Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your error?”

“We’ll take a look at those hills across the river first,” said I, “and see what we find. I am still doubtful about variations. I have been brought up to believe that the needle is true to the pole.”

The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited⁠—Keats, I think it was, and Kelly or Shelley⁠—while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to cross the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the other side.

“My good Ulysses,” said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while I was washing the tin breakfast-plates, “let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like a packsaddle. I never saw a packsaddle. What is it like, Jim?”

“Score one against culture,” said I. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Goodloe was looking at old Rundle’s document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate swearword.

“Come here,” he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. “Look at that,” he said, laying his finger against it.

On the blue paper⁠—a thing I had never noticed before⁠—I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures: “Malvern, 1898.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“It’s the watermark,” said Goodloe. “The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said I. “The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle.”

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.

“I’ve often told you you were a fool,” he said. “You have let yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me.”

“How,” I asked, “have I imposed upon you?”

“By your ignorance,” said he. “Twice I have discovered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to avoid. And,” he continued, “I have been put to expense that I could ill afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it.”

I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dishwater.

“Goodloe Banks,” I said, “I care not one parboiled navy bean for your education. I always barely tolerated it in anyone, and I despised it in you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore to your friends. Away,” I said⁠—“away with your watermarks and variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the quest.”

I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like a packsaddle.

“I am going to search that mountain,” I went on, “for the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a watermark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide.”

A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.

“I am done with the swindle,” said he, sourly. “No one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate.”

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a packsaddle.

It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds, so many butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields.

I investigated the hill shaped like a packsaddle from base to summit. I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the document of old man Rundle.

I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River.

And there I was startled to see what I took to be a wild man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant wings.

“Perhaps he is an escaped madman,” I thought; and wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of education and learning.

And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers.

She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew her I saw her face⁠—which was the color of the white keys of a new piano⁠—turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.

“I knew you would come, Jim,” she said clearly. “Father wouldn’t let me write, but I knew you would come.”

What followed you may guess⁠—there was my wagon and team just across the river.

I’ve often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he can’t use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where does it come in?

For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.

And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in places where they cannot be found.

But who cares for that? Who cares⁠—who cares?

The Last of