O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 by Various

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

The old bull that led the herd, seventy years of age and at the pride of
his wisdom and strength, scarred, yellow-tusked and noble past any
elephant patriarch in the jungle, curled up his trunk when he saw him
come. He knew very well what would happen. And because no one knows
better than the jungle people what a good thing it is to take the
offensive in all battles, and because it was fitting his place and
dignity, he uttered the challenge himself.

The silence dropped as something from the sky. The little pink calves
who had never seen the herd grow still in this same way before, felt the
dawn of the storm that they could not understand, and took shelter
beneath their mothers' bellies. But they did not squeal. The silence
was too deep for them to dare to break.

It is always an epoch in the life of the herd when a young bull contests
for leadership. It is a much more serious thing than in the herds of
deer and buffalo. The latter only live a handful of years, then grow
weak and die. A great bull who has attained strength and wisdom enough
to obtain the leadership of an elephant herd may often keep it for forty
years. Kings do not rise and fall half so often as in the kingdoms of
Europe. For, as most men know, an elephant is not really old until he
has seen a hundred summers come and go. Then he will linger fifty years
more, wise and grey and wrinkled and strange and full of memories of a
time no man can possibly remember.

Long years had passed since the leader's place had been questioned. The
aristocracy of strength is drawn on quite inflexible lines. It would
have been simply absurd for an elephant of the Dwasala or Mierga grades
to covet the leadership. They had grown old without making the attempt.
Only the great Kumiria, the grand dukes in the aristocracy, had ever
made the trial at all. And besides, the bull was a better fighter after
thirty years of leadership than on the day he had gained the honour.

The herd stood like heroic figures in stone for a long moment--until
Muztagh had replied to the challenge. He was so surprised that he
couldn't make any sound at all at first. He had expected to do the
challenging himself. The fact that the leader had done it shook his
self-confidence to some slight degree. Evidently the old leader still
felt able to handle any young and arrogant bulls that desired his place.

Then the herd began to shift. The cows drew back with their calves, the
bulls surged forward, and slowly they made a hollow ring, not greatly
different from the pugilistic ring known to fight-fans. The calves began
to squeal, but their mothers silenced them. Very slowly and grandly,
with infinite dignity, Muztagh stamped into the circle. His tusks
gleamed. His eyes glowed red. And those appraising old bulls in the ring
knew that such an elephant had not been born since the time of their
grandfathers.

They looked him over from tail to trunk. They marked the symmetrical
form, the legs like mighty pillars, the sloping back, the wide-apart,
intelligent eyes. His shoulders were an expression of latent
might--power to break a tree-trunk at its base; by the conformity of his
muscles he was agile and quick as a tiger. And knowing these things, and
recognizing them, and honouring them, devotees of strength that they
were, they threw their trunks in the air till they touched their
foreheads and blared their full-voiced salute.

They gave it the same instant--as musicians strike the same note at
their leader's signal. It was a perfect explosion of sound, a terrible
blare, that crashed out through the jungles and wakened every sleeping
thing. The dew fell from the trees. A great tawny tiger, lingering in
hope of an elephant calf, slipped silently away. The sound rang true and
loud to the surrounding hills and echoed and re-echoed softer and
softer, until it was just a tiny tremour in the air.

Not only the jungle folk marvelled at the sound. At an encampment three
miles distant Ahmad Din and his men heard the wild call, and looked with
wondering eyes upon each other. Then out of the silence spoke Langur
Dass.

"My lord Muztagh has come back to his herd--that is his salute," he
said.

Ahmad Din looked darkly about the circle. "And how long shall he stay?"
he asked.

The trap was almost ready. The hour to strike had almost come.

Meanwhile the grand old leader stamped into the circle, seeming
unconscious of the eyes upon him, battle-scarred and old. Even if this
fight were his last, he meant to preserve his dignity.

Again the salute sounded--shattering out like a thunderclap over the
jungle. Then challenger and challenged closed.

At first the watchers were silent. Then as the battle grew ever fiercer
and more terrible, they began to grunt and squeal, surging back and
forth, stamping the earth and crashing the underbrush. All the
jungle-folk for miles about knew what was occurring. And Ahmad Din
wished his _keddah_ were completed, for never could there be a better
opportunity to surround the herd than at the present moment, when they
had forgotten all things except the battling monsters in the centre of
the ring.

