by O. Henry
“All right,” said Miss Sally, as quietly as if he had expected the notice all along. “Any objections to my bringing my wife down to the ranch?”
“You married?” said the superintendent, frowning a little. “You didn’t mention it when we were talking.”
“Because I’m not,” said the cook. “But I’d like to be. Thought I’d wait till I got a job under roof. I couldn’t ask her to live in a cow camp.”
“Right,” agreed the superintendent. “A camp isn’t quite the place for a married man — but — well, there’s plenty of room at the house, and if you suit us as well as I think you will you can afford it. You write to her to come on.”
“All right,” said Miss Sally again, “I’ll ride in as soon as I am relieved to-morrow.”
It was a rather chilly night, and after supper the cow-punchers were lounging about a big fire of dried mesquite chunks.
Their usual exchange of jokes and repartee had dwindled almost to silence, but silence in a cow camp generally betokens the brewing of mischief.
Miss Sally and the Marquis were seated upon a log, discussing the relative merits of the lengthened or shortened stirrup in long-distance riding. The Marquis arose presently and went to a tree near by to examine some strips of rawhide he was seasoning for making a lariat. Just as he left a little puff of wind blew some scraps of tobacco from a cigarette that Dry-Creek Smithers was rolling, into Miss Sally’s eyes. While the cook was rubbing at them, with tears flowing, “Phonograph” Davis — so called on account of his strident voice — arose and began a speech.
“Fellers and citizens! I desire to perpound a interrogatory. What is the most grievous spectacle what the human mind can contemplate?”
A volley of answers responded to his question.
“A busted flush!”
“A Maverick when you ain’t got your branding iron!”
“Yourself!”
“The hole in the end of some other feller’s gun!”
“Shet up, you ignoramuses,” said old Taller, the fat cow-puncher. “Phony knows what it is. He’s waitin’ for to tell us.”
“No, fellers and citizens,” continued Phonograph. “Them spectacles you’ve e-numerated air shore grievious, and way up yonder close to the so-lution, but they ain’t it. The most grievious spectacle air that” — he pointed to Miss Sally, who was still rubbing his streaming eyes— “a trustin’ and a in-veegled female a-weepin’ tears on account of her heart bein’ busted by a false deceiver. Air we men or air we catamounts to gaze upon the blightin’ of our Miss Sally’s affections by a a-risto-crat, which has come among us with his superior beauty and his glitterin’ title to give the weeps to the lovely critter we air bound to pertect? Air we goin’ to act like men, or air we goin’ to keep on eaten’ soggy chuck from her cryin’ so plentiful over the bread-pan?”
“It’s a gallopin’ shame,” said Dry-Creek, with a sniffle. “It ain’t human. I’ve noticed the varmint a-palaverin’ round her frequent. And him a Marquis! Ain’t that a title, Phony?”
“It’s somethin’ like a king,” the Brushy Creek Kid hastened to explain, “only lower in the deck. Guess it comes in between the Jack and the ten-spot.”
“Don’t miscontruct me,” went on Phonograph, “as undervaluatin’ the a-ristocrats. Some of ‘em air proper people and can travel right along with the Watson boys. I’ve herded some with ‘em myself. I’ve viewed the elephant with the Mayor of Fort Worth, and I’ve listened to the owl with the gen’ral passenger agent of the Katy, and they can keep up with the percession from where you laid the chunk. But when a Marquis monkeys with the innocent affections of a cook-lady, may I inquire what the case seems to call for?”
“The leathers,” shouted Dry-Creek Smithers.
“You hearn ‘er, Charity!” was the Kid’s form of corroboration.
“We’ve got your company,” assented the cow-punchers, in chorus.
Before the Marquis realized their intention, two of them seized him by each arm and led him up to the log. Phonograph Davis, self-appointed to carry out the sentence, stood ready, with a pair of stout leather leggings in his hands.
It was the first time they had ever laid hands on the Marquis during their somewhat rude sports.
“What are you up to?” he asked, indignantly, with flashing eyes.
“Go easy, Marquis,” whispered Rube Fellows, one of the boys that held him. “It’s all in fun. Take it good-natured and they’ll let you off light. They’re only goin’ to stretch you over the log and tan you eight or ten times with the leggin’s. ‘Twon’t hurt much.”
The Marquis, with an exclamation of anger, his white teeth gleaming, suddenly exhibited a surprising strength. He wrenched with his arms so violently that the four men were swayed and dragged many yards from the log. A cry of anger escaped him, and then Miss Sally, his eyes cleared of the tobacco, saw, and he immediately mixed with the struggling group.
But at that moment a loud “Hallo!” rang in their ears, and a buckboard drawn by a team of galloping mustangs spun into the campfire’s circle of light. Every man turned to look, and what they saw drove from their minds all thoughts of carrying out Phonograph Davis’s rather time-worn contribution to the evening’s amusement. Bigger game than the Marquis was at hand, and his captors released him and stood staring at the approaching victim.
The buckboard and team belonged to Sam Holly, a cattleman from the Big Muddy. Sam was driving, and with him was a stout, smooth-faced man, wearing a frock coat and a high silk hat. That was the county judge, Mr. Dave Hackett, candidate for reëlection. Sam was escorting him about the county, among the camps, to shake up the sovereign voters.
