was killed in the last revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with
our cause.'
"And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses clear
across the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found a piece
of paper curled around a stem with a line in Spanish on it. He dragged
the interpreter out of his corner and got him busy. The interpreter
scratched his head, and gave us as a translation three best bets:
'Fortune had got a face like the man fighting'; 'Fortune looks like a
brave man'; and 'Fortune favors the brave.' We put our money on the last
one.
"'Do ye see?' says O'Connor. 'She intends to encourage me sword to save
her country.'
"'It looks to me like an invitation to supper,' says I.
"So every day this señorita sits behind the barred windows and exhausts
a conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks like a
Dominecker rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he will win her
by feats of arms and big deeds on the gory field of battle.
"By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes me
into the back room and tells me all.
"'Bowers,' says he, 'at twelve o'clock one week from to-day the struggle
will take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and diversion in
this project because ye have not sense enough to perceive that it is
easily accomplished by a man of courage, intelligence, and historical
superiority, such as meself. The whole world over,' says he, 'the
O'Connors have ruled men, women, and nations. To subdue a small
and indifferent country like this is a trifle. Ye see what little,
barefooted manikins the men of it are. I could lick four of 'em
single-handed.'
"'No doubt,' says I. 'But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled an
army of seventeen against you?'
"'Listen,' says O'Connor, 'to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday
25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The
government will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be
taken, the regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set
up. In the capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the army
being stationed there. They will occupy the president's palace and the
strongly fortified government buildings and stand a siege. But on the
very day of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a march to the
capital from every town as soon as the local victory has been won. The
thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us to fail. I
meself will lead the troops from here. The new president will be Señor
Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet.'
"'What do you get?' I asked.
"''Twill be strange,' said O'Connor smiling, 'if I don't have all the
jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I've been
the brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won't be
in the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled
into this country? Didn't I arrange it with a New York firm before
I left there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands of
Winchester rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place up
coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game is
already won.'
"Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility
of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed
that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way.
I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what
kind of uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.
"Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to
schedule. O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the
uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national
warehouse. That had been secretly loaded and promptly at twelve o'clock
was to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would seize their
concealed arms, attack the comandante's troops in the cuartel, and
capture the custom-house and all government property and supplies.
"I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor became
infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He geared
his father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the back room
like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple of dozen
cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of my
uniform.
"At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll through the
streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back
in fifteen minutes.
"'Did you hear anything?' he asks.
"'I did,' says I. 'At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; it
was snoring. Everybody in town's asleep.'
"O'Connor tears out his watch.
"'Fools!' says he. 'They've set the time right at the siesta hour when
everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. Everything will
be all right, depend upon it.'
"Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon - BOOM! - shaking
the whole town.
"O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I
went as far as the door and stood in it.
"People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there
was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.
"General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his
residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his
cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold braid
and buttons. Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush
slipper completed his make-up.
"The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the sidewalk
toward the soldiers' barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two hundred
pounds could travel.
"O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's
sword and rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.
"Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of
blacksmithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general
roared, and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.
"Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his
ginger-colored heels crying out, 'Policios,' at every jump. O'Connor
chased him a block, imbued with the sentiment of manslaughter, and
slicing buttons off the general's coat tails with the paternal weapon.
At the corner five barefooted policemen in cotton undershirts and
straw fiats climbed over O'Connor and subjugated him according to the
municipal statutes.
"They brought him past the late revolutionary headquarters on the way to
jail. I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and foot,
and they dragged him on his back through the grass like a turtle. Twice
they stopped, and the odd policeman took another's place while he rolled
a cigarette. The great soldier of fortune turned his head and looked
at me as they passed. I blushed, and lit another cigar. The procession
passed on, and at ten minutes past twelve everybody had gone back to
sleep again.
"In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid his
hand on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.
"'The ice-man didn't call to-day,' says I. 'What's the matter with
everything, Sancho?'
"'Ah, yes,' says the liver-colored linguist. 'They just tell me in
the town. Verree bad act that Señor O'Connor make fight with General
Tumbalo. Yes, general Tumbalo great soldier and big mans.'
