Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

thing. I teach ’em not to desire anything beyond their simplest needs. A little mutton, a little cocoa, and a little fruit brought up from the coast⁠—that’s all they want to make ’em happy. I’ve got ’em well trained. They make their own clothes and hats out of a vegetable fibre and straw, and they’re a contented lot. It’s a great thing,’ winds up Shane, ‘to have made a people happy by the incultivation of such simple institutions.’

“Well, the next day, with the King’s permission, I has the McClintock open up a couple of sacks of my goods in the little plaza of the village. The Indians swarmed around by the hundred and looked the bargain-counter over. I shook red blankets at ’em, flashed finger-rings and ear-bobs, tried pearl necklaces and side-combs on the women, and a line of red hosiery on the men. ’Twas no use. They looked on like hungry graven images, but I never made a sale. I asked McClintock what was the trouble. Mac yawned three or four times, rolled a cigarette, made one or two confidential side remarks to a mule, and then condescended to inform me that the people had no money.

“Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red and royal as usual, with the gold chain over his chest and his cigar in front of him.

“ ‘How’s business, W. D.?’ he asks.

“ ‘Fine,’ says I. ‘It’s a bargain-day rush. I’ve got one more line of goods to offer before I shut up shop. I’ll try ’em with safety-razors. I’ve got two gross that I bought at a fire sale.’

“Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private secretary he carries with him has to hold him up.

“ ‘O my sainted Aunt Jerusha!’ says he, ‘ain’t you one of the Babes in the Goods, W. D.? Don’t you know that no Indians ever shave? They pull out their whiskers instead.’

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s just what these razors would do for ’em⁠—they wouldn’t have any kick coming if they used ’em once.’

“Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a block, if there had been any block.

“ ‘Tell ’em,’ says I to McClintock, ‘it ain’t money I want⁠—tell ’em I’ll take gold-dust. Tell ’em I’ll allow ’em sixteen dollars an ounce for it in trade. That’s what I’m out for⁠—the dust.’

“Mac interprets, and you’d have thought a squadron of cops had charged the crowd to disperse it. Every uncle’s nephew and aunt’s niece of ’em faded away inside of two minutes.

“At the royal palace that night me and the King talked it over.

“ ‘They’ve got the dust hid out somewhere,’ says I, ‘or they wouldn’t have been so sensitive about it.’

“ ‘They haven’t,’ says Shane. ‘What’s this gag you’ve got about gold? You been reading Edward Allen Poe? They ain’t got any gold.’

“ ‘They put it in quills,’ says I, ‘and then they empty it in jars, and then into sacks of twenty-five pounds each. I got it straight.’

“ ‘W. D.,’ says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, ‘I don’t often see a white man, and I feel like putting you on. I don’t think you’ll get away from here alive, anyhow, so I’m going to tell you. Come over here.’

“He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the room and shows me a pile of buckskin sacks.

“ ‘Forty of ’em,’ says Shane. ‘One arroba in each one. In round numbers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It’s all mine. It belongs to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars⁠—think of that, you glass-bead peddler,’ says Shane⁠—‘and all mine.’

“ ‘Little good it does you,’ says I, contemptuously and hatefully. ‘And so you are the government depository of this gang of moneyless moneymakers? Don’t you pay enough interest on it to enable one of your depositors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond worth $200 for $4.85?’

“ ‘Listen,’ says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow. ‘I’m confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever,’ he says, ‘feel the avoirdupois power of gold⁠—not the troy weight of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?’

“ ‘Never,’ says I. ‘I never take in any bad money.’

“Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of gold-dust.

“ ‘I love it,’ says he. ‘I want to feel the touch of it day and night. It’s my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I’m a king and a rich man. I’ll be a millionaire in another year. The pile’s getting bigger every month. I’ve got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the creeks. I’m the happiest man in the world, W. D. I just want to be near this gold, and know it’s mine and it’s increasing every day. Now, you know,’ says he, ‘why my Indians wouldn’t buy your goods. They can’t. They bring all the dust to me. I’m their king. I’ve taught ’em not to desire or admire. You might as well shut up shop.’

“ ‘I’ll tell you what you are,’ says I. ‘You’re a plain, contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,’ I goes on, ‘is never anything but supply. On the contrary,’ says I, ‘demand is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights of our women and children, and charity and friendship, and even a little begging on the street corners. They’ve both got to harmonize equally. And I’ve got a few things up my commercial sleeve yet,’ says I, ‘that may jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and economy.’

“The next morning I had McClintock bring up another mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up. The people gathered around the same as before.

“I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women put ’em on. And then I played trumps.

“Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand-mirrors, with solid