Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

Barely did I my life bring away. Carrambos! what a devil’s animal was that mule, señor! Like ships in one storm was I dashed about. The skin on myself was ripped away with the thorns and vines. Upon the bark of a hundred trees did that beast of the infernal bump, and cause outrage to the legs of mine. In the night to Port Barrios I came. I dispossess myself of that mountain of mule and hasten along the water shore. I find a little boat to be tied. I launch myself and row to the steamer. I cannot see any mans on board, so I climbed one rope which hang at the side. I then myself hide in the bananas. Surely, I say, if the ship captains view me, they shall throw me again to those Guatemala. Those things are not good. Guatemala will shoot General De Vega. Therefore, I am hide and remain silent. Life itself is glorious. Liberty, it is pretty good; but so good as life I do not think.’

“Three days, as I said, was the trip to New Orleans. The general man and me got to be cronies of the deepest dye. Bananas we ate until they were distasteful to the sight and an eyesore to the palate, but to bananas alone was the bill of fare reduced. At night I crawls out, careful, on the lower deck, and gets a bucket of fresh water.

“That General De Vega was a man inhabited by an engorgement of words and sentences. He added to the monotony of the voyage by divestin’ himself of conversation. He believed I was a revolutionist of his own party, there bein’, as he told me, a good many Americans and other foreigners in its ranks. ’Twas a braggart and a conceited little gabbler it was, though he considered himself a hero. ’Twas on himself he wasted all his regrets at the failin’ of his plot. Not a word did the little balloon have to say about the other misbehavin’ idiots that had been shot, or run themselves to death in his revolution.

“The second day out he was feelin’ pretty braggy and uppish for a stowed-away conspirator that owed his existence to a mule and stolen bananas. He was tellin’ me about the great railroad he had been buildin’, and he relates what he calls a comic incident about a fool Irishman he inveigled from New Orleans to sling a pick on his little morgue of a narrow-gauge line. ’Twas sorrowful to hear the little, dirty general tell the opprobrious story of how he put salt upon the tail of that reckless and silly bird, Clancy. Laugh, he did, hearty and long. He shook with laughin’, the black-faced rebel and outcast, standin’ neck-deep in bananas, without friends or country.

“ ‘Ah, señor,’ he snickers, ‘to the death you would have laughed at that drollest Irish. I say to him: “Strong, big mans is need very much in Guatemala.” “I will blows strike for your down-pressed country,” he say. “That shall you do,” I tell him. Ah! it was an Irish so comic. He sees one box break upon the wharf that contain for the guard a few gun. He think there is gun in all the box. But that is all pickaxe. Yes. Ah! señor, could you the face of that Irish have seen when they set him to the work!’

“ ’Twas thus the ex-boss of the employment bureau contributed to the tedium of the trip with merry jests and anecdote. But now and then he would weep upon the bananas and make oration about the lost cause of liberty and the mule.

“ ’Twas a pleasant sound when the steamer bumped against the pier in New Orleans. Pretty soon we heard the pat-a-pat of hundreds of bare feet, and the Dago gang that unloads the fruit jumped on the deck and down into the hold. Me and the general worked a while at passin’ up the bunches, and they thought we were part of the gang. After about an hour we managed to slip off the steamer onto the wharf.

“ ’Twas a great honour on the hands of an obscure Clancy, havin’ the entertainment of the representative of a great foreign filibusterin’ power. I first bought for the general and myself many long drinks and things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at my side, leavin’ all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette Square and set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had bought for him, and he humped himself down on the seat like a little, fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt and dust. Praise to the mule, his clothes is mostly strings and flaps. Yes, the looks of the general man is agreeable to Clancy.

“I ask him, delicate, if, by any chance, he brought away anybody’s money with him from Guatemala. He sighs and bumps his shoulders against the bench. Not a cent. All right. Maybe, he tells me, some of his friends in the tropic outfit will send him funds later. The general was as clear a case of no visible means as I ever saw.

“I told him not to move from the bench, and then I went up to the corner of Poydras and Carondelet. Along there is O’Hara’s beat. In five minutes along comes O’Hara, a big, fine man, red-faced, with shinin’ buttons, swingin’ his club. ’Twould be a fine thing for Guatemala to move into O’Hara’s precinct. ’Twould be a fine bit of recreation for Danny to suppress revolutions and uprisin’s once or twice a week with his club.

“ ‘Is 5046 workin’ yet, Danny?’ says I, walkin’ up to him.

“ ‘Overtime,’ says O’Hara, lookin’ over me suspicious. ‘Want some of it?’

“Fifty-forty-six is the celebrated city ordinance authorizin’ arrest, conviction and imprisonment of persons that succeed in concealin’