O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 by Various

V >> Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920

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That, however, is a thing of the past. I always did detest a
welcher,
and if this money is going to a woman to whom it will be manna from
heaven--to use your words--I am satisfied. Convey to her my
personal
congratulations, gratitude and best wishes.

Cordially yours,

C. V. D. WILEY.

"Good old Chris!" muttered the sheriff. "He's rich because he's white."
He thrust both check and letter back into the long envelope and
headed for the office of our local daily paper at a smart pace.

The earning of five thousand dollars reward-money by Cora McBride
made an epochal news-item, and in that night's paper we headlined it
accordingly--not omitting proper mention of the sheriff and giving
him appropriate credit.

Having so started the announcement permeating through the community,
the old man employed the office phone and called the local
livery-stable. He ordered a rig in which he might drive at once to
the McBride house in the northern part of town.

"But half that money ought to be yourn!" protested the proprietor of
the stable as the sheriff helped him "gear up the horse" a few
minutes later.

"Under the circumstances, Joseph, can you see me takin' it? No; it
ain't in me to horn in for no rake-off on one o' the Lord's miracles."

The old man climbed into the sleigh, took the reins from the
liveryman and started the horse from the livery yard.

Two weeks ago--on Monday, the twenty-seventh of the past October--the
telephone-bell rang sharply in our newspaper-office a few moments
before the paper went to press. Now, the telephone-bell often rings
in our newspaper-office a few moments before going to press. The
confusion on this particular Monday afternoon, however, resulted from
Albany calling on the long-distance. Albany--meaning the nearest
office of the international press-association of which our paper is
a member--called just so, out of a clear sky, on the day McKinley
was assassinated, on the day the _Titanic_ foundered and on the day
Austria declared war on Serbia.

The connection was made, and over the wire came the voice of young
Stewart, crisp as lettuce.

"Special dispatch ... Wyndgate, Vermont, October 27th ... Ready?"
The editor of our paper answered in the affirmative. The rest of us
grouped anxiously around his chair. Stewart proceeded:

"'Hapwell Ruggam, serving a life-sentence for the murder of Deputy
Sheriff Martin Wiley at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two years ago,
killed Jacob Lambwell, his guard, and escaped from prison at noon
to-day.

"'Ruggam had been given some repair work to do near the outer
prison-gate. It was opened to admit a tradesman's automobile. As
Guard Lambwell turned to close the gate, Ruggam felled him with his
shovel. He escaped to the adjacent railroad-yards, stole a corduroy
coat and pair of blue overalls hanging in a switchman's shanty and
caught the twelve-forty freight up Green River.'"

Stewart had paused. The editor scribbled frantically. In a few words
aside he explained to us what Stewart was sending. Then he ordered
the latter to proceed.

"'Freight Number Eight was stopped by telegraph near Norwall. The
fugitive, assuming correctly that it was slowing down for search,
was seen by a brakeman fleeing across a pasture between the tracks
and the eastern edge of Haystack Mountain. Several posses have
already started after him, and sheriffs all through northern New
England are being notified.

"'Christopher Wiley, lumber magnate and brother of Ruggam's former
victim, on being told of the escape, has offered a reward of five
thousand dollars for Ruggam's capture, dead or alive. Guard Lambwell
was removed to a hospital, where he died at one-thirty'.... _All
right_?"

The connection was broken, and the editor removed the headpiece. He
began giving orders. We were twenty minutes behind usual time with
the papers, but we made all the trains.

When the big Duplex was grinding out newsprint with a roar that shook
the building, the boys and girls gathered around to discuss the thing
which had happened.

The Higgins boy, saucer-eyed over the experience of being "on the
inside" during the handling of the first sizable news-story since he
had become our local reporter, voiced the interrogation on the faces
of other office newcomers.

"Ruggam," the editor explained, "is a poor unfortunate who should
have been sent to an asylum instead of the penitentiary. He killed
Mart Wiley, a deputy sheriff, at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two
years ago."

"Where's the Lost Nation?"

"It's a term applied to most of the town of Partridgeville in the
northern part of the county--an inaccessible district back in the
mountains peopled with gone-to-seed stock and half-civilized
illiterates who only get into the news when they load up with
squirrel whisky and start a programme of progressive hell. Ruggam
was the local blacksmith."

"What's a kitchen-dance?"

