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

Sam⁠—I mean the lady you married, while she was teaching school at Prairie View. But you was the lucky man. How is Missis Telfair?”

“S-h-h-h!” said the dogman, signalling the waiter; “give it a name.”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“She’s well,” he continued, after his chaser. “She refused to live anywhere but in New York, where she came from. We live in a flat. Every evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It’s Marcella’s pet. There never were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one another like me and that dog does. His name’s Lovekins. Marcella dresses for dinner while we’re out. We eat tabble dote. Ever try one of them, Jim?”

“No, I never,” said Jim. “I seen the signs, but I thought they said ‘table de hole.’ I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it taste?”

“If you’re going to be in the city for awhile we will⁠—”

“No, sir-ee. I’m starting for home this evening on the 7:25. Like to stay longer, but I can’t.”

“I’ll walk down to the ferry with you,” said the dogman.

The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had sunk into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.

“If that’s your dog,” said Jim, when they were on the street again, “what’s to hinder you from running that habeas corpus you’ve got around his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?”

“I’d never dare to,” said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. “He sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to Marcella if I look at him. Some night, Jim, I’m going to get even with that dog. I’ve made up my mind to do it. I’m going to creep over with a knife and cut a hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him. See if I don’t do it!”

“You ain’t yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain’t what you was once. I don’t know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen you stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass faucet out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the wildest steer on Little Powder in 39½.”

“I did, didn’t I?” said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye. “But that was before I was dogmatized.”

“Does Misses Telfair⁠—” began Jim.

“Hush!” said the dogman. “Here’s another café.”

They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“I thought about you,” said Jim, “when I bought that wild land. I wished you was out there to help me with the stock.”

“Last Tuesday,” said the dogman, “he bit me on the ankle because I asked for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream.”

“You’d like Prairie View now,” said Jim. “The boys from the roundups for fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in sixteen miles of the town. There’s a straight forty miles of wire on one side of it.”

“You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom,” said the dogman, “and you pass through the parlour to get to the bath room, and you back out through the dining-room to get into the bedroom so you can turn around and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep, and I have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma.”

“Don’t Missis Telfair⁠—” began Jim.

“Oh, shut up!” said the dogman. “What is it this time?”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“Well, I’ll be racking along down toward the ferry,” said the other.

“Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!” shouted the dogman, with a new note in his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them, with an angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.

At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through swinging doors.

“Last chance,” said he. “Speak up.”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“I don’t know,” said the ranchman, “where I’ll find the man I want to take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know something about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted your eye over, Sam. Now if you was⁠—”

“Speaking of hydrophobia,” said the dogman, “the other night he chewed a piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella’s arm. ‘It ought to be cauterized,’ says Marcella, and I was thinking so myself. I telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to me: ‘Help me hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I hope he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.’ Now what do you think of that?”

“Does Missis Telfair⁠—” began Jim.

“Oh, drop it,” said the dogman. “Come again!”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket window.

Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the air was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged, lubberly, bowlegged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street alone.

“Ticket to Denver,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket.

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds