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

Keogh left, feeling that he could be of no use. Johnny laid a handful of cigars on a table and stretched himself in a steamer chair. When the sudden daylight broke, silvering the harbor ripples, he was still sitting there. Then he got up, whistling a little tune, and took his bath.

At nine o’clock he walked down to the dingy little cable office and hung for half an hour over a blank. The result of his application was the following message which he had transmitted at a cost of $33:

To Pinkney Dawson

Dalesburg, Miss.

Draft for $100 comes to you next mail. Ship me immediately 500 pounds stiff, dry cockleburrs. New use here in arts. Market price twenty cents pound. Further orders likely. Rush.

Within three or four days a suitable building was secured for Mr. Hemstetter’s store on the main street of the town which ran parallel to the beach. The rent was moderate, and the stock of shoes made a fine showing on the shelves in their neat, white boxes.

Johnny’s friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keogh strolled into the store about once every hour, and bought a pair of shoes. After he had purchased a pair each of extension soles, congress gaiters, button kids, gum boots, suede slippers, low-quartered calfs and dancing pumps, he sought out Johnny to find if there were any more kinds he could call for. The other English-speaking residents also played their parts nobly, by buying often and liberallly. Keogh marshalled them and made them distribute their patronage, thus keeping up a fair run of trade for about a week. Mr. Hemstetter was gratified with the business done thus far, but expressed some surprise that the natives were so backward with their custom.

“Oh, they’re awfully shy,” explained Johnny. “They’ll get the habit pretty soon and you’ll do some lively business with Maduro gang.”

Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought him a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny’s influence with the customhouse people was sufficiently strong for him to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection. He had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the backroom. That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of the cockleburrs. They were the ripe August product as hard as filberts and bristling with spines and tough and sharp as needles. Johnny whistled his same little tune again, and went to find Billy Keogh.

Later in the night, when Vibora was steeped in slumber, he and Billy went forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging like balloons. All up and down the main street they went, sowing the sharp burrs carefully in the sand, along every footpath, upon every yard of grass between the silent houses. No place where the foot of man, woman, or child might fall was slighted. And then they took the side streets and byways, missing none. Many trips they made to and from the prickly hoard. They sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing tares and with the perseverance of Paul planting. And then, late in the night, they laid themselves down to sleep calmly as great generals do after laying their plans in accordance with the revised tactics.

With the first blush of dawn the purveyors of fruits and meats arranged their wares in and around the little market-house. Next from every ’dobe and palm hut and grass-thatched shack and dim patio glided women⁠—black women, brown women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. They were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava, plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Décoletté they were and bare-armed and barefooted, with a single skirt reaching below the knee. Stolid and ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorways into the narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets.

The first to emerge uttered ambiguous squeals, and raised one foot quickly. Another step and they sat down, with shrill cries of alarm, to pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon the feet. “Que picadores diablos!” they screeched to one another across the narrow ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but there they were also stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls. They plumped down in the grass, and added their lamentations to those of their sisters in the sandy paths. All through the town was heard the plaint of feminine jabber. The vendors in the market wondered why no customers came.

Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to hop, to dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood stranded and foolish, or stooped to pluck at the scourge that attacked their feet and ankles. Some loudly proclaimed the pest to be poisonous insects of an unknown species.

And then the children ran out for their morning romp. And now to the uproar was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburred childhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh victims.

Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her honored doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread from the panaderia across the street. She was clad in a skirt of flowered yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple mantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were bare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny’s burrs. Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as a wildcat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled⁠—ay, like a beast of the fields she crawled back to her honorable doorsill.

Don Señor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, Juez de la Paz, weighing 20 stone, attempted to