"'What'll they do to Mr. O'Connor?' I asks.
"'I talk little while presently with the Juez de la Paz - what you call
Justice-with-the-peace,' says Sancho. 'He tell me it verree bad crime
that one Señor Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He say they keep
Señor O'Connor in jail six months; then have trial and shoot him with
guns. Verree sorree.'
"'How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?' I asks.
"'Oh,' says this Sancho, 'I think too hot weather for revolution.
Revolution better in winter-time. Maybe so next winter. Quien sabe?'
"'But the cannon went off,' says I. 'The signal was given.'
"'That big sound?' says Sancho, grinning. 'The boiler in ice factory he
blow up - BOOM! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree sorree. No ice.
Mucho hot day.'
"About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to O'Connor
through the bars.
"'What's the news, Bowers?' says he. 'Have we taken the town? I've been
expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any firing.
Has any word been received from the capital?'
"'Take it easy, Barney,' says I. 'I think there's been a change of
plans. There's something more important to talk about. Have you any
money?'
"'I have not,' says O'Connor. 'The last dollar went to pay our hotel
bill yesterday. Did our troops capture the custom-house? There ought be
plenty of government money there.'
"'Segregate your mind from battles,' says I. 'I've been making
inquiries. You're to be shot six months from date for assault and
battery. I'm expecting to receive fifty years at hard labor for
vagrancy. All they furnish you while you're a prisoner is water. You
depend on your friends for food. I'll see what I can do.'
"I went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest of
O'Connor's. I took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the
morning I went down to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then went
back to the jail. O'Connor had a porterhouse steak look in his eye.
"'Barney,' says I, 'I've found a pond full of the finest kind of water.
It's the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the word and
I'll go fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile government
stuff out the window. I'll do anything I can for a friend.'
"'Has it come to this?' says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell. 'Am
I to be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors feel
the weight of an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this.' And then he
comes to the bars and speaks softer. 'Has nothing been heard from Dona
Isabel?' he asks. 'Though every one else in the world fail,' says he, 'I
trust those eyes of hers. She will find a way to effect my release. Do
ye think ye could communicate with her? One word from her - even a rose
would make me sorrow light. But don't let her know except with the
utmost delicacy, Bowers. These high-bred Castilians are sensitive and
proud.'
"'Well said, Barney,' says I. 'You've given me an idea. I'll report
later. Something's got to be pulled off quick, or we'll both starve.'
"I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other side of
the street. As I went past the window of Dona Isabel Antonia Concha
Regalia, out flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.
"The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't
very light; inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window
smoking a black cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was about
thirty-nine, and had never seen a straight front in her life. I sat down
on the arm of her chair, and took the cheroot out of her mouth and stole
a kiss.
"'Hullo, Izzy,' I says. 'Excuse my unconventionality, but I feel like I
have known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?'
"The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long breath.
I thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of air she
only came out with: 'Me likee Americanos.'
"As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be doing
things with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a chair
beside her, and inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I took my
hat and said I must go out for a while.
"'You come back?' says Izzy, in alarm.
"'Me go bring preacher,' says I. 'Come back twenty minutes. We marry
now. How you likee?'
"'Marry to-day?' says Izzy. 'Good!'
"I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He was
a grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot eleven,
pickled. He was playing chess with an india-rubber man in white clothes.
"'Excuse me for interrupting,' says I, 'but can you tell me how a man
could get married quick?'
"The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.
"'I believe I had a license to perform the ceremony myself, a year or
two ago,' he said. 'I'll look, and - '
"I caught hold of his arm.
"'Don't look it up,' says I. 'Marriage is a lottery anyway. I'm willing
to take the risk about the license if you are.'
"The consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma to
come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and begged
to be excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the ceremony.
"That evening Mrs. Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, tamales,
baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I sat in the
rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor plunking at
a guitar and happy, as she should be, as Mrs. William T. B.
