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

you understand? You’re to be stood up against a ’dobe wall and shot in two or three weeks⁠—three, I think, they said.’

“ ‘Would you mind asking ’em which?’ says I. ‘A week don’t amount to much after you’re dead, but it seems a real nice long spell while you are alive.’

“ ‘It’s two weeks,’ says the interpreter, after inquiring in Spanish of the court. ‘Shall I ask ’em again?’

“ ‘Let be,’ says I. ‘Let’s have a stationary verdict. If I keep on appealing this way they’ll have me shot about ten days before I was captured. No, I haven’t got any fine-cut.’

“They sends me over to the calaboza with a detachment of coloured postal-telegraph boys carrying Enfield rifles, and I am locked up in a kind of brick bakery. The temperature in there was just about the kind mentioned in the cooking recipes that call for a quick oven.

“Then I gives a silver dollar to one of the guards to send for the United States consul. He comes around in pajamas, with a pair of glasses on his nose and a dozen or two inside of him.

“ ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks,’ says I. ‘And although I’ve made a memorandum of it, I don’t seem to get it off my mind. You want to call up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all worked up about it. Have ’em send the Kentucky and the Kearsarge and the Oregon down right away. That’ll be about enough battleships; but it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of cruisers and a torpedo-boat destroyer, too. And⁠—say, if Dewey isn’t busy, better have him come along on the fastest one of the fleet.’

“ ‘Now, see here, O’Keefe,’ says the consul, getting the best of a hiccup, ‘what do you want to bother the State Department about this matter for?’

“ ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ says I; ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks. Did you think I said I was going to a lawn-party? And it wouldn’t hurt of Roosevelt could get the Japs to send down the Yellowyamtiskookum or the Ogotosingsing or some other first-class cruisers to help. It would make me feel safer.’

“ ‘Now, what you want,’ says the consul, ‘is not to get excited. I’ll send you over some chewing tobacco and some banana fritters when I go back. The United States can’t interfere in this. You know you were caught insurging against the government, and you’re subject to the laws of this country. To tell the truth, I’ve had an intimation from the State Department⁠—unofficially, of course⁠—that whenever a soldier of fortune demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of revolutionary katzenjammer, I should cut the cable, give him all the tobacco he wants, and after he’s shot take his clothes, if they fit me, for part payment of my salary.’

“ ‘Consul,’ says I to him, ‘this is a serious question. You are representing Uncle Sam. This ain’t any little international tomfoolery, like a universal peace congress or the christening of the Shamrock IV. I’m an American citizen and I demand protection. I demand the Mosquito fleet, and Schley, and the Atlantic squadron, and Bob Evans, and General E. Byrd Grubb, and two or three protocols. What are you going to do about it?’

“ ‘Nothing doing,’ says the consul.

“ ‘Be off with you, then,’ says I, out of patience with him, ‘and send me Doc Millikin. Ask Doc to come and see me.’

“Doc comes and looks through the bars at me, surrounded by dirty soldiers, with even my shoes and canteen confiscated, and he looks mightily pleased.

“ ‘Hello, Yank,’ says he, ‘getting a little taste of Johnson’s Island, now, ain’t ye?’

“ ‘Doc,’ says I, ‘I’ve just had an interview with the U.S. consul. I gather from his remarks that I might just as well have been caught selling suspenders in Kishineff under the name of Rosenstein as to be in my present condition. It seems that the only maritime aid I am to receive from the United States is some navy-plug to chew. Doc,’ says I, ‘can’t you suspend hostility on the slavery question long enough to do something for me?’

“ ‘It ain’t been my habit,’ Doc Millikin answers, ‘to do any painless dentistry when I find a Yank cutting an eyetooth. So the Stars and Stripes ain’t lending any marines to shell the huts of the Colombian cannibals, hey? Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light the star-spangled banner has fluked in the fight? What’s the matter with the War Department, hey? It’s a great thing to be a citizen of a gold-standard nation, ain’t it?’

“ ‘Rub it in, Doc, all you want,’ says I. ‘I guess we’re weak on foreign policy.’

“ ‘For a Yank,’ says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild, ‘you ain’t so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I would have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone back on you, you have to come to the old doctor whose cotton you burned and whose mules who stole and whose niggers you freed to help you. Ain’t that so, Yank?’

“ ‘It is,’ says I heartily, ‘and let’s have a diagnosis of the case right away, for in two weeks’ time all you can do is to hold an autopsy and I don’t want to be amputated if I can help it.’

“ ‘Now,’ says Doc, businesslike, ‘it’s easy enough for you to get out of this scrape. Money’ll do it. You’ve got to pay a long string of ’em from General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding your door. About $10,000 will do the trick. Have you got the money?’

“ ‘Me?’ says I. ‘I’ve got one Chili dollar, two real pieces, and a medio.’

“ ‘Then if you’ve any last words, utter ’em,’ says that old reb. ‘The roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the noise of a requiem.’

“ ‘Change the treatment,’ says I. ‘I admit that