The two bulls were quite evenly matched. The patriarch knew more of
fighting, had learned more wiles, but he had neither the strength nor
the agility of Muztagh. The late twilight deepened into the intense
dark, and the stars of midnight rose above the eastern hills.

All at once, Muztagh went to his knees. But as might a tiger, he sprang
aside in time to avoid a terrible tusk blow to his shoulder. And his
counter-blow, a lashing cut with the head, shattered the great leader to
the earth. The elephants bounded forward, but the old leader had a trick
left in his trunk. As Muztagh bore down upon him he reared up beneath,
and almost turned the tables. Only the youngster's superior strength
saved him from immediate defeat.

But as the night drew to morning, the bulls began to see that the tide
of the battle had turned. Youth was conquering--too mighty and agile to
resist. The rushes of the patriarch were ever weaker. He still could
inflict punishment, and the hides of both of them were terrible to see,
but he was no longer able to take advantage of his openings. Then
Muztagh did a thing that reassured the old bulls as to his craft and
wisdom. Just as a pugilist will invite a blow to draw his opponent
within range, Muztagh pretended to leave his great shoulder exposed. The
old bull failed to see the plot. He bore down, and Muztagh was ready
with flashing tusk.

What happened thereafter occurred too quickly for the eyes of the
elephants to follow. They saw the great bull go down and Muztagh stand
lunging above him. And the battle was over.

The great leader, seriously hurt, backed away into the shadowed jungle.
His trunk was lowered in token of defeat. Then the ring was empty except
for a great red-eyed elephant, whose hide was no longer white, standing
blaring his triumph to the stars.

Three times the elephant salute crashed out into the jungle silence--the
full voiced salaam to a new king. Muztagh had come into his birthright.

VII

The _keddah_ was built at last. It was a strong stockade, opening with
great wings spreading out one hundred yards, and equipped with the great
gate that lowered like a portcullis at the funnel end of the wings. The
herd had been surrounded by the drivers and beaters, and slowly they had
been driven, for long days, toward the _keddah_ mouth. They had guns
loaded with blank cartridges, and firebrands ready to light. At a given
signal they would close down quickly about the herd, and stampede it
into the yawning mouth of the stockade.

No detail had been overlooked. No expense had been spared. The profit
was assured in advance, not only from the matchless Muztagh, but from
the herd as well. The king of the jungle, free now as the winds or the
waters, was about to go back to his chains. These had been such days! He
had led the herd through the hills, and had known the rapture of living
as never before. It had been his work to clear the trail of all dangers
for the herd. It was his pride to find them the coolest watering-places,
the greenest hills. One night a tiger had tried to kill a calf that had
wandered from its mother's side. Muztagh lifted his trunk high and
charged down with great, driving strides--four tons and over of majestic
wrath. The tiger leaped to meet him, but the elephant was ready. He had
met tigers before. He avoided the terrible stroke of outstretched claws,
and his tusks lashed to one side as the tiger was in midspring. Then he
lunged out, and the great knees descended slowly, as a hydraulic press
descends on yellow apples. And soon after that the kites were dropping
out of the sky for a feast.

His word was law in the herd. And slowly he began to overcome the doubt
that the great bulls had of him--doubt of his youth and experience. If
he had had three months more of leadership, their trust would have been
absolute. But in the meantime, the slow herding toward the _keddah_ had
begun.

"We will need brave men to stand at the end of the wings of the
_keddah_," said Ahmad Din. He spoke no less than truth. The man who
stands at the end of the wings, or wide-stretching gates, of the
_keddah_ is of course in the greatest danger of being charged and
killed. The herd, mad with fright, is only slightly less afraid of the
spreading wings of the stockade than of the yelling, whooping beaters
behind. Often they will try to break through the circle rather than
enter the wings.

"For two rupees additional I will hold one of the wings," replied old
Langur Dass. Ahmad Din glanced at him--at his hard, bright eyes and
determined face. Then he peered hard, and tried in vain to read the
thoughts behind the eyes. "You are a madman, Langur Dass," he said
wonderingly. "But thou shalt lie behind the right-wing men to pass them
torches. I have spoken."

"And the two extra rupees?" Langur asked cunningly.

"Maybe." One does not throw away rupees in Upper Burma.

Within the hour the signal of _"Mail, mail!"_ (Go on, go on!) was given,
and the final laps of the drive began.

