Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

one had to have a gold-mounted horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather inlaid with silver beadwork wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred dollars the two cost him.

“Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit on high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin spoons. Yes, sir, beans⁠—beans boiled with salt pork.

“ ‘I kind of thought we’d strike some over this way,’ says Solly.

“ ‘Delightful,’ says I, ‘That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some; but for me, give me the husky table d’goat.’

“When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the tarpaulin-steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with the amusement column folded out.

“ ‘But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,’ says I. ‘Here’s one of Hall Caine’s shows, and a stockyard company in Hamlet, and skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely⁠—’

“But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.

“ ‘Reckon I’ll be going to bed,’ says he; ‘it’s about my time. St. Louis is a kind of quiet place, ain’t it?’

“ ‘Oh, yes,’ says I; ‘ever since the railroads ran in here the town’s been practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and the fair have about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait till you see Chicago, though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze tomorrow?’

“ ‘Mought as well,’ says Solly. ‘I reckon all these towns are about alike.’

“Well, maybe the wise cicerone and personal conductor didn’t fall hard in Chicago! Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or two things in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the curfew rings. But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried him with theatres, rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne suppers, and all those little inventions that hold the simple life in check; but in vain. Solly grew sadder day by day. And I got fearful about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card. So I mentioned New York to him, and informed him that these Western towns were no more than gateways to the great walled city of the whirling dervishes.

“After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then; so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some new ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down from the Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he almost looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred dollars in there.

“At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York to meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the saddle-stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly when he got lost.

“Now I’ll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself: ‘Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it’ll be the bowstring for yours.’ But I never had any doubt I could do it.

“I began with him like you’d feed a starving man. I showed him the horsecars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferryboats. And then I piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer ones up my sleeve.

“At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of five thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was wilting down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him and whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at the Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the skyscrapers above the third story; it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville in town.

“Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage of one of the biggest hotels in the city⁠—to see the Johnnies and the Alice-sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the fat of the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them over, Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh⁠—like moving a folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two weeks, and it gave me hope.

“ ‘Right you are,’ says I. ‘They’re a funny lot of postcards, aren’t they?’

“ ‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,’ says he. ‘I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead Johnson’s whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,’ says he.

“I felt a cold chill run down my back. ‘Me to play and mate in one move,’ says I to myself.

“I made Solly promise to stay in the café for half an hour and I hiked out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour’s flat on Forty-third Street. I knew her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.

“ ‘Jane,’ says I when I found her, ‘I’ve got a friend from Texas here. He’s all right, but⁠—well, he carries weight. I’d like to give him a little whirl after the show this evening⁠—bubbles, you know, and a buzz out to a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a go?’

“ ‘Can he sing?’ asks Lolabelle.

“ ‘You know,’ says I, ‘that I wouldn’t take him away from home unless his notes were good. He’s got pots of money⁠—bean-pots full of it.’

“ ‘Bring him around after the second act,’ says Lolabelle, ‘and I’ll examine his credentials and securities.’

“So about ten o’clock that evening