Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

focus, and it was a Mexican with a broad-brimmed sombrero, on a hoss what rode up to the fence. He stopped there a minute and then I seen my wife run into the house and shut the door. I seen the Mexican jump off his hoss, try the door, and then go and get the ax at the wood pile. He came back and commenced to split down the door. The mi-ridge commenced to get dimmer and faint like. I don’t know what made me do such a fool thing, but I couldn’t help it. I jerked my Winchester out’n its scabbard, drawed a bead on the darned scoundrel and fired. Then I cussed myself for an idiot, for tryin’ to shoot somethin’ eighteen miles away, jabbed my Winchester back in the scabbard, stuck my spurs in my broncho, and split through the brush like a roadrunner after a rattlesnake.

“I made that eighteen miles in eighty minutes. I never took the road, but crashed through the chaparral, jumped prickly pear and arroyo just as they come. When I got to the ranch I fell off my pony, and he leaned up against the fence streamin’ wet and lookin’ at me mighty reproachful. I never breathed in jumpin’ from the fence to the back door. I clattered up the steps and yelled for Sallie, but my voice sounded to me like somebody else’s, ’way off. The door opened and out tumbled the wife and the kid, all right, but scared as wild ducks. ‘Oh, Jim,’ says the wife, ‘where, oh where have you been? A drunken Mexican attacked the house this morning and tried to cut down the door with an ax.’ I tried to ask some questions, but I couldn’t. ‘Look,’ says Sallie.

“The other door was busted all to pieces and the ax was lyin’ on the step, and the Mexican was lyin’ on the ground and a Winchester ball had passed clear through his head.”

“Who shot him?” asked the lawyer.

“I’ve told you all I know,” said the sheep man. “Sallie said the man dropped all of a sudden while he was choppin’ at the door, and she never heard no gun shoot. I don’t pretend to explain nothin’, I’m telling you what happened. You might say somebody in the brush seen him breakin’ in the door and shot him, usin’ noiseless powder, and then slipped away without leavin’ his card, or you might say you don’t know nothin’ at all about it, as I do.”

“Do you think⁠—” began the young man.

“No, I don’t think,” said the sheep man, rather shortly. “I said I’d tell you about the mi-ridge I seen, and I told you just as it happened. Is they any coffee left in that pot?”

The Legend of San Jacinto The Hermit of the Battle Ground Relates an Ancient Tradition to a Post Man

The battle ground of San Jacinto is a historic spot, very dear to those who make the past reputation of Texas a personal matter. A Texan who does not thrill at the mention of the locality where General Sam Houston and other gentlemen named after the counties of Texas, captured Santa Anna and his portable bar and side arms, is a baseborn slave.

A few days ago a Post reporter who has a friend who is a pilot on the tug boat Hoodoo Jane went down the bayou to the battle ground with the intention of gathering from some of the old inhabitants a few of the stories and legends that are so plentiful concerning the events that occurred on that memorable spot.

The Hoodoo Jane let the reporter off at the battle ground, which is on the bank of the bayou, and he wandered about under the thick grove of trees and then out upon the low flat country where the famous battle is said to have raged. Down under a little bunch of elm trees was a little cabin, and the reporter wandered thither in the hope of finding an old inhabitant.

A venerable man emerged from the cabin, apparently between 15 and 80 years of age, with long white hair and silvery beard.

“Come hither, youth,” he said. “Would’st know the legend of this place? Then cross my palm with silver, and I’ll tell it thee.”

“Good father,” said the reporter, “Gramercy, and by my halidome, and Got wot, as you love me, ask me not for silver, but even fire away with your old legend.”

“Then sit you here,” said the hermit, “and I will tell you the legend of the battle ground of San Jacinto.

“A great many years ago, when these silver locks of mine were dark and my step as quick and blithe as thine, my mother told me this tale. How well I remember the day. It was twilight, and the evening shadows were growing long under the trees. She laid her hand upon my head and said:

“ ‘My boy, I will tell you the legend of San Jacinto. It is a beautiful story, and was told to me by my father, who was one of the earliest settlers in the State. Ah! what a man he was⁠—six feet in height, sinewy as an oaken withe, and as bold as a lion. One day, I remember, he came home after a long, hard fight with the Indians. He took me on his knee as gently as a woman would, this great strong father of mine, and said:

“ ‘ “Listen, little Sunbeam, and I will tell you the grand old story of San Jacinto. It is a legend known to few. It will make your bright eyes dance in your head with wonder. I heard it from my uncle, who was a strange man, and held in dread by all who knew him. One night when the moon was going down in the west and the big owls were hooting mournfully in the woods, he pointed out to me that great grove of trees on the bayou’s bank, and taking