The hills grew full of sound. The beaters sprang up with firebrand and
rifle, and closed swiftly about the herd. The animals moved slowly at
first. The time was not quite ripe to throw them into a panic. Many
times the herd would leave their trail and start to dip into a valley or
a creek-bed, but always there was a new crowd of beaters to block their
path. But presently the beaters closed in on them. Then the animals
began a wild descent squarely toward the mouth of the _keddah_.

_"Hai!"_ the wild men cried. "Oh, you forest pigs! On, on! Block the way
through that valley, you brainless sons of jackals! Are you afraid?
_Ai!_ Stand close! Watch, Puran! Guard your post, Khusru! Now on, on--do
not let them halt! _Arre! Aihai!_"

Firebrands waved, rifles cracked, the wild shout of beaters increased
in volume. The men closed in, driving the beasts before them.

But there was one man that did not raise his voice. Through all the
turmoil and pandemonium he crouched at the end of the stockade wing,
tense, and silent and alone. To one that could have looked into his
eyes, it would have seemed that his thoughts were far and far away. It
was just old Langur Dass, named for a monkey and despised of men.

He was waiting for the instant that the herd would come thundering down
the hill, in order to pass lighted firebrands to the bold men who held
that corner. He was not certain that he could do the thing he had set
out to do. Perhaps the herd would sweep past him, through the gates. If
he did win, he would have to face alone the screaming, infuriated
hillmen, whose knives were always ready to draw. But knives did not
matter now. Langur Dass had only his own faith and his own creed, and no
fear could make him betray them.

Muztagh had lost control of his herd. At their head ran the old leader
that he had worsted. In their hour of fear they had turned back to him.
What did this youngster know of elephant-drives? Ever the waving
firebrands drew nearer, the beaters lessened their circle, the avenues
of escape became more narrow. The yawning arms of the stockade stretched
just beyond.

"Will I win, jungle gods?" a little grey man at the _keddah_ wing was
whispering to the forests. "Will I save you, great one that I knew in
babyhood? Will you go down into chains before the night is done? _Ai!_ I
hear the thunder of your feet! The moment is almost here. And now--your
last chance, Muztagh!"

"Close down, close down!" Ahmad Din was shouting to his beaters. "The
thing is done in another moment. Hasten, pigs of the hills! Raise your
voice! Now! _Aihai!_"

The herd was at the very wings of the stockade. They had halted an
instant, milling, and the beaters increased their shouts. Only one of
all the herd seemed to know the danger--Muztagh himself, and he had
dropped from the front rank to the very rear. He stood with uplifted
trunk, facing the approaching rows of beaters. And there seemed to be
no break in the whole line.

The herd started to move on into the wings of captitivity; and they did
not heed his warning squeals to turn. The circle of fire drew nearer.
Then his trunk seemed to droop, and he turned, too. He could not break
the line. He turned, too, toward the mouth of the _keddah_.

But even as he turned, a brown figure darted toward him from the end of
the wing. A voice known long ago was calling to him--a voice that
penetrated high and clear above the babble of the beaters. "Muztagh!" it
was crying. "Muztagh!"

But it was not the words that turned Muztagh. An elephant cannot
understand words, except a few elemental sounds such as a horse or dog
can learn. Rather it was the smell of the man, remembered from long ago,
and the sound of his voice, never quite forgotten. For an elephant never
forgets.

"Muztagh! Muztagh!"

The elephant knew him now. He remembered his one friend among all the
human beings that he knew in his calfhood; the one mortal from whom he
had received love and given love in exchange.

"More firebrands!" yelled the men who held that corner of the wing.
"Firebrands! Where is Langur Dass?" but instead of firebrands that would
have frightened beast and aided men, Langur Dass stepped out from behind
a tree and beat at the heads of the right-wing guards with a bamboo cane
that whistled and whacked and scattered them into panic--yelling all the
while--"Muztagh! O my Muztagh! Here is an opening! Muztagh, come!".

And Muztagh did come--trumpeting--crashing like an avalanche, with
Langur Dass hard after him afraid, now that he had done the trick. And
hot on the trail of Langur Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn not
meaning to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the
trickster's life.

But it was not written that the knife should ever enter the flesh of
Langur Dass.

The elephant never forgets, and Muztagh was monarch of his breed. He
turned back two paces, and struck with his trunk. Ahmad Din was knocked
aside as the wind whips a straw.

