O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

V >> Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921

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"Here I am."

"You are dead."

"Dead?"

"Before God, I swear it."

"Dead?"

Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts
flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The
song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own
flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows....

"Dead?" he demanded again.

Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him.
"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly
across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud
voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw
followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no
attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told
me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me."

"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden."

"He is not there now."

"But just a moment ago----"

"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted.

The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was
twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the
leaves. Stillness....

"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared."

Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared.
Exactly." And passing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs.

Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the
desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on
scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column....

Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no
attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his
heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand.

He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting
before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at
herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted.
She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then
with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not
turn, did not move....

He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids
of her coarse black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out
of the village, toward the desert.

Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on
together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of
darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale
faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men.
Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed.

"Is this death?"

"Where now, brother?"

Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion.
Forgetfulness."

He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars,
walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the
desert, out of the story at last.

COMET [Published originally under title, "The Comet."]

By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

From _American Magazine_

No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions
than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both
his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while
he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as
puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked
him out.

"That's the best un in the bunch."

When he was only three weeks old he pointed a butterfly that lit in
the yard in front of his nose.

"Come here, Molly," yelled Jim to his wife. "Pointed--the little
cuss!"

When Thompson started taking the growing pups out of the yard, into
the fields to the side of the Devants' great southern winter home, Oak
Knob, it was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting
care. And when Jim taught them all to follow when he said "Heel," to
drop when he said "Drop," and to stand stock-still when he said "Ho,"
he learned far more quickly than the others.

At six months he set his first covey of quail, and remained perfectly
staunch. "He's goin' to make a great dog," said Thompson.
Everything--size, muscle, nose, intelligence, earnestness--pointed to
the same conclusion. Comet was one of the favoured of the gods.

One day, after the leaves had turned red and brown and the mornings
grown chilly, a crowd of people, strangers to him, arrived at Oak
Knob. Then out of the house with Thompson came a big man in tweed
clothes, and the two walked straight to the curious young dogs, who
were watching them with shining eyes and wagging tails.

"Well, Thompson," said the big man, "which is the future champion
you've been writing me about?"

"Pick him out for yourself, sir," said Thompson confidently.

After that they talked a long time planning for the future of Comet.
His yard training was now over (Thompson was only yard trainer), and
he must be sent to a man experienced in training and handling for
field trials.

"Larsen's the man to bring him out," said the big man in tweeds, who
was George Devant himself. "I saw his dogs work in the Canadian
Derby."

Thompson spoke hesitatingly, apologetically, as if he hated to bring
the matter up. "Mr. Devant, ... you remember, sir, a long time ago
Larsen sued us for old Ben."

"Yes, Thompson; I remember, now that you speak of it."

"Well, you remember the court decided against him, which was the only
thing it could do, for Larsen didn't have any more right to that dog
than the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was there, and I saw
Larsen's face when the case went against him."

Devant looked keenly at Thompson.

"Another thing, Mr. Devant," Thompson went on, still hesitatingly;
"Larsen had a chance to get hold of this breed of pointers and lost
out, because he dickered too long, and acted cheesy. Now they've
turned out to be famous. Some men never forget a thing like that.
Larsen's been talkin' these pointers down ever since, sir."

"Go on," said Devant.

"I know Larsen's a good trainer. But it'll mean a long trip for the
young dog to where he lives. Now, there's an old trainer lives near
here, Wade Swygert. There never was a straighter man than him. He used
to train dogs in England."

Devant smiled. "Thompson, I admire your loyalty to your friends; but I
don't think much of your business sense. We'll turn over some of the
others to Swygert, if he wants 'em. Comet must have the best. I'll
write Larsen to-night, Thompson. To-morrow, crate Comet and send him
off."

Just as no dog ever came into the world under more favourable
auspices, so no dog ever had a bigger "send-off" than Comet. Even the
ladies of the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian Devant,
pretty, eighteen, and a sports-woman, stooped down, caught his head
between her hands, looked into his fine eyes, and wished him "Good
luck, old man." In the living-room the men laughingly drank toasts to
his future, and from the high-columned portico Marian Devant waved him
good-bye, as in his clean padded crate he was driven off, a bewildered
youngster, to the station.

Two days and two nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at
a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a
heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean,
pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking man came toward him.

