country, it's the best man wins.
And I'm the best man here, and don't you forget it! This girl's goin'
to be mine. There ain't g'oing to be any playing, or philandering,
or palm reading about it. I've made up my mind I'll have this girl,
and that settles it. My word is the law in this neck o' the woods.
She's mine, and as soon as she says she's mine, you pull out." The
box made one final, tremendous punctuation point.
Etienne's bravado was unruffled. "Ah! that is no way to win a woman,"
he smiled, easily. "I make prophecy you will never win 'er that way.
No. Not thees woman. She mus' be played along an' then keessed, this
charming, delicious little creature. One kees! An' then you 'ave
her." Again he displayed his unpleasant teeth. "I make you a bet I
will kees her--"
As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate
that the hand which fell upon Etienne's amorous lips was not his own.
There was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and
then--through the swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne.
I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost
absent-minded affair. I had thought the cook was rehearsing the
proper method of turning a flapjack.
Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then
he began rolling down his sleeves.
"You'd better get your things on, Miss, and we'll get out of here,"
he decided. "Wrap up warm."
I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her
cloak, sweater, and hat.
Ross jumped to his feet, and said: "George, what are you goin'
to do?"
George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around
and faced his employer. "Bein' a camp cook, I ain't over-burdened
with hosses," George enlightened us. "Therefore, I am going to try
to borrow this feller's here."
For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. "If
it's for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like," I said, grandly.
The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my
words. "No," he replied. "It's for mine and the young lady's
purposes, and we'll go only three miles--to Hicksville. Now let me
tell you somethin', Ross." Suddenly I was confronted with the cook's
chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot through the
room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak.
"You're nutty. That's what's the matter with you. You can't stand
the snow. You're getting nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and
this Dago"--he jerked a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in the
corner--"has got you to the point where I thought I better horn in.
I got to revolving it around in my mind and I seen if somethin'
wasn't done, and done soon, there'd be murder around here and maybe"
--his head gave an imperceptible list toward the girl's room--"worse."
He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep any one else from
speaking. Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas.
"About this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely
think about women. If she hadn't happened in here durin' this here
snow, you'd never have given two thoughts to the whole woman question.
Likewise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin' out,
this here whole business 'll clear out of your head and you won't
think of a skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just because o' this snow
here, don't forget you're living in the selfsame world you was in four
days ago. And you're the same man, too. Now, what's the use o'
getting all snarled up over four days of stickin' in the house? That
there's what I been revolvin' in my mind and this here's the decision
I've come to."
He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle
my horse.
Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then
he began: "I've a durn good notion, George, to knock your confounded
head off and throw you into that snowbank, if--"
"You're wrong, mister. That ain't a durned good notion you've got.
It's durned bad. Look here!" He pointed steadily out of doors until
we were both forced to follow his finger. "You're in here for more'n
a week yet." After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at
Ross: "Can you cook?" Then at me: "Can you cook?" Then he looked
at the wreck of Etienne and sniffed.
There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of
a foodless week.
"If you just use hoss sense," concluded George, "and don't go for to
hurt my feelin's, all I want to do is to take this young gal down to
Hicksville; and then I'll head back here and cook fer you."
The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very
serious and quiet. The horse because he knew what he had before him
in that weather; the girl because of what she had left behind.
Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing.
"My God, man!" I cried, "aren't you afraid to go out in that snow?"
Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, "Not him."
George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his
gloves, put his foot in the stirrup, and turned to inspect me
leisurely.
As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the
algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in
the man before me.
"Snow is my last name," said George. He swung into the saddle
and they started cautiously out into the darkening swirl of fresh
new currency just issuing from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep
her place, clung happily to the sturdy figure of the camp cook.
I brought three things away from Ross Curtis's ranch house--yes,
four. One was the appreciation of snow, which I have so humbly
tried here to render; (2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra
careful; (3) was a memory of what it is to eat very extremely bad
food for a week; and (4) was the cause of (3) a little note delivered
at the end of the week and hand-painted in blue pencil on a sheet of
meat paper.
"I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. Snow say no,
George. I been revolvin' it in my mind; considerin' circumstances
she's right."
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