For an instant elephant and man stood front to front. To the left of
them the gates of the stockade dropped shut behind the herd. The
elephant stood with trunk slightly lifted, for the moment motionless.
The long-haired man who saved him stood lifting upstretched arms.

It was such as scene as one might remember in an old legend, wherein
beasts and men were brothers, or such as sometimes might steal, likely
something remembered from another age, into a man's dreams. Nowhere but
in India, where men have a little knowledge of the mystery of the
elephant, could it have taken place at all.

For Langur Dass was speaking to my lord the elephant:

"Take me with thee, Muztagh! Monarch of the hills! Thou and I are not of
the world of men, but of the jungle and the rain, the silence, and the
cold touch of rivers. We are brothers, Muztagh. O beloved, wilt thou
leave me here to die!"

The elephant slowly turned his head and looked scornfully at the group
of beaters bearing down on Langur Dass, murder shining no less from
their knives than from their lighted eyes.

"Take me," the old man pleaded; "thy herd is gone."

The elephant seemed to know what he was asking. He had lifted him to his
great shoulders many times, in the last days of his captivity. And
besides, his old love for Langur Dass had never been forgotten. It all
returned, full and strong as ever. For an elephant never can forget.

It was not one of the man-herd that stood pleading before him. It was
one of his own jungle people, just as, deep in his heart, he had always
known. So with one motion light as air, he swung him gently to his
shoulder.

The jungle, vast and mysterious and still, closed its gates behind them.

TURKEY RED

BY FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD

From _Pictorial Review_

The old mail-sled running between Haney and Le Beau, in the days when
Dakota was still a Territory, was nearing the end of its hundred-mile
route.

It was a desolate country in those days; geographers still described it
as The Great American Desert, and in looks it deserved the title. Never
was there anything so lonesome as that endless stretch of snow reaching
across the world until it cut into a cold grey sky, excepting the same
desert burned to a brown tinder by the hot wind of summer.

Nothing but sky and plain and its voice, the wind, unless you might
count a lonely sod shack blocked against the horizon, miles away from a
neighbour, miles from anywhere, its red-curtained square of window
glowing through the early twilight.

There were three men in the sled; Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty,
belligerently Western, the self-elected guardian of every one on his
route; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a boy, living on his
pre-emption claim near the upper reaches of the stage line; the third a
stranger from that part of the country vaguely defined as "the East." He
was travelling, had given him name as Smith, and was as inquisitive
about the country as he was reticent about his business there. Dan
plainly disapproved of him.

They had driven the last cold miles in silence when the stage-driver
turned to his neighbour. "Letter didn't say anything about coming out in
the spring to look over the country, did it?"

Hillas shook his head. "It was like all the rest, Dan. Don't want to
build a railroad at all until the country's settled."

"God! Can't they see the other side of it? What it means to the folks
already here to wait for it?"

The stranger thrust a suddenly interested profile above the handsome
collar of his fur coat. He looked out over the waste of snow.

"You say there's no timber here?"

Dan maintained unfriendly silence and Hillas answered: "Nothing but
scrub on the banks of the creeks. Years of prairie fires have burned out
the trees, we think."

"Any ores--mines?"

The boy shook his head as he slid farther down in his worn buffalo coat
of the plains.

"We're too busy rustling for something to eat first. And you can't
develop mines without tools."

"Tools?"

"Yes, a railroad first of all."

Dan shifted the lines from one fur-mittened hand to the other, swinging
the freed numbed arm in rhythmic beating against his body as he looked
along the horizon a bit anxiously. The stranger shivered visibly.

"It's a god-forsaken country. Why don't you get out?"

Hillas, following Dan's glance around the blurred sky line, answered
absently, "Usual answer is 'Leave? It's all I can do to stay here.'"

Smith regarded him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen
this frozen wilderness?"

Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the spring."

"I see!" The edged voice snapped, "Visionaries!"

Hillas's eyes opened again, wide, and then the boy was looking beyond
the man with the far-seeing eyes of the plainsman. He spoke under his
breath as if he were alone.

"Visionary, pioneer, American. That was the evolution in the beginning.
Perhaps that is what we are." Suddenly the endurance in his voice went
down before a wave of bitterness. "The first pioneers had to wait, too.
How could they stand it so long!"

