Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The O’Connors were born to rule. ’Tis a ruler of men I must be.’

“ ‘Barney,’ I says to him, ‘why don’t you get on the force and settle down to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue and maltreat the oppressed?’

“ ‘Look again at the map,’ says he, ‘at the country I have the point of me knife on. ’Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me father’s sword.’

“ ‘I see,’ says I. ‘It’s the green one; and that does credit to your patriotism, and it’s the smallest one; and that does credit to your judgment.’

“ ‘Do ye accuse me of cowardice?’ says Barney, turning pink.

“ ‘No man,’ says I, ‘who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it, nobody else will have any right to kick.’

“ ‘I’m not joking,’ says O’Connor. ‘And I’ve got $1,500 cash to work the scheme with. I’ve taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?’

“ ‘I’m not working,’ I told him; ‘but how is it to be? Do I eat during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a portfolio?’

“I’ll pay all expenses,’ says O’Connor. ‘I want a man I can trust. If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the government.’

“ ‘All right, then,’ says I. ‘You can get me a bunch of draying contracts and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench so I won’t be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can consider me on the payroll.’

“Two weeks afterward O’Connor and me took a steamer for the small, green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O’Connor said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and O’Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.

“The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. ‘Not for me,’ says I. ‘It’ll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it. It’s a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.’

“But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white, with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of the Long Island Railroad.

“We went through the quarantine and customhouse indignities; and then O’Connor leads me to a ’dobe house on a street called ‘The Avenue of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.’ Ten feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.

“ ‘Hooligan Alley,’ says I, rechristening it.

“ ‘ ’Twill be our headquarters,’ says O’Connor. ‘My agent here, Don Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.’

“So in that house O’Connor and me established the revolutionary centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O’Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting. We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a German proprietor with Chinese cooking served à la Kansas City lunch counter.

“It seems that O’Connor really did have some sort of system planned out beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some native gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back room for half an hour with O’Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that when they went in they were always smoking eight-inch cigars and at peace with the world; but when they came out they would be folding up a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly.

“One evening after we had been in Guaya⁠—in this town of Smellville-by-the-Sea⁠—about a month, and me and O’Connor were sitting outside the door helping along old tempus fugit with rum and ice and limes, I says to him:

“ ‘If you’ll excuse a patriot that don’t exactly know what he’s patronizing, for the question⁠—what is your scheme for subjugating this country? Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to buy its votes peacefully and honorably at the polls?’

“ ‘Bowers,’ says he, ‘ye’re a fine little man and I intend to make great use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft. Already by now we have a network of strategy clutching with invisible fingers at the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in every town in the republic. The Liberal party is bound to win. On our secret lists we have the names of enough sympathizers to crush the administration forces at a single blow.’

“ ‘A straw vote,’ says I, ‘only shows which way the hot air blows.’

“ ‘Who has accomplished this?’ goes on O’Connor. ‘I have. I have directed everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents inform me. The people are groaning under burdens