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

I’m short. Call a consultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.’

“ ‘Yank,’ says Doc Millikin, ‘I’ve a good notion to help you. There’s only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty; and that’s the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation that ever existed.’

“Just as you said to me I says to Doc; ‘Why, the Confederacy ain’t a nation. It’s been absolved forty years ago.’

“ ‘That’s a campaign lie,’ says Doc. ‘She’s running along as solid as the Roman Empire. She’s the only hope you’ve got. Now, you, being a Yank, have got to go through with some preliminary obsequies before you can get official aid. You’ve got to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government. Then I’ll guarantee she does all she can for you. What do you say, Yank?⁠—it’s your last chance.’

“ ‘If you’re fooling with me, Doc,’ I answers, ‘you’re no better than the United States. But as you say it’s the last chance, hurry up and swear me. I always did like corn whisky and ’possum anyhow. I believe I’m half Southerner by nature. I’m willing to try the Klu-klux in place of the khaki. Get brisk.’

“Doc Millikin thinks awhile, and then he offers me this oath of allegiance to take without any kind of a chaser:

“ ‘I, Barnard O’Keefe, Yank, being of sound body but a Republican mind, hereby swear to transfer my fealty, respect, and allegiance to the Confederate States of America, and the government thereof in consideration of said government, through its official acts and powers, obtaining my freedom and release from confinement and sentence of death brought about by the exuberance of my Irish proclivities and my general pizenness as a Yank.’

“I repeated these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of hocus-pocus; and I don’t believe any life-insurance company in the world would have issued me a policy on the strength of ’em.

“Doc went away saying he would communicate with his government immediately.

“Say⁠—you can imagine how I felt⁠—me to be shot in two weeks and my only hope for help being in a government that’s been dead so long that it isn’t even remembered except on Decoration Day and when Joe Wheeler signs the voucher for his paycheck. But it was all there was in sight; and somehow I thought Doc Millikin had something up his old alpaca sleeve that wasn’t all foolishness.

“Around to the jail comes old Doc again in about a week. I was flea-bitten, a mite sarcastic, and fundamentally hungry.

“ ‘Any Confederate ironclads in the offing?’ I asks. ‘Do you notice any sounds resembling the approach of Jeb Stewart’s cavalry overland or Stonewall Jackson sneaking up in the rear? If you do, I wish you’d say so.’

“ ‘It’s too soon yet for help to come,’ says Doc.

“ ‘The sooner the better,’ says I. ‘I don’t care if it gets in fully fifteen minutes before I am shot; and if you happen to lay eyes on Beauregard or Albert Sidney Johnston or any of the relief corps, wigwag ’em to hike along.’

“ ‘There’s been no answer received yet,’ says Doc.

“ ‘Don’t forget,’ says I, ‘that there’s only four days more. I don’t know how you propose to work this thing, Doc,’ I says to him; ‘but it seems to me I’d sleep better if you had got a government that was alive and on the map⁠—like Afghanistan or Great Britain, or old man Kruger’s kingdom, to take this matter up. I don’t mean any disrespect to your Confederate States, but I can’t help feeling that my chances of being pulled out of this scrape was decidedly weakened when General Lee surrendered.’

“ ‘It’s your only chance,’ said Doc; ‘don’t quarrel with it. What did your own country do for you?’

“It was only two days before the morning I was to be shot, when Doc Millikin came around again.

“ ‘All right, Yank,’ says he. ‘Help’s come. The Confederate States of America is going to apply for your release. The representatives of the government arrived on a fruit-steamer last night.’

“ ‘Bully!’ says I⁠—‘bully for you, Doc! I suppose it’s marines with a Gatling. I’m going to love your country all I can for this.’

“ ‘Negotiations,’ says old Doc, ‘will be opened between the two governments at once. You will know later today if they are successful.’

“About four in the afternoon a soldier in red trousers brings a paper round to the jail, and they unlocks the door and I walks out. The guard at the door bows and I bows, and I steps into the grass and wades around to Doc Millikin’s shack.

“Doc was sitting in his hammock playing ‘Dixie,’ soft and low and out of tune, on his flute. I interrupted him at ‘Look away! look away!’ and shook his hand for five minutes.

“ ‘I never thought,’ says Doc, taking a chew fretfully, ‘that I’d ever try to save any blame Yank’s life. But, Mr. O’Keefe, I don’t see but what you are entitled to be considered part human, anyhow. I never thought Yanks had any of the rudiments of decorum and laudability about them. I reckon I might have been too aggregative in my tabulation. But it ain’t me you want to thank⁠—it’s the Confederate States of America.’

“ ‘And I’m much obliged to ’em,’ says I. ‘It’s a poor man that wouldn’t be patriotic with a country that’s saved his life. I’ll drink to the Stars and Bars whenever there’s a flagstaff and a glass convenient. But where,’ says I, ‘are the rescuing troops? If there was a gun fired or a shell burst, I didn’t hear it.’

“Doc Millikin raises up and points out the window with his flute at the banana-steamer loading with fruit.

“ ‘Yank,’ says he, ‘there’s a steamer that’s going to sail in the morning. If I was you, I’d sail on it. The Confederate Government’s done all it can for you. There wasn’t a gun fired. The negotiations were carried on secretly between the two nations by the purser of that steamer. I got him to do