"All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I'd forgotten all about O'Connor. I
asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.
"'That big, oogly man,' said Izzy. 'But all right - he your friend.'
"I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket
around to the jail. O'Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face
with a banana peel and said: 'Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel
yet?'
"'Hist!' says I, slipping the rose between the bars. 'She sends you
this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it
to the ruined chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that goat
hash, Barney?'
"O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips. "'This is more to me than all
the food in the world,' says he. 'But the supper was fine. Where did you
raise it?'
"'I've negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut downtown,' I tells
him. 'Rest easy. If there's anything to be done I'll do it.'
"So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook;
and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little
better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of
responsibility for the honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on
I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a
street-car. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was
because I couldn't get away, and I thought it no more than decent to
stay and see O'Connor shot.
"One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour
says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him.
I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the
town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual
cinnamon-colored natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's
cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly
claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a
highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a
few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in a
rich Andalusian brogue:
"'Buenas dias, señor. Yo tengo - yo tengo - '
"'Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers,' says he. 'I spent eight years in your
country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a highball. Lemon
peel, or not?'
"Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell
him about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a
Cumberland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:
"'I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your
friend Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punishing
him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that he
shall be released to-morrow night. You and he will be conveyed on board
the fruit steamer Voyager, bound for New York, which lies in the harbor.
Your passage will be arranged for.'
"'One moment, judge,' says I; 'that revolution - '
"The judge lays back in his chair and howls.
"'Why,' says he presently, 'that was all a little joke fixed up by the
boys around the court-room, and one or two of our cut-ups, and a few
clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The
boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they - what you call
it? - stick Señor O'Connor for his money. It is very funny.'
"'It was,' says I. 'I saw the joke all along. I'll take another
highball, if your Honor don't mind.'
"The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought O'Connor
down to the beach, where I was waiting under a cocoanut-tree.
"'Hist!' says I in his ear: 'Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. Not a
word!'
"They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of table
d'hote salad oil and bone phosphate.
"The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away.
O'Connor leaned on the taffrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed
silently at Guaya - at Buncoville-on-the-Beach.
"He had the red rose in his hand.
"'She will wait,' I heard him say. 'Eyes like hers never deceive. But I
shall see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down forever.'
"'You talk like a sequel,' says I. 'But in Volume II please omit the
light-haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon cell.'
"And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York."
There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the
streets after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.
"Did O'Connor ever go back?" I asked.
"He attained his heart's desire," said Bill. "Can you walk two blocks?
I'll show you."
He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by a
curious-shaped glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on the
tiled walls and supporting columns attested that we were in the Grand
Central station of the subway. Hundreds of people were on the midway
platform.
An uptown express dashed up and halted. It was crowded. There was a
rush for it by a still larger crowd.
Towering above every one there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, athletic
man leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he seized in
either hand and hurled them like manikins toward the open gates of the
train.
Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect
left to him turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the
towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the
ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would
have spoken complaint.
When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe and
admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with
his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved,
crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of
passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the
moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the express
dashed away.
"That's him. Ain't he a wonder?" said Kansas Bill admiringly. "That
tropical country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished
traveller, writer, war correspondent, and playright, Richmond Hobson
Davis, could see him now. O'Connor ought to be dramatized."
[Illustration: O. Henry in Austin, Texas, 1896]
THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR
[O. Henry thought this the best of the Jeff Peters stories,
all the rest of which are included in "The Gentle Grafter,"
except "Cupid à la Carte" in the "Heart of the West." "The
Atavism of John Tom Little Bear" appeared in _Everybody's
Magazine_ for July, 1903.]
I saw a light in Jeff Peters's room over the Red Front Drug Store. I
hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a
man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell
(when he will) of each one.
I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an
orange grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim
on the Yukon. He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, profound
smile on his seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since we
had met, but his greeting was such as men pass from day to day. Time is
Jeff's servant, and the continent is a big lot across which he cuts to
his many roads.
For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which
culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.