"Ordinarily a kitchen-dance is harmless enough. But the Lost Nation
folks use it as an excuse for a debauch. They gather in some sizable
shack, set the stove out into the yard, soak themselves in aromatic
spirits of deviltry and dance from Saturday night until Monday
noon----"

"And this Ruggam killed a sheriff at one of them?"

"He got into a brawl with another chap about his wife. Someone
passing saw the fight and sent for an officer. Mart Wiley was deputy,
afraid of neither man, God nor devil. Martin had grown disgusted
over the petty crime at these kitchen-dances and started out to
clean up this one right. Hap Ruggam killed him. He must have had help,
because he first got Mart tied to a tree in the yard. Most of the
crowd was pie-eyed by this time, anyhow, and would fight at the drop
of a hat. After tying him securely, Ruggam caught up a billet of
wood and--and killed him with that."

"Why didn't they electrocute him?" demanded young Higgins.

"Well, the murder wasn't exactly premeditated. Hap wasn't himself;
he was drunk--not even able to run away when Sheriff Crumpett
arrived in the neighbourhood to take him into custody. Then there
was Hap's bringing up. All these made extenuating circumstances."

"There was something about Sheriff Wiley's pompadour," suggested our
little lady proofreader.

"Yes," returned the editor. "Mart had a queer head of hair. It was
dark and stiff, and he brushed it straight back in a pompadour. When
he was angry or excited, it actually rose on his scalp like wire.
Hap's counsel made a great fuss over Mart's pompadour and the part
it sort of played in egging Hap on. The sight of it, stiffening and
rising the way it did maddened Ruggam so that he beat it down
hysterically in retaliation for the many grudges he fancied
he owed the officer. No, it was all right to make the sentence
life-imprisonment, only it should have been an asylum. Hap's not
right. You'd know it without being told. I guess it's his eyes. They
aren't mates. They light up weirdly when he's drunk or excited, and
if you know what's healthy, you get out of the way."

By eight o'clock that evening most of the valley's deer-hunters, all
of the local adventurers who could buy, borrow or beg a rifle, and
the usual quota of high-school sons of thoughtless parents were off
on the man-hunt in the eastern mountains.

Among them was Sheriff Crumpett's party. On reaching the timberline
they separated. It was agreed that if any of them found signs of
Ruggam, the signal for assistance was five shots in quick succession
"and keep shooting at intervals until the rest come up."

We newspaper folk awaited the capture with professional interest and
pardonable excitement....

In the northern part of our town, a mile out on the Wickford road,
is the McBride place. It is a small white house with a red barn in
the rear and a neat rail fence inclosing the whole. Six years ago
Cora McBride was bookkeeper in the local garage. Her maiden name was
Allen. The town called her "Tomboy Allen." She was the only daughter
of old Zeb Allen, for many years our county game-warden. Cora, as we
had always known--and called--her, was a full-blown, red-blooded,
athletic girl who often drove cars for her employer in the days when
steering-wheels manipulated by women were offered as clinching proof
that society was headed for the dogs.

Duncan McBride was chief mechanic in the garage repairshop. He was
an affable, sober, steady chap, popularly known as "Dunk the
Dauntless" because of an uncanny ability to cope successfully with
the ailments of 90 per cent, of the internal-combustion hay-balers
and refractory tin-Lizzies in the county when other mechanics had
given them up in disgust.

When he married his employer's bookkeeper, Cora's folks gave her a
wedding that carried old Zeb within half an hour of insolvency and
ran to four columns in the local daily. Duncan and the Allen girl
motored to Washington in a demonstration-car, and while Dunk was
absent, the yard of the garage resembled the premises about a
junkshop. On their return they bought the Johnson place, and Cora
quickly demonstrated the same furious enthusiasm for homemaking and
motherhood that she had for athletics and carburetors.

Three years passed, and two small boys crept about the yard behind
the white rail fence. Then--when Duncan and his wife were "making a
great go of matrimony" in typical Yankee fashion--came the tragedy
that took all the vim out of Cora, stole the ruddy glow from her
girlish features and made her middle-aged in a twelvemonth. In the
infantile-paralysis epidemic which passed over New England three
years ago the McBrides suffered the supreme sorrow--twice. Those
small boys died within two weeks of each other.

Duncan of course kept on with his work at the garage. He was quieter
and steadier than ever. But when we drove into the place to have a
carburetor adjusted or a rattle tightened, we saw only too plainly
that on his heart was a wound the scars of which would never heal.
As for Cora, she was rarely seen in the village.

