by Эл Дженнингс
We did not know that at that very moment we had been tracked from West Texas on the bank-robbery almost to Fort Smith.
As soon as we stepped off the Mississippi packet to the levee in New Orleans a new life seemed to open for us. I felt free and cheerful as a good cow that has peacefully followed the herd and chewed in peace her daily cud. Our resolution to quit acted as a sort of absolution. We felt that we had cut loose from our past and that was the end of it.
Every incident in those first days enhanced this false sense of security. A few hours after we arrived I was browsing about the French quarter. A man passed, turned abruptly, came back and grabbed my arm. I thought I was caught. I jerked my six shooter and jammed it into his stomach, full cocked.
"God, Forney, don't you know me?"
When I saw little Ed---, my old pal at the Virginia Military Academy, shaking my hand, I'd have given the soul out of my body to have kept that forty- five out of sight. It was like a screaming voice telling him my brand, but it didn't seem to daunt him.
Ed was a sort of hero-worshiper. He liked me at college because I had been a cowpuncher. For much the same reason, outlawry seemed to him unusual and daring. With all the hospitality of the South, he invited me to visit his people.
They were wealthy. His father was a high official in Louisiana. While in his home we were almost certain of escape from detection. We went, Frank and I, and for weeks we lived in a fool's paradise. Life seemed an everlasting picture. We were home-hungry, and this visit was in the nature of a glorious new kind of spree—a sort of social intoxication.
Ed had a sister, Margaret. She was small and whimsical and black-eyed. I began to understand Frank's symptoms.
Summer in the South has many enchantments. I wanted to make this garden party perennial. Frank and I leased a steam yacht for a prolonged cruise in the gulf. Margaret, her mother, two cousins, Frank, Ed and I made up the party. There was a fine old family at Galveston, friends of Ed's family. We dropped anchor for a little visit with them.
And straightway they returned the compliment with a ball at the Beach Hotel. Of all my life that night was the happiest. Whatever Margaret saw in me I don't know. We were sitting in an alcove. Cape jasmines are fragrant in Galveston and the moon hung out like a big pearl. Music, soft and gentle, twined in with our thoughts. That kind of a night.
I hadn't heard any one come. A finger tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up.
"Step outside a moment," the man said.
"Take a look at me! Now, do you remember who I am? Well, I haven't forgotten what you did for me in El Reno. I'm going to square the debt."
The man had not taken his eyes from my face. I knew him at once. I had saved him from the penitentiary when I was county attorney at El Reno. He was charged with the embezzlement of Wells Fargo funds.* I was prosecutor. The man probably was guilty, but the evidence was entirely insufficient. The jury was prejudiced. I asked for a dismissal because it was the only square thing to do.
That was one loaf of bread on the waters that came back as cake.
"I'm with Wells Fargo," he whispered. "We have a bunch of dicks on the job. They know Al Jennings is in this hotel. The place is surrounded. I'm the only one who knows you by sight. Do the best you can."
I had not said a word. My heart was pounding like a triphammer. If I ever felt like pitying myself it was at that moment. The ignominy of it the disgrace before these friends who honored us. I felt weak and limp all over. I went back to the alcove.
"What did he want, Al?" Margaret asked, her lips white and drawn. Before I could protest, she hurried on. "I know you are Al Jennings. I knew it all along. I knew you from the picture Ed has. What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. They won't get a chance."
The blunt way seemed best. I told her that Williams (that was the name Frank had taken; I was Edwards) was my brother; that we were wanted for a bank-robbery in West Texas ; that our only chance was the Gulf of Mexico. She took it quiet and shrewd, without a whimper.
Frank was dancing with Margaret's cousin. We waltzed over to them. I bumped against Frank.
"Look out," I warned. It was an old signal.
He followed us into the alcove.
"We're surrounded."
"Here? Oh, hell!"