"All them tropical races," said Jeff, "could be run out better with
their own jockeys up. The tropical man knows what he wants. All he
wants is a season ticket to the cock-fights and a pair of Western Union
climbers to go up the bread-fruit tree. The Anglo-Saxon man wants him
to learn to conjugate and wear suspenders. He'll be happiest in his own
way."
I was shocked.
"Education, man," I said, "is the watchword. In time they will rise to
our standard of civilization. Look at what education has done for the
Indian."
"O-ho!" sang Jeff, lighting his pipe (which was a good sign). "Yes, the
Indian! I'm looking. I hasten to contemplate the redman as a standard
bearer of progress. He's the same as the other brown boys. You can't
make an Anglo-Saxon of him. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend
John Tom Little Bear bit off the right ear of the arts of culture and
education and spun the teetotum back round to where it was when Columbus
was a little boy? I did not?
"John Tom Little Bear was an educated Cherokee Indian and an old friend
of mine when I was in the Territories. He was a graduate of one of them
Eastern football colleges that have been so successful in teaching the
Indian to use the gridiron instead of burning his victims at the stake.
As an Anglo-Saxon, John Tom was copper-colored in spots. As an Indian,
he was one of the whitest men I ever knew. As a Cherokee, he was a
gentleman on the first ballot. As a ward of the nation, he was mighty
hard to carry at the primaries.
"John Tom and me got together and began to make medicine - how to get up
some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as
not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger
corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it
grow, as all respectable capitalists do.
"So we figured out a proposition which seems to be as honorable as a
gold mine prospectus and as profitable as a church raffle. And inside
of thirty days you find us swarming into Kansas with a pair of fluent
horses and a red camping wagon on the European plan. John Tom is Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough, the famous Indian medicine man and Samaritan Sachem
of the Seven Tribes. Mr. Peters is business manager and half owner. We
needed a third man, so we looked around and found J. Conyngham Binkly
leaning against the want column of a newspaper. This Binkly has a
disease for Shakespearian rôles, and an hallucination about a 200
nights' run on the New York stage. But he confesses that he never could
earn the butter to spread on his William S. rôles, so he is willing to
drop to the ordinary baker's kind, and be satisfied with a 200-mile
run behind the medicine ponies. Besides Richard III, he could do
twenty-seven coon songs and banjo specialties, and was willing to cook,
and curry the horses. We carried a fine line of excuses for taking
money. One was a magic soap for removing grease spots and quarters from
clothes. One was a Sum-wah-tah, the great Indian Remedy made from a
prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favorite
medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein, bottlers,
Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the
Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction.
Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins,
a gold tooth, and 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' all wrapped up in a
genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady
by Mr. Peters for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly
entertains us in a three-minute round with the banjo.
"'Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the State,
determined to remove all doubt as to why 'twas called bleeding Kansas.
John Tom Little Bear, in full Indian chief's costume, drew crowds away
from the parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones.
While at the football college in the East he had acquired quantities
of rhetoric and the art of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes,
and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the farmers,
eloquent, about chilblains and hyperæsthesia of the cranium, Jeff
couldn't hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough for 'em.
"One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of
Salina. We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent.
Sometimes we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to
fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. 'Twas
about ten o'clock, and we'd just got in from a street performance. I was
in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day's profits. John Tom
hadn't taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the campfire
minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he
finished his hair-raising scene with the trained horses.
"All at once out of dark bushes comes a pop like a firecracker, and John
Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has
dented itself against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the
direction of the fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a
kid about nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little
nickel-mounted rifle in his hand about as big as a fountain-pen.
"'Here, you pappoose,' says John Tom, 'what are you gunning for with
that howitzer? You might hit somebody in the eye. Come out, Jeff, and
mind the steak. Don't let it burn, while I investigate this demon with
the pea shooter.'
"'Cowardly redskin,' says the kid like he was quoting from a favorite
author. 'Dare to burn me at the stake and the paleface will sweep you
from the prairies like - like everything. Now, you lemme go, or I'll tell
mamma.'