Troubles rarely come singly. One afternoon this past August, Duncan
completed repairs on Doc Potter's runabout. Cranking the machine to
run it from the workshop, the "dog" on the safety-clutch failed to
hold. The acceleration of the engine threw the machine into high.
Dunk was pinned in front while the roadster leaped ahead and rammed
the delivery truck of the Red Front Grocery.

Duncan was taken to our memorial hospital with internal injuries and
dislocation of his spine. He remained there many weeks. In fact, he
had been home only a couple of days when the evening stage left in
the McBride letter-box the daily paper containing the story of
Ruggam's "break" and of the reward offered for his capture.

Cora returned to the kitchen after obtaining the paper and sank
wearily into a wooden chair beside the table with the red cloth.
Spreading out the paper, she sought the usual mental distraction in
the three-and four-line bits which make up our local columns.

As the headlines caught her eye, she picked up the paper and entered
the bedroom where Duncan lay. There were telltale traces of tears on
his unshaven face, and an ache in his discouraged heart that would
not be assuaged, for it was becoming rumoured about the village that
Dunk the Dauntless might never operate on the vitals of an ailing
tin-Lizzie again.

"Dunnie," cried his wife, "Hap Ruggam's escaped!" Sinking down beside
the bedroom lamp, she read him the article aloud.

Her husband's name was mentioned therein; for when the sheriff had
commandeered an automobile from the local garage to convey him and
his posse to Lost Nation and secure Ruggam, Duncan had been called
forth to preside at the steering-wheel. He had thus assisted in the
capture and later had been a witness at the trial.

The reading ended, the man rolled his head.

"If I wasn't held here, I might go!" he said. "I might try for that
five thousand myself!"

Cora was sympathetic enough, of course, but she was fast approaching
the stage where she needed sympathy herself.

"We caught him over on the Purcell farm," mused Duncan. "Something
ailed Ruggam. He was drunk and couldn't run. But that wasn't all. He
had had some kind of crazy-spell during or after the killing and
wasn't quite over it. We tied him and lifted him into the auto. His
face was a sight. His eyes aren't mates, anyhow, and they were wild
and unnatural. He kept shrieking something about a head of
hair--black hair--sticks up like wire. He must have had an awful
impression of Mart's face and that hair of his."

"I remember about Aunt Mary Crumpett's telling me of the trouble her
husband had with his prisoner in the days before the trial," his
wife replied. "He had those crazy-spells often, nights. He kept
yelling that he saw Martin Wiley's head with its peculiar hair, and
his face peering in at him through the cell window. Sometimes he
became so bad that Sheriff Crumpett thought he'd have apoplexy
Finally he had to call Dr. Johnson to attend him."

"Five thousand dollars!" muttered Duncan. "Gawd! I'd hunt the devil
_for nothing_ if I only had a chance of getting out of this bed."

Cora smoothed her husband's rumpled bed, comforted him and laid her
own tired head down beside his hand. When he had dozed off, she
arose and left the room.

In the kitchen she resumed her former place beside the table with
the cheap red cloth; and there, with her face in her hands, she
stared into endless distance.

"Five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars!" Over and over she
whispered the words, with no one to hear.

The green-birch fire snapped merrily in the range. The draft sang in
the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter
came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride,
however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she
must go into town and secure work. Not that she minded the labour
nor the trips through the vicious weather! The anguish was leaving
Duncan through those monotonous days before he should be up and
around. Those dreary winter days! What might they not do to
him--alone.

Five thousand dollars! Like many others in the valley that night she
pictured with fluttering heart what it would mean to possess such a
sum of money; but not once in her pitiful flight of fancy did she
disregard the task which must be performed to gain that wealth.

It meant traveling upward in the great snowbound reaches of Vermont
mountain-country and tracking down a murderer who had killed a
second time to gain his freedom and would stop at nothing again.

And yet--_five thousand dollars_!

How much will a person do, how far will a normal human being travel,
to earn five thousand dollars--if the need is sufficiently
provocative?

As Cora McBride sat there in the homely little farmhouse kitchen and
thought of the debts still existent, contracted to save the already
stricken lives of two little lads forgotten now by all but herself
and Duncan and God, of the chances of losing their home if Duncan
could work no more and pay up the balance of their mortgage, of the
days when Duncan must lie in the south bedroom alone and count the
figures on the wallpaper--as she sat there and contemplated these
things, into Cora McBride's heart crept determination.