Gardens that blossomed to the water's edge ran in terraces about the hotel. We made our plan. Together, the four of us sauntered into a rose arbor, laughing and talking as though our hearts were as light as our tongues. The girls were as game as veterans. They challenged us to a race. One lightning sprint and we were at the beach, the girls lagging far behind.
Somebody's first-class dory helped our escape. It was lying there with the oars set. Muscles of iron sent that little yawl shooting across the water. The gods of chance, $32,000 and our six-shooters were with us. We didn't pause for breath until we chopped against an old tramp banana steamer. We clambered up the sides like aboriginal monkeys.
The captain was a smuggler of Three Star Hennessey brandy. When he saw two dudes in full-dress suits, silk hats and white kid gloves tumbling over his railing, he thought we were drunker than himself. He wabbled up to us, his blowsy cheeks puffed out like balloons, his pig eyes squinting and his addled voice making a valiant attempt to order us off.
"Put out tonight? No, sirs; Be damned and a whole lot more if he would. He didn't have his papers. He grew weepy over it. The government wouldn't permit it.
When we slipped him $1,500, he changed his tune.
CHAPTER XI.
The meeting with O. Henry in Honduras; the celebration of the Fourth; quelling a revolution; a new flight; the girl on the beach.
A few hours later, Frank and I and our good friend, the smuggler, were plowing ahead under full steam for South America. I don't know to this day how long the trip lasted. Three Star Hennessey was rousing good company. We were so full of him, we didn't bother to find our bearings until one day the captain discovered his boat was out of water. At about the same time I began to thirst for a new drink. My throat was all but gutted with the smuggler's fiery brandy.
When the captain ordered his men into the yawl to bring back water in kegs, I went with them. About 200 yards from shore the water got so shallow we had to wade in.
My full-dress suit had lost one of its tails by this time; the white shirt was embossed with little hunks of dirt and splashes of whiskey. Only the rim of my stovepipe hat was left, an uncombed red mat stuck out through the ventilator.
With the water squashing about in my patent leather shoes, I was a queer looking pigwidgeon to strike up an acquaintance with the greatest men in Trojillo.
I wanted a drink and I wanted it quick. My tongue was hot and my feet were cold. I didn't have time to waste trying to make the natives of Honduras understand my perplexity. I caught sight of the American flag. In that parched and unslaked moment it meant the joy of freedom—liberty of the throat and the tongue.
Under the ripple of that flag I felt certain that I would find some kindred soul. I did.
On the porch of the squat wooden bungalow that housed the American consulate, sat an ample, dignified figure in immaculate white ducks. He had a large, nobly-set head, with hair the color of new rope and a full, straight-glancing gray eye that noted without a sparkle of laughter every detail of my ludicrous makeup.
He was already serene and comfortably situated with liquor, but he had about him an attitude of calm distinction. A rather pompous dignitary, he seemed to me, sitting there as though he owned the place. This, I thought, is indeed a man worthy to be the American consul.
I felt like a newsboy accosting a millionaire.
"Say, mister," I asked, "could you lead me to a drink? Burnt out on Three Star Hennessey. Got a different brand?"
"We have a lotion here that is guaranteed to uplift the spirit," he answered in a hushed undertone that seemed to charge his words with vast importance.
"Are you the American consul?" I ventured also in a whisper.
"No, just anchore
d here/' he smuggled back the information. Then his cool glance rested on the ragged edge of my coat.
"What caused you to leave in such a hurry?" he asked.
"Perhaps the same reason that routed yourself," I retorted.
The merest flicker of a smile touched his lips. He got up, took my arm and together we helped each other down the street, that was narrow as a burrow path, to the nearest cantina.
This was my first jaunt with William Sydney Porter. Together, we struck out on a long road that lost itself, for many years, in a dark tunnel. When the path broadened out again, it was the world's highway. The man at my side was no longer Bill Porter, the fugitive, the ex-convict. He was O. Henry, the greatest of America's short-story writers.
But, to me, in every detour of the road, he remained the same calm, whimsical Bill—baffling, reserved, loveable—who had led me to the Mexican doggery for my first drink in the paradise of fugitives.
