Short Fiction, O. Henry [best books to read for teens TXT] 📗

morning? He killed your brother Lester⁠—shot him in the co’t-house yard.”

I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said:

“He did, did he? He killed Lester?”

“The same,” said Simmons. “And he did more. He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart the information.”

“I am much obliged, Jim,” said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth. “Yes, I’m glad you rode out. Yes, I’m right glad.”

“Well, I’ll be ridin’ back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store don’t know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back.”

“Shot him in the back?”

“Yes, while he was hitchin’ his hoss.”

“I’m much obliged, Jim.”

“I kind of thought you’d like to know as soon as you could.”

“Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?”

“Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store.”

“And you say⁠—”

“Yes, Sam. Everybody seen ’em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin’ the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They’ll be hard to overtake right away.”

“And which⁠—”

“I was goin’ on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there’s no tellin’ which forks they’ll take⁠—you know that.”

“All right, Jim; much obliged.”

“You’re welcome, Sam.”

Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty yards away he reined up and called back:

“You don’t want no⁠—assistance, as you might say?”

“Not any, thanks.”

“I didn’t think you would. Well, so long!”

Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocketknife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.” The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling melodramas demanded instead.

“I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the cook has any cold beans left over!”

He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam’s private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling “The Cowboy’s Lament” abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.

Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West.

It yet lacked two hours to suppertime; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.

“Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam. “Eat hearty.”

I had a sudden suspicion.

“Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked.

“One, two⁠—one, two,” said Sam. “You can count, can’t you?”

His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice. It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat more beans.

In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum’s steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.

I knew that Ben Tatum’s card to play was flight⁠—flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead.

During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some subjects too big even for the words in the “Unabridged.” Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place⁠—laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes.

Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their meal, but looked around at times uneasily.

The girl was dressed in brown⁠—one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere.

There they were⁠—the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were⁠—the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary