Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

by O. Henry

  “Decline the position,” said the lady, “and come with me. I will tell you what to do.”

  After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to the sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria.

  “Seek some other work,” said the black-and-steel lady, “and assist in crushing the hydra-headed demon rum.” And she got into the victoria and drove away.

  “I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again,” said Elsie, ruefully, turning down the street. “And I’m sorry, too, for I’d much rather make my way without help.”

  Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a doorway that read: “Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on theatrical costumes. Good pay.”

  She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, laid his hand on her arm.

  “My dear girl,” he said, “I entreat you not to enter that dressing-room of the devil.”

  “Goodness me!” exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. “The devil seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What’s wrong about the place?”

  “It is here,” said the solemn man, “that the regalia of Satan — in other words, the costumes worn on the stage — are manufactured. The stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, my dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors and actresses go after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon them for the last time?”

  “Sure,” said Elsie. “Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must get something to do pretty soon.”

  “The flesh-pots of Egypt,” exclaimed the reverend gentleman, uplifting his hands. “I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this place of sin and iniquity.”

  “But what will I do for a living?” asked Elsie. “I don’t care to sew for this musical comedy, if it’s as rank as you say it is; but I’ve got to have a job.”

  “The Lord will provide,” said the solemn man. “There is a free Bible class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell.”

  Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, “Posey & Trimmer, Artificial Flowers.” Below it was hung a newly stretched canvas bearing the words, “Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up.”

  Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat tipped down over her eyes stepped in front of her.

  “Say, you’se,” said the girl, “are you’se goin’ in there after a job?”

  “Yes,” said Elsie; “I must have work.”

  “Now don’t do it,” said the girl. “I’m chairman of our Scab Committee. There’s 400 of us girls locked out just because we demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the foreman to shave off his mustache. You’re too nice a looking girl to be a scab. Wouldn’t you please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere else, or would you’se rather have your face pushed in?”

  “I’ll try somewhere else,” said Elsie.

  She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped to see the sign, “Fox & Otter,” stretching entirely across the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work.

  She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his private office.

  Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well dressed, radiating.

  “Well, well, and so this is Beatty’s little daughter! Your father was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work — nothing easier.”

  Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of himself inside the door.

  “Send Miss Hawkins in,” said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came.

  “Miss Hawkins,” said Mr. Otter, “bring for Miss Beatty to try on one of those Russian sable coats and — let’s see — one of those latest model black tulle hats with white tips.”

  Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! she was beautiful.

  I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it’s got to run it out. I didn’t make it up. I’m just repeating it.

  I’d like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush brandy balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage people (there are others), and all the thousands of good people who are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great city; and then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of Elsie reaching her father’s benefactor and her kind friend and rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old sort. I’d like to do this; but there’s just a word or two to follow.

  While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to the telephone booth and called up some number. Don’t ask me what it was.

  “Oscar,” said he, “I want you to reserve the same table for me this evening. … What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left of the shrubbery. … Yes; two. … Yes, the usual brand; and the ‘85 Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn’t the right temperature I’ll break your neck. … No; not her … No, indeed … A new one — a peacherino, Oscar, a peacherino!”

  Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by him — by him of Gad’s Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand with a covered pumpkin — aye, sir, a pumpkin.

  Lost, Your Excellency. Lost Associations and Societies. Lost, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with the reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every day.

  HEART OF THE WEST

  This is O. Henry’s fourth collection and contains 19 short stories, first published in 1907.

  O. Henry, 1894

  CONTENTS

  HEARTS AND CROSSES

  THE RANSOM OF MACK

  TELEMACHUS, FRIEND

  THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN

  THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES

  SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY

  HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO

  AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE

  THE HIGHER ABDICATION

  CUPID A LA CARTE

  THE CABALLERO’S WAY

  THE SPHINX APPLE

  THE MISSING CHORD

  A CALL LOAN

  THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA

  THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON

  CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION

  A CHAPARRAL PRINCE

  THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE

  HEARTS AND CROSSES

  Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually — but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.

  “I’d be king if I was you,” said Baldy, so positively that his holster creaked and his spurs rattled.

  Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy.

  “If a man marries a queen, it oughtn’t
to make him a two-spot,” declared Webb, epitomising his grievances.

  “Sure not,” said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. “By rights you’re a king. If I was you, I’d call for a new deal. The cards have been stacked on you — I’ll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager.”

  “What?” asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

  “You’re a prince-consort.”

  “Go easy,” said Webb. “I never blackguarded you none.”

