Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house, where I penned ’em in a corral and bade ’em my nightly adieus.

“I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a secondhand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings. ‘Imperial Caesar,’ says I, ‘asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.’

“A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He’s at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he’s about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12:30 a.m. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it’s better for all hands for her to be that way.

“Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical culture⁠—and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

“After I’d smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H. O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a creek farther away.

“I saw five men riding up to the house. All of ’em carried guns across their saddles, and among ’em was the deputy that had talked to me at my camp.

“They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muckraker of this law-and-order cavalry.

“ ‘Good evening, gents,’ says I. ‘Won’t you ’light, and tie your horses?’

“The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover my whole front elevation.

“ ‘Don’t you move your hands none,’ says he, ‘till you and me indulge in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.’

“ ‘I will not,’ says I. ‘I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have to disobey your injunctions in replying.’

“ ‘We are on the lookout,’ says he, ‘for Black Bill, the man that held up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and everybody on ’em. What is your name, and what do you do on this ranch?’

“ ‘Captain,’ says I, ‘Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name is sheepherder. I’ve got my flock of veals⁠—no, muttons⁠—penned here tonight. The shearers are coming tomorrow to give them a haircut⁠—with baa-a-rum, I suppose.’

“ ‘Where’s the boss of this ranch?’ the captain of the gang asks me.

“ ‘Wait just a minute, cap’n,’ says I. ‘Wasn’t there a kind of a reward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have referred to in your preamble?’

“ ‘There’s a thousand dollars reward offered,’ says the captain, ‘but it’s for his capture and conviction. There don’t seem to be no provision made for an informer.’

“ ‘It looks like it might rain in a day or so,’ says I, in a tired way, looking up at the cerulean blue sky.

“ ‘If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,’ says he, in a severe dialect, ‘you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.’

“ ‘I heard a fence-rider say,’ says I, in a desultory kind of voice, ‘that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin’s store on the Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a sheepman’s cousin two weeks ago.’

“ ‘Tell you what I’ll do, Tight Mouth,’ says the captain, after looking me over for bargains. ‘If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill, I’ll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own⁠—out of our own⁠—pockets. That’s liberal,’ says he. ‘You ain’t entitled to anything. Now, what do you say?’

“ ‘Cash down now?’ I asks.

“The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco.

“ ‘Come nearer, capitán meeo,’ says I, ‘and listen.’ He so did.

“ ‘I am mighty poor and low down in the world,’ says I. ‘I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,’ says I, ‘I regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it’s a comedown to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops. I’m pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P.R.R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati⁠—dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you’re ever up that way, don’t fail to let one try you. And, again,’ says I, ‘I have never yet went back on a friend. I’ve stayed by ’em when they had plenty, and when adversity’s overtaken me I’ve never forsook ’em.

“ ‘But,’ I goes on, ‘this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans and cornbread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,’ says I, ‘and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black Bill,’ says I, ‘lying asleep in