"John Tom plants the kid on a camp-stool, and sits down by him. 'Now,
tell the big chief,' he says, 'why you try to shoot pellets into your
Uncle John's system. Didn't you know it was loaded?'
"'Are you a Indian?' asks the kid, looking up cute as you please at John
Tom's buckskin and eagle feathers.
"'I am,' says John Tom. 'Well, then, that's why,' answers the boy,
swinging his feet. I nearly let the steak burn watching the nerve of
that youngster.
"'O-ho!' says John Tom, 'I see. You're the Boy Avenger. And you've
sworn to rid the continent of the savage redman. Is that about the way
of it, son?'
"The kid halfway nodded his head. And then he looked glum. 'Twas
indecent to wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave had
fallen before his parlor-rifle.
"'Now, tell us where your wigwam is, pappoose,' says John Tom - 'where
you live? Your mamma will be worrying about you being out so late. Tell
me, and I'll take you home.'
"The kid grins. 'I guess not,' he says. 'I live thousands and thousands
of miles over there.' He gyrated his hand toward the horizon. 'I come on
the train,' he says, 'by myself. I got off here because the conductor
said my ticket had ex-pirated.' He looks at John Tom with sudden
suspicion 'I bet you ain't a Indian,' he says. 'You don't talk like a
Indian. You look like one, but all a Indian can say is "heap good" and
"paleface die." Say, I bet you are one of them make-believe Indians that
sell medicine on the streets. I saw one once in Quincy.'
"'You never mind,' says John Tom, 'whether I'm a cigar-sign or a Tammany
cartoon. The question before the council is what's to be done with you.
You've run away from home. You've been reading Howells. You've disgraced
the profession of boy avengers by trying to shoot a tame Indian, and
never saying: "Die, dog of a redskin! You have crossed the path of the
Boy Avenger nineteen times too often." What do you mean by it?'
"The kid thought for a minute. 'I guess I made a mistake,' he says. 'I
ought to have gone farther west. They find 'em wild out there in the
canyons.' He holds out his hand to John Tom, the little rascal. 'Please
excuse me, sir,' says he, 'for shooting at you. I hope it didn't hurt
you. But you ought to be more careful. When a scout sees a Indian in his
war-dress, his rifle must speak.' Little Bear give a big laugh with a
whoop at the end of it, and swings the kid ten feet high and sets him on
his shoulder, and the runaway fingers the fringe and the eagle feathers
and is full of the joy the white man knows when he dangles his heels
against an inferior race. It is plain that Little Bear and that kid are
chums from that on. The little renegade has already smoked the pipe of
peace with the savage; and you can see in his eye that he is figuring on
a tomahawk and a pair of moccasins, children's size.
"We have supper in the tent. The youngster looks upon me and the
Professor as ordinary braves, only intended as a background to the camp
scene. When he is seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the
table sawing his neck, and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear
calls for his name. 'Roy,' says the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it.
But when the rest of it and his post-office address is referred to, he
shakes his head. 'I guess not,' he says. 'You'll send me back. I want to
stay with you. I like this camping out. At home, we fellows had a camp
in our back yard. They called me Roy, the Red Wolf! I guess that'll do
for a name. Gimme another piece of beefsteak, please.'
"We had to keep that kid. We knew there was a hullabaloo about him
somewheres, and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and the
Chief of Police were hot after finding his trail, but not another word
would he tell us. In two days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine
outfit, and all of us had a sneaking hope that his owners wouldn't turn
up. When the red wagon was doing business he was in it, and passed up
the bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and satisfied as a prince that's
abjured a two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-dollar parvenuess. Once
John Tom asked him something about his papa. 'I ain't got any papa,' he
says. 'He runned away and left us. He made my mamma cry. Aunt Lucy says
he's a shape.' 'A what?' somebody asks him. 'A shape,' says the kid;
'some kind of a shape - lemme see - oh, yes, a feendenuman shape. I don't
know what it means.' John Tom was for putting our brand on him, and
dressing him up like a little chief, with wampum and beads, but I vetoes
it. 'Somebody's lost that kid, is my view of it, and they may want him.