The men got out, hitched the team to a mesquite, and walked toward the fire.
Instantly every man in camp, except the Marquis, Miss Sally, and Pink Saunders, who had to play host, uttered a frightful yell of assumed terror and fled on all sides into the darkness.
“Heavens alive!” exclaimed Hackett, “are we as ugly as that? How do you do, Mr. Saunders? Glad to see you again. What are you doing to my hat, Holly?”
“I was afraid of this hat,” said Sam Holly, meditatively. He had taken the hat from Hackett’s head and was holding it in his hand, looking dubiously around at the shadows beyond the firelight where now absolute stillness reigned. “What do you think, Saunders?”
Pink grinned.
“Better elevate it some,” he said, in the tone of one giving disinterested advice. “The light ain’t none too good. I wouldn’t want it on my head.”
Holly stepped upon the hub of a hind wheel of the grub wagon and hung the hat upon a limb of a live-oak. Scarcely had his foot touched the ground when the crash of a dozen six-shooters split the air, and the hat fell to the ground riddled with bullets.
A hissing noise was heard as if from a score of rattlesnakes, and now the cow-punchers emerged on all sides from the darkness, stepping high, with ludicrously exaggerated caution, and “hist”-ing to one another to observe the utmost prudence in approaching. They formed a solemn, wide circle about the hat, gazing at it in manifest alarm, and seized every few moments by little stampedes of panicky flight.
”It’s the varmint,” said one in awed tones, “that flits up and down in the low grounds at night, saying, ‘Willie-wallo!’”
“It’s the venomous Kypootum,” proclaimed another. “It stings after it’s dead, and hollers after it’s buried.”
“It’s the chief of the hairy tribe,” said Phonograph Davis. “But it’s stone dead, now, boys.”
“Don’t you believe it,” demurred Dry-Creek. “It’s only ‘possumin’.’ It’s the dreaded Highgollacum fantod from the forest. There’s only one way to destroy its life.”
He led forward Old Taller, the 240-pound cow-puncher. Old Taller placed the hat upright on the ground and solemnly sat upon it, crushing it as flat as a pancake.
Hackett had viewed these proceedings with wide-open eyes. Sam Holly saw that his anger was rising and said to him:
&nb
sp; “Here’s where you win or lose, Judge. There are sixty votes on the Diamond Cross. The boys are trying your mettle. Take it as a joke, and I don’t think you’ll regret it.” And Hackett saw the point and rose to the occasion.
Advancing to where the slayers of the wild beast were standing above its remains and declaring it to be at last defunct, he said, with deep earnestness:
“Boys, I must thank you for this gallant rescue. While driving through the arroyo that cruel monster that you have so fearlessly and repeatedly slaughtered sprang upon us from the tree tops. To you I shall consider that I owe my life, and also, I hope, reëlection to the office for which I am again a candidate. Allow me to hand you my card.”
The cow-punchers, always so sober-faced while engaged in their monkey-shines, relaxed into a grin of approval.
But Phonograph Davis, his appetite for fun not yet appeased, had something more up his sleeve.
“Pardner,” he said, addressing Hackett with grave severity, “many a camp would be down on you for turnin’ loose a pernicious varmint like that in it; but, bein’ as we all escaped without loss of life, we’ll overlook it. You can play square with us if you’ll do it.”
“How’s that?” asked Hackett suspiciously.
“You’re authorized to perform the sacred rights and lefts of mattermony, air you not?”
“Well, yes,” replied Hackett. “A marriage ceremony conducted by me would be legal.”
“A wrong air to be righted in this here camp,” said Phonography, virtuously. “A a-ristocrat have slighted a ‘umble but beautchoos female wat’s pinin’ for his affections. It’s the jooty of the camp to drag forth the haughty descendant of a hundred — or maybe a hundred and twenty-five — earls, even so at the p’int of a lariat, and jine him to the weepin’ lady. Fellows! roundup Miss Sally and the Marquis; there’s goin’ to be a weddin’.”
This whim of Phonograph’s was received with whoops of appreciation. The cow-punchers started to apprehend the principals of the proposed ceremony.
“Kindly prompt me,” said Hackett, wiping his forehead, though the night was cool, “how far this thing is to be carried. And might I expect any further portions of my raiment to be mistaken for wild animals and killed?”
“The boys are livelier than usual to-night,” said Saunders. “The ones they are talking about marrying are two of the boys — a herd rider and the cook. It’s another joke. You and Sam will have to sleep here to-night anyway; p’rhaps you’d better see ‘em through with it. Maybe they’ll quiet down after that.”
The matchmakers found Miss Sally seated on the tongue of the grub wagon, calmly smoking his pipe. The Marquis was leaning idly against one of the trees under which the supply tent was pitched.
Into this tent they were both hustled, and Phonograph, as master of ceremonies, gave orders for the preparations.
