"The
Ransom of Red Chief," O. HenryIt
looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama--Bill
Driscoll and myself--when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward
expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but
we didn't find that out till later. There
was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course.
It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry
as ever clustered around a Maypole. Bill
and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two
thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois
with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness,
says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons,
a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers
that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We
knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables
and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly
Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good. We
selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset.
The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright
collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief
freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand
when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down
for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you. About
two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake.
On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions.
One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid
was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence. "Hey,
little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and a
nice ride?" The boy
catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick. "That
will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing
over the wheel. That boy
put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down
in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched
the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village,
three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain. Bill
was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There
was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy
was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tail-feathers stuck in
his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says: "Ha!
cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the
plains? "He's all
right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises
on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look
like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper,
Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid
can kick hard." Yes,
sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out
in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened
me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath,
I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun. Then
we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and
began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this: "I
like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I
was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's
aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want
some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies.
What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars
hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch
toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have
you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot
can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?" Every
few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick
rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated
paleface. Now and then he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper
shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start. "Red
Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?" "Aw,
what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school.
I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?" "Not
right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while." "All
right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life." We
went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts
and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake
for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist!
pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle
of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw
band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped
and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair. Just
at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't
yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly
set of vocal organs--they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams,
such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to
hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. I
jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with
one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used
for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's
scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening
before. I got the knife
away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit
was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again
in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward
sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at
the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe
and leaned against a rock. "What
you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill. "Me?"
says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up
would rest it." "You're
a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise,
and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't
it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like
that back home?" "Sure,"
said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now,
you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this
mountain and reconnoitre." I
went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous
vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village
armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers.
But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun
mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing
tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent
sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that
lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not
yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the
fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast. When
I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard,
and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut. "He
put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and then
mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?" I
took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. "I'll
fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet struck the Red Chief
but what he got paid for it. You better beware!" After
breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out
of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it. "What's
he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run away,
do you, Sam?" "No
fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've
got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement
around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized
yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane
or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get
a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return." Just
then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked
out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his
pocket, and he was whirling it around his head. I
dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives
out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught
Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire
across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and
poured cold water on his head for half an hour. By
and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know
who my favourite Biblical character is?" "Take
it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently." "King
Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you,
Sam?" I went out and
caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled. "If
you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you
going to be good, or not?" "I
was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank.
But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home,
and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day." "I
don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide.
He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now,
you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or
home you go, at once." I
made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going
to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what
I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought
it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the
ransom and dictating how it should be paid. "You
know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in
earthquakes, fire and flood--in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids,
train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that
two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with
him, will you, Sam?" "I'll
be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the boy amused
and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset." Bill
and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket
wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill
begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two
thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated
moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't
human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of
freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You
can charge the difference up to me." So,
to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:
Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or
the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms
on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred
dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night
at the same spot and in the same box as your reply--as hereinafter described.
If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger
to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to
Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to
the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post,
opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.
The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.
If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you
will never see your boy again.
If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within
three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further
communication will be attempted.
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
I
addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start,
the kid comes up to me and says: "Aw,
Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone." "Play
it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a
game is it?" "I'm
the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade
to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian
myself. I want to be the Black Scout." "All
right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help
you foil the pesky savages." "What
am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously. "You
are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees.
How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?" "You'd
better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going.
Loosen up." Bill gets
down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch
it in a trap. "How
far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of voice. "Ninety
miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get
there on time. Whoa, now!" The
Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side. "For
Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish
we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I'll
get up and warm you good." I
walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store, talking with
the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit
is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen.
That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually
to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away.
The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail
on to Summit. When I got
back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity
of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response. So
I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments. In
about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little
glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout,
with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face
with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him. "Sam,"
says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it.
I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but
there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is
gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times,"
goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft
they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as
I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there
came a limit." "What's
the trouble, Bill?" I asks him. "I
was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring
an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable
substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was
nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green.
I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his
clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue
from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand
cauterized. "But he's
gone"--continues Bill--"gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and
kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom;
but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse." Bill
is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content
on his rose-pink features. "Bill,"
says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there? "No,"
says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?" "Then
you might turn around," says I, "and have a took behind you." Bill
turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round
and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid
for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through
immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if
old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the
kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war
with him is soon as he felt a little better. I
had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots
that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which
the answer was to be left--and the money later on--was close to the road fence
with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching
for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the
fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree
as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive. Exactly
on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard
box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals
away again back toward Summit. I
waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree,
got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at
the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and
read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and
substance of it was this:
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I received your
letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son.
I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition,
which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay
me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands.
You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't
be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very
respectfully, EBENEZER
DORSET.
"Great
pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent--" But
I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I
ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute. "Sam,"
says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the
money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being
a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a
liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?" "Tell
you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat
got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away." We
took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had
bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going
to hunt bears the next day. It
was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door. Just at the
moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the
box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out
two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand. When
the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like
a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father
peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster. "How
long can you hold him?" asks Bill. "I'm
not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can
promise you ten minutes." "Enough,"
says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle
Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border." And,
as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was
a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him. From
Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/8whrl11.txt
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