You let me try him with a few stratagems, and see if I can't get a look
at his visiting-card.'
"So that night I goes up to Mr. Roy Blank by the camp-fire, and looks at
him contemptuous and scornful. 'Snickenwitzel!' says I, like the word
made me sick; 'Snickenwitzel! Bah! Before I'd be named Snickenwitzel!'
"'What's the matter with you, Jeff?' says the kid, opening his eyes
wide.
"'Snickenwitzel!' I repeats, and I spat, the word out. 'I saw a man
to-day from your town, and he told me your name. I'm not surprised you
was ashamed to tell it. Snickenwitzel! Whew!'
"'Ah, here, now,' says the boy, indignant and wriggling all over,
'what's the matter with you? That ain't my name. It's Conyers. What's
the matter with you?'
"'And that's not the worst of it,' I went on quick, keeping him hot
and not giving him time to think. 'We thought you was from a nice,
well-to-do family. Here's Mr. Little Bear, a chief of the Cherokees,
entitled to wear nine otter tails on his Sunday blanket, and Professor
Binkly, who plays Shakespeare and the banjo, and me, that's got hundreds
of dollars in that black tin box in the wagon, and we've got to be
careful about the company we keep. That man tells me your folks live
'way down in little old Hencoop Alley, where there are no sidewalks, and
the goats eat off the table with you.'
"That kid was almost crying now. ''Taint so,' he splutters. 'He - he
don't know what he's talking about. We live on Poplar Av'noo. I don't
'sociate with goats. What's the matter with you?'
"'Poplar Avenue,' says I, sarcastic. 'Poplar Avenue! That's a street to
live on! It only runs two blocks and then falls off a bluff. You can
throw a keg of nails the whole length of it. Don't talk to me about
Poplar Avenue.'
"'It's - it's miles long,' says the kid. 'Our number's 862 and there's
lots of houses after that. What's the matter with - aw, you make me
tired, Jeff.'
"'Well, well, now,' says I. 'I guess that man made a mistake. Maybe it
was some other boy he was talking about. If I catch him I'll teach him
to go around slandering people.' And after supper I goes up town and
telegraphs to Mrs. Conyers, 862 Poplar Avenue, Quincy, Ill., that the
kid is safe and sassy with us, and will be held for further orders. In
two hours an answer comes to hold him tight, and she'll start for him by
next train.
"The next train was due at 6 P.M. the next day, and me and John Tom was
at the depot with the kid. You might scour the plains in vain for the
big Chief Wish-Heap-Dough. In his place is Mr. Little Bear in the human
habiliments of the Anglo-Saxon sect; and the leather of his shoes is
patented and the loop of his necktie is copyrighted. For these things
John Tom had grafted on him at college along with metaphysics and the
knockout guard for the low tackle. But for his complexion, which is
some yellowish, and the black mop of his straight hair, you might
have thought here was an ordinary man out of the city directory that
subscribes for magazines and pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt-sleeves
of evenings.
"Then the train rolled in, and a little woman in a gray dress, with sort
of illuminating hair, slides off and looks around quick. And the Boy
Avenger sees her, and yells 'Mamma,' and she cries 'O!' and they meet
in a clinch, and now the pesky redskins can come forth from their caves
on the plains without fear any more of the rifle of Roy, the Red Wolf.
Mrs. Conyers comes up and thanks me an' John Tom without the usual
extremities you always look for in a woman. She says just enough, in
a way to convince, and there is no incidental music by the orchestra.
I made a few illiterate requisitions upon the art of conversation, at
which the lady smiles friendly, as if she had known me a week. And then
Mr. Little Bear adorns the atmosphere with the various idioms into which
education can fracture the wind of speech. I could see the kid's mother
didn't quite place John Tom; but it seemed she was apprised in his
dialects, and she played up to his lead in the science of making three
words do the work of one.