"Some beauty that, Mr. Larsen," said the agent as he helped Larsen's
man lift the crate onto a small truck.

"Yes," drawled Larsen in a meditative voice, "pretty enough to look
at--but he looks scared--er--timid."

"Of course he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was
to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a
crate to Mars."

The station agent poked his hands through the slats and patted the
head. Comet was grateful for that, because everything was strange. He
had not whined nor complained on the trip, but his heart had pounded
fast, and he had been homesick.

And everything continued to be strange: the treeless country through
which he was driven, the bald house and huge barns where he was lifted
out, the dogs that crowded about him when he was turned into the
kennel yard. These eyed him with enmity and walked round and round
him. But he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, returning
fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, until the man called him
away and chained him to a kennel.

For days Comet remained chained, a stranger in a strange land. Each
time at the click of the gate announcing Larson's entrance he sprang
to his feet from force of habit, and stared hungrily at the man for
the light he was accustomed to see in human eyes. But with just a
glance at him the man would turn one or more of the other dogs loose
and ride off to train them.

But he was not without friends of his own kind. Now and then another
young dog (he alone was chained up) would stroll his way with wagging
tail, or lie down near by, in that strange bond of sympathy that is
not confined to man. Then Comet would feel better and would want to
play, for he was still half puppy. Sometimes he would pick up a stick
and shake it, and his partner would catch the other end. They would
tug and growl with mock ferocity, and then lie down and look at each
other curiously.

If any attention had been paid him by Larsen, Comet would have quickly
overcome his feeling of strangeness. He was no milksop. He was like an
overgrown boy, off at college or in some foreign city. He was
sensitive, and not sure of himself. Had Larsen gained his confidence,
it would all have been different. And as for Larsen--he knew that
perfectly well.

One fine sunny afternoon Larsen entered the yard, came straight to
him, and turned him loose. In the exuberance of his spirits he ran
round and round the yard, barking in the faces of his friends. Larsen
let him out, mounted a horse, and commanded him to heel. He obeyed
with wagging tail.

A mile or more down the road Larsen turned off into the fields. Across
his saddle was something the young pointer had had no experience
with--a gun. That part of his education Thompson had neglected, at
least put off, for he had not expected that Comet would be sent away
so soon. That was where Thompson had made a mistake.

At the command "Hi on" the young pointer ran eagerly around the horse,
and looked up into the man's face to be sure he had heard aright. At
something he saw there the tail and ears drooped momentarily, and
there came over him again a feeling of strangeness, almost of dismay.
Larsen's eyes were mere slits of blue glass, and his mouth was set in
a thin line.

At a second command, though, he galloped off swiftly, boldly. Round
and round an extensive field of straw he circled, forgetting any
feeling of strangeness now, every fibre of his being intent on the
hunt, while Larsen, sitting on his horse, watched him with appraising
eyes.

Suddenly there came to Comet's nose the smell of game birds, strong,
pungent, compelling. He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point.
Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up
behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop. And now Larsen,
having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just
as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen's hand was the gun.

The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud
explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless
powder now used by all hunters. Perhaps it was only an accident that
had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with
black powder shells.

As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head
burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking
every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never
felt before. Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise,
he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated. A single reassuring
word, and he would have steadied. As for Larsen, though, he declared
afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no
nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several
birds for breakfast.

Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its
cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet
turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant--and
then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that
shattering noise.

Miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. Not once
did he look back. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear.
Seeing a house, he made for that. It was the noon hour, and a group of
farm hands was gathered in the yard. One of them, with a cry "Mad
dog!" ran into the house after a gun. When he came out, they told him
the dog was under the porch. And so he was. Pressed against the wall,
in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul
waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears.

Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath the
porch and dragged him out. He, who had started life favoured of the
gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had
circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature,
like a homeless cur.

And thus it happened that Comet came home, in disgrace--a gun-shy dog,
a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but
because he was--yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the
face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he
had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of
what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson.

In the house was a long and plausible letter, explaining how it
happened:

I did everything I could. I never was as surprised in my life. The
dog's hopeless.

As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full
of the events of the season: de luxe hunting parties, more society
events than hunts; lunches in the woods served by uniformed butlers;
launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of
them, except Devant himself, gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian
Devant came out to visit him in his disgrace. She stooped before him
as she had done on that other and happier day, and again caught his
head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim
way he knew he was not now what he had been.

