Short Stories for English Courses

V >> Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) >> Short Stories for English Courses

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

"While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell on a narrow ledge
in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit
upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches,
and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just
above it gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed
chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the
'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp
the full secret of the riddle.

"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other
sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be
used, and a definite point of view, ADMITTING NO VARIATION, from
which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases,
'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and 'north-east and by
north,' were intended as directions for the levelling of the
glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home,
procured a telescope, and returned to the rock.

"I let myself down the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. This fact
confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
course, the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude
to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the
horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, 'north-
east and by north.' This latter direction I at once established by
means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at
an angle of twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by
guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was
arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large
tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of
this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first,
distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I
again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.

"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma
solved; for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,'
could refer only to the position of the skull on the tree, while
'shoot from the left eye of the death's-head' admitted, also, of
but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure.
I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye
of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight
line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through 'the shot'
(or the spot where the bullet fell), and thence extended to a
distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point--and
beneath this point I thought it at least POSSIBLE that a deposit
of value lay concealed."

"All this," I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although
ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's
Hotel, what then?"

"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
homewards. The instant that I left 'the devil's seat,' however,
the circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it
afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity
in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated experiment has
convinced me it IS a fact) that the circular opening in question
is visible from no other attainable point of view than that
afforded by the narrow ledge on the face of the rock.

"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
Jupiter, who had no doubt observed, for some weeks past, the
abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me
alone. But on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to
give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree.
After much toil I found it. When I came home at night my valet
proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I
believe you are as well acquainted as myself."

"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall
through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."

"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and
a half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg
nearest the tree; and had the treasure been BENEATH the 'shot,'
the error would have been of little moment; but 'the shot,'
together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two
points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the
error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded
with the line, and, by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us
quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated convictions that
treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all
our labor vain."

"I presume the fancy of THE SKULL--of letting fall a bullet
through the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical
flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in
recovering his money through this ominous insignium."

"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had
quite as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be
visible from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object,
if small, should be WHITE; and there is nothing like your human
skull for retaining and even increasing its whiteness under
exposure to all vicissitudes of weather."

"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle
--how excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you
insist on letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the
skull?"

"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident
suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you
quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification.
For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it
fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight
suggested the latter idea."

"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles
me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"

"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself.
There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for
them--and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my
suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed
secreted this treasure, which I doubt not--it is clear that he
must have had assistance in the labor. But, the worst of this
labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all
participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a
mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the
pit; perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

BY

O. HENRY

This is a plot-story of the kind in which the American public
delights. The reader enjoys the humor due to situation, hyperbole,
satire, and astounding verbal liberties to which the writer is
given; but he enjoys even more the sharp surprise that awaits him
in the plot. He has prepared himself for a certain conclusion and
finds himself entirely in the wrong. Nevertheless, he admits that
the ending is not illogical nor out of harmony with the general
tone. Bill and Sam subscribe themselves "Two Desperate Men," but
they are so characterized as to prepare us for their surrender of
the boy on the father's own terms.

It is interesting to know that O. Henry himself put slight value
upon local color. "People say that I know New York well!" he says.
"But change Twenty-third Street to Main Street, rub out the
Flatiron Building and put in the Town Hall. Then the story will
fit just as truly elsewhere. At least, I hope that is the case
with what I write. So long as your story is true to life, the mere
change of local color will set it in the East, West, South, or
North. The characters in 'The Arabian Nights' parade up and down
Broadway at midday, or Main Street in Dallas, Texas."

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

[Footnote: From "Whirligigs," by O. Henry. Copyright, 1910, by
Doubleday, Page & Company. Reprinted by special permission of
Doubleday, Page & Company.]

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were
down South, In Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myself--when this
kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it,
"during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't
find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called
Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious an
self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a
Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and
we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent
town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the
front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong
in semi-rural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a
kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of
newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up
talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us
with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some
lackadaisical blood-hounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly
Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen
named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a
mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and
forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles,
and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the
news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured
that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars
to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a
dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a
cave. There we stored provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's
house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on
the opposite fence.

"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of
candy and a nice ride?"

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says
Bill, climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but,
at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove
away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the
cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village,
three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the
mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on
his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the
entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling
coffee, with two buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He
points a stick at me when I come up, and says:

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief,
the terror of the plains?"

"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and
examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're
making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of
Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's
captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid
can kick hard."

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The
fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a
captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy,
and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I
was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and
bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech
something like this:

"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet
'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to
school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled
hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some
more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five
puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of
money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I
don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do
oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to
sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can
talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make
twelve?"

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin,
and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to
rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would
let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That
boy had Bill terrorized from the start.

"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"

"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to
go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home
again, Snake-eye, will you?"

"Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."

"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in
all my life."

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide
blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't
afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up
and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine
and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of
a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of
the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and
dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a
ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from
Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or
yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs--they
were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as
women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful
thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in
a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on
Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he
had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was
industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp,
according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the
evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again.
But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on
his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as
long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along
toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be
burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or
afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.

"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.

"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I
thought sitting up would rest it."

"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned
at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if
he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody
will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?"

"Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that
parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast,
while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over
the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the
sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks
beating the country-side for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I
saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a
dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither
and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents.
There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that
section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay
exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet
been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin
from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down
the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of
it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a
rock half as big as a cocoanut.

"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill,
"and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you
got a gun about you, Sam?"

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the
argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet
struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better
beware!"

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings
wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave
unwinding it.

"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think
he'll run away, do you, Sam?"

"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body.
But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't
seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his
disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone.
His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one
of the neighbors. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must
get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for
his return."

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have
emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling
that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling
it around his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill,
like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead
rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear.
He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the
frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out
and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam,
do you know who my favorite Biblical character is?"

"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."

"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone,
will you, Sam?"

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles
rattled.

"If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now,
are you going to be good, or not?"

"I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old
Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you
won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-
day."

"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to
decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a
while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and
say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and
told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles
from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping
had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a
peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom
and dictating how it should be paid.

"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an
eye in earthquakes, fire, and flood--in poker games, dynamite
outrages, police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never
lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a
kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will
you, Sam?"

"I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep
the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the
letter to old Dorset."

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red
Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down,
guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make
the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I
ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect
of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't
human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-
pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at
fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that
ran this way:

"Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:

"We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is
useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find
him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored
to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills
for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the
same spot and in the same box as your reply--as hereinafter
described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in
writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight
o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove,
there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to
the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom
of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small
paste-board box.

"The messenger will place the answer in this box and return
immediately to Summit.

"If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as
stated, you will never see your boy again.

"If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe
and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do
not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

"TWO DESPERATE MEN"

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I
was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you
was gone."

"Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What
kind of a game is it?"

"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the
stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm
tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."

"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill
will help you foil the pesky savages."

"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and
knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"

"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the
scheme going. Loosen up."

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like
a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.

"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner
of voice.

"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump
yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"

The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his
side.

"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you
can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say,
you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and
store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One
whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of
Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was
all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred
casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter
surreptitiously, and came away. The postmaster said the mail-
carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found.
I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two,
but there was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await
developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled
out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the
kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face.
Bill stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a red
handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I
couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities
and habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems
of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him
home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill,
"that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they
enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural
tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of
depredation; but there came a limit."

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not
barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given
oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I
had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a
road can run both ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell
you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck
of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he
kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to
have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28