At first it was only a faint challenge to her courage. As the
minutes passed, however, her imagination ran riot, with five
thousand dollars to help them in their predicament. The challenge
grew. Multitudes of women down all the years had attempted wilder
ventures for those who were dear to them. Legion in number had been
those who set their hands and hearts to greater tasks, made more
improbable sacrifices, taken greater chances. Multitudes of them, too,
had won--on little else than the courage of ignorance and the
strength of desperation.

She had no fear of the great outdoors, for she had lived close to
the mountains from childhood and much of her old physical resiliency
and youthful daredeviltry remained. And the need was terrible; no
one anywhere in the valley, not even her own people, knew how
terrible.

Cora McBride, alone by her table in the kitchen, that night made her
decision.

She took the kitchen lamp and went upstairs. Lifting the top of a
leather trunk, she found her husband's revolver. With it was a belt
and holster, the former filled with cartridges. In the storeroom
over the back kitchen she unhooked Duncan's mackinaw and found her
own toboggan-cap. From a corner behind some fishing-rods she
salvaged a pair of summer-dried snowshoes; they had facilitated many
a previous hike in the winter woods with her man of a thousand
adventures. She searched until she found the old army-haversack
Duncan used as a game-bag. Its shoulder-straps were broken but a
length of rope sufficed to bind it about her shoulders, after she
had filled it with provisions.

With this equipment she returned below-stairs. She drew on heavy
woollen stockings and buckled on arctics. She entered the cold
pantry and packed the knapsack with what supplies she could find at
the hour. She did not forget a drinking-cup, a hunting-knife or
matches. In her blouse she slipped a household flash-lamp.

Dressed finally for the adventure, from the kitchen she called
softly to her husband. He did not answer. She was overwhelmed by a
desire to go into the south bedroom and kiss him, so much might
happen before she saw him again. But she restrained herself. She
must not waken him.

She blew out the kerosene lamp, gave a last glance about
her familiar kitchen and went out through the shed door, closing it
softly behind her.

It was one of those close, quiet nights when the bark of a distant
dog or whinny of a horse sounds very near at hand. The snow was
falling feathery.

An hour later found her far to the eastward, following an old side
road that led up to the Harrison lumber-job. She had meantime paid
Dave Sheldon, a neighbour's boy, encountered by his gate, to stay
with Duncan during her absence which she explained with a white lie.
But her conscience did not bother. Her conscience might be called
upon to smother much more before the adventure was ended.

Off in the depths of the snowing night she strode along, a weird
figure against the eerie whiteness that illumined the winter world.
She felt a strange wild thrill in the infinite out-of-doors. The
woodsman's blood of her father was having its little hour.

And she knew the woods. Intuitively she felt that if Ruggam was on
Haystack Mountain making his way toward Lost Nation, he would strike
for the shacks of the Green Mountain Club or the deserted
logging-camps along the trail, secreting himself in them during his
pauses for rest, for he had no food, and provisions were often left
in these structures by hunters and mountain hikers. Her plan was
simple. She would investigate each group of buildings. She had the
advantage of starting on the northwest side of Haystack. She would
be working toward Ruggam, while the rest of the posses were trailing
him.

Mile after mile she covered. She decided it must be midnight when
she reached the ghostly buildings of the Harrison tract, lying white
and silent under the thickening snow. It was useless to search these
cabins; they were too near civilization. Besides, if Ruggam had left
the freight at Norwall on the eastern side of Haystack at noon, he
had thirty miles to travel before reaching the territory from which
she was starting. So she skirted the abandoned quiet of the clearing,
laid the snowshoes properly down before her and bound the thongs
securely about her ankles.

She had plenty of time to think of Ruggam as she padded along. He
had no snowshoes to aid him, unless he had managed to secure a pair
by burglary, which was improbable. So it was not difficult to
calculate about where she should begin watching for him. She
believed he would keep just off the main trail to avoid detection,
yet take its general direction in order to secure shelter and
possible food from the mountain buildings. When she reached the
country in which she might hope to encounter him, she would zigzag
across that main trail in order to pick up his foot-tracks if he had
passed her undetected. In that event she would turn and follow. She
knew that the snow was falling too heavily to continue in such
volume indefinitely; it would stop as suddenly as it had started.