"I don't believe he's yellow--inside!" she declared, looking up at
Thompson, her cheeks flushed.

Thompson shook his head.

"I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian," he declared. "I just showed it
to him, and he ran into his kennel."

"I'll go get mine. He won't run from me."

But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to
hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The Terror had
entered his very soul. In spite of her pleading, he made for his
kennel. Even the girl turned away from him now. And as he lay panting
in the shelter of his kennel he knew that never again would men look
at him as they had looked, or life be sweet to him as it had been.

Then there came to Oak Knob an old man to see Thompson. He had been on
many seas, he had fought in a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a
little truck farm near by. Somewhere, in his life full of adventure
and odd jobs, he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined and
seamed, his hair was white, his eyes piercing, blue and kind. Wade
Swygert was his name.

"There's been dirty work," he said, when he looked at the dog. "I'll
take him if you're goin' to give him away."

Give him away--who had been Championship hope!

Marian Devant came out and looked into the face of the old man,
shrewdly, understandingly.

"Can you cure him?" she demanded.

"I doubt it, miss," was the sturdy answer.

"You will try?"

The blue eyes lighted up. "Yes, I'll try."

"Then you can have him. And--if there's any expense----"

"Come, Comet," said the old man.

That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before
him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of
the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed
the old man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this
way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a
gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of
the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the
bed.

Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under
the bed no more. Finally, one day the man fastened the dog to a tree
in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he
shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned;
but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun
was loaded light.

After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading
the gun more and more heavily, and each time after the shot coming to
him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for
all that the Terror remained in his heart.

One afternoon the girl, accompanied by a young man, rode over on
horseback, dismounted, and came in. She always stopped when she was
riding by.

"It's mighty slow business," old Swygert reported; "I don't know
whether I'm makin' any headway or not."

That night old Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it
up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow.

Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last,
"there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was
water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack.
While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me
it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was
little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never
have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow."

Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be
makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as
he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun
himself, right while I'm shootin' it."

Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and next, until he was gaunt
and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert,
at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his
chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew
back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again.
Again Swygert shot.

After that for days Comet "Ate to music," as Swygert expressed it.
"Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even
tied up."

Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the
banks are perpendicular. Toward this pond the old man, with the gun
under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the
woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test.

On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the
middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly
in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as
the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired.

Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the
other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a
foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the
pond. Swygert met him and fired.

Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man
stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face
was grim now, and, though the day was cool, sweat stood out on his
brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be
dead than called yellow."

The dog was growing weary now. His head was barely above water. His
efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet,
each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired.

He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the
bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing
out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was terrible to see,
for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering.

A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the
firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun.

Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man
almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too
faint to care now for the gun that was being fired over his head. On
and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It
would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies,
but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly
old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms.

"Old boy," he said, "old boy."

That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the
eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days.

Next season Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished
to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth
was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog
than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in
spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that
the entry was booked as: "Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler,
Wade Swygert."

Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that
Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and
was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As
for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything
on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless
II.

It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning
out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen
reached the town where the National Championship was to be run, there
on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he
used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown
head, and a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years
before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes.

But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing,
when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was
declared that on the following Wednesday Comet, the pointer, was to
run with Peerless II.

It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement. He left the
meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat
pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder
and some shells.

The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded
half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him
as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he
packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun
could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a
bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and
reecho in the hills.

On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the
field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert, with Comet at his side,
he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a
handsome young woman, and with her, to his amazement, George Devant.
He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would
happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that
was _his_ experience.

As for Comet, he faced the straw fields eagerly, confidently, already
a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part.
There were times when at a report above his head he still trembled,
and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad
tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew
steady, and remained staunch.

Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at
the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an
evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast, and
his tail drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back
to him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time.

He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul
belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant.
Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert,
having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field
trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance
which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be
entered as hers, with himself as handler.

"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked.

"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert.

And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and
behind them came handlers, and judges and spectators, all mounted.

It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange
things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was
like any other field trial. Comet found birds, and Swygert, his
handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless
II found a covey, and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour
it went.

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