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O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 by Various

V >> Various >> O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919




"I'll get him up--or cut leaders--loose! If I don't--come back--drive to
light. _Don't--get--out!_"

Dan disappeared in the white fury. There were sounds of a struggle; the
sled jerked sharply and stood still. Slowly it strained forward.

Hillas was standing, one foot outside on the runner, as they travelled
a team's length ahead. He gave a cry--"Dan! Dan!" and gripped a furry
bulk that lumbered up out of the drift.

"All--right--son." Dan reached for the reins.

Frantically they fought their slow way toward the blurred light,
staggering on in a fight with the odds too savage to last. They stopped
abruptly as the winded leaders leaned against a wall interposed between
themselves and insatiable fury.

Dan stepped over the dashboard, groped his way along the tongue between
the wheel-horses and reached the leeway of a shadowy square. "It's the
shed, Hillas. Help get the team in." The exhausted animals crowded into
the narrow space without protest.

"Find the guide-rope to the house, Dan?"

"On the other side, toward the shack. Where's--Smith?"

"Here, by the shed."

Dan turned toward the stranger's voice.

"We're going 'round to the blizzard-line tied from shed to shack. Take
hold of it and don't let go. If you do you'll freeze before we can find
you. When the wind comes, turn your back and wait. Go on when it dies
down and never let go the rope. Ready? The wind's dropped. Here, Hillas,
next to me."

Three blurs hugged the sod walls around to the north-east corner. The
forward shadow reached upward to a swaying rope, lifted the hand of the
second who guided the third.

"Hang on to my belt, too, Hillas. Ready--Smith? Got the rope?"

They crawled forward, three barely visible figures, six, eight, ten
steps. With a shriek the wind tore at them, beat the breath from their
bodies, cut them with stinging needle-points and threw them aside. Dan
reached back to make sure of Hillas who fumbled through the darkness for
the stranger.

Slowly they struggled ahead, the cold growing more intense; two steps,
four, and the mounting fury of the blizzard reached its zenith. The
blurs swayed like battered leaves on a vine that the wind tore in two
at last and flung the living beings wide. Dan, clinging to the broken
rope, rolled over and found Hillas with the frayed end of the line in
his hand, reaching about through the black drifts for the stranger. Dan
crept closer, his mouth at Hillas's ear, shouting, "Quick! Right behind
me if we're to live through it!"

The next moment Hillas let go the rope. Dan reached madly. "Boy, you
can't find him--it'll only be two instead of one! Hillas! Hillas!"

The storm screamed louder than the plainsman and began heaping the snow
over three obstructions in its path, two that groped slowly and one that
lay still. Dan fumbled at his belt, unfastened it, slipped the rope
through the buckle, knotted it and crept its full length back toward the
boy. A snow-covered something moved forward guiding another, one arm
groping in blind search, reached and touched the man clinging to the
belt.

Beaten and buffeted by the ceaseless fury that no longer gave quarter,
they slowly fought their way hand-over-hand along the rope, Dan now
crawling last. After a frozen eternity they reached the end of the line
fastened man-high against a second haven of wall. Hillas pushed open the
unlocked door, the three men staggered in and fell panting against the
side of the room.

The stage-driver recovered first, pulled off his mittens, examined his
fingers and felt quickly of nose, ears, and chin. He looked sharply at
Hillas and nodded. Unceremoniously they stripped off the stranger's
gloves, reached for a pan, opened the door, dipped it into the drift and
plunged Smith's fingers down in the snow.

"Your nose is white, too. Thaw it out."

Abruptly Dan indicated a bench against the wall where the two men seated
would take up less space.

"I'm--" The stranger's voice was unsteady. "I--," but Dan had turned his
back and his attention to the homesteader.

The eight by ten room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted
from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five
on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the
remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's
cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a
covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture
height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico brightened the homely
shack.

The driver had slipped off his buffalo coat and was bending over a baby
exhaustedly fighting for breath that whistled shrilly through a closing
throat. The mother, scarcely more than a girl, held her in tensely
extended arms.

"How long's she been this way?"

"She began to choke up day before yesterday, just after you passed on
the down trip."

The driver laid big finger tips on the restless wrist.

"She always has the croup when she cuts a tooth, Dan, but this is
different. I've used all the medicines I have--nothing relieves the
choking."

The girl lifted heavy eyelids above blue semicircles of fatigue and the
compelling terror back of her eyes forced a question through dry lips.