In the dingy adobe estanca I found the solution guaranteed to uplift the spirit. But it was not in the sweet, heavy concoction the dignitary from the consulate called for. It was in the droll, unsmiling waggery of the conversation that came forth in measured, hesitant, excessively pure English as we leaned on the rickety wooden table and drank without counting our glasses.
Despite the air of distinction that was with him as a sort of birthmark, I felt at once drawn to him. I began to unfold my plan of settling in the country.
"This is an admirable location for a man who doesn't want much to do," he said.
"What line are you interested in?" I asked.
"I haven't given the matter much thought," he said. "I entertain the newcomers."
"You must be a hell of a busy man," I suggested.
"You're the first since my arrival."
He leaned over. "You probably wonder who I am and why I'm here?"
In Honduras every American is a subject of suspicion.
"Oh, God, no," I put in quickly. "In my country nobody asks a man's name or his past. You're all right."
"Thanks, colonel." He drew in his upper lip in a manner that was characteristic. "You might call me Bill. I think I would like that."
Several hours we sat there, an ex-highwayman in a tattered dress suit and a fugitive in spotless white ducks, together planning a suitable investment for my stolen funds. Porter suggested a cocoanut plantation, a campaign for the presidency, an indigo concession.
There was something so fascinating in the odd surprise lurking in his remarks, I found myself waiting for his conclusions. I forgot that the Helena had but stopped for water and might even now be well cleared of the shores of Honduras.
The mate beckoned to me. I nearly knocked the table over in my haste.
"Just a moment." Porter's unruffled undertone held me as though he had put a restraining hand on my arm. "You are an American. Have you considered the celebration of the glorious Fourth?"
"Fourth, what?"
"The Fourth of July, colonel, which falls at one minute past 12 tonight. Let us have some festivity on the occasion."
Every one who knows O. Henry knows how three loyal prodigals celebrated the nation's birth. He has made it memorable in his story, "The Fourth in Salvador." What he couldn't remember he fabricated, but many of the details, with the exception of the ice plant and the $1,000 bonus from the government, happened just as he has narrated them.
Somehow we got Frank off the boat. Long after midnight Porter took us to the consulate, where he made his home. He had a little cot in one corner of the main room. He took the blankets from it and spread them on the floor. The three of us stretched out.
About 11 o'clock in the morning the celebration of the Fourth opened. Porter, Frank, two Irishmen who owned an indigo concession, the American consul, myself and a negro, brought along for the sake of democracy, made up the party. For a fitting observance of America's triumph Porter insisted that the English consul join us. We put the matter before his majesty's subject. He agreed that it would be a "devil of a fine joke."
There were but four life-size houses in Trojillo. Under the shade of the governor's mansion we stood and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Out of deference to our guest Porter suggested that we render one verse of "God Save the King." The Britisher objected. "Don't make damn' nonsense of this occasion," he demurred.
We started out to shoot up the town in true Texas style, prepared to wind up the fireworks with a barbecued goat in the lemon grove near the beach. We never got to the barbecue. A revolution intervened.
We had shot up two estancas. Glass was shattered everywhere. The Carib barkeepers had fled. We were helping ourselves and scrupulously laying the money for every drink on the counter. Suddenly a shot was fired from the outside. Porter had just finished smashing up a mirror with a bottle. He turned with a quiet that was as ludicrous as it was inimitable.
"Gentlemen," he said, "the natives are trying to steal our copyrighted Fourth."
We made a clattering dash for the street, shooting wildly into the air. A little man in a flaming red coat came galloping by. About 30 barefoot horsemen, all in red coats and very little else, tore up a mighty cloud of dust in his wake. They fired off their old-fashioned muzzle loaders as if they really meant murder.
As the leader whirled past on his diminutive gray pony Porter caught him by the waist and dragged him off. I sprang into the saddle, shooting and yelling like a maniac.
"Reinforcements, reinforcements!" Like a song of victory the shout thundered from the rear. I don't know where or how I rode.