  “It’s a title,” explained Baldy, “up among the picture-cards; but it don’t take no tricks. I’ll tell you, Webb. It’s a brand they’re got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir- apparent. That ain’t any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you’re a prince- consort; and if I was you, I’d start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin’; and I’d be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck.”

  Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

  “Baldy,” said Webb, solemnly, “me and you punched cows in the same outfit for years. We been runnin’ on the same range, and ridin’ the same trails since we was boys. I wouldn’t talk about my family affairs to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don’t amount to a knot in a stake rope.”

  “When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,” continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, “you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did.”

  “I did,” admitted Webb, “up to the time he found out I was tryin’ to get my rope over Santa’s head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ I’m boss of the cattle — that’s all. She ‘tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can’t sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa’s the ‘queen’; and I’m Mr. Nobody.”

  “I’d be king if I was you,” repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. “When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her — on the hoof — dressed — dried — corned — any old way from the chaparral to the packing- house. Lots of folks thinks it’s funny, Webb, that you don’t have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain’t reflectin’ none on Miz Yeager — she’s the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas — but a man ought to be boss of his own camp.”

  The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers forbade the comparison.

  “What was that you called me, Baldy?” he asked. “What kind of a concert was it?”

  “A ‘consort,’” corrected Baldy— “a ‘prince-consort.’ It’s a kind of short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a four-card flush.”

  Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scabbard from the floor.

  “I’m ridin’ back to the ranch to-day,” he said half-heartedly. “I’ve got to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning.”

  “I’m your company as far as Dry Lake,” announced Baldy. “I’ve got a round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin’ out two-year-olds.”

  The two /companeros/ mounted their ponies and trotted away from the little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty morning.

  At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a parting cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum of the ponies’ hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder between your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without apology, Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun ten miles away.

  “You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa wasn’t quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister was keepin’ us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander if I ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign she used to send, Baldy — the heart with a cross inside of it?”

  “Me?” cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. “You old sugar-stealing coyote! Don’t I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle- dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The ‘gizzard-and-crossbones’ we used to call it. We used to see ‘em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of ‘em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister sent out from the ranch — danged if I didn’t.”

  “Santa’s father,” explained Webb gently, “got her to promise that she wouldn’t write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she managed to put that mark on somethin’ at the ranch that she knew I’d see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the little horse-corral.”

  “We knowed it,” chanted Baldy; “but we never let on. We was all for you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin’ to eat up miles that night instead of grass. You remember Scurry — that educated horse-wrangler we had — the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever Scurry saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch, he’d wave his hand like that, and say, ‘Our friend Lee Andrews will again swim the Hell’s point to-night.’”

  “The last time Santa sent me the sign,” said Webb, “was once when she was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto forty mile that night. She wasn’t at the coma mott. I went to the house; and old McAllister met me at the door. ‘Did you come here to get killed?’ says he; ‘I’ll disoblige you for once. I just started a Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And then come out here and see me.’

  “Santa was lyin’ in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed — mud and spurs and chaps and all. ‘I’ve heard you ridin’ across the grass for hours, Webb,’ she says. ‘I was sure you’d come. You saw the sign?’ she whispers. ‘The minute I hit camp,’ says I. ‘’Twas marked on the bag of potatoes and onions.’ ‘They’re always together,’ says she, soft like— ‘always together in life.’ ‘They go well together,’ I says, ‘in a stew.’ ‘I mean hearts and crosses,’ says Santa. ‘Our sign — to love and to suffer — that’s what they mean.’

  “And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin’ himself with whisky and a palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her forehead; and he says to me: ‘You’re not such a bad febrifuge. But you’d better slide out now; for the diagnosis don’t call for you in regular doses. The little lady’ll be all right when she wakes up.’

  “I seen old McAllister outside. ‘She’s asleep,’ says I. ‘And now you can start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my gun on my saddle-horn.’

  “Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: ‘Pumpin’ lead into the best ranch- boss in West Texas don’t seem to me good business policy. I don’t know where I could get as good a one. It’s the son-in-law idea, Webb, that makes me admire for to use you a
s a target. You ain’t my idea for a member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you’ll keep outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we’ll talk it over.’”

  Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle- horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.

  “/Adios/, Baldy,” said Webb, “I’m glad I seen you and had this talk.”

  With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail, the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of gravity.

  Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.

  “If I was you,” came Baldy’s strident and perverting tones, “I’d be king!”

  At eight o’clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from his saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with whizzing rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of beef-cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio. Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing in a red earthenware jar.

  “King” McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong characteristics — his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious self-reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns. /Allegro/ and /fortissimo/ had been McAllister’s temp and tone. In Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. Substantially, she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother’s slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of royal independence.