"Dan, do you know what membranous croup is like? Is this it?"

The stage-driver picked up the lamp and held it close to the child's
face, bringing out with distressing clearness the blue-veined pallour,
sunken eyes, and effort of impeded breathing. He frowned, putting the
lamp back quickly.

"Mebbe it is, Mis' Clark, but don't you be scared. We'll help you a
spell."

Dan lifted the red curtain from the cupboard, found an emptied
lard-pail, half filled it with water and placed it on an oil-stove that
stood in the center of the room. He looked questioningly about the four
walls, discovered a cleverly contrived tool-box beneath the cupboard
shelves, sorted out a pair of pincers and bits of iron, laying the
latter in a row over the oil blaze. He took down a can of condensed
milk, poured a spoonful of the thick stuff into a cup of water and made
room for it near the bits of heating iron.

He turned to the girl, opened his lips as if to speak and stood with a
face full of pity.

Along the four-foot space between the end of the bed and the opposite
wall the girl walked, crooning to the sick child she carried. As they
watched, the low song died away, her shoulder rubbed heavily against the
boarding, her eyelids dropped and she stood sound asleep. The next
hard-drawn breath of the baby roused her and she stumbled on, crooning a
lullaby.

Smith clutched the younger man's shoulder. "God, Hillas, look where
she's marked the wall rubbing against it! Do you suppose she's been
walking that way for three days and nights? Why, she's only a child--no
older than my own daughter!"

Hillas nodded.

"Where are her people? Where's her husband?"

"Down in Yankton, Dan told you, working for the winter. Got to have the
money to live."

"Where's the doctor?"

"Nearest one's in Haney--four days' trip away by stage."

The traveller stared, frowningly.

Dan was looking about the room again and after prodding the gay seat in
the corner, lifted the cover and picked up a folded blanket, shaking out
the erstwhile padded cushion. He hung the blanket over the back of a
chair.

"Mis' Clark, there's nothing but steam will touch membreenous croup. We
saved my baby that way last year. Set here and I'll fix things."

He put the steaming lard-pail on the floor beside the mother and lifted
the blanket over the baby's head. She put up her hand.

"She's so little, Dan, and weak. How am I going to know if she--if
she--"

Dan rearranged the blanket tent. "Jest get under with her yourself, Mis'
Clark, then you'll know all that's happening."

With the pincers he picked up a bit of hot iron and dropped it hissing
into the pail, which he pushed beneath the tent. The room was
oppressively quiet, walled in by the thick sod from the storm. The
blanket muffled the sound of the child's breathing and the girl no
longer stumbled against the wall.

Dan lifted the corner of the blanket and another bit of iron hissed as
it struck the water. The older man leaned toward the younger.

"Stove--fire?" with a gesture of protest against the inadequate oil
blaze.

Hillas whispered, "Can't afford it. Coal is $9.00 in Haney, $18.00
here."

They sat with heads thrust forward, listening in the intolerable
silence. Dan lifted the blanket, hearkened a moment, then--"pst!"
another bit of iron fell into the pail. Dan stooped to the tool-chest
for a reserve supply when a strangling cough made him spring to his feet
and hurriedly lift the blanket.

The child was beating the air with tiny fists, fighting for breath. The
mother stood rigid, arms out.

"Turn her this way!" Dan shifted the struggling child, face out. "Now
watch out for the--"

The strangling cough broke and a horrible something--"It's the membrane!
She's too weak--let me have her!"

Dan snatched the child and turned it face downward. The blue-faced baby
fought in a supreme effort--again the horrible something--then Dan laid
the child, white and motionless, in her mother's arms. She held the limp
body close, her eyes wide with fear.

"Dan, is--is she--?"

A faint sobbing breath of relief fluttered the pale lips that moved in
the merest ghost of a smile. The heavy eyelids half-lifted and the child
nestled against its mother's breast. The girl swayed, shaking with sobs,
"Baby--baby!"

She struggled for self-control and stood up straight and pale. "Dan, I
ought to tell you. When it began to get dark with the storm and time to
put up the lantern, I was afraid to leave the baby. If she strangled
when I was gone--with no one to help her--she would die!"

Her lips quivered as she drew the child closer. "I didn't go right away
but--I did--at last. I propped her up in bed and ran. If I hadn't--" Her
eyes were wide with the shadowy edge of horror, "if I hadn't--you'd have
been lost in the blizzard and--my baby would have died!"