But the next day the governor and two of his little tan Caribs called at the consulate. He wished to thank the American patriots for the magnificent aid they had given in quelling the revolution. They had saved the republic! With a lordly air he offered us the cocoanut plantations that grew wild all over the country. The incredible daring of the American riders had saved the nation !
We didn't even know there had been a revolution. And we didn't know whose side we had taken. Porter rose to the occasion.
"We appreciate the government's attitude," he answered, with a touch of patronage in his tone. "So often patriots are forgotten."
It seems that in that moment when we rushed wildly to the door of the cantina we changed the tide of battle. The government troops were chasing the rebels and the rebels were winning. We had rallied the royal army and led it to victory. It was a bloodless battle.
Our triumph was short-lived. The government and the rebel leaders patched up their differences. The rebel general demanded amends for the insult to his troops. He demanded the lives of the outsiders who had impudently ended a revolution before it had decently begun.
The American consul advised a hasty and instant departure.
"Is there no protection in this realm for an American citizen?" I asked.
"Yes," Porter declared. "The State Department will refer our case to Mark Hanna. He will investigate our party affiliations. It will then be referred to the bureau of immigration, and by that time we will all be shot."
Flight was our only recourse. We started toward the beach. As we ran a little Carib girl about 15 came scooting out from a hedge and hurled herself against me. She was crying and talking and clutching my arm. I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Porter tried a little Spanish.
"The little girl is in great distress," he said. "She is saying something entirely beyond my comprehension of the Spanish language. I gather that she wants to be one of our party."
Scarcely were the words out of her mouth when a burly fellow much bigger than the natives broke through the hedge and grabbed the tiny creature by the hair. It interrupted our conversation. I landed him a smash on the head with my 45 gun.
Just then a signal rang out. It was the call to arms. The army was after us.
Porter, Frank and I, with the little maid at our heels, made for the beach. Porter stopped a moment to ask the little Carib, in the gravest English, her pardon for his haste. He had a most pressing engagement, he said, some 2,000 mil
es away. She was not satisfied and stood shrieking on the beach while we rowed out to the Helena.
It bothered Porter. Years afterward, when we were together in New York, he recalled the incident.
"Remember that little strip of brown muslin that fluttered down the street after us in Trojillo? I wondered what she was saying."
He didn't like "unfinished stories."
Bill, the newfound friend, had thrown in his lot with us. He didn't have a cent in the world. He didn't know where we were going or who we were.
"What is your destination?" he asked quietly, as the Helena steamed up.
"I left America to avoid my destination," I told him.
"How far can you go?"
"As far as $30,000 will take us."
It took us farther than we reckoned.
CHAPTER XII.
Voyaging at leisure; the grand ball in Mexico City; O. Henry's gallantry; the don's rage; O. Henry saved from the Spaniard's knife.
Like aimless drifters in a boat that has neither rudder nor compass, we started on that tour of investigation. We planned to loll along, stopping as we would, looking for a pleasant soil in which to plant ourselves. But we made not the slightest effort to map our course.
And then suddenly, across that idle way, there rippled a little stick of chance, an incident so trivial and insignificant we scarcely noticed it. In a moment t had broken the waters and our boat was all but wrecked by the unconsidered wisp. Bill Porter nearly lost his life for a smile!
The captain of the Helena was at our service. We stopped at Buenos Aires and rode out through the pampas country, but it did not attract us.
Peru was no more alluring. We were looking for big game. And the mighty pastime of this realm was the shooting of the Asiatic rats that stampeded the wharves.
For no particular reason, two of us being acknowledged fugitives and the third a somewhat mysterious soldier of fortune, we stopped off at Mexico City. We knew Porter only as Bill. I had told him the main facts of my life. He did not return the confidence and we did not seek it. Neither Frank nor I placed him in our own class. He was secretive, but we did not attribute the trait to any sinister cause. With the romance of the cowpuncher I figured that this fine, companionable fellow was troubled with an unhappy love affair.