by O. Henry
“ ‘Now, what do you think of that?’ he says laughing—‘a letter like that to ME!’
“Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it through. It was one of them old-time typewritten green goods letters explaining how for $1,000 you could get $5,000 in bills that an expert couldn’t tell from the genuine; and going on to tell how they were made from plates stolen by an employee of the Treasury at Washington.
“ ‘Think of ’em sending a letter like that to ME!’ says Murkison again.
“ ‘Lots of good men get ’em,’ says Andy. ‘If you don’t answer the first letter they let you drop. If you answer it they write again asking you to come on with your money and do business.’
“ ‘But think of ’em writing to ME!’ says Murkison.
“A few days later he drops around again.
“ ‘Boys,’ says he, ‘I know you are all right or I wouldn’t confide in you. I wrote to them rascals again just for fun. They answered and told me to come on to Chicago. They said telegraph to J. Smith when I would start. When I get there I’m to wait on a certain street corner till a man in a gray suit comes along and drops a newspaper in front of me. Then I am to ask how the water is, and he knows it’s me and I know it’s him.’
“ ‘Ah, yes,’ says Andy, gaping, ‘it’s the same old game. I’ve often read about it in the papers. Then he conducts you to the private abattoir in the hotel, where Mr. Jones is already waiting. They show you brand-new real money and sell you all you want at five to one. You see ’em put it in a satchel for you and know it’s there. Of course it’s brown paper when you come to look at it afterward.’
“ ‘Oh, they couldn’t switch it on me,’ says Murkison. ‘I haven’t built up the best paying business in Grassdale without having witticisms about me. You say it’s real money they show you, Mr. Tucker?’
“ ‘I’ve always—I see by the papers that it always is,’ says Andy.
“ ‘Boys,’ says Murkison, ‘I’ve got it in my mind that them fellows can’t fool me. I think I’ll put a couple of thousand in my jeans and go up there and put it all over ’em. If Bill Murkison gets his eyes once on them bills they show him he’ll never take ‘em off of ’em. They offer $5 for $1, and they’ll have to stick to the bargain if I tackle ‘em. That’s the kind of trader Bill Murkison is. Yes, I jist believe I’ll drop up Chicago way and take a 5 to 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess the water’ll be fine enough.’
“Me and Andy tries to get this financial misquotation out of Murkison’s head, but we might as well have tried to keep the man who rolls peanuts with a toothpick from betting on Bryan’s election. No, sir; he was going to perform a public duty by catching these green goods swindlers at their own game. Maybe it would teach ‘em a lesson.
“After Murkison left us me and Andy sat a while pre-pondering over our silent meditations and heresies of reason. In our idle hours we always improved our higher selves by ratiocination and mental thought.
“ ‘Jeff,’ says Andy after a long time, ‘quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business. I may have been often wrong. But here is a case where I think we can agree. I feel that it would be wrong for us to allow Mr. Murkison to go alone to meet those Chicago green goods men. There is but one way it can end. Don’t you think we would both feel better if we was to intervene in some way and prevent the doing of this deed?’
“I got up and shook Andy Tucker’s hand hard and long.
“ ‘Andy,’ says I, ‘I may have had one or two hard thoughts about the heartlessness of your corporation but I retract ’em now. You have a kind nucleus at the interior of your exterior after all. It does you credit. I was just thinking the same thing that you have expressed. It would not be honorable or praiseworthy,‘ says I, ’for us to let Murkison go on with this project he has taken up. If he is determined to go let us go with him and prevent this swindle from coming off.’
“Andy agreed with me; and I was glad to see that he was in earnest about breaking up this green goods scheme.
“ ‘I don’t call myself a religious man,’ says I, ‘or a fanatic in moral bigotry, but I can’t stand still and see a man who has built up a business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace to the public good.’
“ ‘Right, Jeff,’ says Andy. ‘We’ll stick right along with Murkison if he insist on going and block this funny business. I’d hate to see any money dropped in it as bad as you would.’
“Well, we went to see Murkison.
“ ‘No, boys,’ says he. ‘I can’t consent to let the song of this Chicago siren waft by me on the summer breeze. I’ll fry some fat out of this ignis fatuus or burn a hole in the skillet. But I’d be plumb diverted to death to have you all go along with me. Maybe you could help some when it comes to cashing in the ticket to that 5 to 1 shot. Yes, I’d really take it as a pastime and regalement if you boys would go along too.’