The hours of the night piled up. The silent, muffling snowfall
continued. And Cora McBride began to sense an alarming weariness. It
finally dawned upon her that her old-time vigour was missing. The
strength of youth was hers no longer. Two experiences of motherhood
and no more exercise than was afforded by the tasks of her household,
had softened her muscles. Their limitations were now disclosed.

The realization of those limitations was accompanied by panic. She
was still many miles even from Blind Brook Cabin, and her limbs were
afire from the unaccustomed effort. This would never do. After
pauses for breath that were coming closer and closer together, she
set her lips each time grimly. "Tomboy Allen" had not counted on
succumbing to physical fatigue before she had climbed as far as
Blind Brook. If she were weakening already, what of those many miles
on the other side?

Tuesday the twenty-eighth of October passed with no tidings of
Ruggam's capture. The Holmes boy was fatally shot by a rattleheaded
searcher near Five-Mile Pond, and distraught parents began to take
thought of their own lads missing from school. Adam MacQuarry broke
his leg near the Hell Hollow schoolhouse and was sent back by
friends on a borrowed bobsled. Several ne'er-do-wells, long on
impulse and short on stickability, drifted back to more comfortable
quarters during the day, contending that if Hap were captured, the
officers would claim the reward anyhow--so what was the use bucking
the System?

The snowfall stopped in the early morning. Sunrise disclosed the
world trimmed from horizon to horizon in fairy fluff. Householders
jocosely shoveled their walks; small children resurrected attic sleds;
here and there a farmer appeared on Main Street during the forenoon
in a pung-sleigh or cutter with jingling bells. The sun soared higher,
and the day grew warmer. Eaves began dripping during the noon hour,
to stop when the sun sank about four o'clock behind Bancroft's hill.

After the sunset came a perfect evening. The starlight was magic.
Many people called in at the newspaper-office, after the movies, to
learn if the man hunt had brought results.

Between ten and eleven o'clock the lights on the valley floor
blinked out; the town had gone to bed--that is, the lights blinked
out in all homes excepting those on the eastern outskirts, where
nervous people worried over the possibilities of a hungry, hunted
convict's burglarizing their premises, or drawn-faced mothers lived
mentally through a score of calamities befalling red-blooded sons
who had now been absent twenty-four hours.

Sometime between nine o'clock and midnight--she had no way of
telling accurately--Cora McBride stumbled into the Lyons clearing.
No one would have recognized in the staggering, bedraggled
apparition that emerged from the silhouette of the timber the figure
that had started so confidently from the Harrison tract the previous
evening.

For over an hour she had hobbled blindly. It was wholly by accident
that she had stumbled into the clearing. And the capture of Ruggam
had diminished in importance. Warm food, water that would not tear
her raw throat, a place to lie and recoup her strength after the
chilling winter night--these were the only things that counted now.
Though she knew it not, in her eyes burned the faint light of fever.
When a snag caught her snowshoe and tripped her, there was hysteria
in her cry of resentment.

As she moved across from the timber-line her hair was revealed
fallen down; she had lost a glove, and one hand and wrist were
cruelly red where she had plunged them several times into the snow
to save herself from falling upon her face. She made but a few yards
before the icy thong of her right snowshoe snapped. She did not
bother to repair it. Carrying it beneath her arm, she hobbled
brokenly toward the shelter of the buildings.

Her failure at the other cabins, the lack, thus far, of all signs of
the fugitive, the vastness of the hunting-ground magnified by the
loneliness of winter, had convinced her finally that her quest was
futile. It was all a venture of madness. The idea that a woman,
alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a revolver, could track
down and subdue a desperate murderer in winter mountains where
hardly a wild thing stirred, and make him return with her to the
certain penalty--this proved how much mental mischief had again been
caused by the lure of money. The glittering seduction of gold had
deranged her. She realized it now, her mind normal in an exhausted
body. So she gained the walls of the buildings and stumbled around
them, thoughtless of any possible signs of the fugitive.

The stars were out in myriads. The Milky Way was a spectacle to
recall vividly the sentiment of the Nineteenth Psalm. The
log-buildings of the clearing, every tree-trunk and bough in the
woods beyond, the distant skyline of stump and hollow, all stood out
sharply against the peculiar radiance of the snow. The night was as
still as the spaces between the planets.

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