She stood before the men as if for judgment, her face wet with unchecked
tears. Dan patted her shoulder dumbly and touched a fresh, livid bruise
that ran from the curling hair on her temple down across cheek and chin.

"Did you get this then?"

She nodded. "The storm threw me against the pole when I hoisted the
lantern. I thought I'd--never--get back!"

It was Smith who translated Dan's look of appeal for the cup of warm
milk and held it to the girl's lips.

"Drink it, Mis' Clark, you need it."

She made heroic attempts to swallow, her head drooped lower over the cup
and fell against the driver's rough sleeve. "Poor kid, dead asleep!"

Dan guided her stumbling feet toward the bed that the traveller sprang
to open. She guarded the baby in the protecting angle of her arm into
safety upon the pillow, then fell like a log beside her. Dan slipped off
the felt boots, lifted her feet to the bed and softly drew covers over
mother and child.

"Poor kid, but she's grit, clear through!"

Dan walked to the window, looked out at the lessening storm, then at the
tiny alarm-clock on the cupboard. "Be over pretty soon now!" He seated
himself by the table, dropped his head wearily forward on folded arms
and was asleep.

The traveller's face had lost some of its shrewdness. It was as if the
white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life.
He moved restlessly along the bench, then stepped softly to the side of
the bed and straightened the coverlet into greater nicety while his lips
twitched.

With consuming care he folded the blanket and restored the corner seat
to its accustomed appearance of luxury. He looked about the room, picked
up the grey kitten sleeping contentedly on the floor and settled it on
the red cushion with anxious attention to comfort.

He examined with curiosity the few books carefully covered on a corner
shelf, took down an old hand-tooled volume and lifted his eyebrows at
the ancient coat of arms on the book plate. He tiptoed across to the
bench and pointed to the script beneath the plate. "Edward Winslow (7)
to his dear daughter, Alice (8)."

He motioned toward the bed. "Her name?"

Hillas nodded, Smith grinned. "Dan's right. Blood will tell, even to
damning the rest of us."

He sat down on the bench. "I understand more than I did Hillas,
since--you crawled back after me--out there. But how can you stand it
here? I know you and the Clarks are people of education and, oh, all the
rest; you could make your way anywhere."

Hillas spoke slowly. "I think you have to live here to know. It means
something to be a pioneer. You can't be one if you've got it in you to
be a quitter. The country will be all right some day." He reached for
his greatcoat, bringing out a brown-paper parcel. He smiled at it oddly
and went on as if talking to himself.

"When the drought and the hot winds come in the summer and burn the
buffalo grass to a tinder and the monotony of the plains weighs on you
as it does now, there's a common, low-growing cactus scattered over the
prairie that blooms into the gayest red flower you ever saw.

"It wouldn't count for much anywhere else, but the pluck of it, without
rain for months, dew even. It's the 'colours of courage.'"

He turned the torn parcel, showing the bright red within, and looked at
the cupboard and window with shining, tired eyes.

"Up and down the frontier in these shacks, homes, you'll find things
made of turkey-red calico, cheap, common elsewhere--" He fingered the
three-cornered flap. "Its our 'colours.'" He put the parcel back in his
pocket. "I bought two yards yesterday after--I got a letter at Haney."

Smith sat looking at the gay curtains before him. The fury of the storm
was dying down into fitful gusts. Dan stirred, looked quickly toward the
bed, then the window, and got up quietly.

"I'll hitch up. We'll stop at Peterson's and tell her to come over." He
closed the door noiselessly.

The traveller was frowning intently. Finally he turned toward the boy
who sat with his head leaning back against the wall, eyes closed.

"Hillas," his very tones were awkward, "they call me a shrewd business
man. I am, it's a selfish job and I'm not reforming now. But twice
to-night you--children have risked your lives, without thought for a
stranger. I've been thinking about that railroad. Haven't you raised any
grain or cattle that could be used for freight?"

The low answer was toneless. "Drought killed the crops, prairie fires
burned the hay, of course the cattle starved."

"There's no timber, ore, nothing that could be used for east-bound
shipment?"

The plainsman looked searchingly into the face of the older man.
"There's no timber this side the Missouri. Across the river it's
reservation--Sioux. We--" He frowned and stopped.

