by O. Henry
Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. I was busy driving, because I was in a hurry.
As shortly as could be after our empty return Goodloe Banks and I forgathered in the back room of Snyder’s saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told Goodloe about my expedition after the buried treasure.
“If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars,” I said to him, “I could have scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum.”
“She is meant for higher things,” said Goodloe. “I shall find her myself. But, tell me how you went about discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was imprudently buried.”
I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the draughtsman’s sketch with the distances marked plainly upon it.
After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter.
“Well, you are a fool, Jim,” he said, when he could speak.
“It’s your play,” said I, patiently, fingering my double-six.
“Twenty,” said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his chalk.
“Why am I a fool?” I asked. “Buried treasure has been found before in many places.”
“Because,” said he, “in calculating the point on the river where your line would strike you neglected to allow for the variation. The variation there would be nine degrees west. Let me have your pencil.”
Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an envelope.
“The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish mission,” said he, “is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according to your story. Allowing for the variation, the point on the Alamito River where you should have searched for your treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim!”
“What is this variation that you speak of?” I asked. “I thought figures never lied.”
“The variation of the magnetic compass,” said Goodloe, “from the true meridian.”
He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the seeker after buried treasure.
“Sometimes,” he said with the air of the oracle, “these old traditions of hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing the location. Perhaps together we might—”
The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, became companions in adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad town. In Chico we hired a team drawing a covered spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the same surveyor run out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his variations, and then dismissed him and sent him on his homeward road.
It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near the bank of the river and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not fitted him for practical things.
But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great thoughts handed down from the dead ones of old. He quoted some translations from the Greek at much length.
“Anacreon,” he explained. “That was a favorite passage with Miss Mangum—as I recited it.”
“She is meant for higher things,” said I, repeating his phrase.
“Can there be anything higher,” asked Goodloe, “than to dwell in the society of the classics, to live in the atmosphere of learning and culture? You have often decried education. What of your wasted efforts through your ignorance of simple mathematics? How soon would you have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your error?”
“We’ll take a look at those hills across the river first,” said I, “and see what we find. I am still doubtful about variations. I have been brought up to believe that the needle is true to the pole.”
The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited—Keats, I think it was, and Kelly or Shelley—while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to cross the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the other side.
“My good Ulysses,” said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while I was washing the tin breakfast-plates, “let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it like, Jim?”
“Score one against culture,” said I. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Goodloe was looking at old Rundle’s document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate swear-word.
“Come here,” he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. “Look at that,” he said, laying his finger against it.
On the blue paper—a thing I had never noticed before—I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures: “Malvern, 1898.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“It’s the water-mark,” said Goodloe. “The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said I. “The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle.”
And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.
“I’ve often told you you were a fool,” he said. “You have let yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me.”
“How,” I asked, “have I imposed upon you?”
“By your ignorance,” said he. “Twice I have discovered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to avoid. And,” he continued, “I have been put to expense that I could ill afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it.”
I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dish-water.
“Goodloe Banks,” I said, “I care not one parboiled navy bean for your education. I always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it in you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore to your friends. Away,” I said—“away with your water-marks and variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the quest.”
I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like a pack-saddle.
“I am going to search that mountain,” I went on, “for the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a water-mark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide.”
A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.
“I am done with the swindle,” said he, sourly. “No one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate.”
He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.
After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle.
It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds, so many butterflies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields.
I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from base to summit. I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the document of old man Rundle.
I came down the hill in the cool of
the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River.
And there I was startled to see what I took to be a wild man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant wings.
“Perhaps he is an escaped madman,” I thought; and wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of education and learning.
And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers.
She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew her I saw her face—which was the color of the white keys of a new piano—turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.
“I knew you would come, Jim,” she said clearly. “Father wouldn’t let me write, but I knew you would come.”
What followed you may guess—there was my wagon and team just across the river.
I’ve often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he can’t use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where does it come in?
For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.
And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in places where they cannot be found.
But who cares for that? Who cares—who cares?
The Last of the Troubadours
* * *
INEXORABLY SAM Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months’ visit. It is not to be expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, the big Negro man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits: Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been forced to fly from his cuisine, after only a six-weeks’ sojourn.
On Sam’s face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn, tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men, women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employés, dogs, and casual callers were grouped in the “gallery” of the ranch house, all with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio or Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and distress.
And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the significance of it, it explains Sam.
Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about the troubadours. The encyclopædia says they flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn’t seem clear—you may be pretty sure it wasn’t a sword: maybe it was a fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady’s scarf. Anyhow, Sam Galloway was one of ’em.
Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his pony’s. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had often guyed Sam’s pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of by a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be excused for tripping up a troubadour.
Oh, I know I’m one; and so are you. You remember the stories you memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the piano—how does it go?—ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum—those little Arabian Ten Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your rich Aunt Jane. You should know that omnæ personæ in tres partes divisæ sunt. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time: so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.
The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of Sam’s knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward. Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of delicate, sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony’s bridle he had tucked some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned, the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and, judging by his countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.
Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument, competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers bring boars’ heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.
Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour for his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was the Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too early to know him, or he wouldn’t have conferred that sobriquet upon Warwick. In life it is the duty and the function of the Baron to provide work for the Workers and lodging and shelter for the Troubadours.
Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have been written the day on which a troubadour—a troubadour who, according to the encyclopædia, should have flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries—drew rein at the gates of his baronial castle!
Old man Ellison’s smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to greet him.
“Hello, Mr. Ellison,” called Sam cheerfully. “Thought I’d drop over and see you a while. Notice you’ve had fine rains on your range. They ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs.”
“Well, well, well,” said old man Ellison. “I’m mighty glad to see you, Sam. I never thought you’d take the trouble to ride over to as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you’re mighty welcome. ’Light. I’ve got a sack of new oats in the kitchen—shall I bring out a feed for your hoss?”
“Oats for him?” said Sam, derisively. “No, sir-ee. He’s as fat as a pig now on g
rass. He don’t get rode enough to keep him in condition. I’ll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don’t mind.”
I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their parallels did that evening at old man Ellison’s sheep ranch. The Kiowa’s biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong. Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison’s weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his tours of the ranches.
After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you—neither Sam Galloway nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, and then sing for Art’s sake.
Sam Galloway’s repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.
I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray, exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw sombrero.