Complete Writings of O. Henry [i.e. W.S. Porter], Volume 10Doubleday, Page, 1917 |
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Pagina 103 - THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF IT 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 flannelcake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around...
Pagina 115 - 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.
Pagina 104 - ... 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...
Pagina 114 - ... 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'ma renegade, but I couldn't help it.
Pagina 108 - 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 pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.
Pagina 105 - 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.
Pagina 109 - 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.
Pagina 67 - ... how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part. On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey's desk where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole — Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it. "The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,
Pagina 110 - 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?
Pagina 115 - 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 look behind you." Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid of his mind.