Smith stood up, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. "I admitted I was
shrewd, Hillas, but I'm not yellow clear through, not enough to betray
this part of the frontier anyhow. I had a man along here last fall
spying for minerals. That's why I'm out here now. If you know the
location, and we both think you do, I'll put capital in your way to
develop the mines and use what pull I have to get the road in."

He looked down at the boy and thrust out a masterful jaw. There was a
ring of sincerity no one could mistake when he spoke again.

"This country's a desert now, but I'd back the Sahara peopled with your
kind. This is on the square, Hillas, don't tell me you won't believe
I'm--American enough to trust?"

The boy tried to speak. With stiffened body and clenched hands he
struggled for self-control. Finally in a ragged whisper, "If I try to
tell you what--it means--I can't talk! Dan and I know of outcropping
coal over in the Buttes." He nodded in the direction of the Missouri,
"but we haven't had enough money to file mining claims."

"Know where to dig for samples under this snow?"

The boy nodded. "Some in my shack too. I--" His head went down upon the
crossed arms. Smith laid an awkward hand on the heaving shoulders, then
rose and crossed the room to where the girl had stumbled in her vigil.
Gently he touched the darkened streak where her shoulders had rubbed and
blurred the newspaper print. He looked from the relentless white desert
outside to the gay bravery within and bent his head.
"Turkey-red--calico!"

There was the sound of jingling harness and the crunch of runners. The
men bundled into fur coats.

"Hillas, the draw right by the house here," Smith stopped and looked
sharply at the plainsman, then went on with firm carelessness, "This
draw ought to strike a low grade that would come out near the river
level. Does Dan know Clark's address?" Hillas nodded.

They tiptoed out and closed the door behind them softly. The wind had
swept every cloud from the sky and the light of the northern stars
etched a dazzling world. Dan was checking up the leaders as Hillas
caught him by the shoulder and shook him like a clumsy bear.

"Dan, you blind old mole, can you see the headlight of the Overland
Freight blazing and thundering down that draw over the Great Missouri
and Eastern?"

Dan stared.

"I knew you couldn't!" Hillas thumped him with furry fist. "Dan," the
wind might easily have drowned the unsteady voice, "I've told Mr. Smith
about the coal--for freight. He's going to help us get capital for
mining and after that the road."

"Smith! Smith! Well, I'll be--aren't you a claim spotter?"

He turned abruptly and crunched toward the stage. His passengers
followed. Dan paused with his foot on the runner and looked steadily at
the traveller from under lowered, shaggy brows.

"You're going to get a road out here?"

"I've told Hillas I'll put money in your way to mine the coal. Then the
railroad will come."

Dan's voice rasped with tension. "We'll get out the coal. Are you going
to see that the road is built?"

Unconsciously the traveller held up his right hand. "I am!"

Dan searched his face sharply. Smith nodded. "I'm making my bet on the
people--friend!"

It was a new Dan who lifted his bronzed face to a white world. His voice
was low and very gentle. "To bring a road here," he swung his
whip-handle from Donovan's light around to Carson's square, sweeping in
all that lay behind, "out here to them--" The pioneer faced the wide
desert that reached into a misty space ablaze with stars, "would be
like--playing God!"

The whip thudded softly into the socket and Dan rolled up on the
driver's seat. Two men climbed in behind him. The long lash swung out
over the leaders as Dan headed the old mail-sled across the drifted
right-of-way of the Great Missouri and Eastern.




FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD


By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST

From _Saturday Evening Post_

I was before one of those difficult positions unavoidable to a man of
letters. My visitor must have some answer. He had come back for the
manuscript of his memoir and for my opinion. It was the twilight of an
early Washington winter. The lights in the great library, softened with
delicate shades, had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost
a thing of beauty in its vague outline; even the squat ridiculous bronze
horse had a certain dignity in the blue shadow.

If one had been speculating on the man, from his physical aspect one
would have taken Walker for an engineer of some sort, rather than the
head of the United States Secret Service. His lean face and his angular
manner gave that impression. Even now, motionless in the big chair
beyond the table, he seemed--how shall I say it?--mechanical.

And that was the very defect in his memoir. He had cut the great cases
into a dry recital. There was no longer in them any pressure of a human
impulse. The glow of inspired detail had been dissected out. Everything
startling and wonderful had been devitalized.

The memoir was a report.

The bulky typewritten manuscript lay on the table beside the electric
lamp, and I stood about uncertain how to tell him.