“Murkison gives it out in Grassdale that he is going for a few days with Mr. Peters and Mr. Tucker to look over some iron ore property in West Virginia. He wires J. Smith that he will set foot in the spider web on a given date; and the three of us lights out for Chicago.
“On the way Murkison amuses himself with premonitions and advance pleasant recollections.
“ ‘In a gray suit,’ says he, ‘on the southwest corner of Wabash Avenue and Lake Street. He drops the paper, and I ask how the water is. Oh, my, my, my!’ And then he laughs all over for five minutes.
“Sometimes Murkison was serious and tried to talk himself out of his cogitations, whatever they was.
“ ‘Boys,’ says he, ‘I wouldn’t have this to get out in Grassdale for ten times a thousand dollars. It would ruin me there. But I know you all are all right. I think it’s the duty of every citizen,’ says he, ‘to try to do up these robbers that prey upon the public. I’ll show ’em whether the water’s fine. Five dollars for one—that’s what J. Smith offers, and he’ll have to keep his contract if he does business with Bill Murkison.’
“We got into Chicago about 7 P.M. Murkison was to meet the gray man at half-past 9. We had dinner at a hotel and then went up to Murkison’s room to wait for the time to come.
“ ‘Now boys,’ says Murkison, ‘let’s get our gumption together and inoculate a plan for defeating the enemy. Suppose while I’m exchanging airy bandage with the gray capper you gents come along, by accident, you know, and holler: “Hello, Murk!!” and shake hands with symptoms of surprise and familiarity. Then I take the capper aside and tell him you all are Jenkins and Brown of Grassdale, groceries and feed, good men and maybe willing to take a chance while away from home.’
“ ‘ “Bring ’em along,” he’ll say, of course,“if they care to invest. ” Now, how does that scheme strike you?’
“ ‘What do you say, Jeff?’ says Andy, looking at me.
“ ‘Why, I’ll tell you what I say,’ says I. ‘I say let’s settle this thing right here now. I don’t see any use of wasting any more time.’ I took a nickel-plated .38 out of my pocket and clicked the cylinder around a few times.
“ ‘You undevout, sinful, insidious hog,’ says I to Murkison, ‘get out that two thousand and lay it on the table. Obey with velocity,’ says I, ‘for otherwise alternatives are impending. I am preferably a man of mildness, but now and then I find myself in the middle of extremities. Such men as you,’ I went on after he had laid the money out, ‘is what keeps the jails and court houses going. You come up here to rob these men of their money. Does it excuse you?’ I asks, ‘that they were trying to skin you? No, sir; you was going to rob Peter to stand off Paul. You are ten times worse,’ says I, ‘than that green goods man. You go to church at home and pretend to be a decent citizen, but you’ll come to Chicago and commit larceny from men that have built up a sound and profitable business by dealing with such contemptible scoundrels as you have tried to be to-day. How do you know,’ says I, ‘
that that green goods man hasn’t a large family dependent upon his extortions? It’s you supposedly respectable citizens who are always on the lookout to get something for nothing,’ says I, ‘that support the lotteries and wild-cat mines and stock exchanges and wire tappers of this country. If it wasn’t for you they’d go out of business. The green goods man you was going to rob,’ says I, ‘studied maybe for years to learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money and liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all sanctified and vanoplied with respectability and a pleasing post office address to swindle him. If he gets the money you can squeal to the police. If you get it he hocks the gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr. Tucker and me sized you up,’ says I, ‘and came along to see that you got what you deserved. Hand over the money,’ says I, ‘you grass-fed hypocrite.’
“I put the two thousand, which was all in $20 bills, in my inside pocket.
“ ‘Now get out your watch,’ says I to Murkison. ‘No, I don’t want it,’ says I. ‘Lay it on the table and you sit in that chair till it ticks off an hour. Then you can go. If you make any noise or leave any sooner we’ll hand-bill you all over Grassdale. I guess your high position there is worth more than $2,000 to you.’
“Then me and Andy left.
“On the train Andy was a long time silent. Then he says: ‘Jeff, do you mind my asking you a question?’
“ ‘Two,’ says I, ‘or forty.’
“ ‘Was that the idea you had,’ says he, ‘when we started out with Murkison?’
“ ‘Why certainly,’ says I. ‘What else could it have been? Wasn’t it yours, too?’
