Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old Book Shop. And James Turner’s smarting and aching feet did not tend to improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he had a spirit equal to any caliph’s.

“Say, you old faker,” he said, angrily, “be on your way. I don’t know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus $40,000,000 bill. Well, I don’t carry that much around with me. But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you’ll get if you don’t move on.”

“You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup,” said the caliph.

Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him by the collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A cop came up, took an arm of each, and marched them to the nearest station house. “Fighting and disorderly conduct,” said the cop to the sergeant.

“Three hundred dollars bail,” said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly and inquiringly.

“Sixty-three cents,” said James Turner with a harsh laugh.

The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change amounting to four dollars.

“I am worth,” he said, “forty million dollars, but⁠—”

“Lock ’em up,” ordered the sergeant.

In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. “Maybe he’s got the money, and maybe he ain’t. But if he has or he ain’t, what does he want to go ’round butting into other folks’s business for? When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it’s the same as $40,000,000 to him.”

Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.

He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the cold bars of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called “A Sailor’s Sweetheart.” He gave a great sigh of contentment.

Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said:

“Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping seems to have been the goods after all. He phoned to his friends, and he’s out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a Pullman car pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out and see him.”

“Tell him I ain’t in,” said James Turner.

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Piños swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat⁠—seamy on both sides.

“Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,” said the seedy man. “Which way you been travelling?”

“Texas,” said the red-faced man. “It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I’ll tell you about one hot spell I went through there.

“One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it go on without me. ’Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. Only out there they build ’em twenty miles away so you can’t smell what they’ve got for dinner, instead of running ’em up two inches from their neighbors’ windows.

“There wasn’t any roads in sight, so I footed it ’cross country. The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman’s private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-railroad station.

“There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door.

“ ‘Greetings,’ says I. ‘Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?’

“ ‘Oh, come in,’ says he, in a refined tone. ‘Sit down on that stool, please. I didn’t hear your horse coming.’

“ ‘He isn’t near enough yet,’ says I. ‘I walked. I don’t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.’

“ ‘You do look pretty dusty,’ says he; ‘but our bathing arrangements⁠—’

“ ‘It’s a drink I want,’ says I. ‘Never mind the dust that’s on the outside.’

“He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then goes on:

“ ‘Do you want work?’

“ ‘For a time,’ says I. ‘This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn’t it?’

“ ‘It is,’ says he. ‘Sometimes⁠—so I have been told⁠—one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time. I’ve been here only a month. I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.’

“ ‘It suits me,’ says I. ‘Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middleweight slugging, and play the piano.’

“ ‘Can you herd sheep?’ asks the little ranchman.

“ ‘Do you mean have I heard sheep?’ says I.

“ ‘Can you herd ’em⁠—take charge of a flock of ’em?’ says he.

“ ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘now I understand. You mean chase ’em around and bark at ’em like collie dogs. Well, I might,’ says I. ‘I’ve never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I’ve often seen ’em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don’t look dangerous.’

“ ‘I’m short a herder,’ says the ranchman. ‘You never can depend on the Mexicans. I’ve only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons⁠—there are only eight hundred of ’em⁠—in the morning, if you like. The pay is