The young shoulders drooped as he thrust stiff fingers deep within the
shapeless coat pockets. He slowly withdrew his right hand holding a
parcel wrapped in brown paper. He tore a three-cornered flap in the
cover, looked at the brightly coloured contents, replaced the flap and
returned the parcel, his chin a little higher.

Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly. "It won't be snow. Look
like a blizzard to you, Hillas?"

The traveller sat up. "Blizzard?"

"Yes," Dan drawled in willing contribution to his uneasiness, "the real
Dakota article where blizzards are made. None of your eastern
imitations, but a ninety-mile wind that whets slivers of ice off the
frozen drifts all the way down from the North Pole. Only one good thing
about a blizzard--it's over in a hurry. You get to shelter or you freeze
to death."

A gust of wind flung a powder of snow stingingly against their faces.
The traveller withdrew his head turtlewise within the handsome collar in
final condemnation. "No man in his senses would ever have deliberately
come here to live."

Dan turned. "Wouldn't, eh?"

"No."

"You're American?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was born here. It's my country."

"Ever read about your Pilgrim Fathers?"

"Why, of course."

"Frontiersmen, same as us. You're living on what they did. We're getting
this frontier ready for those who come after. Want our children to have
a better chance than we had. Our reason's same as theirs. Hillas told
you the truth. Country's all right if we had a railroad."

"Humph!" With a contemptuous look across the desert. "Where's your
freight, your grain, cattle--"

"_West_-bound freight, coal, feed, seed-grain, work, and more
neighbours."

"One-sided bargain. Road that hauls empties one way doesn't pay. No
company would risk a line through here."

The angles of Dan's jaw showed white. "Maybe. Ever get a chance to pay
your debt to those Pilgrim pioneers? Ever take it? Think the stock was
worth saving?"

He lifted his whip-handle toward a pin-point of light across the stretch
of snow. "Donovan lives over there and Mis' Donovan. We call them 'old
folks' now; their hair has turned white as these drifts in two years.
All they've got is here. He's a real farmer and a lot of help to the
country, but they won't last long like this."

Dan swung his arm toward a glimmer nor' by nor'east. "Mis' Clark lives
there, a mile back from the stage road. Clark's down in Yankton earning
money to keep them going. She's alone with her baby holding down the
claim." Dan's arm sagged. "We've had women go crazy out here."

The whip-stock followed the empty horizon half round the compass to a
lighted red square not more than two miles away. "Mis' Carson died in
the spring. Carson stayed until he was too poor to get away. There's
three children--oldest's Katy, just eleven." Dan's words failed, but his
eyes told. "Somebody will brag of them as ancestors some day. They'll
deserve it if they live through this."

Dan's jaw squared as he leveled his whip-handle straight at the
traveller. "I've answered your questions, now you answer mine! We know
your opinion of the country--you're not travelling for pleasure or your
health. What are you here for?"

"Business. My own!"

"There's two kinds of business out here this time of year. Tain't
healthy for either of them." Dan's words were measured and clipped.
"You've damned the West and all that's in it good and plenty. Now I say,
damn the people anywhere in the whole country that won't pay their debts
from pioneer to pioneer; that lets us fight the wilderness barehanded
and die fighting; that won't risk--"

A grey film dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not
the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked out over the
heads of the leaders and they broke into a quick trot. The shriek of the
runners along the frozen snow cut through the ominous darkness.

"Hillas," Dan's voice came sharply, "stand up and look for the light on
Clark's guide-pole about a mile to the right. God help us if it ain't
burning."

Hillas struggled up, one clumsy mitten thatching his eyes from the
blinding needles. "I don't see it, Dan. We can't be more than a mile
away. Hadn't you better break toward it?"

"Got to keep the track 'til we--see--light!"

The wind tore the words from his mouth as it struck them in lashing
fury. The leaders had disappeared in a wall of snow, but Dan's lash
whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull.

"See it, Hillas?"

"No, Dan."

Tiger-like the storm leaped again, bandying them about in its paws like
captive mice. The horses swerved before the punishing blows, bunched,
backed, tangled. Dan stood up shouting his orders of menacing appeal
above the storm.

Again a breathing space before the next deadly impact. As it came Hillas
shouted, "I see it--there, Dan! It's a red light. She's in trouble."

Through the whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling
horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the
leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice
and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them
with far-reaching lash, then the off leader went down. Dan felt behind
him for Hillas and shoved the reins against his arm.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24