“In about half an hour Andy spoke again. I think there are times when Andy don’t exactly understand my system of ethics and moral hygiene.
“ ‘Jeff,’ says he, ‘some time when you have the leisure I wish you’d draw off a diagram and footnotes of that conscience of yours. I’d like to have it to refer to occasionally.’ ”
Hostages to Momus
I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that I’d have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws.
Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico, just like selling forty-eight cents’ worth of postage-stamps for forty-nine cents is over here. So Uncle Porfirio he instructs the rurales to attend our case.
Rurales? They’re a sort of country police; but don’t draw any mental crayon portraits of the worthy constable with a tin star and a gray goatee. The rurales—well, if we’d mount our Supreme Court on broncos, arm ‘em with Winchesters, and start ’em out after John Doe et al. we’d have about the same thing.
When the rurales started for us we started for the States. They chased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and that night we swum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absent-minded, which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had ‘em.
From there we migrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans, where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and other adjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented by the Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they are still served at the side doors. The most I can remember of this town is that me and Caligula and a Frenchman name McCarty—wait a minute; Adolph McCarty—was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back trading-stamps due on the Louisiana Purchase, when somebody hollers that the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection of buying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man swing a lantern and say “All aboard!” I remembered no more, except that the train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J. Evans’s works and figs.
When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against the State of Georgia at a spot hitherto unaccounted for in time tables except by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other Thursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboard ing and the chicken coop was right under the window. Me and Caligula dressed and went downstairs. The landlord was shelling peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in complexion though in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and features.
Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though red-haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.
“Pardner,” says he, “good-morning, and be darned to you. Would you mind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, but can’t exactly figure out on account of at what place.”
“Well, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “I reckoned you-all would be inquiring this morning. You all dropped off of the nine-thirty train here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart in liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the State of Georgia.”
“On top of that,” says Caligula, “don’t say that we can’t have anything to eat.”
“Sit down, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “and in twenty minutes I’ll call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town.”
That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly four years at a stretch.
“The wonder to me is,” says Caligula, “that Uncle Robert Lee’s boys didn’t chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson’s Bay. It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!”
“Hog and hominy,” I explains, “is the staple food of this section. ”
“Then,” says Caligula, “they ought to keep it where it belongs. I thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee at the St. Lucifer House, I’d show you some breakfast grub. Antelope steaks and fried liver to begin on, and vension cutlets with chili con carne and pine-apple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of beer. You won’t find a layout like that on the bill of affairs of any of your Eastern restauraws.”
“Too lavish,” said I. “I’ve travelled, and I’m unprejudiced. There’ll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he’d come pretty close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia.”
“Too ephemeral,” says Caligula. “I’d want ham and eggs, or rabbit stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and casual in the way of a dinner?”
“I’ve been infatuated from time to time,” I answers, “with fancy ramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds, jambolaya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there’s nothing less displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the Broadway street cars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that’s all, except a demi-tasse.”
“Well,” says Caligula, “I reckon in New York you get to be a conniseer; and when you go around with a demi-tasse you are naturally bound to buy ‘em stylish grub.”
“It’s a great town for epicures,” says I. “You’d soon fall into their ways if you was there.”
“I’ve hea
rd it was,” says Caligula. “But I reckon I wouldn’t. I can polish my fingernails all they need myself.”
II After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two of the landlord’s flor de upas perfectos, and took a look at Georgia.
The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked mighty poor. As far as we could see was red hills all washed down with gullies and scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all that kept the rail fences from falling down. About fifteen miles over to the north was a little range of well-timbered mountains.
That town of Mountain Valley wasn’t going. About a dozen people permeated along the sidewalks; but what you saw mostly was rain-barrels and roosters, and boys poking around with sticks in piles of ashes made by burning the scenery of Uncle Tom shows.
And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high man in a long black coat and a beaver hat. All the people in sight bowed, and some crossed the street to shake hands with him; folks came out of stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of windows and smiled; and all the kids stopped playing to look at him. Our landlord stepped out on the porch and bent himself double like a carpenter’s rule, and sung out, “Good-morning, Colonel,” when he was a dozen yards gone by.
“And is that Alexander, pa?” says Caligula to the landlord; “and why is he called great?”
“That, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “is no less than Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of immigration and public improvements.”
“Been away a good many years, hasn’t he?” I asked.
“No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post office for his mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such wealth and public spirit.”