"That kid introduced us, with some footnotes and explanations that made
things plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and punched
us in the back, and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John Tom,
mamma,' says he. 'He's a Indian. He sells medicine in a red wagon. I
shot him, but he wasn't wild. The other one's Jeff. He's a fakir, too.
Come on and see the camp where we live, won't you, mamma?'
"It is plain to see that the life of the woman is in that boy. She has
got him again where her arms can gather him, and that's enough. She's
ready to do anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second
and takes another look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about
John Tom, 'Seems to be a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr.
Peters she disposes of as follows: 'No ladies' man, but a man who knows
a lady.'
"So we all rambled down to the camp as neighborly as coming from a
wake. And there she inspects the wagon and pats the place with her hand
where the kid used to sleep, and dabs around her eyewinkers with her
handkerchief. And Professor Binkly gives us 'Trovatore' on one string of
the banjo, and is about to slide off into Hamlet's monologue when one of
the horses gets tangled in his rope and he must go look after him, and
says something about 'foiled again.'
"When it got dark me and John Tom walked back up to the Corn Exchange
Hotel, and the four of us had supper there. I think the trouble started
at that supper, for then was when Mr. Little Bear made an intellectual
balloon ascension. I held on to the tablecloth, and listened to him
soar. That redman, if I could judge, had the gift of information. He
took language, and did with it all a Roman can do with macaroni. His
vocal remarks was all embroidered over with the most scholarly verbs and
prefixes. And his syllables was smooth, and fitted nicely to the joints
of his idea. I thought I'd heard him talk before, but I hadn't. And it
wasn't the size of his words, but the way they come; and 'twasn't his
subjects, for he spoke of common things like cathedrals and football
and poems and catarrh and souls and freight rates and sculpture. Mrs.
Conyers understood his accents, and the elegant sounds went back and
forth between 'em. And now and then Jefferson D. Peters would intervene
a few shop-worn, senseless words to have the butter passed or another
leg of the chicken.
"Yes, John Tom Little Bear appeared to be inveigled some in his bosom
about that Mrs. Conyers. She was of the kind that pleases. She had the
good looks and more, I'll tell you. You take one of these cloak models
in a big store. They strike you as being on the impersonal system.
They are adapted for the eye. What they run to is inches around and
complexion, and the art of fanning the delusion that the sealskin would
look just as well on the lady with the warts and the pocket-book. Now,
if one of them models was off duty, and you took it, and it would say
'Charlie' when you pressed it, and sit up at the table, why, then you
would have something similar to Mrs. Conyers. I could see how John Tom
could resist any inclination to hate that white squaw.
"The lady and the kid stayed at the hotel. In the morning, they say,
they will start for home. Me and Little Bear left at eight o'clock, and
sold Indian Remedy on the courthouse square till nine. He leaves me
and the Professor to drive down to camp, while he stays up town. I am
not enamored with that plan, for it shows John Tom is uneasy in his
composures, and that leads to firewater, and sometimes to the green corn
dance and costs. Not often does Chief Wish-Heap-Dough get busy with the
firewater, but whenever he does there is heap much doing in the lodges
of the palefaces who wear blue and carry the club.
"At half-past nine Professor Binkly is rolled in his quilt snoring in
blank verse, and I am sitting by the fire listening to the frogs. Mr.
Little Bear slides into camp and sits down against a tree. There is no
symptoms of firewater.
"'Jeff,' says he, after a long time, 'a little boy came West to hunt
Indians.'
"'Well, then?' says I, for I wasn't thinking as he was.
"'And he bagged one,' says John Tom, 'and 'twas not with a gun, and he
never had on a velveteen suit of clothes in his life.' And then I began
to catch his smoke.
"'I know it,' says I. 'And I'll bet you his pictures are on valentines,
and fool men are his game, red and white.'
"'You win on the red,' says John Tom, calm. 'Jeff, for how many ponies
do you think I could buy Mrs. Conyers?'
"'Scandalous talk!' I replies. ''Tis not a paleface custom.' John Tom
laughs loud and bites into a cigar. 'No,' he answers; ''tis the savage