“You, Dry-Creek and Jimmy, and Ben and Taller — hump yourselves to the wildwood and rustle flowers for the blow-out — mesquite’ll do — and get that Spanish dagger blossom at the corner of the horse corral for the bride to pack. You, Limpy, get out that red and yaller blanket of your’n for Miss Sally’s skyirt. Marquis, you’ll do ‘thout fixin’; nobody don’t ever look at the groom.”
During their absurd preparation, the two principals were left alone for a few moments in the tent. The Marquis suddenly showed wild perturbation.
“This foolishness must not go on,” he said, turning to Miss Sally a face white in the light of the lantern, hanging to the ridge-pole.
“Why not?” said the cook, with an amused smile. “It’s fun for the boys; and they’ve always let you off pretty light in their frolics. I don’t mind it.”
“But you don’t understand,” persisted the Marquis, pleadingly. “That man is county judge, and his acts are binding. I can’t — oh, you don’t know— “
The cook stepped forward and took the Marquis’s hands.
“Sally Bascom,” he said, “I KNOW!”
“You know!” faltered the Marquis, trembling. “And you — want to— “
“More than I ever wanted anything. Will you — here come the boys!”
The cow-punchers crowded in, laden with armfuls of decorations.
“Perfifious coyote!” said Phonograph, sternly, addressing the Marquis. “Air you willing to patch up the damage you’ve did this ere slab-sided but trustin’ bunch o’ calico by single-footin’ easy to the altar, or will we have to rope ye, and drag you thar?”
The Marquis pushed back his hat, and leaned jauntily against some high-piled sacks of beans. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were shining.
“Go on with the rat killin’,” said he.
A little while after a procession approached the tree under which Hackett, Holly, and Saunders were sitting smoking.
Limpy Walker was in the lead, extracting a doleful tune from his concertina. Next came the bride and groom. The cook wore the gorgeous Navajo blanket tied around his waist and carried in one band the waxen-white Spanish dagger blossom as large as a peck-measure and weighing fifteen pounds. His hat was ornamented with mesquite branches and yellow ratama blooms. A resurrected mosquito bar served as a veil. After them stumbled Phonograph Davis, in the character of the bride’s father, weeping into a saddle blanket with sobs that could be heard a mile away. The cow-punchers followed by twos, loudly commenting upon the bride’s appearance, in a supposed imitation of the audiences at fashionable weddings.
Hackett rose as the procession halted before him, and after a little lecture upon matrimony, asked:
“What are your names?”
“Sally and Charles,” answered the cook.
“Join hands, Charles and Sally.”
Perhaps there never was a stranger wedding. For, wedding it was, though only two of those present knew it. When the ceremony was over, the cow-punchers gave one yell of congratulation and immediately abandoned their foolery for the night. Blankets were unrolled and sleep became the paramount question.
The cook (divested of his decorations) and the Marquis lingered for a moment in the shadow of the grub wagon. The Marquis leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she was saying. “Father was gone, and we kids had to rustle. I had helped him so much with the cattle that I thought I’d turn cowboy. There wasn’t anything else I could make a living at. I wasn’t much stuck on it though, after I got here, and I’d have left only— “
“Only what?”
“You know. Tell me something. When did you first — what made you— “
“Oh, it was as soon as we struck the camp, when Saunders bawled out ‘The Marquis and Miss Sally!’ I saw how rattled you got at the name, and I had my sus— “
“Cheeky!” whispered the Marquis. “And why should you think that I thought he was calling me ‘Miss Sally’?”
“Because,” answered the cook, calmly, “I was the Marquis. My father was the Marquis of Borodale. But you’ll excuse that, won’t you, Sally? It really isn’t my fault, you know.”
From The Rolling Stone
A FOG IN SANTONE
[Published in The Cosmopolitan , October, 1912. Probably written in 1904, or shortly after O. Henry’s first successes in New York.]
The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.
“I would rather not supply you,” he said doubtfully. “I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.”
The customer smiles wanly. “The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn’t intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me.”
He draws his collar higher, and moves out, slowly. He stops under an electric light at the corner, and juggles absorbedly with three or four little pasteboard boxes. “Thirty-six,” he announces to himself. “More than plenty.” For a gray mist had swept upon Santone that night, an opaque terror that laid a hand to the throat of each of the city’s guests. It was computed that three thousand invalids were h
ibernating in the town. They had come from far and wide, for here, among these contracted river-sliced streets, the goddess Ozone has elected to linger.
Purest atmosphere, sir, on earth! You might think from the river winding through our town that we are malarial, but, no, sir! Repeated experiments made both by the Government and local experts show that our air contains nothing deleterious — nothing but ozone, sir, pure ozone. Litmus paper tests made all along the river show — but you can read it all in the prospectuses; or the Santonian will recite it for you, word by word.
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then, cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watchers. On the red stream of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came handy to their relief, pistols, gas or the beneficent muriate.
The purchaser of the morphia wanders into the fog, and at length, finds himself upon a little iron bridge, one of the score or more in the heart of the city, under which the small tortuous river flows. He leans on the rail and gasps, for here the mist has concentrated, lying like a foot-pad to garrote such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge guys rattle to the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming to say to him: “Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir — but not from our river. Litmus paper all along the banks and nothing but ozone. Clacket-y-clack!”