Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

sixteen dollars and a quarter fer the truck, so me and Lem is three twenty-five ahead. When folks makes a big strike they most al’ays gets drunk, and es me and Lem never was drunk, we says, we’ll git drunk and see how it feels. The feelin’s pretty bully, ain’t it?”

“Some think so,” said the bartender, “what’ll you have?”

They both called for whisky and stood against the bar until they had taken some five or six drinks apiece.

“Feel good, Lem?” asked the old man.

“Not a dam bit,” said the son.

“Don’t feel like shoutin’ and raisin’ Cain?”

“No.”

“Don’t feel good at all?”

“No. Feel like the devil. Feel sick, en burnin’ inside.”

“Is yer head buzzin’, Lem, and er achin’?”

“Yes, Dad, en is yer knees a kind er wobblin’, en yer eyes a waterin’?”

“You bet, en is yer stummick er gripin’ en does yer feel like yer had swallowed a wild cat en er litter of kittens?”

“Yes, Dad, and don’t you wish we wuz to home, whar we could lie down in ther clover patch en kick?”

“Yes, sonny, this here is what comes of goin’ back on yer ma. Does yer feel real bad?”

“Bad ez ther devil, Dad.”

“Look a here, mister,” said the old man to the bartender, “somebody has lied to us about the fun in gettin’ drunk. We’re a goin’ home and never goin’ to do it again. I’d ruther hev the blind staggers, the itch, en the cramp colic all to onct, then ter git drunk. Come on, sonny, en let’s hunt the waggin.”

The Lotus and the Cockleburrs

There are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That grim coast washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance.

Buccaneers and revolutionists have roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the condor has wheeled perpetually above where, in the dark green jungles, they made food for him with their pikes and cutlasses. Taken and retaken by pirates, by adverse powers, and by sudden uprising of rebellious factions, the old towns along the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast have scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call their master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a port of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte, and other eminent sea-rovers, bombarded and pounded it in the name of Abaddon.

The game still goes on. The tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, and the kodaking tourist have found it out. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Syria bag its small change across their counters. The gentleman adventurer throngs the waiting-rooms of its rulers with propositions for railways and concessions. The little, opera bouffe nations play at government and intrigue until some day a big, silent gunboat glides into the offing and warns them not to break their toys. It was in these latter days that Johnny Atwood added his handiwork to the list of casualties along the Spanish Main by his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat of elevating that despised and useless weed product, the cockleburr, from its obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.

The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a romance. There was a man names Hemstetter, who came to the little Southern town where Johnny lived, to open a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called Rosine, a name that atoned much for “Hemstetter.” This young woman was possessed of sufficient pulchritude to agitate the young men of the community. Johnny, who was among the more violently agitated, was the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the colonial mansion near the edge of Dalesburg. Being a young man of address and spirit, as well as scion of one of the oldest families in the State, it would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return his affection, and be received into the stately but rather empty colonial mansion. But no. There was a cloud on the horizon in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighborhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the highborn Atwood.

One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered of great importance by the young. The accessories were all there⁠—moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, and the mock-bird’s song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous young farmer, came between them, is not known; but Johnny was declined. Hesitatingly, blushingly, flutteringly, it is true⁠—but declined. Could the blood of an Atwood brook declination? Johnny bowed to the ground and went away with head high, but mortified and bruised in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse an Atwood!

Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic President. Judge Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny set the wheels moving. He would go away⁠—away! Rosine should never look upon his face again. Perhaps in years to come she would look back with regret upon the pure and faithful love that⁠—etc., etc.

The wheels of politics revolved, and John De Graffenreid Atwood was appointed United States Consul at Vibora. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter’s to say goodbye. Pink Dawson was there, of course, talking about his 80-acre field, and the 3-mile meadow, and the 200-acre pasture, and the 40-acre hill-tract. Johnny shook hands with Rosine as cooly as if he were only going to run up to Vicksburg for a week.

“If you happen to strike a good thing in the way of an investment down there, Johnny,” said Pink Dawson, “just let me know, will you? I reckon I could rustle up a thousand or two ’most any time for a profitable deal.”

“All right, Pink,” said Johnny, pleasantly. “If I strike anything I’ll let you know, sure.”

So Johnny went to New Orleans, and took a steamer down to his post at Vibora.

Vibora was a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, set