"Walker," I said, "did nothing wonderful ever happen to you in the
adventure of these cases?"

"What precisely do you mean?" he replied.

The practical nature of the man tempted me to extravagance.

"Well," I said, "for example, were you never kissed in a lonely street
by a mysterious woman and the flash of your dark lantern reveal a face
of startling beauty?"

"No," he said, as though he were answering a sensible question, "that
never happened to me."

"Then," I continued, "perhaps you have found a prince of the church,
pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put together the
indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you with such uncanny
acumen that you stood aghast at his perspicacity?"

"No," he said; and then his face lighted. "But I'll tell you what I did
find. I found a drunken hobo at Atlantic City who was the best detective
I ever saw."

I sat down and tapped the manuscript with my fingers.

"It's not here," I said. "Why did you leave it out?"

He took a big gold watch out of his pocket and turned it about in his
hand. The case was covered with an inscription.

"Well," he said, "the boys in the department think a good deal of me. I
shouldn't like them to know how a dirty tramp faked me at Atlantic City.
I don't mind telling you, but I couldn't print it in a memoir."

He went directly ahead with the story and I was careful not to interrupt
him:

"I was sitting in a rolling chair out there on the Boardwalk before the
Traymore. I was nearly all in, and I had taken a run to Atlantic for a
day or two of the sea air. The fact is the whole department was down and
out. You may remember what we were up against; it finally got into the
newspapers.

"The government plates of the Third Liberty Bond issue had disappeared.
We knew how they had gotten out and we thought we knew the man at the
head of the thing. It was a Mulehaus job, as we figured it.

"It was too big a thing for a little crook. With the government plates
they could print Liberty Bonds just as the Treasury would. And they
could sow the world with them."

He paused and moved his gold-rimmed spectacles a little closer in on his
nose.

"You see these war bonds are scattered all over the country. They are
held by everybody. It's not what it used to be, a banker's business
that we could round up. Nobody could round up the holders of these
bonds.

"A big crook like Mulehaus could slip a hundred million of them into the
country and never raise a ripple."

He paused and drew his fingers across his bony protruding chin.

"I'll say this for Mulehaus: He's the hardest man to identify in the
whole kingdom of crooks. Scotland Yard, the Service de la Surete,
everybody, says that. I don't mean dime-novel disguises--false whiskers
and a limp. I mean the ability to be the character he pretends--the
thing that used to make Joe Jefferson Rip Van Winkle--and not an actor
made up to look like it. That's the reason nobody could keep track of
Mulehaus, especially in South American cities. He was a French banker in
the Egypt business and a Swiss banker in the Argentine."

He turned back from the digression:

"And it was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We didn't
have a clue. We thought, naturally, that they'd make for Mexico or some
South American country to start their printing press. And we had the
ports and the border netted up. Nothing could have gone out across the
border or through any port. All the customs officers were working with
us, and every agent of the Department of Justice."

He looked at me steadily across the table.

"You see the government had to get those plates back before the crook
started to print, or else take up every bond of that issue over the
whole country. It was a hell of a thing!

"Of course we had gone right after the record of all the big crooks to
see whose line this sort of job was. And the thing narrowed down to
Mulehaus or old Vronsky. We soon found out it wasn't Vronsky. He was in
Joliet. It was Mulehaus. But we couldn't find him.

"We didn't even know that Mulehaus was in America. He's a big crook with
a genius for selecting men. He might be directing the job from Rio or a
Mexican port. But we were sure it was a Mulehaus job. He sold the
French securities in Egypt in '90; and he's the man who put the bogus
Argentine bonds on our market--you'll find the case in the 115th Federal
Reporter.

"Well," he went on, "I was sitting out there in the rolling chair,
looking at the sun on the sea and thinking about the thing, when I
noticed this hobo that I've been talking about. He was my chair
attendant, but I hadn't looked at him before. He had moved round from
behind me and was now leaning against the galvanized-pipe railing.

"He was a big human creature, a little stooped, unshaved and dirty; his
mouth was slack and loose, and he had a big mobile nose that seemed to
move about like a piece of soft rubber. He had hardly any clothing; a
cap that must have been fished out of an ash barrel, no shirt whatever,
merely an old ragged coat buttoned round him, a pair of canvas breeches
and carpet slippers tied on to his feet with burlap, and wrapped round
his ankles to conceal the fact that he wore no socks.